


Cicatrization

by SofiaBane



Series: Eight Days a Week [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: And everyone is emotionally self-actualized too, BDSM, Depression, Everyone Is Gay, Hogwarts Eighth Year, Multi, Omorashi, Philosophy, Politics, Post-War, Read the warnings inside though, Sexuality, Slow Burn, Slytherins Being Slytherins, Sorry not sorry for the kink, Soul Magic, Unrealistic amount of talking during sex, Voldemort's endless pretensions, Why is only vanilla sex literary?, baby don't hurt me, nappies, what is love?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-14
Updated: 2018-07-28
Packaged: 2019-05-22 00:11:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 39
Words: 709,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14925668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SofiaBane/pseuds/SofiaBane
Summary: Cicatrization: the formation of scar tissue at the site of a healing wound.With the statute of secrecy repealed and an armistice with Voldemort signed, the wixen world struggles to put itself back together amidst the Muggle world. Harry is the collateral by which everyone keeps peace; and Voldemort takes his place within the Ministry as the architect of the Unification, even if he’s sort of insufferable about it. Meanwhile: why are the Slytherins going missing, what is causing the magic of Hogwarts to decay, and who wants to carve Harry’s Horcrux out of his soul?





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry gets a teaching contract; Voldemort gets a prison sentence. Scrimgeour negotiates, reluctantly.

 

_Tuesday, May 26, 1998._ They’d made it a month, at least. It surpassed both of their expectations. Over a month under house arrest, being fetched every other Sunday to fortify the shimmering shield over Britain, protecting its airspace. The shield had been negotiated for the wixen world’s autonomy among Muggles. That Voldemort and Harry should do it specifically was their own negotiation, keeping them away from more terrible forms of prosecution. At least, that had been the deal. Apparently, Harry thought as he opened the front door to a half dozen unexpected Aurors one hideous morning, someone had changed the rules without informing him.

Moody and Shacklebolt were at the front; the others he’d only met a few times, and they were still all sort of a hazy collection. For whatever difference that would make – neither Moody or Shacklebolt looked particularly happy to see him, either. “Morning,” Moody grumbled. “Where’s Voldemort?”

Harry pulled himself to his full, very unimpressive height as though to fill the doorframe. “Why?” he asked. “Dawlish said nobody would be by until Thursday, you can’t just – “

“Minister’s orders,” Moody cut him off, clearly not in the mood to get into it. “And I’d rather explain with him present, so….” He made an impatient gesture behind Harry.

“But there’s a _contract_ ,” Harry said uselessly, stalling, because he didn’t want to see the day unfold as he knew it had to.

“And extenuating circumstances,” Moody countered. “ _Go._ ”

Harry shot him a horrible look as he went. Voldemort was awake before him on most days and indeed today Harry only had a faint idea of what he was doing. But he found Voldemort in the basement, staring at a wall of runes he’d written in mid-air as he sipped (what now must be cold) tea. “Um.”

Voldemort glanced up. “Aurors?” he said with distaste. “You may as well let them in. It was inevitable. You saw the negotiations with Germany, of course.”

“ _Of course_ ,” Harry echoed self-deprecatingly. “I didn’t, actually. So?”

Voldemort looked at him, exasperated. “Really, _what_ is competing for your attention in this infernal place, that you don’t even keep up with the news?” he demanded. “British and German wixes want talks about trade. But Germany’s taken a hard line, they want me properly locked up before they’ll work with Scrimgeour. I expect he’s gotten an ultimatum.”

Shit. Harry sagged against the doorjamb. “What’d you do to Germany?”

He flashed his teeth. “Nothing. But they’re still, ah, shell-shocked from Grindelwald’s legacy. Which is absurd, there’s more differences between us than similarities….” But he’d gotten to his feet, pulling on a traveling cloak over his robe, and Harry wanted to beg him not to acquiesce. And either Voldemort felt this through Legilimency, or it was just bleeding obvious how strenuously he objected to this, because before he’d said anything, Voldemort flashed him a warning look. “Don’t get involved. They want to protect you. Don’t give them reason to regret it. Now, _please_ go let the Aurors in. I’m sure they’re very impatient by now.”

“I’d go with you, you know.”

Voldemort jerked at this as though he’d been prodded, and shot Harry an irritated look. “You would, and your useless heroism will be your death someday. You see how that would be helpful to precisely _nobody_?” He took Harry’s shoulders, rather too forcefully, and steered him toward the stairs. “Listen,” he said lowly, conspiratorially. “If it’s Azkaban… I am not affected by Dementors as they affect others, I am told. You understand why?” (He waited for Harry to nod; Voldemort was paranoid enough to not speak freely about his Horcruxes in a home kept by the Ministry. Which might not even be unreasonable, as far as paranoia went.) “So sulk, or carry on. But the Ministry can’t realize this. And they can’t lock you away too, because then we truly would be fucked.”

“Oh.” And that was all he could think to say.

“I need a moment.” And Voldemort pushed him up the staircase, alone.

The Aurors did literally need to be let in. It was part of the security measures of this improvised prison: the amount of magic was throttled here, enough that Voldemort objected that they couldn’t properly defend themselves, so the Aurors had added a charm that kept anyone who wasn’t specifically invited in each time from entering. And indeed they were _quite_ restless outside, when he went to retrieve them. “Come in,” he said, in tones that made clear he’d rather they didn’t. “I’ll put on tea.” Another thing he didn’t want to do, but the basement stairs were in the kitchen, so Voldemort wouldn’t emerge without him.

The Aurors congregated in the living room; only Kingsley followed him into the kitchen. “We really don’t like to intrude,” he said, a bit cautious. “This is critical, however.”

“Is it?” He only just caught himself before he slammed the kettle onto the range. “Scrimgeour needs to impress Germany that badly?”

Kingsley’s eyebrows went up. “Voldemort has caught you up, then,” he said, and Harry didn’t bother denying it. “But there’s more. As Mad Eye said….”

But at that moment Voldemort ascended the stairs, looking a great deal better than Harry felt. “Shacklebolt,” he greeted Kingsley. “It can’t just be you? Harry spoke of it as an ambush…. _Ah_ ,” he said as he stepped farther into the kitchen, glancing into the sitting room. “So Harry was right.”

Kingsley’s mouth went tight. “We come with much to discuss,” he said. “The Minister sends his apologies, that he couldn’t join us.”

“No matter.” He strode into the living room, and Harry, making a discontented noise as he gathered up the tea tray, rushed after him.

“Rye, Willoughby, Bragg….” Voldemort was casually greeting all the Aurors as he passed them. He’d been better at learning their Aurors than Harry had; or maybe he’d known them from the war. Harry had never asked. In any case, he set down the tea tray (it was going to go untouched; he knew from experience that none of them wanted to look away from Voldemort for longer than necessary) and took a seat next to Voldemort, on a sofa before the fireplace. “What _is_ the occasion, that you all need to be present?”

A few of the Aurors looked slightly chastised. It did look like overkill: Voldemort, though imposing and inhuman as always, had only ever been poised and professional with the Aurors, since their house arrest had begun. Really, at times his demeanor with them bordered on _chipper_ , which Harry would swear was just to fuck with them. It worked, anyway. But Moody wouldn’t be Moody if he ever did anything by halves, so… a half dozen nervous Aurors sat in their living room.

The one he thought was Rye began: “The Minister’s been in talks with Minister Müller for several weeks now. Germany’s offering very generous trade deals; they say they’ve got surplus, and Britain’s supply lines are still a bit fragile. In exchange we’ll be employing more young German wixes in our Ministry. More visas, you know.” He’d made her nervous; she was babbling, stalling. “But they also insist that you should be in a proper wixen prison, not here. They say they can’t work with a Minister so _weak_ as to let you go free.”

“Oh, is this freedom?” Voldemort asked with faux-politeness.

Rye colored. “Just passing along their impressions,” she muttered. “Scrimgeour asked whether there wasn’t anything else he could offer… but it’s been days now, and we only want a resolution.”

A pause. “Alastor, you brought half the department out here to tell us about trade deals?” Voldemort raised his non-eyebrows at Moody. “ _Surely…._ ”

“There’s more,” Moody said with irritation. (Voldemort’s wry and mocking performance always got to him most of all.) “We haven’t told the public yet. There’d be chaos.” He glared as something like a warning. “It reached… an ultimatum. That is, Müller said Germany would intervene itself if our Ministry didn’t imprison you.”

By the looks on their faces, even most of the Aurors hadn’t known this bit. Well, shit.

And based on his expression, Voldemort hadn’t known either. Still, he gave a tiny, deliberate shrug. “That would certainly be an embarrassment to the Ministry. Though not your greatest,” he added off-handedly. “But what concern is it of mine, what international crisis is brewing?”

A muscle twitched in Moody’s cheek. “You’re going to Azkaban. Only the dignity of it is up to you.”

“ _Dignity_ ,” Voldemort echoed with scorn. “The most internalized of social control. And what of our contract?” With a snap of his fingers he’d conjured a thick scroll. Wandless magic was another thing he did to unnerve the Aurors. Moody’s grip on his staff got tighter.

“It’s well within the clause of a state of emergency,” Moody said. “As you say, there’s an impending international crisis.”

But Voldemort had opened the scroll, dropping the heavy end of it in Harry’s lap as he sifted through it. “’If the Ministry finds reason to suspend any part of this contract for political expediency or necessity, alternate arrangements for security, abode, magic, recompense, et cetera, will be made,’” he read out to the room. “Really, you’d be hard-pressed to find an excuse that couldn’t be made to fit that clause,” he said to Moody. “ _However_ ,” he said slightly louder, cutting off the beginning of Moody’s defense, “I’d be willing to surrender myself at Azkaban. With a proper sentence, one that’s got an end date. Within a year, ideally.”

Moody’s face, already gnarled, twisted into deeper knots of suspicion. “A year?”

“That’s how long I’d consent to stay,” Voldemort clarified. “Any longer and Scrimgeour will have the embarrassment of a breakout instead.”

A longer pause. More of the Aurors in the room were getting distinctly anxious, ready for a fight if need be. Harry wasn’t entirely sure Voldemort wouldn’t kill them (he _couldn’t_ , technically. One, a vow Harry had made swore that he himself would drop dead if Voldemort tried killing the Aurors. Two, there wasn’t enough magic in this prison anyway; somehow that wouldn’t stop him. Harry regretted sharpening their knives just yesterday). Finally Moody said, “I’ll suggest it to the Minister.”

“Do.” He still had the scroll in his claws, picking at its edges idly. “And the Muggles’ shield?”

The Aurors looked at each other. “We couldn’t hold you to it,” Kingsley said, his brow furrowed. “As non-compliance carried with it time in Azkaban… it would be redundant.”

But Voldemort was shaking his head. “I’d rather continue casting it. It’s not a technique that can be passed along easily.”

“Why?” Kingsley’s suspicion was probably well-founded.

Voldemort bared his teeth. “As a gesture of charity and goodwill.” To put them relatively more at ease, he went on: “Because it’s delicate, experimental magic. It’s nearly organic, and still in its infancy. Harry will receive its caretaking techniques and responsibilities when it’s matured, but that won’t be for at least a year.”

The Aurors’ gazes flickered to Harry at this, as though they’d already forgotten he was here. Voldemort had a way of taking up all the space in the room. Not that Harry minded.

“Ah, Harry might be busy,” Kingsley said elliptically, sharing a look with Moody.

“What?” Harry said, surprised to be relevant to this conversation. “Why would I be busy?”

With a permissive nod from Moody, Kingsley leaned forward (going for something like ‘avuncular,’ he supposed, with some measure of success). “Hogwarts will be re-opening this summer.”

“That’s great.” And it was – Hogwarts’s closing or, more recently, its use as a fortress, had been one of the worst irregularities of the war. “But, uh, am I still a student? I’ll be eighteen in July. Even if I didn’t really get a seventh year.”

“You didn’t,” Kingsley agreed. “And you’d be welcome to sit in on classes, particularly if you’re taking NEWTs. But actually… some of the faculty suggested that you might like to teach Defense. Dumbledore’s portrait was a particularly strong advocate of yours.”

“Oh. Huh.” He sat back, warmed inside by the thought. Certainly he’d had the experience, if not an inclination for teaching as a career.

“It would be a one year contact, to begin,” Kingsley added. “Renewable, if it suits you. The faculty thought you… adaptable enough to teach in this transition year.”

“Thanks. I mean, tell them thanks. I’d like to.”

“Minerva says she’ll expect you at the first staff meeting, mid-June.”

“Right.” Taking the end of the contract in his lap, he re-rolled it for Voldemort. (The contract had bits about him in it too, but honestly… nobody thought Harry was the dangerous one. Hence him getting a teaching job while Voldemort got a prison sentence.) “Is that it, then?” He didn’t mean to sound abrupt but didn’t regret that he did. “We’ll need to get to Cornwall this Sunday, as well.” The vantage point from which they cast the shield charm over Britain. Bloody exhausting, and an all-day endeavor, but not as complicated as Voldemort was making it out to be.

“That is it. Do you need anything?” Moody drew himself up on his staff creakily, shaking off Willoughby’s offering grasp. “You know how to work the post, yeah? Can’t set up a Floo here, or owls.”

“Yes.” A book recently left on their kitchen counter, where Harry could write what he liked, and apparently its twin text in the Aurors department would be looked after. “We’re fine, though.” He was subtly drawing them all toward the door. “See you Sunday. Tell Tonks I say hullo.” And he was ushering them out, and most of them looked distinctly relieved to be going, even though nothing had even _happened_. The twats.

When the front door was shut, rather too heavily, Harry slumped against it. “ _Ugh_ ,” he said to the house at large, since Voldemort had disappeared into the other room. “Have they got to be so….” But he couldn’t even think of what they were being. He went to find Voldemort.

In the kitchen, hovering over that same book with which they were meant to communicate with the Aurors. He wasn’t writing, though, at least not in it. Instead he was drawing runes in the air above it, frowning as they twisted and changed shape, apparently giving him answers to whatever arcane question he had posed of it. When he noticed Harry in the doorway, he nodded him in. “I hadn’t looked at the charm on this before. Which, really, was careless. It could have been recording any number of things. I’ve found nothing yet, anyway.”

Putting his elbows on the counter, Harry leaned up beside Voldemort. “Oh. Good?” he guessed. He’d never tried writing in it, even. He slid a bottle of ink and quill over, dripping a bit of it onto the corner of the page. It shimmered and vanished, and an old memory surfaced within him. “Like your diary,” he said. Even though it’d probably be a sore subject, given that he had destroyed ( _killed_?) said diary. Still. Perhaps he was even goading Voldemort a bit – he did a lot better when Voldemort was slightly sardonic and scathing, not this faux-chipper act he performed for the Aurors.

And as expected, Voldemort’s face went dark at the mention. “Superficially,” he said. “An emergent property, not something it was charmed to do.” This had distracted him enough from his runes, as he squared off. “Lucius suffered greatly for that,” he said, eyes glinting. “You probably should as well. And the basilisk! Harry, that basilisk _belonged to Salazar Slytherin_.”

Harry wasn’t sure what either of them wanted out of this exchange exactly, but it was at least an excellent distraction. “That was pretty shit of him, then. It looked like an awfully boring existence.”

“Captivity generally is,” Voldemort sighed, and they were once more facing the dull horror that was their life. “But look.” He stepped back to display the runes in mid-air. “They’ve put Geminio on it, that’s those two symbols.” He motioned to the first two runes. “A Protean charm would have been simpler, but it doesn’t have the same range for runework. And there’s a cipher on it, one that casts the spell persistently, do you see? Fairly clever, not how I would have accomplished the same. But it will do, as a spell benign enough not to trip the Aurors’ security.”

“Their security…?”

Making a face, Voldemort rapped on his skull with a sharp knuckle. “They’ll be crawling all over Hogwarts generally, and you specifically. As a means of communication, I _could_ just shove dreams into your head, but you’d need to be asleep for that, of course. A book of some sort wouldn’t garner nearly the attention.”

“Oh. Yeah, I guess.” He looked up at Voldemort, concerned. “Are you really going to Azkaban?” He hated the thought.

“If our dear Minister agrees to it, yes.”

“But _why_?” Harry said this so forcefully that Voldemort looked vaguely alarmed. “You haven’t got to be. Just like you haven’t got to be here, either. I assumed you’re just keeping me company.”

Voldemort hummed in amusement at this. “It is by choice, yes. Don’t you find that more meaningful?”

“Meaningful for _what_? It doesn’t _mean_ anything.”

Harry wanted a confrontation, wanted to be scolded and shouted at because then at least maybe Voldemort would accidentally let slip his true motives. If they were anything more than an unsettling puzzle by design. Instead Voldemort seemed to grow only more amused at his frustration. “I suppose to you it wouldn’t.” He cast a few more spells, idly, at the book. Then, abruptly, he took Harry by the wrist and pulled him to the basement stairs, pressing a hand warningly over Harry’s mouth.

He was not a fan of this cloak and dagger drama, in such a thoroughly undramatic environment. He peeled Voldemort’s hand from his face but followed.

The wall of runes that Voldemort had been studying still hung in the air. With a swish of his wand they expanded, encircling the room, making their faces warm with the glow from the makeshift cage now surrounding them. “Oh my god, _what_ ,” Harry said, staring at Voldemort. “It was bugged, then?”

“Yes.” Voldemort’s voice was tight. “Not always active, just listening for phrases… and using similar runes, one that barely shifted with activity. God _damn_ them,” he swore, angry enough that Harry took a half-step back, alarmed. (Voldemort only invoked ‘the Muggle god,’ in his words, at the worst times.) “I’d only searched for centralized spells in this house, I thought they’d cast it over the entire place, but the book’s range….” He hissed air through his teeth. “Have you said anything incriminating recently?” he asked, mostly idly. “Have I?”

“You did just threaten me for destroying your Horcrux.”

Voldemort’s look made clear he felt that was incredibly warranted. “We’re using Parseltongue from now on,” he said with finality. “Let them track _that_. There’s a writing system, Parselscript, you should learn it anyway. Along with runes, of course.”

“I will. I mean, I’ll try.” He swallowed, and forced his mind into Parsel-mode. “What _are_ you planning, then, really?”

Voldemort sank into the same chair Harry had found him in this morning; Harry joined him. “Why would you want the responsibility of knowing?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I just… worry.”

“You worry,” Voldemort repeated, mocking. “I have suffered much worse than Azkaban, you know.”

Harry assumed that meant himself. “I’m sorry,” he apologized, absurdly.

Voldemort gave him a look, dry and exasperated, before continuing: “You should ask again when things have… settled. Not before you’re at Hogwarts.”

It was unsatisfying but what could he do. “Okay,” he said. “Was that the right choice? Taking the Defense post?”

Voldemort raised where his eyebrows would be. “You agreed to it readily enough.”

“Well. Somebody had to do it. And,” (dipping into Voldemort’s past _again_ , normally something they didn’t engage) “they probably just want you to lift the curse on it, anyway.”

Voldemort’s eyebrows shot up higher. “Oh, Merlin,” he sighed. “What secrets of mine _hasn’t_  Dumbledore divulged to you?”

“I think he got in about all of them.”

Voldemort frowned at that. “I’d lift the curse, if doing so would offer any particular leverage. As with anything else.”

“Oh.” This wasn’t unreasonable, he supposed. “Maybe you should curse the Minister’s position instead, then. For leverage.”

This delighted Voldemort in his own cold, cruel way. “It would certainly expedite things,” he said. And before Harry could cleverly, innocently ask what sort of things, Voldemort was up, the cage of runes shifting to accommodate him as he walked to the far side of the basement, to the built-in bookshelves. The Aurors had been pleasant enough about the comfort of this house arrest (“We _have_ just saved the world,” Harry had muttered at some point as their move-in had been supervised) and of course that included Voldemort’s library. “This is probably dated,” he said, flipping through a thin, ragged book. “I haven’t looked at it since I was a student.”

Harry rose to receive it. Strange shapes, with curlicues and jaunting lines everywhere, covered the front. It was exactly what Parselscript should look like. “Thanks. I’ll practice.”

But Voldemort was still at his shelves, now looking at the Defense titles. “And for teaching, you’ll want to read Hornett… Messer… Sun Tzu….” He started creating little stacks.

“Sun Tzu?”

“You’ll appreciate him more than you might expect,” Voldemort assured him. “Historians argue whether he was a wizard. Of course, you could find advocates arguing that _any_ prominent Muggle was secretly a wixie. It gets absurd, at a point.” He hadn’t turned from his shelves, still arranging stacks for Harry.

He had known none of this. “Who are your favorite secret wixes, then?”

“Socrates,” Voldemort said immediately. “And Hypatia. Probably overly optimistic on my part, though, to hope that the dissidents and enemies of the state got off. There.” And he finally turned dramatically, gesturing to his rearranged shelf. “Introduction and method. Curses, counter-curses. Dueling. Zoology. Law.” He motioned to each stack in turn, and frowned. “Would you like any dark arts books proper?”

He couldn’t exactly get any _more_ tainted. “Sure. If they’re not, like, made of human skin.”

“Reports of anthropodermic volumes are greatly exaggerated,” Voldemort not-actually-reassured him. He perked up. “Oh, although if you’re on faculty, you’ll have access to Hogwarts’s restricted section. Assuming the Aurors who will be assigned to you don’t _completely_ infantilize you.” He began pulling dark arts titles.

“I’ll post you whatever you want,” Harry promised.

“Your ideas about the quality of mail service in Azkaban are charming.”

Every time _Azkaban_ was mentioned, Harry’s guts wrenched a little bit more. “Fine. I’d hand deliver them, then.”

“Good boy.” He turned, pressing a stack of dark arts titles into Harry’s arms. “Here. These are the un-cursed ones, at least.”

“Bloody thanks.” But he began flipping through the top book ( _Out of Order: Dark Arts and its Legal Challenges_ ). “When Barty Crouch was teaching Defense, he said it was important that we experience dark arts firsthand from him and not, you know, in the moment.”

“Do you agree?”

“I think so,” Harry said hesitantly. “He showed us the Unforgivables. And cast Imperio on us, each of us, in turn. I don’t know why Dumbledore didn’t sack him then.”

Voldemort shrugged minutely. “If he’d known. There’s no detection spells for the Unforgivables on Hogwarts grounds. Though really, there probably should be.”

“You know from experience?” Harry asked, against his much better judgment.

“Practicing Avada Kedavra on the edge of the forest,” he said with some relish. “Sometimes I’d do it in the line of sight of Dumbledore’s office window, for the thrill of it. The killing curse I used on my worthless father couldn’t have been the very first time I’d ever cast it. He would have been _maimed_. Like killing someone with a blunt knife instead of a sharp one. It would have been unpleasant all around.”

_Ugh_. He shuddered. “You’re a psychopath,” he muttered, turning to go.

“Harry.” A strong grip on his shoulder; he turned back. Voldemort gave him a cold smile. “Don’t ever believe I’m not dangerous.” He loosened his grasp and nodded to the stack of books in Harry’s arms. “You’re taking those?”

Hell, he shouldn’t. “Yeah,” he said anyway, slipping out from under Voldemort’s touch to go read.

 

Three things, after he had consumed a few dark arts books:

1) ‘Dark Arts’ was a legal category, not a natural one. There was nothing inherently ‘light’ or ‘dark’ about a spell until the Ministry decreed it so.

2) As such, most of what got classed as dark magic was guilt by association: spells Grindelwald had created or favored, or Voldemort, or any other dark sorcerers really. Because certainly light magic also had the capacity to harm people, as much as anything. Intention had something to do with it, and so did severity, but most of the distinction came down to, ‘Because the Ministry says so.’

3) Even if all of this sounds like apologia, Harry was never, ever ‘going dark.’ Whatever the fuck that meant.

 

They stayed out of each other’s way (in this strangely, generously spacious home) until evening. The icebox would fill itself with prepared dishes – another spell Voldemort had deconstructed, but deemed innocent – and they cooked anyway. It was as much as Harry usually, tangibly accomplished in a day. Though today, pacing between Voldemort’s bookshelves and the nook where he usually read, he had a month’s syllabus for each year. He held it out hesitantly to Voldemort when the man found him in the kitchen. “Do you care?”

He didn’t answer but, taking it, did settle at the kitchen table to read, as Harry went to chop vegetables. “May I?” he asked, conjuring a quill with a twist of his fingers.

“Sure.”

So Voldemort scribbled away happily while Harry set a curry simmering. Finally, pouring each of them a glass of wine (and thank god the Aurors withheld judgment on how much wine they consumed. Though Tonks had once politely suggested getting him butterbeer instead, but of course she meant well), he settled at the table.  “Well?”

“It’s very good, so far.” He looked up curiously. “Have you done this before?”

“No. Well, I mean, a bit. My fifth year, the Ministry wouldn’t let us practice magic in class.”

“I have no one to thank more for my successful return than Cornelius Fudge,” Voldemort said, a bit dreamily. “I should send him a card someday, expressing my gratitude.”

Harry snorted. “So we started a club instead, in secret, and I showed them defensive magic. Everyone in my year can cast a Patronus now. We called ourselves Dumbledore’s Army,” he added, desperate to see Voldemort’s reaction to _that_.

It was brilliant; he made a choking noise somewhere between laughter and disgust. “I suppose at the time your relationship with the Ministry couldn’t have been made worse.”

“No. And Scrimgeour kind of hates me for the same reason, that I wouldn’t work with him. You wouldn’t think he and Fudge wanted many of the same things.”

“I would,” Voldemort said archly.

He rolled his eyes at this predictable cynicism, rising to stir the curry. But as he was crumbling a block of tofu into the pan, there was sort of unfamiliar flurry at the far side of the kitchen. He thought initially that Voldemort had _thrown_ his syllabi for some awful reason, and whirled to protest – but no, the Aurors’ book was fluttering a few inches off the counter. In a dull, oddly papery voice it announced, “The Minister will be arriving at your home on Thursday at eleven a.m. Be advised that he’ll have his full security detail with him.”

“Brilliant.” Harry turned back to the stovetop.

Voldemort was not a great fan of autonomous artifacts, as it turned out. “Has that happened before? Have they sent announcements through it before?”

“Uh, written ones.” He’d glance over at the book sometimes and find a reminder of their Aurors’ next appointment. “I didn’t know it talked.”

This prompted a new volley of spells by Voldemort, to apparently uncover the book’s full secrets. “It should be thrown in the fire,” he muttered at some point. “It’s dehumanizing. _Rufus Scrimgeour is a prick_ ,” he enunciated over the book, switching back to English for this test, and when Harry turned in surprise (not that he’d argue the point, mind), Voldemort motioned to a new set of runes. “You saw the change? It means _Scrimgeour_ is a word it’s tracking. _I’ll murder the Muggles first, and the Aurors second. Then the Death Eaters will destroy Hogwarts_. Hm,” he frowned at the runes shifting in mid-air. “ _I need to break Bellatrix Lestrange out of Azkaban_. I really do,” he said as an aside in Parseltongue, “as she’s quite worthless inside. _Harry Potter is a Horcrux_?” he said, cautiously. Nothing. He seemed to sag with relief.

“So they don’t know.”

“No.”

“Dumbledore knew. At least, he suspected. I don’t know why he wouldn’t have tasked the Order with destroying them.”

“Mm.” Voldemort had lit the kitchen hearth and might have actually been contemplating dropping the book in. “Our world is too small for secrets. Even if he’d trusted everyone – _which he didn’t_ , incidentally – word simply spreads too quickly among us.”

“Who didn’t he trust?”

“Oh, I only meant categorically. He might have presented himself as ‘forgive and forget,’ but Harry, he never forgot. And forgiveness is only ever a performance.”

This was cynical, even for Voldemort. Because they mostly agreed to not talk about Dumbledore (or Snape, or Muggles, or blood politics) Harry let a long moment pass instead. So Voldemort continued hopefully: “ _Can_ I pitch this? I’ve got its charms, to replicate it. The awful thing shouldn’t be kept around.”

“If you’d like, yeah.” The Aurors would be annoyed, but it would make Voldemort so happy. And, living in a cage with Voldemort (spacious though it was), his interest in keeping Voldemort happy was really a quality of life issue for them both.

When Voldemort threw the book on the fire, he thought that it emitted something like a scream. Voldemort only snorted. “How dramatic.” He went to put naan in the oven.

 

_Thursday, May 28._ The Aurors were as frustrated as expected that they’d burned their book. They preceded Scrimgeour: a dozen, and a different group than earlier, no Moody this time but Kingsley was joined by Tonks. One of the more senior Aurors, and one of the ones less afraid of Voldemort (Whitebone? Brightbone?) was currently castigating Harry. “It was for your _safety_ ,” she’d snapped as he’d let them in on Thursday morning. “Everything we’ve done is for your safety. Whether you believe it or not, we still have a responsibility to protect even prisoners like yourself.”

“Voldemort found the tracking charms on it,” Harry said flatly.

Whitebone-Brightbone was unmoved. “Naturally. We have a similar responsibility – a greater one, I’d argue, though Kingsley disagrees with me – to protect law-abiding wixen _from_ you.” (Kingsley looked over at hearing his name, sized up the conversation, and wisely decided not to get roped into it.)

Voldemort entered behind him, apparently unmoved by the confrontation in progress. “Good morning, Camilla. What laws has Harry broken?”

“The ones against sedition.”

This was probably fair, and it didn’t matter anyway, because Scrimgeour entered then, flanked by Moody and another Auror called Bragg. They wore identical expressions. Moody took his place beside Tonks, but Scrimgeour paused to shake Harry’s hand, and then Voldemort’s. Harry wondered if Voldemort’s message that he was a prick had been relayed.

They settled in the living room once more. (Harry began to realize that the reason they’d been imprisoned in such a large home was to fit all the Aurors they wanted to surround Voldemort with.) Scrimgeour, in another gesture of desired civility, poured tea. “I apologize for my absence on Tuesday,” he began. “These meetings with Müller are… thorough. Alastor caught you up on the diplomatic circumstances?”

“He did.” Voldemort was more subdued, relatively, compared to the usual mocking way he spoke to the Aurors. “As discussed then, I’d serve a sentence in Azkaban if you got a proper ruling from a judge.”

Scrimgeour’s eyebrows knitted. “Yes. We’d need an entire court proceeding for it.”

“ _Exactly_ ,” Voldemort hissed, and Harry looked over at him in surprise. The Aurors had always vaguely deferred questions about a trial, court dates, depositions, and anything else. He’d felt resigned to it by now, an indefinite detention without charges until someone just… let him go. It wasn’t the way things were supposed to work, yet here they were, a month later. Voldemort was clearly less accepting of their circumstances.

Scrimgeour pursed his lips. “As you know, at the moment a trial would cause undue chaos, for the Ministry and our society. It would create more problems than it would solve, in the current political climate.”

“So will I,” Voldemort muttered.

Scrimgeour ignored this. “Really, it’s worked so far…. The negotiations, the allowances I’ve offered, all without trial.”

“What are you hiding?” Voldemort snapped.

“ _You_ ,” Scrimgeour came back, equally forcefully. (Harry felt how surprised and taken aback Voldemort was by this, strong enough that it bled through their usual Occlumency.) “The Ministry is too fragile right now to fully prosecute you, or to manage the spectacle that it would create. Furthermore, we are _grateful_ ” (he said it nearly spitefully) “for your critical role in resolving the last crisis. And I don’t think the Wizengamot would properly factor that in.”

This was obviously not true, such that Harry couldn’t restrain himself. “I saw the Wizengamot pardon Ludo Bagman because they thought he was brilliant at Quidditch,” he objected.

As always, they’d all immediately forgotten about him the moment things began, so he got a lot of surprised (and frankly, inhospitable) looks. “You _saw_ them?” Scrimgeour asked with slight incredulity, but still undeterred, he turned back to Voldemort. “The courts have their own standards and leniencies. I can’t account for them. I can, however, bypass them.”

“Are you truly a representative of the law, then, if you’d rather get things done extra-judicially?”

Scrimgeour made an exasperated sound. (Bad move; Harry had seen exasperation and drama and anger trigger Voldemort’s more caustic side like blood to a shark.) “Is this all on _principle_?”

Voldemort bared his teeth as though this were a great joke. “Are you a representative of the law, either, if you’re not an advocate for the principle of the matter?”

Harry understood the conversation but he was lost as to _why_ it was happening. Voldemort had seemed indifferent to trial before today; or if he was fussed then he’d at least not bothered Harry with it. He desperately wanted to tell Voldemort to take Scrimgeour’s offer, without jeopardizing whatever Voldemort was playing at. He could’ve muttered it in Parseltongue – but, while not _illegal_ or anything, he’d gotten a lot of dark looks from the Aurors last time he and Voldemort had spoken in Parseltongue. (Harry had only been telling Voldemort to get rid of the bloody handcuffs they’d left in the dining nook, but nevermind _that_.) Instead he tried pushing this sentiment very hard through their mental connection.

Voldemort might have felt it. In any case, he had now sat back and waited for Scrimgeour to beg, or chastise, or explode – what the Aurors normally did at this point. Scrimgeour did not. Instead he nodded to the Auror nearest Voldemort, who extracted a scroll from his robes and passed it over. “A proposed contract,” Scrimgeour said. “I drafted it personally yesterday, with Bloom and Hare.” The Minister’s personal legal counsel, who’d overseen their first arrest and agreement. “A year in Azkaban, tentatively beginning and ending on June twentieth. Self-surrender may come with certain privileges. At the conclusion of the sentence in Azkaban, you’d be returned here. By that time, a trial seems more feasible. This is not, after all, an indefinite detention.”

Harry had moved in closer to read the contract. “Er, Harry, you’d get your own. There’s nothing about you in this one,” Scrimgeour said, slightly strained.

“Harry’s quite welcome to read it,” Voldemort said, passing it into Harry’s lap entirely. “It must have troubled you deeply, to have Germany accuse you of being soft on crime.” (Now he was just being an arsehole. Harry changed his projected sentiment to _Knock it off._ )

“I’ve certainly been called worse,” Scrimgeour said, not rising to the bait. “This relationship with Germany seems to be the most expedient way to stabilize the country. Which _you_ nearly destroyed, with your Death Eaters,” he added, anger here slipping through, “so that you should bear the effects seems fundamentally just.”

“ _Just_ ,” Voldemort mocked. “Perhaps it is, but how would you know, avoiding law and due process whenever possible.”

“You don’t really believe that.” His mouth now in a thin line, he said very bluntly, “If you won’t self-surrender, then you’ll be imprisoned anyway, when I decree a state of emergency and a need for exceptional security.”

“Of course you will. ‘Sovereign is the one who decides the exception,’” Voldemort quoted. “You’ve got no more of an obligatory relationship to the law than I have, Minister. How does that make you feel?”

“I’ve quite made peace with it.”

A long silence. Harry hadn’t noticed how stock-still the rest of the Aurors had become, like rabbits frozen before a wolf. (Two wolves? Harry wondered. They both looked rather wild and predatory at the moment.) Voldemort shrugged, as though indifferent, and conjured a quill. “Visitation,” he said, shaking out the bottom of the scroll. “Books. No human guards. And I’ll need to maintain the Muggles’ airspace shield, every fortnight.”

The last – though it’d been relayed to Scrimgeour before – still seemed to take him by surprise. “Why?”

Voldemort puffed up a bit, irritated at having to defend this request a second time. “Because it’s _fragile_. Because I’m _proud_ of it. Because it will wither without my magic, and there’s no other single wix powerful enough to cast it again.”

The apparent sincerity and passion took Scrimgeour by surprise. “Oh,” he said, and his intense, predatory air was gone. “Yes. You may.”

Voldemort was now crossing out bits on the contract, and writing in others. The scratch of the quill was deafening.

“And, er, Harry.” Scrimgeour turned to him, as though any conversation could follow what had just happened. “Hogwarts itself will have increased security this year. We could discuss the extent to which that might overlap with your personal security. By which we mean both punishment and protection,” he said, a bit apologetically. (Voldemort snorted; several of the Aurors jumped at the sound but Scrimgeour steadfastly ignored him.)

“I mean, I’m not dangerous,” Harry said. A statement he thought obvious. “You should probably assign more Aurors to… I don’t know, the war zones?” (Hogsmeade was still a mess, and portions of Diagon Alley. There had been a nasty firefight in Eeylops; and more stores had suffered looting, and smashed windows from explosions, at least. They were still profoundly depressing places to be, last Harry had seen them.)

This was apparently the right answer, and Harry tried not to childishly regret it as Scrimgeour lit up. “We agree,” he said. “Of course, we’ll be watching for contraband. You’ll need escorts if you’re traveling to Azkaban,” he said, looking between Voldemort and Harry as though he wanted a great many questions about their relationship answered. ( _No, Minister, you really don’t_.) “And… would you still also be working on the airspace shield?”

“Yeah.”

“Really.” He was deadpan, looking back at Voldemort. “This extraordinarily fragile spell requires the particular talents of one powerful wizard, and one teenage boy?”

“Amazingly enough, it does.”

For some reason, Scrimgeour didn’t challenge that. “Aurors will come around on June fourteenth to collect you, and bring you straight to Hogwarts. Professor McGonagall requested that you be at the staff meeting the next day.”

“Yes, sir. Thanks.”

Voldemort, recognizing that things were wrapping up and he was still writing, drew his wand. Immediately all the Aurors had theirs drawn as well, and it was horrible, and Harry thought he’d have to jump in their midst to stop it. But, casting a spell to duplicate the scroll, Voldemort put the same runes on it that the book had had, to track the changes he was making to it. He dropped the scroll on the coffee table between them with mocking deference; Scrimgeour looked at it and then him with distaste. “Clever,” he said, and it wasn’t a compliment.

“Yes.”

But Scrimgeour took the scroll. And the Aurors moved to leave, and there was apparently a protocol about it when the Minister was present. Half preceded him, and the other half followed, wrapping around him like a cocoon. This time he shook nobody’s hand.

But Tonks was at the rear, and gave Harry a tiny, hesitant smile as they went. After a furtive look over her shoulder (only Kingsley caught her eye, and winked), she squeezed his arm. “Okay?” she mouthed, and he nodded. And then they were off.

And he truly was okay, mostly. Bored, understimulated, and restless from not being out often (Voldemort had yelled at him a few days ago for sprinting the staircase, _just because he could_ ), but that was expected. The thing that was most killing him was the lack of contact with his friends. The Aurors could hand-deliver post, but there weren’t any owls. Something like an unplottable charm was over the house, Voldemort had guessed once. Perhaps it was even hidden with a Secret Keeper, wouldn’t that be a fucking kick. So Hermione wrote him a long, thorough letter each week, and Ron would scrawl something at the bottom. Ginny had once sent a stack of Muggle puzzle books with the note ‘Dad likes these,’ that might’ve been sarcastic. For the circumstances, his day-to-day life was actually incredibly boring.

“D’you think they’d bring me cigarettes if I asked?” he asked idly as he passed through the living room, tidying up after their guests.

Voldemort was still writing. “No. Why?”

“I don’t know, it’d feel right. Complete the anti-social look. Give me something to do.”

He barely looked up at that. “Wixes are far better at drugs, and you’ve clearly spent no time with Slytherins if you don’t know that. I’ll request a Potions set. And if you start smoking, I won’t kiss you.”

“You don’t kiss me anyway,” Harry objected.

“ _Harry,_ ” Voldemort sighed. “This draft should be completed before Scrimgeour’s returned to his desk.” He fanned at fresh ink to dry it faster. “Though if you come here, I’d give you a handjob with my off hand while writing.”

The idea of Voldemort simultaneously getting Harry off and writing to Scrimgeour was equal parts disgusting and hilarious, but really would bring the Minister far too close to their sex life. He snickered but shook his head. “I’d rather wait.” Instead, settling onto the sofa beside Voldemort, he looked over the contract’s marginalia. At the top, where Scrimgeour had written the surrender date of June 20th, Voldemort had crossed it out and written in the 14th instead, the day Harry was to leave for Hogwarts. Good man, Voldemort.

“You should put on a pot of tea while you’re waiting.” Voldemort was now scrawling _And I need a Potions set for Harry_ in a blank bit of the margins.

Thank Merlin. This preceded sex or something like it. And by the time that was set and he was back on the sofa with a mug in hand, Scrimgeour (or another Auror? Probably Scrimgeour) had engaged Voldemort, a second set of handwriting now blossoming over the page. They were on a clause about Azkaban guards now – Voldemort forbade human guards, Scrimgeour wrote that there would be one Auror stationed outside his cell at all times and he should damn well be grateful it wasn’t more. Harry tucked his feet under him, settling in for the long haul. “What’ve you got against guards? Or what’ve you got in favor of Dementors, I guess.” He gave Voldemort a skeptical look. “Do you _like_ Dementors?”

“Nobody _likes_ Dementors. What do you take me for.” Voldemort drew a thick line through the phrase _at all times_ and wrote _between dusk and dawn_ above it. It went unchallenged. “But humans are _cruel_. Humans are _vindictive_. Dementors are nothing if not predictable.”

Needless to say, this was unspeakably rich. “But _you’re_ cruel and vindictive,” Harry pointed out, he thought quite reasonably.

Voldemort, hilariously, seemed to take offense at this. “There are terrible ways to die, you know.” And he’d set the quill down, making the conversation real and serious very quickly. “Slow ways, painful ways, humiliating ways. The killing curse is none of those things. Really, there are dozens of curses that should be more unforgiveable.”

“I don’t need your apologia, thanks,” Harry said (though he did see a bit of the point). “You’re not a better person because you kill them _efficiently_.”

“I never took you for a utilitarian,” Voldemort remarked. “That’s quite Slytherin of you.”

“Urgh,” Harry said. Though, knowing Voldemort, that might’ve been something like a compliment. “I mean, thanks, I guess. But no.”

“You had never wondered why those curses in particular are the unforgivables? They’re not even anti-social in the same _way_. The Ministry put the Imperius on there because it’d been making their jobs harder at the time. And Avada Kedavra’s on there because they couldn’t stand the idea that their deaths are generally inevitable _anyway_.”

Again: rich. Seeing Harry’s skepticism, Voldemort went on: “I’m not arguing that these curses are ethical. Just that they’re only not exceptional enough to warrant their own, particularly rigid legal category.”

He was still hesitant to almost-condone this conversation. “Sure, yeah,” he muttered.

“And I’m telling you this because if you do intend to go into the Ministry – in diplomacy, advocacy, ambassadorship – then you might write some useful reforms.”

“Oh.” He still liked the idea. Even if he wasn’t fond of the Ministry itself, and the feeling was more than mutual. Still. “You already tried installing me in the Ministry. It didn’t go well.”

“It didn’t go _poorly_ , really,” Voldemort objected. “And I don’t care for the interpersonal nuance you’d be practicing.”

_Obviously_. Keeping this to himself, Harry instead said, “I’ll have to talk to Professor McGonagall, I guess. I don’t know what sort of NEWTs I’d need for that.”

“Mm. History. Charms or potions, if you’ll be traveling. Defense, if things go south.”

“ _History_ ,” Harry sighed. “I’ve never paid attention in a single history class.”

“It shows,” Voldemort said dryly. “I’ll teach you myself, though not before potions…. _Merde_.” He had looked down at the request for a potions set on the contract, and found Scrimgeour’s handwriting had overtaken the page.

“Sorry. Shit. Sorry.” Now was not the time for distractions. As he jumped up to pour another tea, Voldemort was writing furiously over Scrimgeour’s words.

To avoid mucking things up any worse, he settled in to the kitchen to read more, and construct more of his syllabus. He’d drained the teapot within the hour, and made another, despite his desperation and already-crossed legs. And when he heard something heavy get hurled at the wall in the next room, he only put his head down and let Voldemort negotiate.

It was deep in the afternoon when he heard Voldemort cackle, and approach. “He’s spent all day on this,” He said, the contract tucked under one arm. (Had it gotten _longer_ somehow?) “He must have cleared his schedule.”

“Have you got to aggravate him all the time?”

“They’d be more unnerved if I didn’t,” Voldemort pointed out. “I’ve got a moment. Do you?”

“Yeah.” Harry pushed the stack of books away from himself. Onto better things.

He couldn’t say whether the sex in captivity had made him more grounded or less. In any case, he was bursting to piss already, and fighting back an anticipatory hard-on. It took him a careful moment of uncrossing his legs before he could get up, even. “What – fuck,” he interrupted his sultry voice as his bladder sloshed. A breath. “What do you propose?”

He was so bad at being seductive that this was at least as much to amuse Voldemort as arouse him. But Voldemort was too thoughtful to even make fun of him, plotting something. “Give me your magic.”

“Why?” He opened his hands regardless, gathering stray magic in what was now a practiced gesture.

“It will be worth it.”

And so he was passing off magic to Voldemort with one hand while the other was shoved between his legs. Pathetic, really. And then he was being pulled into the living room, pushed onto the sofa and turned away from Voldemort, who had yanked his shirt over his head and was tying his hands behind his back in that way that made him feel vulnerable and exposed and so goddamn hot. He squirmed, enough that Voldemort made a noise of irritation and wound the restraints as high up his arms as they’d go, until his elbows and shoulders ached from the hyper-extension.  He groaned appreciatively.

Then the nappy bag was summoned. (They’d done their own packing, they’d merely added this to the pile, and… well, even if the Aurors had searched it all, what the fuck were they going to say to Harry about it.) Voldemort settled onto the sofa before him. “Open your mouth,” he said, shaking out a spoon bit to gag him.

He was half-hard, and he was reckless, and he was going to argue with Voldemort. “But I’d rather suck you off.”

Dangerous silence for a moment, but Harry didn’t rescind the statement. What could Voldemort do, punish him? Finally: “There’s more work to be done on the contract.”

“Good.” He’d bloody delight in watching Voldemort keep from smudging the contract while he got off. “Please, put the bit in afterward, but first….” He leaned in clumsily, catching Voldemort’s lower lip between him, licking and sucking as a prelude. Voldemort put the bit down.

“Anything else?”

“Mm. No. Here.” He leaned back, precariously, to toe off his trainers and shift his weight to accommodate a nappy.

“Ah.” Voldemort slung the bag away. “You’re going without a nappy tonight. Nor are you using the toilet.” Taking him by an elbow, he steadied Harry as he sunk to his knees on the carpet. But moving was not only precarious but on the edge of panic-inducing, as desperate as he was. He’d been anticipating that nappy. Fuck.

Voldemort liked it when he begged, but he’d be forced to even if he didn’t. “But….” He was rocking his weight from one knee to the other. And now, tied up and kneeling as he was, he had to keep his legs apart to maintain his balance. Sod it all. “But I won’t make it.” His voice carried the faintest note of hysteria.

Voldemort slid onto the sofa before him, kicking Harry’s legs apart farther as he spread his own. “You will. You must.” He pushed Harry’s hair behind his ear, a patronizing gesture that nevertheless gave him chills.

“No, please. I’m… not good at waiting.”

A twitch at his lips. “Clearly.” He pressed the toe of his boot into Harry’s abdomen, at his swollen bladder, making him whimper. “Your toilet training really is underwhelming. We’ve got to begin all over. So when you feel young and helpless and foolish tonight in very wet pants, that seems an appropriate place to begin.” He was unbuttoning the bottom of his robes, parting them. No pants this time, just his cock, already pert at this preparation. He slung one leg over Harry’s shoulder.

This was new, this was creative. He’d never told Voldemort that his toilet training had been… well, _perfunctory_ would be a generous word. And somehow all that shame and anxiety had gotten translated in his stupid head as a _thrill_ , these days. “I’d like that,” he said, lowly, because of course it was still humiliating and wrong. “But I really – _ah_ ,” he gasped as a surge of desperation hit hard, making him contort in useless ways to attempt to hold it off.

Voldemort cocked his head. “Suggestion charm,” he explained.

“Not that I need one,” he said through his teeth. “I really – I’m sorry, I didn’t know I’d have to wait. And I want to but I _can’t_. Please, let me go, just a bit.” He was already babbling. It didn’t bode well.

Surprisingly: “You may.” Voldemort was pulling out his wand now, for some more substantial magic. “At my discretion, with the Imperius.”

Harry’s breath caught in his throat, but he was too intrigued to protest. He nodded faintly.

Voldemort noted his cooperation, wonderfully. “Good boy,” he murmured. “You won’t even feel it. It carries exponentially more control than the suggestion charm. As a means of assistance, really.”

He found his voice. “Yes, sir.” (Voldemort didn’t ask Harry to call him sir. He didn’t ask Harry to call him anything. Harry just liked to, sometimes.) “Thank you.”

Faint amusement. “You’re quite welcome. And really, Harry, don’t look so _tragic_. Here.” And a twist of his wand cast Imperio. Not like he’d felt in the graveyard, when they’d dueled. Closer to when Crouch-Moody had performed it on all of them in class: light, floaty, simple. The sense of control and constraint that came with it was oddly reassuring. _Warm_ , if anything that originated with Voldemort could be called warm. The panic-thrill of his imminent accident was still there, it just felt unbelievably pleasurable right now. Huh.

“Do you like it?” Voldemort’s voice sounded farther away. Harry made himself focus on the task at hand.

“I love it.” And he rocked himself forward to run his tongue down Voldemort’s cock. Making a contented sound, he picked up the contract once more.

He bobbed his mouth around the erection, wet and awkward like they both liked. His mouth was too small or Voldemort’s cock was too big, because he always felt like he’d either gag or suffocate. Not in a bad way. His own cock was straining against his jeans without even touching himself, partly out of desperation and partly out of lust. (As though those weren’t the same bloody thing for him.) He opened his mouth wide, turning his head sideways, and slid down the length of Voldemort’s cock. A slight groan, a delicious sound because Voldemort never lost control. Not like Harry.

He bobbed and sucked, his chin becoming slick with spit and bitter pre-come. He watched for the moments of weakness, even if Voldemort was not writing tiny words in the contract’s margin. He plunged his mouth on his length, until he hit the back of his throat and retched slightly, a reverberation that’d resonate in the head of Voldemort’s cock. His fingers went white on his quill. Amazing.

He lifted his mouth for just a moment. “Read it to me,” he requested, his voice thick with saliva. “The good parts.”

“You are a deviant,” Voldemort murmured affectionately. “Mm. ‘The prisoner will have access to a library of one hundred books’ – _ah_ ,” he choked as Harry pressed a sucking kiss to the tip, swirling his tongue upon the sensitive underside “’— one hundred books, to be approved for both content and structure by the Aurors’ Department.’” A breath hissed between his teeth as Harry sucked near the base, licking and suckling goddamn adorably. He went on, voice a touch lower: “’All books must be published by a mainstream publisher, with minimal marginalia’ – _Morgana_ ,” he said, and Harry’s lips would’ve curled into a smile if they weren’t filled with cock. He bounced on his knees now, both to suck Voldemort off and because his own desperation felt the best like that. Performative, obvious, childish.

And then Voldemort’s contract was thrown aside and his hands were in Harry’s hair, unusually unable to contain himself. Harry bloody loved it when he’d pull his hair, and he whimpered in delighted pain as Voldemort’s long fingers clenched against his scalp, pulling him in, holding him tight. He bounced and bounced, his bladder sloshing horrifically, his entire lower half impossibly swollen. His whimpers sent shocks through Voldemort’s velvety flesh, delicious and agonizing.

But he liked watching Voldemort’s face most, when he could. Soft, unguarded – the only time he was ever lost in the moment. His eyes were closed and his thin lips gasped in a tight O, before he caught himself and bit his mouth closed. Amazing.

And he sucked harder, his tongue lapping at warm flesh over and over. An inhalation that might’ve been the beginning of _Harry_. Fingers scrabbling in his hair, desperate. And he’d sat still, poised and in control, up to this point, but as he came he thrust hard, hitting Harry’s hard palate, knocking him off-balance, bringing tears to his eyes as he choked on hot come. And in that moment he felt the Imperius, or rather its absence, as Voldemort’s control over him slipped, and a hot spurt of piss hit his boxers.

His exclamation of surprise only pushed Voldemort further. Another surge of piss into his jeans and panic in his chest. Voldemort’s come was weighing down his tongue when he pulled back, and he was desperate, trying to talk through it anyway: “Oh god, I’m going in my pants,” he said thickly, trying uselessly to throw his legs together. A dark spot had bloomed on the front of his jeans, and he was pissing so hard that the stream bubbled through. “Vol – bugger – I can’t stop – “

“Imperio.” And immediately the burst of piss stopped and it fucking hurt, making him more desperate than he’d been before, if that was even possible. Dropping his head to his chest, he made a noise somewhere between a groan and a sob.

“Stand up. Let me see,” Voldemort said after a long moment, when they’d nearly caught their breath. And no longer in the thrill of it, the wet heat in his jeans wasn’t as exquisite as it was disgusting and shameful. He wouldn’t argue, but when he got up, he was bashful. A wet spot the size of a handprint, on the front of his jeans, for God and everyone to see.

Voldemort pressed right on the stain, pressing it against Harry’s erection. Thank fuck he could kind of piss while hard, dribble at least, but there’d been no relief accompanying this accident, only shame. And he wanted desperately to cover it, but of course his hands were still tied behind his back. He had to just… stand there.

“That’s a very small accident,” Voldemort said.

“Yes.”

“Do you feel better?”

“Of course not.” A warning look. “No. Sir.”

“Hm.” Voldemort pulled him sitting. He was going to ruin the sofa. “Do you want to get off?”

A dangerous proposition, in case his erection was in fact stemming the tide. Still, he was immeasurably wound up, and the taste of Voldemort in his mouth was making him hot. “Yeah. Please.”

He said nothing. But Harry’s wet jeans were unzipped – not tugged down, just the zipper, enough that Voldemort could slide his hand inside, fondling him through his wet shorts. “This awful Muggle clothing,” he said, eyeing the jeans with distaste. “Please ruin it.”

Harry swallowed. “I am about to.”

Voldemort’s touch was teasing, indifferent. He even picked up his quill again, the arsehole. Still, his long fingers caressed and weaved and pressed against Harry’s cock, the wet fabric kept warm by his body heat. “I’m letting go,” he murmured, and before Harry could ask what that meant, desperation twisted his insides, and piss swelled to the head of his cock. It was the slightest trickle, still mostly contained by his erection, but he rewet his boxers, and it dripped down his inner thighs. “ _Fuck_ ,” he said, trying to jump up, to preserve the furniture. Voldemort pushed him back down, dismissively. And then it all came in surges, a panic in his chest that moved into a pain in his torso, finishing with blessed awful filthy relief as, incrementally, his jeans grew saturated. It was maybe ten seconds, when only his thighs had gotten wet, when Voldemort snapped the Imperio back into place. A deep, painful shiver ran through him. He’d never get to finish. And every dribble just made things worse.

“Just let me go,” he groaned. He could’ve pissed harder, gotten some actual relief, without the fucking hard-on in the way. He pushed, in his cock and in his mind, to overcome the Imperio. His bladder only throbbed, and he whimpered.

Voldemort enjoyed his desperation deeply. “When you’re not expecting it,” he said. “Perhaps while you’re asleep. That is, if you can fall asleep tonight.”

“Sod off,” Harry groaned. He was doubled over. He needed to touch himself, and couldn’t, and did his best to grind against Voldemort’s hand instead. Throbbing, humiliating, ineffectual, desperate.

“Beg me,” Voldemort said.

“For what?” Harry’s voice had a pitch of panic. “Let me piss, let me come. I – _ugh_ – it hurts so much, at least one of them – “

“Which?”

The worst decision. “Let me come,” he said, the more proximate need if not the wiser one. “Here – “ And he was pushing himself into Voldemort’s hand, the wet fabric between them rough but not bad. It held him at bay, to keep him from popping off immediately. “Please – you’ve always been so good to me, and so generous. Let me get off, I’ll do anything – “

Voldemort looked up with faint curiosity at that. And his hand stilled while he reached for something, and Harry felt magic, but his eyes were closed as he pumped his hips, reckless and off-balance, against Voldemort’s touch.

“Harry.” And something was being pushed into his mouth, but not the heavy metal of the spoon gag. Something softer. Rubber. “I’ve changed my mind, you haven’t got to beg. Shh.”

The feel of it was not quite a gag – though it was magically adhered in his mouth, a tiny brilliant spell they’d worked out just last week. A soother, it had to be a soother. What the christ. He couldn’t quite tell without going cross-eyed. Though, Merlin, what Voldemort was doing to him now, having scooped up his cock and beginning to rub along its underside, grazing his balls – was going to make him cross-eyed anyway.

His cries were indistinct now, muffled by the rubber filling his mouth. He’d assumed Voldemort had cast Engorgio on the bulb of it, because it filled his cheeks and weighted down his tongue. “ _Urgh_ ,” he groaned through his teeth, uselessly, as Voldemort let go of Imperio again and a wicked surge ran through Harry. But he was so far beyond pissing, he felt his bladder throb and now his erection was the only thing holding him back. He arched, to finish off and maybe find some actual relief. Voldemort, delighted by Harry’s mute and desperate display, pumped him harder.

His desire and desperation and the best sort of pain crested, and he shoved himself at Voldemort, his cock throbbing. Voldemort’s thin lips curled. One – two – three firm strokes along the underside of his heavy cock and he was spurting thick ropes into his ruined shorts. And Voldemort was reaching beneath his boxers _now_ , to scoop up fingerfuls of his come, to feel it spattered on his long fingers. Harry was helpless against any of the mess he was making.

And the soother was popped out of his mouth, though he could only pant by now, and Voldemort’s fingers were loaded with his come. “Here,” he said, so softly and resonating so deeply that he might have pushed it through their psychic connection instead. Then the thick, tangy come was dropped on his tongue, and before he could react the soother was back in. Spreading his own taste throughout his mouth, layered atop Voldemort’s. He shuddered in arousal and disgust, at Voldemort’s perverse creativity. And then he slumped, each molecule of his body vibrating at a different frequency. He couldn’t say anything of course – and Voldemort only ever mocked the maudlin things he’d say after sex anyway – but looked up with a satisfied, sleepy expression.

Voldemort was dimming the lights and pulling Harry into a more natural position, because they both knew he was useless after getting off. “Can you breathe?” he asked, nodding to the soother. Harry hummed his assent. “We’ll discuss it later.” And, gathering his books and contract, he was gone.

 

He collected Harry for dinner what felt like a long while later, slicing through the ropes without decorum. The soother he let Harry pull out himself, and gave him no instruction on what should be done with it. Harry was fairly sure that his being awkward and anxious around Voldemort was in fact one of Voldemort’s fetishes. He slipped the soother into a pocket, and stood, wincing as the wet, stained fabric slapped his thighs. “Merlin,” he muttered, reaching for his belt to discard the jeans altogether.

“Leave them.”

He shuddered. “But this is hideous.”

Voldemort’s mouth curved. “Incredibly,” he agreed. “However, you made your choice.”

That was true enough. Steeling his resolve, he pulled his hands off his wet jeans, and followed Voldemort to the kitchen.

There were no longer dark, hasty, competing marks on the contract. “Have you finished?” Harry asked, gesturing to it.

“Yes. Scrimgeour was… amenable to my requests.” He didn’t say it as a positive thing.

“Maybe you’ve just pleasantly surprised him.” Voldemort snorted.

“We began on you as well,” Voldemort went on. “I wrote that you’d be looking to diplomacy. He suggested that you should work not in international wixen relations, but rather establishing wixen-Muggle relations.”

“Oh.” He seated himself. “Sure. I hadn’t thought about a preference. What do the Muggles need from us?”

“ _Want_ ,” Voldemort corrected. “They need precious little but our peace. But there’s legislation to be written, on both sides.” He brought a bowl of pasta and a bottle of wine to the table. “Commerce, for example. They want to buy our products and our labor. We may want their technology. The Ministry’s already established a research team, to sort out tech and magic.”

Arthur’s job at the Muggle artifacts department was probably already gone. “Do they need more?” He pulled the contract toward himself.

Voldemort looked at him curiously. “I hadn’t thought that was among your interests.”

“It’s not.” Conjuring a quill, he wrote in the margin, _You need to hire Arthur Weasley to the tech research team._ “But my best mate’s dad, he loves Muggles, and especially electricity. He would be so happy.”

There was an unexpected spark of recognition in Voldemort’s eyes. “Weasley?”

“Yeah. How…?”

A smirk. “Lucius hates him, rather obsessively. Sometimes he can’t contain himself.” Then, the wry look fading, he added, “Lucius and Narcissa are under house arrest. Draco couldn’t stay, of course. Unless they’ve apprehended him by now as well. And Flint, Yaxley, and Avery are in Azkaban. Even when I’ve told Scrimgeour, and the rest of them, that my power isn’t derived from my followers.” A frown. “I’ve resurrected myself alone before, as I pointed out. But it suits them to believe that power is still contained and negotiated by the Leviathan.”

“Oh.” He didn’t regret any of their arrests. He wondered if it would be impolite to say so. “Are you breaking them out? _Can_ you?”

“I can, and I won’t. There was a time when I would have, when I needed the most loyal among my ranks.” He sounded perversely nostalgic. “Now, being older and more pragmatic, I would prefer the most competent. Not the ones who let themselves be captured.”

“Tight for them.”

“Indeed.” He shook his head as though clearing it, and returned to safer topics: “Muggle applications for magic are nearly endless. We’ve got excellent leverage, and an excellent means for revitalizing the economy. Quicker than the trade deals with Germany, though no simpler. I told Scrimgeour to sell something to the Muggles before the laws are in place, for easy wealth and plausible deniability.”

“What did he think of that?”

“As little as you might expect.” Voldemort lifted a bony shoulder in a shrug. “I would negotiate it myself, if I could. Their psychiatrists want our cheering charms. Or we might sell them autonomous cleaning supplies, or self-correcting quills, or mittens with warming spells in them. Tiny things, you understand. Insignificant things. Monetize the small things, keep the larger ones for negotiations. Such as the airspace shield.”

“Those are harmless,” Harry agreed. “I’ve got friends who started a joke shop on Diagon Alley, they keep a stock of Muggle magic tricks. They’d probably love to trade.”

“Well, if they’d obscure their business dealings from the Ministry…. Would this happen to be the particularly garish storefront across from the cauldron shop?”

“That’s the one.” Since the Weasley twins’ relation to the law could be described as strained at best, he made a mental note to write them. Twirling his pasta in his bowl, he asked with faux-casualness, “So Scrimgeour would still hire me? I mean, he called me an enemy of the state, so…. And what’s-her-name Whitebone keeps threatening me with sedition charges.”

“Camilla Brightbone,” Voldemort corrected with some asperity. “Only Scrimgeour himself could begin those proceedings, and as previously illustrated, he doesn’t want trials. For anyone, apparently. But yes, he seems to think having you in the Ministry would benefit them. It would improve their image, or at the very least neutralize you under the bureaucracy of it all. It is a possibility that apparently outweighs even his displeasure with you.”

“Huh.” He thought; Voldemort looked at him expectantly. “Whatever Scrimgeour wants for me, though, is probably something I don’t want for myself.”

A flash of his fangs. “Good boy. It is troublesome in its own way. For now, you can only stay back and learn more.”

That seemed to be everyone’s MO these days: Harry and Voldemort watching the machinations of the Ministry; the Ministry for some inscrutable reason keeping them together to learn more of the world domination for which Voldemort was grooming Harry. Or something like that; he had no sodding idea really. “Right. I will.” He looked curiously at Voldemort. “What do they want from you, though?”

“What a fantastic question.” He wasn’t even scathing about it. “Power? Information? Innovation? The Minister has been less than forthcoming.”

“And you think going to Azkaban will push him into asking?”

Voldemort smiled as though he found Harry’s concern over Azkaban just fucking adorable. “No,” he said. “But perhaps it will reveal something anyway.” Infuriating.

It was late in the evening, when Harry was doing the washing up and Voldemort was working at the kitchen table, that he began coaxing the Imperius off himself. It wasn’t unpleasant or invasive, not as Voldemort had cast it this time, it was just like picking at a scab. “I’d show the Imperius to my students,” he said aloud as he stacked dishes in the drying rack. “It was helpful to get it from Moody – Crouch – first. Before that night.” (They didn’t discuss all the instances in which Voldemort had tried and failed to kill Harry. It just wouldn’t help.) “And it – I could see how people could live under it long-term. It’s subtle.” It was distressing, how natural it felt, but Voldemort had to know. Could probably feel exactly the effects on Harry anyway.

He’d set down his book. “Yes,” he said. “Some of them probably never knew, their lives were so unexamined _anyway_.”

“I mean, I wouldn’t say you did them a favor or anything.”

“No,” he agreed. “But you should recognize – better than anyone, really – that being told what to do, being bound by someone else’s decisions, is not wholly unpleasant.”

Harry flushed. “Don’t philosophize this,” he muttered. “I’m only getting off on it.”

He hummed in some amusement. “Throw off the Imperius, Harry,” he said. “I’ll make it difficult, so you may learn something. Come find me when you’ve managed it.” Scooping up his books, he returned to the living room. Harry heard the crackle of the hearth springing to life.

And simultaneously he felt the Imperius in earnest. It was as if someone had just tightened a belt around his soul, constraining him. _Oh_. This felt familiar, this felt like the fear and humiliation and hopelessness and panic of the night in the graveyard. He suppressed the desire to go throw himself in Voldemort’s arms and beg him to call it off. Instead he forced himself into something like happiness. He was safe, he was fine. He was just a bit… hindered. Wasn’t that what he was goddamn begging Voldemort for all the time anyway? He resumed the washing up.

Now, it was more like untangling complex knots, or picking a lock. Careful, exploratory, poking for the unexpected weak parts. And he found it, after a few long minutes: he’d begun by focusing on pushing Voldemort’s presence out, but that had felt all wrong. (Whether because of the Horcrux or not, he couldn’t say. Voldemort probably could.) So, instead, he embraced it, until his presence became warm and pliable. “Like wards,” he murmured, dishes frozen in his hands as he’d worked this out. Exactly like the wards, and the counter-intuitive magic that would break them. He shoved magic and goodwill and acceptance into the tight space in his mind where the Imperius resided.

And, once it was _his_ enough (there was no better way to describe the sensation), he began to manipulate it. Press away at the rough and unpleasant bits, until it no longer hurt. Push forward his will, his self, his desire. He couldn’t quite tell where Voldemort’s will ended and his own began… but he never had been able to, really. This sort of porosity no longer bothered him, though. It was all he’d ever known.

So he pushed and pulled at the right moments, feeling Voldemort’s spell mutate under his touch. It was clever, shifting and dodging to avoid detection, or to convince Harry of its own rightful place within him. He had never _respected_ the Imperius before, of course. But the nuance of it was fascinating. He unraveled another knot around his heart, feeling freer. He was close, the spell was loose, with barely any purchase on him now. Putting aside the forgotten washing up, he wiped his hands off and moved to the living room. “Voldemort? I think I’ve about got it – _fuck_.” He did indeed break the Imperius, and all the desperation he’d been holding onto all night did him in. He jumped backward off the carpet as a warm tide rushed down his legs, and shoved his hands into his crotch to uselessly stem it.

But Voldemort had crossed the room, grabbing Harry and pulling them both to an armchair. “Very good,” he was murmuring, pushing Harry’s hands away because he fucking loved to see him humiliate himself. The denim of his jeans was glistening, tiny streams breaking through the saturated fabric as his overtaxed bladder emptied. Unexpectedly, he felt the Imperius curse once more. But it didn’t stop him. Instead Voldemort hissed into his ear, “Call me daddy.”

He jerked backward, the request jolting his guts. “No,” he tried to say, but only a strangled noise escaped him. He was already so hot, skin prickling with shame and disgust, but this…. He flushed, and he couldn’t even put a feeling to it. He couldn’t, he couldn’t, this was wrong. Wrong like everything else they were doing, wrong in the way he loved and Voldemort so willingly indulged. He scrambled to push his magic and acceptance and self into the curse, to own and manipulate it. “No.” He said it as though he were choking on it. “That is fucked up.” His protest was punctuated by the sound of his piss streaming onto the now-saturated chair and the carpet beneath them. Voldemort’s lap was sodden with his piss, and his robes clung to his erection. Fuck.

The piss draining into his jeans felt amazing, felt hot and shameful. He felt _young_ , he realized. As intended. “I couldn’t hold it,” he said softly, trying this out. Squirming, he shoved his hands between his legs once again. “Sorry.”

“You certainly are.” And Voldemort was unzipping his jeans, peeling them off so the final trickles ran over Harry’s soaked boxers, leaving wet trails along his thighs. And then Voldemort was pulling his own robes back, spread toward his bony hips, and he was arranging Harry on his lap. They always struggled over this bit: Harry wanted to fuck while facing Voldemort; Voldemort wanted to fuck him facing away. Cliché, really. But Harry resisted Voldemort’s maneuvering, dropping his forehead to Voldemort’s collarbone, licking the deep hollow of his throat. “Please,” he mouthed against his cool skin. He tried sounding young, innocent, helpless. “Please. Daddy.” Voldemort’s cock twitched against his thigh.

The word in his mouth gave him shivers down his torso. But… that wasn’t far from the interplay of pleasure and disgust he was getting off on _anyway_. And Voldemort’s Occlumency slipped – on accident? On purpose? – and he felt the thrill of this recursively. It was fucked up, it was all so fucked up, but….

And then Voldemort reached under his leg, plunging slick fingers inside of him, and he choked. Maneuvering himself on his knees (and thank god for years of clutching a broomstick between his legs, for the sinewy thighs it gave him), he sank onto Voldemort’s rigid cock. He didn’t hold Harry, didn’t guide him, because the control and the delicacy and the whimpering as Harry took him in, inch by exquisite inch, was so much better. And then Voldemort opened his Occlumency again, fully and deliberately this time, until Harry could watch his own gasping red lips and fluttering eyelids. He was already so flushed, his face with a sheen. He’d look better with his glasses off, he half-thought (his ideas already disjointed by the distracting fullness of his arse, but god, he wasn’t nearly finished). And before he could reach up himself, Voldemort was pulling his glasses off his face, pushing his wild hair from his damp forehead. But he was clearly impatient, and Harry felt his bony hands on his sides then, bearing down, pressing Harry onto his cock. He bounced a bit, first teasing and then more desperately, craving the waves of pleasure that shot through his belly.

It turned into a sort of rocking motion, inching Voldemort’s cock inside of him and hitting some good sensitive spot within. And then Voldemort was palming his cock through a handful of his wet boxers, bunched up uselessly around his thighs; and then his rocking became a sort of grinding into his touch. Voldemort was controlled, perfected, as he thrust upward and stroked Harry off in time. And their hands were all over each other, and he was mouthing Voldemort’s throat ( _cold_ , he was always so cold) and the heat built up inside him until his ears were ringing. “ _Ohh --_!” And he was pulling himself up on his knees when Voldemort slammed him back down, filling him up to his belly, spurting hot come deep inside him. His own fluids ran over Voldemort’s fingers, pressed through the saturated fabric, smearing as he still thrust against his touch. He was sticky and wet and flushed with humiliation, and it was perfect. His vision swam as the aftershocks coursed through him.

He crawled off Voldemort’s lap when he was able to. “ _Urgh_ ,” he muttered, kicking his wet shorts down his legs, and then just pulling his shirt over his head as well because he needed nothing so badly as a shower. “Can I go?” Because Voldemort had clearly had some narrative in mind, and he didn’t want to ruin it.

But Voldemort motioned that he could. “Yes. Oh, here.” And he wiped his hands off on Harry’s torso, dragging sticky lines across his abs. “You are a disaster.”

“Yeah,” Harry agreed happily.

 

_Sunday, June 1._ The Aurors acted like they were doing Harry a massive favor when they sent him home with a potions set that following Sunday, after the day in Cornwall with the airspace wards. He’d offered them gold – offered them the key to his Gringotts vault to pull out whatever his imprisonment was costing them, really – but Moody had grumbled about ethics committees and leaving himself open to extortion. So, new potions set, bought by wix taxes. Cool.

It had made Voldemort happy, at least – he’d been restless, in spite of the time they’d spent on syllabi, and history books, and sex. So, even though they were always knackered after wards, Voldemort more than Harry obviously, since Harry was only there as a cheerleader and reserve of magic, Voldemort set up the potions set once they got home late that evening. Harry was tasked with setting up barriers to protect the basement’s bookshelves, in case of explosion, and that somehow took longer than the set-up.

“You’ve witnessed this spell used for the shield for months now,” Voldemort said, coming up behind him as he tried draping a modified Protego in midair. “Why is it a problem?”

“I don’t know,” Harry sighed. “I can cast it normally, just over _people_ ….”

“Ah. People.” He said it with distaste. “Either objectify people more or objectify my books less, then.”

Somehow that sodding worked. Summoning all his concern for how sad Voldemort would be if his books were ruined, Harry made the silvery charm pop into existence. “ _Really_?” he said, incredulous. “That’s all it is? You told the Aurors it was so arcane….”

“Well, the ritual elements are more complex. Mainly though, the airspace is simply _large_.” Voldemort was leading him to the center of the room, where a table held his ingredients, and a cauldron was already set over a burner. “There are some large scale magics that work better collaboratively and others that work better with a single caster. Obviously, the latter causes problems of a prohibitively small population of possible casters who are sufficiently strong.”

He hadn’t known this but it made sense. “And you think that’s why the Ministry wants to keep you.”

“Well, among other reasons. But my death would be their loss, yes.” Somehow he managed this as a neutral statement – normally Voldemort got antsy around the subject of his own (potential, possible, unlikely, even impossible) death. Picking up a boning knife, he twirled it through his fingers. “Potions, though.”

“Just…?”

“For your edification, and my amusement, yes. Unless you’re going to beg the Aurors to have you on after all.”

Harry shuddered. His opinion of Aurors department had dropped precipitously in the past year. “No,” he said. “You promised to show me wixie drugs.”

A glint of Voldemort’s teeth. “Yes.” He surveyed the ingredients at hand. “Given our options… would you rather make something that makes you relaxed, or productive? Don’t even answer that,” he interrupted Harry, “because I already know.”

With something like real offense, Harry changed his answer. “Productive. You bitch.”

A sidelong look. “Right.” But he rotated out the ingredients he was lining up anyway, transfiguring oranges into a larger, pink fruit. “This potion only has unofficial names. Street names. It’s most often called Enki.” He transfigured the cauldron from pewter to marble. “Dice these.” He slid the unidentified fruit toward Harry, turning to go.

“Why?”

Voldemort looked back, surprised. “Because that is the first step.” He did not sound patient.

“No. Sorry. I just… thought you’d explain the theory. Snape never has, in a way that’s helped. If it’s just following directions… then most people would make the house elves do it, like cooking. Right?”

“It _is_ cooking,” Voldemort said, but he’d backtracked from the staircase. “And it has been a puzzle, that you’re able to cook but don’t excel at Potions.”

“Yeah, well, thank fuck that stir fries don’t _explode_ if you dice an ingredient instead of chopping it. Maybe I just do a little better in a more relaxed atmosphere.” This probably did not serve as a great defense.

“You’re beginning with the dragonfruit because more of your potion will be catalyzed with acid than heat. The cauldron is meant to keep it uniformly lukewarm,” Voldemort said, nodding at the granite. “As such, brewing will be a mixed method, that includes handling ingredients with charms. But you need four cups of dragonfruit before you can do anything else, so….”

“Right.” He picked up a hefty knife. “Thank you.”

And Voldemort left, and returned with handfuls of things from their cupboards, muttering about all the possible effects of the substitutions they’d have to make. “And it’s supposed to take its final form under moonlight,” he concluded with a sigh. “When you’ve finished that, liquidate it with a charm.”

It was different from any potion they’d worked on in class – non-standardized, with mingled method and magic. It felt, well, _illicit_. And it absolutely kept his attention a great deal more than the structured and exact science of Snape’s classroom. He could learn to like Potions.

It was after midnight when he’d finished, having worked through the glowing set of instructions Voldemort had hung in midair. The last line of the set: _Let set in moonlight for minimum six hours_. Well.

He climbed the stairs. “Voldemort?” The ground floor was dark. Another set of stairs, and he saw the light on in the bath. “Voldemort?” He knocked.

“Harry, just come in, really.”

He did, to find Voldemort sprawled in a bubble bath, the Panopticon hovering inches above the tub. Score one for magic. “The potion’s finished. I can put a freezing spell on it for later, if you’d like.”

Voldemort brightened at the news. “No need.” One hand emerged from the bath to wave the Panopticon to safety. Harry handed him a towel. “The question of approximating moonlight is an interesting one.” He was so tall and pale and thin as he stood; and yet Harry was finding all his weirdness more attractive than normal humans, these days. Voldemort toweled off the suds and then followed Harry out in the nude, extremely unconcerned. “At worst, you could freeze it until you returned to Hogwarts in a fortnight.”

“You can do that?”

Voldemort paused at the top of the basement stairs. “We do _magic_ ,” he enunciated. “You can manipulate the world however you’d like, really. That’s the point.”

“But there are laws. Natural laws, limits to what magic can do.” He followed Voldemort downstairs. “Magic doesn’t mean that we’re breaking the natural laws, it just means that the laws are bigger than what the Muggles think they are.”

A long pause – one that made him nervous because he normally didn’t fight Voldemort in his didactic moments. But all he said at last was, “Perhaps you’re right,” in a way that was actually thoughtful. And then he was dipping a hand directly into the cauldron, licking the lilac fluid off his index finger. “Good,” he said.

“You – _what_?”

“Here.” Voldemort handed him a pipette of the potion. “It’s meant to be cold and a bit alkaline at this stage. Which it is.”

He couldn’t shake the feeling that tasting an unfinished potion was desperately wrong. But he stuck the pipette in his mouth anyway. Cold spread across his tongue; and the acidity and fruitiness of the ingredients were already gone, leaving only a faint bitterness. “Snape has never made us taste our potions while we made them,” he said around the pipette. “I guess that’d be a disaster.”

“Obviously not all potions can be taste-tested. But it’s helpful, the ones that can – quicker than diagnostic spells. Bring that upstairs.”

Harry hefted the cauldron to his chest; Voldemort gave him a faintly pained look and cast an unspillable charm over the top. To the ground floor.

Voldemort brought him to the front door. “I haven’t studied the wards here extensively,” he said, holding open the door and peering into the black night. “But I assume the nearer ones are merely obnoxious, rather than dangerous.”

“I mean, all the Aurors’ warnings seemed pretty dire.” That any more than ten feet beyond the front door would cause them great bodily harm, and summon guards immediately, and get them less luxurious imprisonment that much faster.

“Of course they were.” But Voldemort was in the garden now, prodding at bits of the air experimentally. “But presumably they’d put wards of increasing severity farther out. Not that it matters for our sake; the moonlight of the charmed sky will be equally effective or ineffective anywhere.” Finding a ward, he tugged on it, and a bright string became visible.

Harry gazed up at what he had thought was the real sky, outdoors, in a remote but normal location. Apparently not. “The charmed sky?” He kind of didn’t want to know.

“Yes.” Voldemort had turned back to him. “This is only an illusion. An antechamber of sorts. Whatever horrible building we’re imprisoned underneath will have half dozen layers of security between ourselves and the outside world.” Harry made a faint choking noise; Voldemort nearly winced. “I thought you knew.”

“No, it’s fine. I should have expected that.” Should have expected that more than anti-Apparition charms and the magic version of an electric fence was keeping them in. Still, his stupid brain screamed at him, _Buried alive, you’ve been buried alive_. Suddenly the weight of the world was poised above their ceiling of stars, threatening to collapse in on itself.

Voldemort took the cauldron from him. “The charms seem respectable, at least. It might even be, ah, transferring real moonlight. Displacing it, you see.” He transfigured a stone into a pedestal.

“So we’re in an illusion with real components?” Real moonlight, what the fuck. He plucked a flower, crushing its petals between his nails. It felt real enough. Though, how would he ever really know.

“Plato’s cave had _real_ shadows,” Voldemort pointed out, in what he clearly thought was a reasonable tone. “It won’t be apparent whether the potion’s developed until the morning.” He motioned Harry back inside.

“Wait.” He looked toward the sky, attempting to discern how bloody _real_ the moonlight looked, but also appreciating the loosening in his chest that he hadn’t recognized as being tight. Even if this space was fake. “I’m, um, not good at being inside for so long. Are there brooms, by any chance?”

“Of course not.” Voldemort stepped around him. “The walls of the cell don’t cease to _exist_ , darling, just because they’ve been made invisible. Even if you did bypass the wards.”

Frowning at Voldemort, he flexed his fingers to conjure a rubber ball between them. Then he chucked it as hard as he could toward the sky. It soared into the dark sky, disappearing rapidly –

_Crack_.

His stomach dropped at the sound, and he levitated a spherical Lumos toward the ceiling, washing out the stars (“stars,” as they were). A wide and absurd crack now ran along the night sky, through which they could see what looked like packed earth. ( _Buried alive, buried alive_ , his heart pounded.) Still, he looked back at Voldemort, attempting to seem nonchalant. “It’s enough room to fly, at least.”

“Fidelia Squire is going to be livid at what you’ve done to her skylight charm.”

“Yeah, well.” He’d apologize for it if it’d get him a broom. Voldemort left him alone in the dark, still, fake night.

 

_Monday, June 2._ Voldemort handed him a shot glass of lilac potion over breakfast the next morning. He had a matching one. “It seems to have worked.”

“Huh. Cheers.” He clinked his glass to Voldemort’s and threw back the shot. Still cool, but a sort of bitter herbal note had developed overnight. Not bad, really. Voldemort was sipping his glass, a crease between his furrowed brows. “Well?”

“You did well,” Voldemort said (not as though it were a compliment, just a statement of fact). “You could compensate for the artificial moonlight with a touch more baking soda next time.” And he summoned one of his books from the basement, to make a note of that, presumably.

He was going to ask a dumb question. “What should I feel?”

“Not much, at that dosage. Some warmth, some focus.” Voldemort looked up, frowning. “Students aren’t selling potions like this during exams?”

“Nothing that actually worked.” His extremities were growing warm, if he concentrated on it. “Hermione had to confiscate doxy droppings during our OWLs.”

Voldemort’s frown deepened. “That is both disgusting and ineffective.”

“That’s what she thought, too.” Bringing the cauldron indoors, he drank another shot glass worth of Enki. _Ah_ – a distinct sort of drive settled in beside the warmth.

Voldemort had watched him do it. “You should make something of the day, for the potion to do any good.”

“Sure.” It didn’t sound like a bad proposition. Was this how Hermione felt all the time, he wondered incredulously. “I need to work on my classes.”

“Good boy.”

(That would always be obnoxious from anybody else, but from Voldemort it was just… nice.) “Do you want to, too?”

“Ah, no. I have my own work to be done.”

He tried to be casual about it; Voldemort would never tell him what he was doing, on late nights and early mornings. “Yeah?” he asked, super-cool.

Voldemort gave him a wry look. “ _Yeah_ ,” he mocked. “You should begin. Effects of Enki last five or six hours. Don’t redose before then.”

“Fine.” He summoned his books and parchment wandlessly; they zoomed across the room with unusual force, and he grunted as the heavy spines slammed into his sternum. “Uh, my magic’s stronger now too,” he said.

“Yes,” Voldemort deadpanned. “That’s atypical. Perhaps coincidental.” He shrugged minutely. “You should go, in any case,” he reiterated.

“Right, yeah, I’m going.” He went to go do his reading in the garden, in the glorious fake sunlight.

 

And he did work through the day, with a studiousness he’d never felt except in the DA and maybe in Quidditch strategy sessions. (Though he was happier even to be teaching DADA than Quidditch, really.) He’d finished up to the fourth years’ syllabus by late afternoon, when the Enki had mostly eroded into a satisfying lull. He wondered if he was allowed to see what Voldemort was working on. He took the parchment but left the books, returning inside.

Voldemort was in his favorite chair in the living room, bent over a long sheet of parchment, writing furiously. Harry took a casual seat beside him, quietly, as though waiting his turn.

“Harry,” Voldemort acknowledged without looking up.

He peered at the parchment. Voldemort’s handwriting wasn’t the only one on it --- there was a conversation running down the parchment, with more along the top that had already been re-rolled. And the other handwriting….

“Scrimgeour?” he asked. “Still?”

“Intermittently,” Voldemort corrected. “Should I pass along any messages?”

“It’s, uh, bold to have incinerated their book that we were meant to write in, and then send our demands through this instead.” A pause. “Can I have a broom? My broom, really. It’s with the Weasleys.”

“They’ll say no,” Voldemort said, even as he wrote it. “It’s transparently an escape plan.”

Harry frowned. “But it’s not. I mean, my escape plan is just to wait for them to bring me to Hogwarts in a few weeks. Sorry,” he added. It was a kinder escape than Azkaban.

“Well, Alastor Moody has never found it in himself to be trusting when he could be suspicious instead.”

“But… you’re here,” Harry pointed out, obviously. “And not in Azkaban. And not kissed by a Dementor. And I’m here too, for some reason.” It had been the great mystery of their captivity, that the Aurors had just always sort of worked off the assumption that they’d want to be together, and that they could be. And that Harry wouldn’t… radicalize or whatever.

“Yes,” Voldemort said. “There’s no reason to assume this was an act of generosity on their part.”

“Then, what?”

“If I knew, darling, I’d tell you,” he said waspishly.

Fine, apparently that was a sore spot he hadn’t known of. “Sorry,” he muttered. “Is that what you’re trying to get out of Scrimgeour?”

“Oh. No. He wanted my input on policy. It’s reasonable,” he said at Harry’s look. “The dissolution of the statute of secrecy was my initiative, and has been among my chief aims for… decades.” He nearly sighed the word, a flicker of foreign emotion crossing his face. “As such, I’ve got more developed ideas of how to implement the new, necessary policies than anything their committees could suggest.”

“That’s… nice of you.”

Voldemort’s eyebrows shot up. “I am not a generous person either,” he reminded Harry, overly patient.

“So, what, will being a consultant for the Ministry get you out of Azkaban?”

Voldemort charmed the ink dry before rolling up the parchment in a rather insistent motion, his attention now fully on Harry. “I’m staying in Azkaban. How could I write of law and justice without ever having experienced the peripheries of the justice system?”

“Street cred,” Harry supplied. Voldemort looked vaguely puzzled. “Nevermind.”

“And I’ll make myself so indispensable to them – _publicly_ so, my name on their legislation and corresponding open letters in the newspapers – that either their dependence on me or my continued imprisonment will be a refutation enough of their governance.”

“And they’ll… _agree_ to be shown up like that?”

A cold smile. “I have enough contacts in the press who would run my letters, against the Ministry’s wishes. If my writing appears in every paper but the Prophet, then that is its own refutation.”

Harry blinked, suddenly put in mind of his time with Luna. He missed Luna. “I gave an interview to the Quibbler in my fifth year,” he said, “when the Daily Prophet – and, well, Fudge – wouldn’t listen to me, about you.”

“And the credibility of the Prophet, and of Fudge, suffered for that,” Voldemort agreed. “It was a clever decision.”

“Hermione’s,” Harry said. “Most clever things are Hermione’s.” A pause. “So after you show up Scrimgeour… then you stage a coup?”

“Well, I was thinking of doing it by the books, actually.” He was watching Harry closely now.

And Harry utterly failed, because this realization made him guffaw. “Sorry,” he said at the look of irritation that crossed Voldemort’s face, and he was. “Scrimgeour’s going to appoint you to something? Or… oh. Or you’ll get elected as Minister. Really?”

“Yes.” Voldemort stood, crossing the room to retrieve the scotch, to give them both a moment to collect themselves. “I wanted you to know first,” he said, handing Harry a drink. “You would be… well, as dragged into things as you can imagine.” He sat, carefully. “So I am asking, how strenuously should I discourage them – the press, the Ministry’s employees – from seeking you out about the matter.”

He drank his scotch too quickly, to give himself time to consider. (Though Voldemort would never rush him. Harry rushed himself far more, usually to combat silences. Voldemort more often was chastising him for his impulsive mouth.) When he swallowed the liquor burning the insides of his mouth, the only word he had was, “Oh.”

Voldemort was extremely unimpressed. “That is an answer to nothing.”

“Well, that wasn’t the question you’d wanted to ask anyway.” And he sounded a little impatient but that generally piqued Voldemort’s interest, and he motioned for Harry to continue. “The press can come find me if they want. I’ve felt like… like I’ve gotten off easy these past few months anyway, being inaccessible to them. But for the answer you actually want, if I’d endorse you… I don’t know,” he finished lamely. “I don’t know what you want, really. Everyone’s asked me, Dumbledore and Moody and Tonks, and I never know what to say.”

Voldemort was looking at him peculiarly. “You don’t,” he agreed. “But for the parts we’ve already effected – dropping the statute, opening commerce.”

“Everyone wanted those,” Harry objected.

A quirk of Voldemort’s mouth. “I assure you, they are still quite contentious. The detractors tend to be a pragmatic lot, is all.”

“But… it all happened so easily.”

A tiny dismissive gesture. “A non-repeatable zeitgeist,” he said. “I’ve written a manifesto – well, _revised_ , as I wrote the thing at the age of twenty-five – and you could read that if you’d like. But I don’t know that that’s what you’re after.” His eyes were still searching Harry’s face.

“It might be, actually.” Voldemort conjured a scroll with a turn of his wrist and passed it to him silently. “Can I think about this?”

“Of course.” He was unhappy but unceasingly polite.

Harry poured himself another drink but left Voldemort the bottle.

Into his bedroom, door shut and wards drawn over it. (The Aurors had left retractable wards. For his safety, they said. In case Voldemort abruptly changed his mind about killing Harry and came at him with a knife, or something.) His stomach was filled with the knots that had receded weeks ago, when the new status quo had settled in. Because it was fine that he should work with Voldemort, live with him, confide in him, fuck him. Much like the universal curiosity of what Voldemort truly wanted (he supposed he now held the answer to that), there was a universal curiosity about why they remained together, and so close, and so loyal. Harry knew that sentimentality could only account for his own half of things. Perhaps it was all the same question – that Voldemort’s recent cooperation with him and the Ministry both were stepping stones in his political maneuvering. Fudge and Scrimgeour had been attempted to invest Harry’s political capital. Of course Voldemort would do the same. He probably had to throw his lot in publicly at some point. He set his scotch on the bedside table and shook out the scroll.

Forty-nine resolutions, regarding the structure and governance of wixen Britain. It would be forty-nine. It took him a bit to get the hang of the scroll – when each number was prodded with his wand, a little accordion-like section that hadn’t been there before would unfold, with clauses and sub-clauses. Harry wondered if Voldemort knew anything of origami.

As for the resolutions… they weren’t bad, and that was troublesome in its own way, for they could hide so much more malice under a reasonable-seeming veneer.

_25) Establish wix-regulated commerce between worlds. Exchange of goods, services, intellectual properties shall be considered commerce._

_26) Establish unregulated exchange of artworks._

_27) Implement a tax decrease for wixes, proportionate to inter-world profits. Annual measures will propose new investments of said profits._

_28) Establish Muggle-regulated oversight of inter-world banks._

_29) Establish joint-regulated transit, checkpoints, and interchanges between worlds._

And so on. It was thorough, and even-handed. Harry would object to the tracking of blood status, for example, on principle (though, did the Ministry do this already? He’d have to ask Voldemort), but just underneath it:

_35) Establish adoption and foster system for magical children, to magical parents._

_36) Establish parallel early education programs, for wix-born and Muggleborn children respectively._

Blood regulation sounded bad, but early education sounded… really good. He probably wouldn’t have been spared the Dursleys (there would’ve been no shortage of wixen families clamoring to adopt him, if Dumbledore had asked, so presumably he’d had other reasons), but to have learned of this world any earlier… might have made his childhood bearable. And Voldemort… _Tom_ , really, in this instance, might have been saved. Might have never turned out to be Voldemort. And as much as he liked the current Voldemort, really, he wouldn’t bring another one into the world. He carefully refolded the scroll’s little accordion boxes, and rolled it all up, before returning downstairs.

He’d gone by now – gone to find somewhere to wait as Harry had pored over the document he’d had poised for this opportunity for decades, Harry realized. He handled the scroll a bit more gently.

Voldemort was outside, unusually, in a patch of shade he’d conjured, back at the discussion with Scrimgeour. Or not – his writing now was unencumbered by another hand on the page, Harry saw as he got closer.

“Sit down,” Voldemort said without looking up.

There were no other seats out here, so he conjured one for himself (matching Voldemort’s because he knew Voldemort would like it that way), and sat. “Am I interrupting?”

“As much as usual,” Voldemort said, cleverly leaving out the _Only_. “Your thoughts?”

The resolutions. “They’re good. They’re thorough.”

“Brilliant. Keep it,” he said, raising his eyebrows when Harry attempted to hand it back. “Of course that’s a copy.”

“Thanks. I mean… the laws on the books now aren’t the ones the Ministry actually abides by. Just promising laws won’t make the Wizengamot want you. Or trust you.”

A glimmer of amusement. “You think I’d be better off running on extra-judicial promises? Everyone knows how things work. If I am too _principled_ for the ways their politics are run, well.”

“ _Well_ , if you really want it, then you wouldn’t be principled about it. I would be, yes,” he pre-empted Voldemort’s response, “but not Slytherins. Not the _ambitious_ and _self-serving_ ones.”

“Harry,” he sighed. “Someday you will understand that those are two different words.” He motioned him on: “What I am more interested in than your campaign strategies, however, is your commitment.”

“Right.” He chewed a thumbnail. “I don’t know. Just because you want it can’t be enough.”

“I have been incredibly helpful and cooperative these past few months,” Voldemort pointed out winningly.

“You have been,” Harry agreed. “I haven’t worked out why yet.” He squinted. “Would you tell me why? Or can I not be in on your plans either?”

A noise of indignation. “I am… tired by my current prospects with the Death Eaters,” Voldemort said after a moment. “Almost all of whom are imprisoned at the moment, anyway. The contact with the Ministry _now_ is unusually advantageous. It nearly requires that I parlay it into something better.”

“And when all your beloved Death Eaters are released, and you’re powerful with them again?” he challenged. “Then you can install all your purebloods and take over….”

“You are delightfully optimistic in thinking the purebloods don’t already run the Ministry,” Voldemort said dryly. “And no, I won’t. You didn’t read the sub-clauses of number 16.” He shook out the parchment, laying it on a table between them. Harry leaned in.

_16.c) Everyone known to be a Death Eater or branded with the Dark Mark would be subjected to the Dementor’s Kiss._

“Oh.” Harry pushed it away. “Oh, that’s… fucked up, actually.”

Voldemort’s mouth twisted. “As you say, the Ministry’s practices rarely align with its laws. At best, I could keep that one an unfulfilled campaign promise.”

“And at worst?”

“Then a fulfilled one, obviously. Why would it concern you?”

Harry hissed a sigh between his teeth. “Because they’re only _mostly_ terrible, I don’t know. Because I don’t believe in the Dementor’s Kiss at all.”

A look of surprise. “You don’t?”

“What?” Harry said. “I have political beliefs sometimes, too.”

“Ah.” A pause. “Well, perhaps it won’t come to that. But campaign promises…. They have a certain ethos. A certain rigidity. Particularly with an ex-Auror as current Minister, and the Aurors’ office as influential as it is.”

“You warned Scrimgeour once that he couldn’t look soft on crime,” Harry recalled.

“Precisely.”

“But what about….” He sighed once more. They didn’t talk about Snape. It was apparent Snape was living on borrowed time. But he couldn’t not protest. “I don’t want Snape to die. Or Draco. Or anyone else, really. It’s just so morbid, taking out an entire group of people. Even Death Eaters.”

Another pause. “I admit, I didn’t anticipate this to be where your objections would fall,” Voldemort said.

“I can’t be a part of your campaign if you use people’s lives to your advantage like that. Like always.”

“Then I’ll keep your name out of it,” Voldemort said. “If that was an ultimatum….”

“It wasn’t.” So that was that, his dilemma solved for him. He rerolled the parchment.

“I shouldn’t have pointed it out,” Voldemort sighed. “Such a small thing.”

His stomach tightened at hearing the death (well, Dementor’s Kiss) of dozens of people (well, Death Eaters) characterized as a ‘small thing.’ “The rest of it was fine. Not, you know, horrid or fascist or whatever. I’d wondered when you’d implement the awful parts.”

“They’re kept to a minimum, really,” Voldemort said. “Only the most politic of _awful_ ideas make it in.”

“Sorry,” Harry muttered, because he hadn’t meant it as a rebuke.

“No – Harry, listen.” Voldemort sank his claws into Harry’s forearm, out of urgency rather than anger. “If this seems abrupt, you’ve only misunderstood my commitments. I would give anything to be _powerful_ , not dark or evil or whatever absurd descriptor you’ve got in mind…. And if power looks more attainable from the side of law right now, well.” A crooked smile. “Is that sufficiently sincere and confessional?”

Perhaps overly so. “Yes,” he said. “I still can’t endorse you. Especially if you think any good you can do is only _incidental_.”

“Not everyone is as principled as a Gryffindor.”

“Well, that’s who will be left, when you put all the Death Eater Slytherins to death.” He startled himself with the bitterness in his voice.

But Voldemort only shook his head in something like disbelief. “Your optimism is astounding,” he said. “Is that what makes everyone so… insistent on protecting you?”

“Maybe. I’m not sure.” He’d done his best to explain love to Voldemort, the irrational and selfless parts of it. He knew it would never really connect – if Dumbledore was right, if Voldemort really couldn’t feel love. But it brought him to one last question: “The resolution about magical children being adopted into magical families….”

“An oft-discussed proposition by the Ministry,” Voldemort said. “It’s never passed, far too controversial. You’d heard of it, then?”

“Oh. No, I hadn’t. Just… if it had been in place, my childhood would’ve been better, and easier. I think.” No reaction; he pushed ahead: “And you? Would you have still ended up being… you?”

He didn’t know why he anticipated anger. It was a personal question, and one laden with implications, but so was everything else they talked about. Still, he felt a relief he hadn’t known he’d wanted when Voldemort only made a noise somewhere between impatience and amusement. “What a banal question,” he chided. “Really, Harry, you can’t _save_ me. And not only because I won’t allow it.”

“I know.” He moved to leave. “I just want… happiness for you.” A non-committal noise was the only response he got.

He was in the threshold when Voldemort added, his voice somewhat strained, “I do apologize for your childhood.”

He thought he misheard, at first. He glanced back at Voldemort, who was watching him carefully. “Thank you,” he said, and then he retreated before he could decide what _that_ all meant.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, darlings. Welcome to (what for now is) the last installment of the trilogy. I am so excited to share Cicatrization with you; it’s meant a lot to me as I’ve written it over this past year, and I hope it will mean something to you as well. It is a story of love, belonging, and power.
> 
> I know that this story is very long, but it’s an entire story of political intrigue, and an 8th year fic, and erotica, and an indulgent amount of banter, all woven into one. I hope you find something worthwhile within it. And if you're going to binge all 700,000 words at once -- god bless and keep you. Please hydrate.
> 
> I looove finessing the political, economic, and social mechanisms of world-building, so you’ll see a lot of that. I wanted to write about post-war politics and economics, and every way the suspension of the statute of secrecy would re-shape their way of life. So the world, the cast of characters, and the magic will all feel big. I am keeping a running index of non-canonical details, magic, and characters if it would help, but I think a lot of it should also be intuitive. You can find this index [here](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zQkSzP-Q-NyG1Qo9ZhTw_iSJBY-QKeygj8fJiviUTfw).
> 
> Content warnings for the story overall: this is a story about sexuality. There are a lot of sex scenes (in maybe half the chapters, though more toward the beginning than the end, for plot reasons), but there are also a lot of scenes of people discussing or considering or negotiating their sexuality and relationships in broader terms. Most of the sex scenes involve wetting or watersports in some way – sorry if that’s a squick, I give you permission to scroll past it! But Harry also spends some time explaining (in his own way) what is more broadly attractive about the kinks here, so if you’re at least neutral about them, I feel that there is character development wrapped up in the sex scenes too.
> 
> Of course, if you’re only here for the sex scenes -- *kinky high five!* I also give you permission to scroll past the entire plot. lol.
> 
> Other warnings: this is a story about depression, and the worst depressive episodes will seem very bleak.There is a plot about physical and sexual abuse within a prison. There are scenes of recreational drug use, and conversations about addiction. There are flashbacks to emotional and physical abuse of a child. There are some minor character deaths, most of which happen offscreen. But I’d like to say upfront that this is ultimately a happy story, that will have a happy ending.
> 
> I put together my writing playlist for this fic over here if that's something you're into. Just listen on shuffle, it's not in order, but it got me through some of the more emotionally taxing scenes.
> 
> Finally, come find me on Tumblr! I post headcanons and meta and usually a lot of Harrymort. I'm [sofiabanefics](sofiabanefics.tumblr.com), come talk to me or whatever.
> 
> Thanks for reading!  
> \---
> 
> Allusions for Chapter 1:
> 
> Sun Tzu’s The Art of War is an ancient Chinese treatise about military tactics. It proposes subtlety, and luring your enemies in to conquer them.
> 
> Socrates was an ancient Greek philosopher who taught by asking questions. He was a critic and antagonist of the ruling class, and was executed for ‘corrupting the youth’ of Athens.
> 
> Hypatia was an ancient Mediterranean philosopher and scientist. Some stories of her identify her as an iconoclast and critic of religion, and she was murdered by a mob of monks.
> 
> “Sovereign is the one who decides the exception” – a quote from Carl Schmitt’s 1922 Political Theology, which argues that leaders are defined by not being obligated to follow the same law they enforce.
> 
> “You’ve got no more of an obligatory relationship to the law than I have” – alluding to Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer, which uses Schmitt to argue that the sovereign and outlaw are similar in that both of them stand outside the boundaries of ‘legal’ society.
> 
> Enki – here a study drug, named for the Sumerian god of knowledge and mischief.
> 
> The conversation about whether magic is a part of the laws of nature or an exception to them is inspired by [Lithium, by grayclouds.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2296544/chapters/5050643)
> 
> “Plato’s cave had real shadows” – Plato’s Allegory of the Cave tells a story of prisoners chained in a cave, watching shadows on the wall before them and believing it was the entirety of reality.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry learns a potion that gets him a little high. Except their magic is so entangled, it gets Voldemort a little high, too.
> 
> (I know this chapter’s summary sounds like crack, but it is not. Also careful with this one, as there’s flashbacks to child abuse here.)

_Thursday, June 4._ The days that followed were paradoxically both long and rushed. They were both merely counting down the days until the 14th, their respective release and imprisonment. That Thursday’s check-in with the Aurors brought an unusual amount of letters for Harry. Apparently news of his DADA post had gotten out.

Hermione’s letter first, as it’d be the most explanatory:

_Harry: Professor McGonagall just told the faculty that you’d be teaching Defense. I’m so happy for you; you’re an excellent choice. If you need any help choosing textbooks, please write. I already have some ideas. And I’m sending a few books with Tonks. Trimble is the more traditional pedagogy; Marjorie St John’s is a bit experimental. Really, if you just teach your student like you led the DA, they’ll be well equipped._

_Ron and I are at Hogwarts already; I’m helping to re-set the wards, and he’s become a bit of a handyman. He brought his dad’s toolbox along and everything. Which will be an excellent hands-on prop for Muggle Studies – you probably haven’t been told yet, but we’re co-teaching it. It was Ron’s idea, pair us up to get the perspective of a pureblood and a Muggleborn, and I think it’s brilliant. He says his dad’s interests had to wear off sometime; I think he’s really just nervous about impressing my parents._

A scuffle and splatters of ink intruding here, and Ron’s hand: **_No, if I wanted to impress Hermione’s parents, I’d be learning all their dentist tools._**

Hermione’s hand: _(Ron only learned the word ‘dentist’ last week.)_ And more splatters and a failed attempt at crossing that out. Harry found himself grinning.

Further down: _It will be good to be back, even just for an interim year. I know it’s foolish to long for things to be ‘normal’ again, as though that means anything. But in the parts of the castle that have been restored, if there aren’t any memorials nearby… I can stand still there for just a moment and feel like a first year again. You’ll see what I mean when you return, I’m sure._

_The group of us restoring the castle are in agreement that recreating what was there before will be the most effective sort of healing. We’ve convinced most of the paintings and statues back. Spiro Hoffman, the new Caretaker, is out on assignment to persuade all the ghosts back. Can you imagine? At the moment, we’ve only got Peeves, and even he’s rather subdued._

_We’ve got no new ghosts from the war. Thank goodness. Though, Professor McGonagall said it could take awhile for them to materialize. Still, cross your fingers. We’d hoped that the memorials would settle any spirits. They are really quite lovely._

_Anyway, Tonks has promised us you’re safe and content for now, but it will be so good to see you in a few weeks. I hope this is the beginning of something like normality for you as well._

_Love always, Hermione **(and Ron!)**_

 

Normal. Of course. Still, he glanced from his place at the kitchen table to the living room, where Voldemort and Scrimgeour were having an animated conversation about… something. Something about permits for traveling between wixen and Muggle worlds. Voldemort had excused Harry in a way that made clear it was not just a suggestion. Anything could be normalized, he supposed, with time; including Voldemort’s presence as a poised, standard politician in the midst of a dozen Aurors. (It still made him nervous.)

The Aurors who had come were surrounding Scrimgeour, at the ready (as though Voldemort would kill them mid-conversation. Did they not know of his theatricality?), but Tonks caught his eye as he looked over, and peeled herself away. She produced a package from her bag. “Hermione wanted you to have these,” she said, taking a seat.

“Cheers.” He tore the butcher paper open, to find the defense textbooks she’d written about. “You didn’t say she and Ron would be teaching as well,” he said. “Anyone else?”

“Ah. They’re still looking for new faculty.”

“But Professor McGonagall is Headmistress now, right?”

“The Sorting Hat hasn’t decided that yet.”

A note of suspicion at her non-answers. “Will you be part of the security team in the castle?” he tried.

“Harry.” Tonks shifted in her seat. “We, ah, can’t tell you much about the state of Hogwarts while you’re still here. You understand.”

Hermione’s letter had been rather tactfully censored. Maybe even saying anything about her own appointment had been too much. “But… I’ll find it all out next week.”

“Yes. When you’re alone.”

“But I’ll still see Voldemort. In Cornwall, and in Azkaban. Unless I’m not allowed to go, after all?” This possibility unexpectedly struck him as the worst thing.

“No, you probably still can.” She picked at her nails. “Mad Eye objects to you two being locked up in here together, you know. Says giving him access to you is going to radicalize you. And, well, most of the Aurors agree.”

He wanted to object, but not so much as he wanted to hear how he and Voldemort got locked up together anyway, in spite of Moody’s (and goddamn everyone else’s too, apparently) protests. He raised his eyebrows to beckon Tonks on, a motion he’d learned from Voldemort, he realized afterward. “But….”

“But, it was the Minister’s decision, unilaterally,” Tonks said. She’d dropped her voice, not that any of the other Aurors were listening from the living room anyway. “He won’t say why. Only that he got a letter from Dumbledore when he first took office, and that he trusts its directions.”

Harry could imagine very few things Scrimgeour and Dumbledore would agree on, least of all anything that concerned himself or Voldemort. “Do you trust him? Scrimgeour.”

Tonks glanced once more through the doorway, where Voldemort was currently gesticulating with a heavy book in Scrimgeour’s direction, his tone and posture as didactic as Harry had ever known him to be. Scrimgeour looked unimpressed. “Got to, haven’t I? It’s my job.”

He couldn’t argue with that. “Yeah,” he said. A pause. “Would you recommend it, working for the Ministry? I don’t want to be an Auror, though,” he added, getting a grin out of Tonks.

“Bad experiences with Aurors lately?”

“Kind of,” he agreed lightly. “But I thought I might be a diplomat or a mediator. You’ll need them.”

As though that were some sort of cue, they heard raised voices and the thump of a thrown book from the next room. “Yes, we will,” Tonks muttered as they jumped up.

Only a moderate amount of chaos in the other room – the Aurors were on their feet, wands out; Scrimgeour was still seated, and given the book lying before him, either Voldemort had hurled it at Scrimgeour’s feet, or at his head and it’d gotten caught by a shield. Harry didn’t want to guess which. “Stop, _stop_ ,” he pled, launching himself between them (and now all the Aurors’ wands were pointed at him instead, and that was unnerving and he dealt with it). “ _What_?” he asked, looking between them. “I step away for five minutes….”

But Scrimgeour looked past him, raising his eyebrows at Voldemort. “Do you see?” he asked, somewhat smugly. “A protection spell would do the boy some good, in his unpredictable moments. To say nothing of the human labor involved in surrounding him with Aurors.”

“Oh god,” Harry groaned, taking Voldemort’s sleeve and pulling them both onto the nearest sofa. The room relaxed incrementally. “Don’t fight about _me_. Especially not behind my back.”

“We’d only been discussing the security of Hogwarts for the upcoming year,” Scrimgeour said. “A conversation better left to the school’s governors, in any case,” he added, “but the Aurors felt… there will be a great many of them stationed around the school, and around Hogsmeade. It might be redundant for you to have an escort as well. Instead, a protection spell – well, one part protection and one part trace, not unlike the trace put on underage wixes – would satisfy the Ministry’s obligations to your safety.”

“Oh.” He looked at Voldemort curiously. “You’d rather I be followed by Aurors? I don’t care,” he said as an aside to the rest of the room.

“Protection spells can be cracked. Reverse-engineered. Never mind,” he sneered at the lost-looking purebloods at that term. “The unpredictability of humans is their strength.”

“A protection spell is unerring by design – “ Scrimgeour began.

“It is,” Harry said, frowning at Voldemort. “And you _know_ that, and you know I’ve got my mum’s protection spell on me already, because it nearly killed you.”

There was a hiss of breath from one of the Aurors, which was hilarious because that wasn’t the sort of thing that raised Voldemort’s ire at all. “But that was blood magic,” Voldemort told him, with some patience.

“So… make this one with blood magic too?”

Voldemort’s eyes lit up. “Yes,” he said. “Good boy.” And, pulling his sleeve out of Harry’s grasp, he ducked into the kitchen, taking the basement stairs two at a time. The Aurors followed, morbidly curious. Scrimgeour was last, and fell in step beside Harry.

“I don’t know what he wants,” Harry said, pre-emptively. “But whatever he’s doing, it won’t hurt me.”

“Are you so certain?”

“Are _you_ , Minister?” Harry glanced over as they descended the stairs. “You locked us up here together, after all. He could have killed me anytime, by now.”

Scrimgeour sighed. “If only death were the worst fate,” he said, a bit tired. “Of course you want answers. The information I have, however, is a matter of national security.” He cocked his head. “You haven’t complained.”

“No,” Harry said. “I mean, I’m grateful. Thank you.” They reached the basement, where Voldemort had just carved a gash across his palm, catching his blood in a vial. “Oh god.” He stepped between the Aurors, taking the warm vial in one hand as he surreptitiously pushed magic into Voldemort’s forearm with the other. Blood loss always affected him poorly. “What are you doing?” he muttered.

Voldemort ignored him. “The Soma-Skene Charm would work. Or perhaps the Underwood Solution, if you’re able to convert it,” he was saying to the Aurors as he bled out.

“We haven’t agreed to this,” the one in front, Bragg, objected, looking with distaste at Voldemort’s blood everywhere.

“And of course, I am powerless to force you if you decline,” Voldemort said reasonably. “But if you insist on a protection spell, my blood would serve Harry best. He’s already protected by light magic; you see how invulnerable additional protection of dark magic would make him.” The vial full, he tied up his hand in a handkerchief. “Well?” He held out the vial; Bragg took it gingerly.

Moody, on the other hand, was on the far side of the potions table. The cauldron was still half-full from Monday, with Harry taking bits of Enki here and there when he went off to read. Mad Eye swiped potion off the cauldron’s side and licked it from his forefinger. “Enki?” he grumbled, raising his bushy brows at Voldemort.

“Alastor, did you just ingest an unidentified and untested potion?” Voldemort chided him with vague amusement. “Yes. Harry had never worked with an acid-catalyzed potion before. A lamentable gap in his education. It’s not illegal,” he added in defense.

“It is nevertheless _unwise_ ,” Moody ground out, and vanished the rest of the cauldron’s contents. “Teach Harry something on his NEWTs next time, if you are to teach him anything.”

“Certainly.”

“But I’m not taking a Potions NEWT,” Harry objected.

“Oh, yes, you are,” Moody said a bit grimly. “Perhaps you’ll learn the danger of brewing potions you know nothing about, under suspicious conditions.” He shot Voldemort another terrible look. “And Professor Slughorn asked for you back, personally.”

He and Voldemort probably had identical expressions of surprise. “Professor Slughorn is back?” Harry asked. “But… what about Snape?”

Moody’s magical eye darted in Tonks’s direction. “As my colleague already discussed with you,” he began wryly (Tonks shrugged at him), “it is a matter of security that you should only learn more about the state of Hogwarts upon arrival.”

“When I am safely locked in Azkaban,” Voldemort said dryly.

Moody’s eye swiveled toward him. “Precisely.”

“Alastor.” Scrimgeour’s voice was quiet but clear at the back of the room. “We’ve imposed for long enough.” He looked to them both. “Until next week?”

“Thank you, sir.” Harry would normally run ahead of them, to grab the door and see them out, but he didn’t want to leave Voldemort’s side. They took up the rear instead, and watched from the house’s threshold as the Aurors sorted out the Portkeys they used to travel here.

“It’d be a good joke if we were buried under the Ministry after all,” Harry remarked as they vanished, “and they’re just keeping up appearances when they could just, like, take the lift.”

Voldemort looked at him with some pity. “Prison cells like this generally aren’t accessible by a lift. Or anything else, really.”

That was a hideous thought. He shook it off. “What was the problem with a protection spell?” he asked, as they began cleaning up. “Or, I mean, why would you care?”

“Ah. Yes.” Voldemort poked at his hand, still bandaged in a handkerchief. “In crafting a protection spell perfectly attuned to you, they might have discovered the presence of my Horcrux. Worse yet, depending on the manner of protection, the spell might have destroyed it. Or you.”

His stomach tightened at the thought. “But the way you told them to do it….”

He shrugged. “My magic, my blood. My Horcrux wouldn’t be targeted as a foreign entity.”

“That’s smart,” Harry said. “I hope they trust you enough to do it. Or something.”

A snort. “They would be fools to _trust_ me. But they should recognize the value of working with my blood. I gave them enough to craft protection for you and pass some on to their researchers, for whatever they may discern from it. I thought it’d make the option more attractive.”

“You’re still, uh, bleeding a lot.” He was mopping up little smudges of blood on the counter as Voldemort rinsed tea cups. “Can I fix it?”

Voldemort unwrapped his hand. “I put an anti-coagulant on the knife. I did the same for you last autumn, if you noticed.”

 _For_ him, not _to_ him, gods. He took Voldemort’s hand in both of his. “You can’t heal it yourself?”

It was the wrong question; Voldemort’s face darkened. “How fortunate that you can’t tell,” he said. “They’ve been throttling the magic available here further with each visit. It’s enough to keep me alive, but not enough to do anything significant.” Before Harry could say that sounded reasonable – it was really the terms of their agreement to house arrest – Voldemort added, “I imagine the plan in a few weeks’ time is that I will be sufficiently weakened, to be transported to Azkaban unconscious.”

“But….” He couldn’t think of anything. The Aurors were more of a hindrance than help these days, but they’d be fools to not treat Voldemort as, well, dangerous. He was dangerous. “We’ll be at Cornwall that day. I’ll give you all my magic then. All of it,” he promised at Voldemort’s skeptical look. “You can’t just die in Azkaban, alright? I won’t let you.” He’d been rubbing his thumb absently over Voldemort’s palm; looking down, the wound was gone.

But Voldemort wasn’t satisfied. “They’ll do the same to the cell in Azkaban,” he said. “They’ve got to. It….” He struggled with the words. “It feels like drowning.”

His insides were twisted with pity. “I’m sorry,” he murmured, pushing more magic into Voldemort’s hands. “I’ll come, as often as I’m allowed to. Unless.” He hesitated. “Is there anything – a charm or something – that would let you share my magic when we’re apart?”

A thoughtful frown. “It would be incredibly arcane, if such a thing exists. And no doubt classified as dark magic.”

“So?”

A look of surprise and then gentle pity. “Oh, Harry. If only I could improvise magic as quickly and competently as you believe I can.” A pause. “If such a spell exists, you’ll be the one to find it. Begin by pulling all the books on Horcruces you can. Don’t get caught by the Aurors, obviously.”

It had to be Horcruxes. (Horcruces. He would never stop being amazed at Voldemort’s obscure pretensions.) At the very least, the more arcane magic he sought out, the less likely the Aurors were to notice or recognize it. He wondered if Tom Riddle, while crafting his first Horcrux at Hogwarts, had taken solace in the same. “But there’s nothing in our library about Horcruxes. We looked, last year.” When he thought he’d have killed Voldemort by now. It seemed so far away.

“There’s not,” Voldemort said grimly. “But if Dumbledore was as… insistent on dismantling my Horcruces as he seems to have been, he would have his books. Try his office.”

Professor McGonagall’s office now, presumably. (He wondered if Tonks had been lying when she’d said the Sorting Hat hadn’t decided on a Headmaster yet.) That would be a task, then. “Sure,” he agreed, over-easily. There was some color, relatively, back in Voldemort’s face, and he withdrew his touch. Voldemort said nothing in acknowledgment. They never could talk about it, anyway.

 

Late that evening, Voldemort found him in his reading nook, working through the tiny, worn copy of Parselscript. He found him, specifically, because Harry had to sound out what he wanted to write out loud, and his hand would kind of compel itself into the appropriate motions. It was the weirdest experience. It felt like possession. Anyway, he flushed at his childish illiteracy as Voldemort approached. “Sorry. I’m probably loud. I’ll go work on this – “

“Stay.” Dropping a heavy hand on Harry’s shoulder, he conjured another chair. “Do you like it?”

He’d been at it for a couple hours, so at the very least it unusually kept his attention. “Yeah. I mean, the writing is easy. Reading it is harder.”

“You’ll improve.” And, to make his point, he produced two identical volumes, small and thin and bound in inky blue leather. “As a means of communication. I need your magic for the charm that will synchronize them.”

He set aside his book. “Can I do it?” He expected Voldemort to say no. It was just a test.

“You may,” Voldemort said. “Would you like to set the runes first, or should I?”

“Could you. Please.” He took the books as Voldemort traced now-familiar shapes in mid-air. “Geminio, right?”

“Yes.” He finished the final shape with a motion like twirling pasta, and took the twisted end, bringing it to the books. “Tie them both in a square knot.”

After a few fumbling tries (the cord’s ephemeral nature made it a bit difficult to grasp), he did; and Voldemort motioned for him to continue. “ _Geminio_.” And a bright current surged through the books, up the cords, lighting up the runes themselves. Then the entire strand of magic disappeared with a flash. The books felt very warm in his lap. “Did that work?” He handed Voldemort his copy, flipping open his own. “I thought it would have been harder,” he muttered in Parseltongue, letting his quill glide over the page to write the same.

Voldemort took his quill, concentrating for a moment, and wrote in Parselscript, **_You did well._**

“Thanks,” he said aloud. Taking the quill back, he wanted to try one more thing, something that he could ask for aloud but his shame compelled him to write it down instead. _Tell me what you’ve got in mind for toilet training._

Voldemort’s eyes glittered. “Yes,” he said, and deliberately setting the journals aside, he pulled Harry upstairs.

In the master bath, Voldemort stripped off all Harry’s clothes, perfunctorily. “There’s a week left,” he said.

(Ten days, but who’s counting.)

“And I’ll send you off with the Aurors as defiled as possible. Such that it’d be more humiliating to deny it than admit it.” He pressed Harry seated on the toilet, the porcelain cold. “Your ankles.”

“Yes, sir.” The idea of returning to Hogwarts with a freshly-fucked look about him was just too good. He steadied himself with one hand, leaning back to lift his bare feet. Voldemort caught his ankles in a glowing cord, fastening it tightly; and he realized that the only way he’d be getting off this toilet was either crawling or being carried. This became especially true when Voldemort extended the cord, tying it around the bottom of the toilet and securing Harry’s ankles there.

“You need to masturbate now,” he said, stepping back and leaning against the opposite counter. “I haven’t got the patience for your incessant schoolboy needs.”

The restraints on his ankles fell low enough that he could still mostly spread his knees, slipping a hand between his legs. Voldemort’s persistent, unimpressed gaze on him was blistering, and without anything to say from either of them, the only sound that was amplified by the room’s cool tile was the _schlick-schlick_ of Harry palming his cock.

“What do you think of? Harry, look at me,” Voldemort added impatiently as his gaze slid to an unfocused nowhere. He snapped to attention, his blush redoubled.

“I don’t know. You, sometimes, or what we’ve done recently.” His cock was stiff against his belly now. “But sometimes it’s, like, being tied up in public, and being forced to piss myself. Or led around on a leash, and nothing else. Or being spanked in the middle of the Great Hall.” It took more and more concentration to keep his voice level as he recounted these, and to keep his eyes on Voldemort’s face. Still impassive, still unimpressed. Perfect.

“We haven’t been nearly public enough,” Voldemort agreed. “Perhaps the next time the Aurors come round, I’ll tie you to the stairway railing first. With a bow around your cock, or perhaps put you in a nappy.”

Oh god. He squeezed his eyes shut against the mental image, but a smile was curling his lips. “Please.” His cock was pulsating at the thought. Another image intruded, just flitting across his memory, but since he was certain Voldemort could see everything in his head anyway, he met Voldemort’s gaze again as he confessed – “Yesterday, it was – I wished Scrimgeour would cane me.”

Voldemort made a noise of amusement and disgust. “He would be thrilled to,” he assured him. “If you didn’t mind how enthusiastic and sincere it would be.”

He was blushing like mad at the thought but it wasn’t a bad feeling. Caned, humiliated – set back on the right path, away from this deviant deviation with Voldemort – or an agreement to avoid a prison sentence – Throwing his head back, he arched, orgasm bursting from deep within his belly. He groaned lowly as warm fluids spurted over his grasping fingers. He’d just gotten off to Scrimgeour, in front of Voldemort, tied up in the toilet, Merlin help him. He slumped backward, satisfied.

“Very good.” Voldemort picked his defiled hand off his lap, sucking his fingers off one at a time. _That_ was new. He ran his thumb over Voldemort’s lower lip with affection. “But that’s all the release we can spare for you this weekend,” Voldemort went on.

“But it’s _Thursday._ ”

Voldemort’s mouth curved around his fingers. “Yes.” With a twist of his wrist, he conjured a bit of metal. One Harry might have seen in the nappy bag before, but never asked about. And when he was soft again, Voldemort was taking his cock and balls in one hand, fitting a ring around their base. A second piece, a metal spiral forged in the shape of a flaccid cock, he pressed into Harry’s grasp. “It’s self-explanatory, I believe,” he deadpanned.

Deep breath. “Yeah.” Caging his cock for the weekend… the idea twisted his insides. He took a minute, turning the device over in his hands, even as he adjusted to the contained sensation of the ring sitting behind his balls. He slipped the spiral over the head of his cock; some subtle charm forged the pieces together. His cock had never looked so insignificant, locked away and dwarfed by the gleaming hardware. He shifted, letting Voldemort examine it. “What if I get hard?” His tone was low and embarrassed, but he could hardly not ask.

“You won’t.” Voldemort sounded entirely too confident. Pushing his knees together, and expanding the restraints up his calves, he lay Harry’s cock in his lap, prominently. “Not the least because you won’t let it happen. Please demonstrate some self-control.” A pause. “You are really much too young to have such prurient interests, anyway.”

They were doing this, then. “Yes, sir.” He allowed Voldemort to take his wrists, pulling them above his head. The same type of cords as the ones around his legs, fastening to a light fixture above him. His shoulders began aching immediately. “Be careful,” Voldemort murmured as he squirmed to settle his arms in something like a comfortable position. “If you pull that lighting down… you will not enjoy the consequences.”

He nearly shot back that, as demonstrated by every other time he’d gotten off from being punished, he absolutely would. He looked back at the fixture instead. It already looked fragile.

“What else?” Voldemort had stepped back, studying him. He felt very small and very exposed.

“What am I – what would you like me to do?” It wasn’t apparent, being tied up here. He was at about the right height to blow Voldemort, but that never required such theatrics.

“Ah.” Voldemort’s look was slightly manic, and delighted. “This is your chance to use the toilet, practice being an adult. You need to be empty when I return for you.”

“But….” The end of the cage was open, it wasn’t as though it literally inhibited him from pissing. But his cock sat atop his thighs right now, his legs tightly squeezed together from the knees. “But that’s going to be a disaster.” More was going to up on the floor than in the toilet.

“Perhaps.” Voldemort conjured a blindfold, black and heavy, tying it on. “And perhaps this will ease your anxieties.” It was pitch-black when it was secure; Harry suspected a charm. And the disorientation… wasn’t bad, heightening his desperation and the stupid, incredible weight of the cock cage.

“Thank you.” And since he was mostly contained already, he may as well finish it off: “The, um, soother should be in my pocket.” Wherever Voldemort had deposited his jeans. “Please.”

A pause (which really was much worse while blindfolded, guessing at Voldemort’s reaction). Then the sound of his jeans being sorted through. “You kept it?”

He would’ve shrugged if his shoulders weren’t already hyper-extended. “Yeah.” The sound of the jeans being dropped to the tile again. “And, um, could you make the plastic bit something else? Something heavier.” Something to feel like a more significant hindrance.

“No,” Voldemort said. “But perhaps you can. It will give you something to focus on, anyway.” He popped the soother into Harry’s mouth, hit the lights on his way out as though it would make any difference, and left without another word.

In the dark, Harry squirmed, judging precisely how fucked he was. Very, very fucked. The cage’s weight around his cock only really settled in at this point. He was trapped in this bit of metal for days. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d gone so long without coming. He could already anticipate begging Voldemort for release, bargaining, pleading. It was always bargaining, with him.

Voldemort hadn’t said how long Harry was to be left like this. Long enough for him to somehow coax himself to piss. Which – he never went sitting down, or with his legs tied, or knowing it’d run over his thighs and onto the floor, or trapped in a bloody cock cage. He drew a deep breath and pushed. Nothing, of course, but a painful throb of his bladder. His mouth encumbered, he sighed through his nose.

This was absurd. Nappies were a normalized part of his life now, but those were… simple. Wetting accidents made him feel, somehow, so much younger.

Right. He squeezed his eyes shut, willing himself to feel young, to feel helpless. And to appreciate it. In the dark, enclosed space, he felt like the cupboard under the stairs could be surrounding him once more. That he could be seven or eight, young enough to have accidents when he was locked away for too long; old enough to know better, and to be punished significantly for it. That at the worst of times he’d sit cross-legged in bed, hands jammed between his legs, staring resolutely at the door. Willing his relatives to get home, despairing when they _did_ and didn’t let him out immediately.

Once he’d been so desperate he had gone into his pillow. It had taken days to dry.

He felt a warm trickle roll down his thigh. And another. He pushed himself deeper. Being held down in some bushes behind his school, he must have been nine or ten. Dudley had told all his friends of Harry’s bedwetting because of course he fucking had. He couldn’t even remember the name of the boy who towered over him in this recollection: Max? Marcus? Dudley had made himself strangely scarce this time as the boys encircled Harry, Max or Marcus growling, _Do it or I’ll do it for you_. His cock was already out, held over Harry’s hips, a threat. And Harry had let go partly out of fear, and partly out of resignation that his own piss was still less horrifying than a stranger’s, wetness spreading across the front of his ill-fitted jeans. God, that made it so much worse, all the extra, heavy, sodden fabric. The weight would drag the jeans off his bony hips, and he already struggled to keep them up normally. And then the boys had hollered and taunted, and the biggest boy was pissing along the front of his jeans anyway, sneering, _Well, a bit more won’t hurt, now_. Christ, he hadn’t thought of this since… since it had happened. Magic had saved him then, as it did, so Dudley had given him a very curious look when he arrived home after school with his jeans inexplicably dry.

A stream bubbled between his closed legs, some snaking between his thighs to _drip-drip_ into the toilet, some reaching his knees to cascade down his shins.

And the warm tracks were matched by tears he hadn’t recognized, sod it all. Most were absorbed in the blindfold; for the rest he turned his face to awkwardly wipe against his bicep. He was wet and helpless and stupid, again and always, just like all the other times, so young and so inept –

And the door was opened again, slightly too hard. Voldemort hadn’t been gone nearly long enough, and now he was pulling the soother from between Harry’s teeth. He _had_ transfigured it, without meaning to. Some sort of metal, that was overheated and chapping his lips. He hadn’t noticed. Wild surges of magic were thematically appropriate, anyway. He hadn’t realized the way his chest was heaving, either. “I’m not finished,” he said weakly. Long dribbles, entirely out of his control, sprayed against his wet legs.

“It doesn’t matter.” Voldemort’s tone was flat. He was removing the cords around Harry’s ankles as quickly as he could.

Oh. _Oh_. He hadn’t realized… Voldemort would’ve felt all that, could feel even the more mundane fluctuations of Harry’s mind, nevermind… _that_. He twisted his face away as Voldemort reached for the blindfold. “Leave it,” he requested. He was deep elsewhere, and he needed to stay there for awhile. “I need you to spank me.”

“Harry, I won’t – “

Reaching upwards, he grasped the cords that bound his wrists to the light fixture, and yanked as hard as he could. The crack of plaster above him, and a flare of magic as Voldemort caught the falling fixture with a spell. “You really do need to.”

Silence. He was too immersed in this to be made nervous by it. Then the cords around his legs were gone, and the ones around his wrists were shortened, so he could hold his hands before him. “Careful,” Voldemort muttered, cradling the cock cage with one hand as he pulled Harry standing with the other, giving him a moment to adjust to the new weight of it. He felt a small flood down his legs; there must have been a puddle in his lap. He couldn’t help it, he smiled a bit at how gross and depraved this all was.

He was led into the master bedroom, lowered onto the edge of the bed. There was a nappy already underneath him, he realized with a ridiculous amount of relief, because he was still wetting himself in tiny shudders.

“How?” Voldemort asked lowly.

How did he want to recreate his childhood, how did he want to reclaim it. “They’d use a belt sometimes, or a hairbrush,” he recalled. No need to clarify who. “But mostly it was this wooden spoon… a broad one, with slots in it that’d make it whistle.” There wasn’t anything quite like it in this home, but no matter. He conjured one of their spatulas, transfiguring it by touch alone. “She’d make me bring it to her, from where they kept it in the lowest drawer.” And he held out the transfigured spoon to approximately where Voldemort was standing. It was taken.

Voldemort’s weight settled onto the bed beside him. Spankings before now, he’d usually been slung facedown across Voldemort’s lap, but of course the cock cage prohibited that. Instead Voldemort pulled him up by his ankles, and was going to paddle him sideways, when he reached over. “Just straddle me,” he requested. “It’ll be easier.”

He couldn’t even say if the moment of hesitation and revulsion he gathered was something he _heard_ from Voldemort or something he _felt_. “They never… no.” He let out a laugh at the thought of Petunia bloody climbing on top of him. “I just want it.”

Voldemort’s knees went around Harry’s hips, and he was tucking Harry’s legs one at a time underneath his arms, so Harry’s heels were approximately on Voldemort’s shoulder blades. He made a mental note to ask Voldemort to penetrate him with something like this at some point, splayed open as he was. But for now – “Good.”

“Say when.” And the spoon cracked against his arse, solidly, pausing a moment to press the reverberation into his skin. _Crack, crack_. The exact same spot, making the shallow sting bloom into a deep ache. He threw his head back.

The spoon snapped higher, across the back of his thighs. Where he bruised the best. _Snap, snap, snap_ , up one thigh methodically. Voldemort switched hands: _snap, snap, snap_ up the other thigh. He groaned in pleasure.

A volley of little swats along his arse. He was wet – his entire lower half was wet, really, and it was making each hit sting more than it would have otherwise. His flesh warmed quickly, until he could feel his pulse in it. _Smack, smack, smack._ Voldemort hoisted him higher to better reach the curve of his arse. He rolled backwards happily, wincing in pleasure and pain as a sharp _smack_ hit the thickest parts of his cheeks.

 _Smack, smack_. Hitting already-sore parts of his arse, probably already bruised, because that pain seemed to shoot right through him, from his arse to somewhere in his chest. _Smack, smack_ – the pain had flared from his overtaxed arse, spreading upwards, making him deliciously warm and tender. This was good, this was… safe.  His toes curled against Voldemort’s back.

Voldemort flipped the spoon, using magic to make the handle wider and longer, and then making swishing little motions to beat it into Harry’s thighs now. “Since you have such a great curiosity about being caned,” he muttered. Harry hummed, lifting his arse higher to receive the stinging blows.

Or at least he meant to hum. The sound that came out was wetter, far closer to a sob. And this time he was positive he felt Voldemort’s alarm, through Legilimency or whatever. “Don’t stop,” he begged, pressing his bound hands to Voldemort’s back, urging him on. His voice was cracking but he was warm, he was in the best sort of pain –

“Harry – “

“Just let me cry, goddamn you.”

A _smack_ diagonally, along the curve of his arse, for impertinence. “I was only going to say that I didn’t want to hear it,” Voldemort said, even though that clearly wasn’t it. He gave Harry the courtesy of not looking back as he pulled the blindfold from his eyes to his open, gasping mouth. It was already saturated, and he bit down hard on the impromptu gag.

 _Crack_. Pause for the reverberation. _Crack_. Pause. He somehow ached all over – he somehow _burned_ all over, really. His heartbeat pounded in his warmed skin. Everything within him was tense, anticipating each blow. And when the ringing in his ears began, when he couldn’t hear anything over his own pulse, when the stinging pain sort of… crescendoed into a deep peace, he said clumsily around the gag, “Stop.” The sound he made was a mangled mess, but he probably only had to think it, really. Voldemort stopped.

Dropping the spoon on the bedspread, he climbed off Harry, carefully disentangling their limbs. Voldemort was almost never exerted – Harry assumed he felt that exertion was beneath him – but this time his breathing was quick. He flexed the hand that had been gripping the spoon. And he took his time in finally pulling the cloth out of Harry’s mouth, now letting it slide loosely around his throat.

“Thanks. _Urgh_ ,” he groaned, stretching out his legs and back. “Stop,” he added, laughing a bit and a bit annoyed at Voldemort’s uncharacteristic concern. It was just a twinge but it was _there_ , and it was unnerving. “I’m fine. I mean I’m _not_ , clearly, but… I’m fine.”

He hadn’t moved. Voldemort propped himself on one elbow beside Harry, dabbing at the wet trails where he’d pissed himself, before properly pinning the nappy on. “Your Occlumency is getting worse,” he said, as though that were the most viable way into this conversation.

“How does something get worse than non-existent,” Harry muttered, and he meant it as a deflection but saw that it sparked a sort of curiosity in Voldemort. He tried rolling onto his side to square off, and the radiating pain from his arse failed him miserably, so he was still staring at the ceiling as he said, “I didn’t mean for you to see that. Any of it. It was all a long time ago.”

“I know.”

Harry looked over with a slight frown. “Then… why are you so concerned? Or why _were_ you, I guess.” That had been nothing short of a rescue mission, really.

“It was… acute,” Voldemort said carefully. “I assumed there was some more immediate crisis.”

“Oh. No. Just some old, shitty memories.” His mouth quirked. “I suppose you took it to heart, then, that I regret how my childhood was. That’s not….” He hesitated, because _That’s not your fault_ was blatantly false. He tried instead: “That’s not something you’ve got to fix. Or anyone. It just… is.”

Voldemort’s eyebrows shot up. “None of this means anything,” he assured Harry.

“Good.”

“Though, do you want to get off?” His fingers played on Harry’s flat stomach. “I wouldn’t let you, but this wasn’t meant to be as… heightened as it was.”

He did consider it, at least. But the persistence of pain had brought its own sort of calm, that wasn’t his post-orgasmic haze but did leave him a certain type of vulnerable and unmoving. “No,” he said. “Sunday. I can wait until Sunday.” He pressed a row of kisses to Voldemort’s jaw, a little in thanks and a little as an excessively saccharine gesture, so Voldemort would just return to being scathing and indifferent already, and not so apologetic and _worried_. Why on earth was he so worried. “I’ll move when I’m able to move,” he promised. “And I’ll be out of your bed before bedtime.”

“You haven’t got to, you know.”

“I know.”

 

He did fail at crawling out of Voldemort’s bed after all – his arse and the back of his legs were inflamed, and this was about the only position where he could lie down without them touching anything, since the cock cage precluded him lying on his stomach. He summoned the journal he’d share with Voldemort. Voldemort, wherever else in the house to which he’d retreated, wouldn’t be looking at his copy, and that would make this… easier.

 ** _I changed my mind_** **,** he wrote. (He still had to mostly speak it out loud to conjure the writing, but he muttered it under his breath.) **_I want you to run for Minister. I don’t know if I want you to win. But I’d support you, anyway. If my Auror detail this year will let me. It probably won’t be much. Can I do anything yet?_**

Because he’d realized the idea of Voldemort as Minister didn’t scare him. He had entered the wixen world when Fudge was Minister, a perfect portrait of ruthless incompetence. Voldemort’s ruthless competence had at least one more thing to recommend it. And perhaps it was because Harry was generally a bit more reckless these days, but he’d begun to prefer larger, more grandiose political gestures, not caution. Timidity had never gotten anyone anything. And the large scale changes that were settling onto their new world, working with the Muggles and outing themselves and all, would need more dramatic leadership to match.

This was to say nothing of how much he unexpectedly liked having access to the higher ups in the Ministry. That even when Scrimgeour and Moody and Kingsley treated him with exasperation, they still _listened_. (And still kept Voldemort here, out of Azkaban, apparently on his behalf, a tiny voice in the back of his mind added). He didn’t aspire to the higher ranks of the Ministry himself, he wasn’t that ambitious…. It’d just be nice to drop by the Minister’s office sometimes.

One more thing, probably more anxiety-inducing than the first. **_Can you teach me Occlumency?_**

Setting the journal beside himself on the bed, he tried gingerly sitting up. Holy shit he was going to have some great bruises tomorrow. And the nappy was soft, but not so soft that it didn’t chafe the more delicate parts of his arse. He reached down to adjust it, wincing when he found that he was rather wetter than he’d thought. Toilet training, indeed.

But in his peripheral vision, a single symbol inked itself on the bottom of the journal’s page. _No._

No, what? Presumably no to Occlumency, which came as a surprise because he considered his unconscious broadcasting of his thoughts to be more of a nuisance to them both than anything. Besides, (he picked up the quill, frowning) **_Anything you want to know, you can just ask._**

He was going to take Voldemort up on his offer to sleep in his bedroom tonight. It seemed right. When he limped back into the bedroom from brushing his teeth, Voldemort had come upstairs, and was pulling a dressing gown over his tale, pale frame. He looked vaguely amused at how delicately Harry was moving. “Would you like a healing charm?” he asked politely.

“Of course not.” He turned to display the backs of his legs. “Am I bruised yet?”

“No. But you will be.” He passed Harry a pajama top. “Are you wet?” A finger slipped into the leg of the nappy, prodding at the batting between his legs. “A bit.”

Oh. “I’m, um, not supposed to feel it, then?” ( _So_ young, _so_ inept, _so_ helpless.)

“Your body isn’t your own at the moment.” He said it lightly, indifferently, even as his hand slipped forward to adjust the cock cage. Harry shivered.

And when he had crawled into bed, Voldemort pushed him face-down into a pillow – breathable, but only just – as he pulled Harry’s hands behind his back. “We must keep your hands off your helpless cock tonight,” he said lowly, snapping softer leather handcuffs around his wrists. “Right?”

“Yes, sir.” His voice was lost in the pillow. He concentrated on breathing steadily, even though panic and hyperventilation seemed so close at hand today.

“Because we couldn’t have you slipping the cage off to play with yourself.” His tone lilted at the infantile phrase. “Good luck falling asleep without bringing yourself off first.”

His face burned. Obviously Voldemort had known. Even on the nights they weren’t having sex, that was his best strategy for falling asleep. Especially then. He took what was meant to be a steadying breath and got a mouthful of cotton. Voldemort let him splutter for a few long seconds before flipping him back over. His chest heaved against the tightness created by having his arms pinned. And his balls swelled, as they always did when he was suffocated and humiliated. He winced at the pressure, willing himself to think unsexy thoughts.

The lights were lowered and the blankets pulled over them both. Harry was on his side now, precariously, watching Voldemort climb into bed. His eyes glinted in the darkness as he met Harry’s gaze.

“Why won’t you teach me Occlumency?” Voldemort hadn’t acknowledged it, any of it, since coming upstairs.

“Because you’ll be bad at it.”

Harry blinked. He’d had a hundred responses ready but none of them had anticipated this answer. “So?” he challenged. “I’m bad at a lot of things. It won’t, like, hurt me or anything, will it?”

“No.” His tone went familiarly didactic: “The Aurors – if any of them are practiced in Legilimency, I assume some of them are – would be able to tell. Skilled Occlumency is not only concealing your thoughts, but concealing _that_ you’re concealing them, do you see? You’d look like a toddler hiding something behind its back.”

Ouch. “Oh,” he said. “I wasn’t worried about the Aurors. I should be,” he amended, “but I wasn’t.”

“Then, what?” Voldemort’s face was indistinct in the darkness but Harry did see him frown. “As you said, I will have access to everything I wish to know.”

“No, but – “ He felt stupid, having to talk about this _again_. “What about everything else? I didn’t realize until today that – how much of everything you would feel. Do you see my nightmares, too?” The thought occurred to him. “I’m used to them, but I don’t want to, I don’t know, inflict them on you.”

A long pause. “ _Harry_ ,” Voldemort sighed, drawing him close, tucking his head under his chin. “I want to know all of those things, too.”

“You do?” Today had been dumb and embarrassing in a number of ways he’d rather not repeat. And while he hadn’t cared about Occlumency previously… well, now he didn’t want to hurt Voldemort. ( _Could_ he hurt Voldemort? Could Voldemort be hurt, really. He would have doubted it before today.)

“Yes.”

Something burned within him. Not in a bad way. He pressed a kiss to the hollow of Voldemort’s throat. “Thank you.”

“And….” Voldemort’s fingers entangled themselves in his hair. “I do want you involved in my political career.” (So he had read that. Of course he’d read it.) “But there’s precious little for you to do here. And precious little for me to do, either,” he added in a darker tone.

“I’ll ask again when I’m at Hogwarts.”

“Please do.”

He fell asleep like that, held still and handcuffed and caged. It was… _safe_ kept coming to mind. It felt safe.

 

 _Friday, June 5._ He woke up alone. Voldemort generally found sleep to be a waste of time, so this was normal. He squirmed, sore along his arse and thighs. The handcuffs were gone, so he stretched out his shoulders. The nappy was incredibly swollen between his legs, from an entire night of leaking. But he also had to go, badly – a curious sensation after a night in which all his control and sense of need had been taken. Feeling like the nappy would leak if he went anymore, he did his best to hold it as he went to find Voldemort.

In the kitchen, with a pot of tea and the Panopticon. It occurred to Harry that he didn’t know if this game or whatever was even still on. He’d take it slow, then. “Morning,” he said, sliding into the adjacent chair – and jumping right back up because sod it, sitting provoked new types of pain.

Voldemort looked up with some amusement. “Good morning,” he said, turning Harry to admire the bruises on his thighs. “Have you looked in a mirror yet?”

“No. I’ve only just gotten up.” He twisted to look, but the nappy was thoroughly in the way. “And, um, can I take this off? I’ve got to use the toilet.”

“Mm. Yes, let’s.” And Voldemort led him to the toilet because apparently this was going to be a group effort.

That was probably for the best, however, when it became apparent that the cock cage was staying on. Voldemort vanished the nappy and nudged him a bit closer to the toilet than he’d normally stand. “Try standing for now,” he said. “If you make a mess, well….”

He didn’t actually know how that sentence ended, nor did he wish to ask, because it could equally be ‘well, we can always clean up with magic’ or ‘well, you can mouth it from the tile.’ Nor did he point out that his control was rather limited regardless, since Voldemort had insisted on holding his cock (or more accurately, his cock cage) for him. Taking a breath, he tried letting go.

The stream came fast and thick – holding had hurt, and letting go at any moment of need had begun to feel natural. The stream fell straight down, rather than in an arc, from the imposed angle of his cage. But it was, happily, hitting the bowl and not his feet. Success.

At least success until like ten seconds later, when he… finished? His desperation was gone and the stream tapered off. Voldemort made an impatient noise. “I think I’m, um, done,” Harry muttered, reaching to shake off. “Sorry. I thought it was worse.”

“You’ll be a bit delicate today,” Voldemort said, the genteel way of saying, ‘extremely prone to still pissing yourself.’ Harry excused himself to the shower.

Gross, he felt gross and dumb and infantilized. That they were making a long weekend out of his inability to _hold it_. He turned the shower very hot.

Of course it was nice too, Voldemort’s attention. Attention, and exasperation, and mocking amusement. He always handled Harry’s cock in the most demeaning, indifferent way and it was exquisite. The cock cage was open at the front, enough to stroke the head; he reached between his legs.

And at first it felt really great. He was sensitive, from all the attention and from not being touched in so long. The metal spirals were set too tightly to put his fingers through, but the stream of the shower pounded through them in a lovely way, as he swirled and scrubbed the pad of his thumb across the tip of his prick. He closed his eyes: the spanking yesterday had been fantastic, rough and withering. He pressed his fingertips harder to his cock –

 _Fuck_. The pain was more abrupt than he’d expected, as the ring pressed into his quickly-swelling balls, throbbing and warm. His cock was pressed tighter against the bars of the cage, bits of his foreskin poking through. And then he was hard(ish) _and_ incapacitated by the sharp pain that he couldn’t will away. It was, hilariously, a recursive problem since he goddamn loved pain and helplessness and humiliation, and here he was. The shooting tendrils stung now from his balls into his belly – he couldn’t get off on this. Biting back a whimper, he threw the shower to cold, wishing the hard-on away. And it didn’t work, and it began to hurt too badly for him to dredge up any particularly unsexy thoughts. He was braced against the wall, and debating whether to run to Voldemort with this stupid, stupid problem, when he tried what would have been any wizard’s first instinct and cast Alohomora.

The hardware fell to the tile in pieces, and Harry hissed in pain. Merlin. He cradled his bruised genitals for a bit, rubbing gentle circles into where the ring had pressed.

Which sparked his libido once more. Naturally. He debated: it’d numb the residual pain, and take the edge off the general anxiety of the past few days. Voldemort would know. But Voldemort probably knew now; he was mildly surprised he wasn’t already here, chastising Harry for subverting their game.  But… it was a game he wanted to still play, himself. With a final rinsing off he took the cage, wrapped himself in a thick towel, and went to find Voldemort.

Living room. Another pot of tea. Completely disregarded Harry until he made a tiny noise. His eyes went right to the metal bits he held. “Yes?”

“I – “ Breath. “Could you put this back on? I took it off in the shower.” He approached, dropping the towel, padding damp and barefoot across the carpet. His tone was not merely honest but confessional. “I tried to bring myself off. I’m sorry. It really bloody hurt.” He pressed the pieces into Voldemort’s thin hands. “And I thought it’d be – _safer_ if you did it.”

Voldemort pulled him seated on the sofa. “You didn’t get off, then.”

“No, I didn’t, I swear – “

Voldemort made a faintly exasperated noise. “I _believe_ you. Look.” And his hand scooped behind Harry’s balls, emphasizing their particular weight and size. “Lie back.”

He did so. He hadn’t noticed how his balls had swollen in the past day; all he’d seen between his legs was the cage. He liked it, really. He was desperate and full, waiting for release, waiting to be allowed to humiliate himself –

A sharp breath as he realized he was getting turned on again. Voldemort realized it too, and withdrew the ring with which he’d been approaching Harry’s bits. “Really,” he said with a sigh, drawing his wand and casting… something.

His arousal vanished, without any pleasure whatsoever, and he stared. “What was _that_?”

“Magic,” Voldemort deadpanned, and fitted the ring behind his balls. “The reverse spell is more elusive. You’d be famous for creating the perfect spell to keep old wizards hard.” He slid the metal spirals up Harry’s shaft, locking the two together once more. “I’m proud of you,” he said, in a lighter tone than was warranted. “I’ll blow you, after this.”

His heart skipped. “If you’d like.”

Another exasperated noise. “You won’t get anything you want like _that_.”

“I mean, yes you bloody will,” Harry tried. Voldemort squeezed his thigh and added a pair of black fitted briefs, to hold the cock cage in place. Harry was both amused and bemused at this new affection and playfulness (subtle but distinct from mockery). He shimmied out from under him.

Returning to the basement, he set up the mise en place for another batch of Enki. It’d been a good feeling, really, the drive he’d had to be productive on it. And chopping up dragonfruit to tiny, perfect pieces was meditative, in a way. The cauldron was still marble; all the ingredients were still at hand from last time. And if Moody chided him again, well.

(There had been a time when getting scolded by Alastor Moody was about the scariest thing he could imagine. He smiled.)

Mid-afternoon, he transferred the potion to a stoneware bowl, leaving it by the door to put out in their fake-but-effective moonlight. Voldemort looked at him curiously. “Moody will kill you.”

“Yeah,” Harry agreed, with some satisfaction. “You said I had ingredients for a relaxant too?”

“If you haven’t used up the jar of billywig stings yet.”

“I haven’t.”

Voldemort began writing up a recipe for him. “Another one that can be taste-tested, after you’ve added the parsley at least. Be careful; in its early stages it can produce euphoria.”

“Thanks.” Taking the recipe, he wondered if he could put any of this to use in Slughorn’s class. Since he’d been enrolled in it without his consent and all. He no longer had the Prince’s textbook (still stashed somewhere in the Room of Requirement, never touched again as long was Snape was around. Snape had only suspected, but their relationship was terrible enough as it was), so if he was going to continue excelling in Potions – _when he didn’t really want to_ – he’d need _something._

This new potion was called kaval, and it looked… extremely plant-based. It would look like a recipe for magic gazpacho, but for the stingers and a dash of colloidal silver. He brought a bottle of scotch down with him because why the fuck not. He was brewing potions for fun in the middle of a Friday afternoon of mid-summer. And the basement wasn’t so different from the dungeons. He wondered if Snape brewed any sort of recreational potions. Brewed them for Voldemort, even.

Snape. He sighed, pouring a drink. He would find out what had become of Snape, in a week. Maybe he’d been imprisoned with the rest of the Death Eaters; or maybe the Aurors had put them in their supposed witness protection program. His loyalties were… more complicated than they ought to be. He shredded poinsettia leaves into the cauldron.

It took the better part of the day. Voldemort had added tasting notes alongside the steps of the recipe; right now he was at _13) Sprinkle powdered mudroot in a circular motion; wait until it completely sinks beneath the surface. The potion will take on a caramel color, texture, and taste._

Cool. The color and texture were right, at least, once the mudroot had been absorbed. He took a spoonful, and hesitated upon bringing it to his lips. It still smelled like mudroot, disorientingly, but he supposed nothing in the notes promised to _smell_ like caramel too. Sticking the spoon in his mouth, he was vindicated, as the uncanny sensation of perfect hot caramel ran over his tongue. He took another.

It was amazing, he thought, how much he didn’t know about potions. Maybe Snape hadn’t wanted to teach them about recreational potions. Or maybe he only taught them to the Slytherins, brewing wix cocaine for them in the common rooms. Christ, cocaine would explain so much about the Slytherins.

The potion needed to simmer for a few minutes, and he needed to peel an entire root of ginger. One more spoonful of caramel to suck on – he let the spoon dangle from his mouth like a prat – as he found the peeler.

This was nice. This was great. He was _good_ at potions for the first time. The atmosphere of the dungeons had never been conducive to this sort of meditative practice, obviously. To say nothing of how persistently and publicly Snape hated him.

He found himself smiling at the thought. This was so long ago, and so petty, and so… small. Everything before the battle at Hogwarts felt small. If Snape were still around, he decided, he’d do his best to make theirs a functional relationship. Snape must see how funny and small it all was, too.

The smell of freshly peeled ginger was tickling his nose, and as he scrubbed his face it only tickled more, finally making him sneeze violently. And _that_ dredged up its own small funny moment, magical poisoning last autumn as he’d been abducted by Voldemort, wetting himself like a child in Voldemort’s lap. And from that he found himself… _here._ The happiest, most vulgar comedy of errors.

He thought he’d share this idea with Voldemort. Perhaps he’d find it funny too. Though he didn’t understand which things Voldemort found funny, anyway. Voldemort’s internal life was a mystery to them all.

He did remember to take the spoon out his mouth before going upstairs, but he was still clutching the ginger bulb and the peeler for some reason.

“Voldemort?” It was later than he’d thought, the sun low in the sky. They should begin dinner. But he wasn’t hungry. He wandered through the ground floor, and up the staircase. Silence. “Voldemort?”

A light went on in the bedroom, and the door opened. “Come here,” Voldemort said, peering out. He already looked reproachful.

“Sorry,” Harry muttered. “I didn’t mean to disrupt you, it’s really not important….” But he followed Voldemort.

Who pushed them both sprawled on the bed, his motions large and dramatic. Noticing the ginger still in Harry’s grasp, he snorted and lay it aside. And then grabbing Harry’s chin, he looked deeply into his face. Harry squirmed at the intensity of it. He’d gotten used to Voldemort’s visage, had become more attracted to it than to, well, _humans_ recently, but this was too much of a feeling. “What?” he squeaked.

“You’re high as a hippogriff,” Voldemort declared. “You didn’t give the mudroot long enough to dissolve – though even if you had, I _warned_ you it’d cause euphoria.”

“I am high as a hippogriff,” Harry echoed, trying to sound remorseful but unable to choke back giggles. “There’s nothing to _warn_ me about, anyway. I love this.” He was warm and happy in a complete sort of way, a way he hadn’t been since… he couldn’t say when. Maybe never, honestly. The body high had begun to set in, and he stretched, luxuriating in the tingles. “I mean, there’s nothing else to do for a week. I might as well be high.”

“You have gotten _us_ high,” Voldemort corrected. “I was drafting legislation until it abruptly became a _hilarious_ concept, running for the Ministry.”

Harry grinned in spite of himself. “Well.”

An unimpressed look. “You aren’t… you _couldn’t_ do this on purpose. Could you?”

“What? I’m not doing anything,” Harry promised, without really knowing what he meant. “Just, sometimes magic and coincidences just happen around me.” Being one of his classmates, he reflected, was probably a strange and incredible experience. He attracted unlikely coincidences.

“Your thoughts and your feelings are _louder_ ,” Voldemort said. “You wouldn’t…. There’s not a good inverse for Legilimency, there’s no real way to shove thoughts into somebody’s head. I could manipulate your dreams, but those are _dreams_ , they’re hardly in your control regardless. But during waking life….”

“I really didn’t mean to,” he promised again. “Maybe you’d rethink teaching me Occlumency?” It was a playful suggestion but not an insincere one.

Voldemort sighed. “You may learn Occlumency. But that is not what concerns me. Why _now_. It’s not as though the Horcrux grows; it only connects us to the same degree it always has.”

“I just… I don’t know. I don’t know why this is a problem?” Harry asked. “If it’s distracting – it’s got to be distracting –I’ll try to keep my feelings to myself. And I’ll learn Occlumency. If it’s, like, a scholarly question… then I’m sorry you’ve only got me to tell,” and again he couldn’t hold back his laughter. _Poor Voldemort._

 “You’re not stupid,” Voldemort said, a bit sharply. A pause, and a concession: “Well, maybe at the moment you are.” (He laughed at that too, unable to keep himself together.) “But you must understand the question. If something has changed, is it due to proximity, or time, or something to do with the Ministry’s magic? And if the effects are being sorted through the Horcrux… that’s a fairly essential piece of magic. That is, whatever is happening, might be a permanent change at the level of your soul. Only exceptional circumstances provoke that. The Horcrux only develops in a self-contained way. It’s about as difficult to alter as it is to destroy.”

“Oh.” Harry had propped himself up on one elbow. “Yeah, that… sounds like a problem. Are you sure it’s not just your Occlumency? Having less magic here.”

“I am positive.”

“Well, bollocks.” He chewed his lip. “I haven’t felt anything different. Anything I’ve noticed, at least. Though… do you even feel things? Like a normal person. Other than yesterday,” he added, “but I was a mess yesterday.” There, that dumb question he’d kept wondering, and he was finally high and uninhibited enough to ask.

Voldemort bared his teeth. “I make a great attempt not to.”

“Oh.” He frowned, suddenly filled with _pity_ of all things. “But that sounds horrible.”  


“Does it?” Voldemort was puzzled at Harry’s reaction, and Harry’s pity became recursive, that Voldemort couldn’t even know what was wrong with himself. He gave a tiny nod; Voldemort considered and continued: “It seems that dwelling on one’s feelings is a… a luxury, and an idle life. It also seems to get in the way. Doesn’t it? To have an ambition tempered by fear, or spite, or longing. A longing for happiness seems the worst. I’ve seen great people throw away great opportunities for such a small bit of what they call happiness.”

Harry stared, too sad and too inebriated to formulate a response. Voldemort looked back, steadily. “That can’t be right,” he finally said. “What…. If none of this even makes you happy, then why do anything?”

“I reject a happy life, not a meaningful one,” Voldemort corrected. “Powerful people have an obligation to wield power, anyway.”

“What, we should impress all the bright ones into service?”

“Well, it’s something I want, so no need.” Voldemort begrudgingly allowed Harry to curl up alongside him, entangling their legs, because the body high and the crackle of magic between them was irresistible. “Power _should_ be attractive. Societies that make it little better than a punishment… deserve the leaders they get, really. The people who choose some inane happiness over power, especially. ‘The heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself,’” he quoted. Harry gave him a look. “Plato. But you ask me if I feel. I made a decision a very long time ago… all of it only looked like vulnerability, like weakness. It would only ever impede my goals.”

“It doesn’t _have_ to,” Harry objected. “People can be powerful or ambitious or whatever and still love people, or be happy, or have friends. Have a family. You’ve never got to give up everything.”

Voldemort let a long moment pass. “I tortured people’s spouses for information or cooperation,” he said. His voice was flat. “I tortured their children. Wixes who wouldn’t break under torture themselves, who told me they’d sooner die, going to pieces when I had their families. I couldn’t allow that same weakness to be exposed to my opponents. I knew there would be too many people willing to break me, pursue me, exploit me. Why offer them that vulnerability?”

The torture nauseated him, but so did the pity. He pressed his face into Voldemort’s shoulder, sighing deeply. “I’m so sorry.”

“ _Why_ ,” Voldemort said with a dark laugh. “Do you see? You’re torn by this. I am invulnerable to it.”

“I guess,” he said, his voice muffled in Voldemort’s robes. He rolled back over. “Dumbledore told me once that he thinks – thought – you’re incapable of love.” Another idea he’d been keeping to himself for a long time.

“How charming of him.”

But Harry looked up. “What, you’re not surprised?” He had expected a different reaction – he couldn’t say what, just not this. “Did he tell you that?”

“Frequently,” Voldemort assured him. “Not when I was a student – that would be an exceptionally cruel thing for an educator to tell a child, really, even for him – but afterwards. We fought about the magical value of love more than anything. When he deigned to fight, rather than simply patronize me,” he added with a sneer. “I _am_ curious about why he relayed it to you – along with many things of mine he’s shared. To find Horcruces, as you’ve said, but that’s hardly the best way to go about _that_. I know you don’t know,” he added, before Harry could object. “I know every useful thing in your head. In any case, I _don’t_ love. Whether I _can_ seems rather beside the point. As there are more drawbacks to love than benefits, I’m rather satisfied with whatever the circumstances may be.” He looked over, curious. “I don’t understand why this seems so terrible to you.”

It wasn’t anything he could put to words right now. “It just sounds sad, and lonely,” he said. “And it’s worse that you don’t even know what’s missing, how other people feel all the time. That’s all.”

“Well, if that’s all.” Voldemort sat up. “You may stay here, paralyzed by your feelings. I’ll be doing something more useful and beginning on dinner.”

“Wait.” Before Voldemort could get up, he reached over, grabbed his hands, and put every bit of his being toward concentrating on the feeling of love. Of how much he loved Voldemort. He had to know, had to feel it at least briefly.

For a moment it nearly worked, heat and magic coursing between them. Then – Voldemort jerked his hands away, hissing in pain. “ _What_ ,” he snapped, instantly furious, “are you doing?”

Harry stared up at him, horrified. “That’s what love feels like,” he said, shakily. “At least, I tried. If you can feel everything I feel, these days.”

“It certainly was not,” Voldemort said. He held out his hands as proof. They were covered in blisters.

“Oh my god. Episkey,” he tried, though only waving his hand over Voldemort’s, too wary to touch him again. It didn’t work. “Mollesco, Confervo _._ Shit. I’m so, so sorry.” He looked up at Voldemort, wide-eyed.

Voldemort had gone from angry to intrigued, as he did when faced with any magic he didn’t understand. “I thought you had cast a stinging hex,” he said, turning over his hands in his lap. “But of course you wouldn’t. And healing spells won’t work when the caster is agitated.”

“They don’t?” This was inane but they needed a moment of inanity, to catch their breath. “But Madam Pomfrey… well, I guess she was never _agitated_ , really, she was just always exasperated when she saw me.”

“Two entirely separate things,” Voldemort assured him. “If you can’t clear your mind straight away, then count back from one hundred, slowly. And match your breathing to the pace of it.” The corner of his mouth curled. “You may also consider this your first Occlumency lesson.”

“Thanks.” He dropped his gaze, tried shaking off the guilt and horror he felt. They’d be fine, they’d have to be fine –

“Out loud.”

He was going to be so bad at Occlumency. He took a breath. “One hundred, ninety nine, ninety eight, ninety seven….”

He got down to seventy before he felt calm and clear-minded and sobered enough to do anything. Voldemort offered his blistered hands, shiny and red, and he took them very gently. “Confervo.” The blisters receded, and Voldemort’s hands were cool and soft and pale again. “I’m so sorry.”

Voldemort gave him a queer half-smile. “As I said, the responsibility for hurting the ones they love breaks people much faster than torture.” Rising, he left, and Harry remained, with his heart in his throat.

 

He spent the day light-headed and good-natured, still a bit high. Voldemort, made of much stronger stuff than Harry, powered through it, returning to the newspaper editorial he was writing. But in the evening, when the caramel-kaval had worn off, he approached Voldemort.

“Let me get high again tonight,” he asked. “I mean, if it wouldn’t disrupt you.”

Voldemort looked at him with vague alarm. “You aren’t obligated to care about the effect on me, you know.”

“Slytherin,” Harry said affectionately. “Fine, then I’m not asking, but telling.”

Voldemort nodded but asked, “Why? You seem especially determined.”

Instead of answering directly, he moved on to his next request. “And I also need you to lock me in a closet tonight. With the same blindfold and everything.”

“ _Harry_ ,” Voldemort sighed, realizing what he was doing.

“I want to,” he insisted. Something had broken open within him, back among his childhood memories. Doing it again while a bit high might… protect him.

Finally Voldemort said, “Go clear out a closet.”

“I love you,” he said easily as he went to do it. Voldemort made a dubious noise behind him.

 

Within the hour Harry had taken some kaval – he’d finished it earlier so it was no longer caramel, but a green, juniper-tinged thing that promoted a sort of ease and sense of goodness. He brought the blindfold and a nappy to Voldemort, who pushed him sitting in the space of the closet he’d just cleared out.

“Tell me about your cupboard, Harry,” he said, knotting a cord to the horizontal pole. “Since you’re so interested in re-visiting your childhood.”

“Mm.” He tipped his head back against the far wall, looking around the space. “It was the same size as this, about. I could only hold my arms out to around my elbows.” And he would’ve demonstrated if his arms weren’t already over his head.

And then Voldemort was kneeling beside him, wrapping glowing cords up his legs. “Should you really be in a nappy?” he asked, nodding to the one Harry had brought along. “It seems rather… pacifying.”

He flinched. But that was fair. “You’re right – but – “

He didn’t want to piss into the carpet, and he wasn’t positive he’d hold it. Voldemort waved his concern away, lacing the cords all the way to his knees. “Blindfold,” he said, pulling it over Harry’s face. The pitch black buzzed before his face. “And a soother?”

He shook his head. Like the nappy, it’d be too comforting for what he meant to happen. “A bit or a gag. Please.” Voldemort slipped a spoon bit into his mouth, fastening it behind his head. It was just like all those times he’d been forbidden to cry because of the noise it made. “Okay,” he said around the heavy metal, and it sounded like nothing at all. He felt something of Voldemort, an emotion too brief and inhuman to identify, as he shut the door.

And then he was alone in the cupboard under the stairs again. And then he was instantly tiny, fearful, _resigned_. He had forgotten how resigned he had always felt.

 _It would’ve killed me_ , he realized, trying to do the mental calculation of what sort of person he would be now, if not for magic. That existence would have killed him. He felt a flare of anger and indignation on behalf of his younger self, for the first time.

The cords were cutting into his wrists and he pulled against them, the pain liberating something within him. All the times he’d been hit – not _beaten_ , _beating_ was a nasty common thing that the poor people did to their kids according to Petunia, but _hit_.

It was typically Petunia, since she stayed home with Dudley. (He did benefit from having a cousin the same age. He wondered if his neglect would be even worse without already having children’s things around for Dudley.) But on the weekends, when Vernon was home, it’d be him. And it wasn’t just that he was stronger but that he was _meaner_ , and more vindictive.

So the infraction that was nearest to his memory… it must have been something he’d beaten Dudley at; Vernon always took that so personally. Not passing a maths test well enough when Dudley had failed it, being too quick and good at hiding for Dudley to bully him that day, something like that. He had thrown open the closet door – he’d taken up the entire frame so Harry could only see his bulbous body as he shouted – and dragged Harry out. It was the worst incident, the most erratic and violent. Vernon was a bit drunk, and Harry remembered watching the beer bottle in his hand fearfully, lest it get swung, accidentally or on purpose, at his head.

He remembered Petunia and Dudley huddled at the top of the stairs, spectators but keeping their distance. Vernon was shoving him, until he stumbled back over the fireplace, and then Vernon was smashing decorative dishes right beside his head, bellowing that it ought to be his face. And when Vernon dragged him toward the sofa, he remembered an inappropriate sense of relief. This part was _predictable_ if no more pleasant. Still, he’d been screaming, he’d been crying, he’d been yelling that Dudley had done worse and why not beat him. A twinge of regret for his younger self at this; he’d learned not to compare himself with Dudley later, for both of their sakes.

Vernon had yelled that he was especially mouthy tonight as he undid his belt. Like Petunia, he didn’t believe in _beating_ kids (“like those _animals_ up the street”) but did very much believe in hitting Harry. Belting him was Vernon’s favorite. And so when Vernon had pulled Harry over his lap, yanking his too-big trousers down, his worn pants – his feet didn’t even touch the ground yet; god, his growth had been so stunted. Another way it would’ve killed him if he’d not escaped to Hogwarts. He was already cringing in anticipation. Vernon didn’t hit with the buckle end, but with the belt doubled in a loop, so the thick part in the middle created welts. “I haven’t done anything!” he remembered his younger self screaming. “ _Nothing_ – “ And then that broke off in a sob as the belt snapped into his bare bottom. And Dudley had run off to his room and Petunia had followed, because this part was the worst part for which to be a spectator.

 _Snap_! _Snap_! “You are an ingrate,” Vernon had bellowed. _Snap_! He always breathed hard when he beat Harry; he remembered the way Vernon would be heaving under him with every breath. _Snap_! And he’d screamed until Vernon brought his other hand to Harry’s face, a heavy sort of slap that he let lay there to smother his cries. And he still screamed indistinctly against his sweaty hand.

 _Snap_! _Snap_! At some point he’d struggled and that hand had moved upwards, grasping his hair to hold him still. There had been some moisture that might’ve been sweat but could’ve been blood.

 _Snap_! The leather burned stripes into his arse. He was so small then, and so easily broken. His chest constricted with pity and anger. And then at some point one blow hit too hard, and he was pissing himself down Vernon’s legs. He’d probably been waiting for awhile, maybe for them to get home from an outing if he’d been locked in the cupboard. And he felt the fear and shame – the _terror_ – as his bladder let go. He had been so young, and so scared. He thought in that moment that Vernon would kill him.

Nearly. He picked Harry up by his scruff, shaking him, furious. And Harry was sobbing, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” anything to make it stop. Vernon had dropped him rather too hard back onto his knees, his trousers wet and hot underneath Harry. But he didn’t return to beating him. More yelling, much more, and then a cold sensation around his entrance. Vernon must’ve been drunker than he’d realized, because that was new. And Harry had shrieked at the violation by the bottle, and Vernon had yelled, “You move and it’ll get broken off inside of you!” A horrifying thought, one that only made him cry harder. And Vernon had his hair in one hand as he shoved this bottle inside him with the other.

It _hurt_ ; the full force of the sensation came back to him in the present, and he cried against the bit uselessly. He thought he was being sliced open inside. He thought the bottle _had_ broken, and the piercing sensation and the blood were from being cut up inside. It was horrifying.

“That’ll teach you to be so mouthy,” Vernon had snarled, smacking the bottom of the glass to drive it in further. He thought he was dying. “Not so clever now, are you.” And he’d shoved Harry off his lap then, and thank god he’d landed on his stomach, grabbing the bottle and pulling with both hands. He couldn’t get leverage at first, it was too big and too slick, and Vernon was laughing at him.

And when he’d gotten the bottle out – well, he thought he’d dropped it, but his magic had gone off and it’d been launched at Vernon’s head instead. And when he realized what was happening, he’d barely had enough time to scrabble back _into_ the cupboard this time, to protect himself, swinging the door shut and desperately holding it there.

And Vernon had tried kicking in the door – he had been _that_ angry or _that_ drunk, because normally he abhorred property damage – but the bed took up enough space in the cupboard that the door only got wedged against it, Harry crouched behind. He had hit the lights then, so he couldn’t be seen even through the splinters, and crouched in the dark until his uncle had gone. He could still feel it now, crouched in the dark, wet tear tracks making his face sticky.

He didn’t come out for days after that, he knew. Couldn’t face Vernon, couldn’t face Petunia or Dudley because they had heard, they would _know_. The time he’d pissed into his pillow – or maybe it’d happened more than once, but at least one time was around now. He didn’t eat, didn’t get let out. He pushed the door back into shape carefully, until the following weekend when Vernon had pushed spackle and paint at him.

He wasn’t sure if Vernon would even remember. Maybe not even the day afterward, but certainly not now. It never happened again – the penetration that is, though the beatings happened all the fucking time. And Harry… Harry hadn’t remembered either, up to this point. He had buried that deep inside. Maybe because it’d been too traumatic to recall, but also maybe because he hadn’t even understood what had happened at the time. Not just the… rape (his breath caught on the word) but all of it. He hadn’t known he had been abused, not really.

It changed everything. He had only meant to delve back into the parts of his childhood he knew. The painful parts, the humiliating parts, the parts he had escaped. _I’ve escaped, I’ve escaped, I’ve escaped_ , he chanted mentally in time with his heartbeat. But if he hadn’t… again that anger flared up. It was despite his relatives’ efforts that he was still here, was still whole. But this… he had this newfound sensation of being broken, in a way he’d never known before.

He had learned to cry quietly in that cupboard, and he thought he was doing so now. It was only rapid breathing, with an occasional escaped high pitched squeak. He’d keep his fist to his mouth for those moments, and this time he couldn’t, wrenching at his hands tied above his head, but the metal of the bit buzzed with the sounds he made. He had regressed in the weeks that had followed that time; that, he had remembered but hadn’t put together why before. And now, retroactively, he was furious with his teachers, his neighbors, his peers, for not _seeing_ such an obvious thing. He had been failed by an entire community, one that valued politeness over anything else. And he was gone, he’d escaped, but he felt like it was its own Horcrux, some jagged and broken-off piece of himself that was still eight years old, being shaken into Vernon’s furious red face, utterly terrified. He had never mourned that boy. He was sobbing for that boy now.

And then Voldemort was sitting beside him, holding him, and normally his touch was cold but now it was perfect. He left the blindfold on but pulled out the bit so Harry could cry unimpeded. And it was fine, it was less embarrassing than he thought it would be as he pressed his face into Voldemort’s recessed chest.

“I didn’t know,” he murmured at one point. He didn’t have to explain, he could feel Voldemort’s presence in his mind, that he’d seen it all if not fully experienced it. “I don’t think I even had the _words_ back then, and certainly not the sense it was wrong…. I was unhappy, but I didn’t think I deserved anything better.”

“Harry….” And Voldemort was pulling him into his lap, his feelings strangled and incredulous. The touch burned with stray magic. He’d probably shot some off, but with nothing in the closet to explode, it had just hung in the air and now clung to them once more. Magic had saved him all those times, he thought – the times he’d healed too quickly, the times Vernon or Petunia had been distracted by something when they’d meant to beat him. It was literally his salvation, before he’d even learned of it.

And now Voldemort was guiding him to the bedroom, lifting him to bed, casting cleaning charms, folding a nappy between his legs. He half-pushed the blindfold up, just in time to see Voldemort fall in bed beside him. His pupils were dilated; they were both still high. He couldn’t say it, couldn’t say anything.

Voldemort broke the silence. Harry could see how still his face was, even in the dull candlelight. “I don’t deserve you.” His touches were gone, the scalding and purifying magic between them. “And you should hate me.” He said it very bluntly.

He didn’t want to _absolve_ Voldemort. That’s not what either of them wanted, and it wasn’t a thing he thought he could do anyway. “I should,” he agreed. “You and everybody else.” He hated everyone around that boy. He hated the broken person he would have become if magic hadn’t saved him. He supposed in that way he was one of the lucky ones.

And so was Voldemort. “Don’t you feel as though it saved you?” He expected his thoughts were loud enough that he didn’t particularly have to explain. “The person I’d be if I’d stayed….” And he broke off with an inarticulate shudder.

“You have idealized the wixen world,” Voldemort told him, but softly. “You know that.”

Harry slid in, resting his forehead on Voldemort’s collarbone. It was… steadying. “I don’t care,” he muttered. The places where they touched burned. “And I _should_ hate you. Everyone is, y’know, suspicious that I don’t. It just… it doesn’t make anything better.” That wasn’t the same as forgiveness. It couldn’t be.

Voldemort held him until he was nodding out, but he finally made a bit of a strangled noise. “Let me….” And he was high and ungraceful too, but he rolled away from Harry, raising the level of candlelight in the bedroom. And then he’d summoned a mirror, still lying on his back, to examine… his chest. Oh shit.

Harry sat up in a panic upon seeing the same shiny red blisters where his face had pressed as he had caused earlier. “Oh Merlin,” he muttered, reaching for the wound instinctively.

Voldemort pushed his hand away without looking, levitating the mirror back upon the wall. “You couldn’t cast while you were agitated,” he reminded Harry. “We are certainly not casting while high.”

“But….”

“Leave it.” And pulling up a sheet as a barrier between them, he pulled Harry back toward him. He fell asleep curled in a ball, his forehead on Voldemort’s chest, steadied by the rhythm of his breathing.

Of course he dreamed, he always dreamed, but it felt disjointed this time. That he couldn’t hold onto his feelings for long enough to be upset, to be fearful. He dreamed of the cupboard closing in around him, squeezing him until he choked – a hand reaching in through the splintered door, not Vernon’s hand but the pallid, decaying hand of a Dementor. And he was reaching for his wand but of course he didn’t have one yet, he was eight years old and he was helpless.

A movement shook him half-awake; Voldemort had slid apart and was leaving. “I’m making dreamless sleep,” he said at Harry’s questioning glance. And Harry pulled himself sitting, pulling the blankets to his chin to combat the shivers. This would be over; he wanted it to be over. If the kaval had made all his memories and feelings more distant, it had also made them more _real_ , resonant and clarified. He was exhausted but kept himself awake.

And Voldemort returned with two glasses of smoking purple potion, handing the fuller one to Harry. Harry winced upon recognizing that Voldemort was taking one too. “I didn’t mean to keep you up,” he muttered, sipping the potion. It was fresh-brewed, stronger and rather nicer than the bottled stuff Madam Pomfrey had given him.

Voldemort slid back into bed. In this light, in this setting, he looked so… frail. Harry supposed he did too. “What do you dream about?” he asked, idly. If he could be this distraught, what would everything Voldemort had seen lead to?

“Mm? Nothing.” Voldemort had also brought his soother, passing it to him. “I haven’t properly dreamt in decades. The ones I do experience are yours,” he said, almost apologetic for the intrusion. “It would just more effectively suppress your dreams tonight, if I take the potion as well.”

“Thanks,” he said. Voldemort shrugged it off. It was an interesting question, what ethical obligation they had to one another while their thoughts and feelings were so entangled. But the potions onset was quick, and he was too high and too exhausted to hold onto much of a train of thought, and he just… couldn’t. He felt Voldemort press the soother to his mouth as he dropped off again.

 

 _Saturday, June 6._ Voldemort was beside him, reading a book, when he awoke. Their fake-sun in their fake-sky indicated it was afternoon rather than morning. It took him a long moment to realize the tension he was feeling wasn’t his own. He rolled over (he was _sore_ , why would he be so sore), taking Voldemort’s sleeve and pulling himself sitting. Enough of this. “Voldemort.” He tried for a steady tone. “Nothing… nothing’s _changed_. I’m fine,” he insisted. “And I’d be better if you went back to being, I don’t know, a bit of an arsehole.”

Voldemort’s face had been carefully neutral until then; there was a flicker of amusement across his features. “Of course,” he agreed, and the ache of concern vanished from Harry’s psyche. “Arsehole it is.”

“Thank you.”

“Do you still want sex?” he asked. “Generally, that is. It all seems a bit… proximate.”

“God, please,” he snorted. It might not fix him, but… it’d give him back something of his own narrative. He couldn’t articulate what.

And then Voldemort was up, pulling him into the toilet, unpinning the nappy so it fell to the ground wetly. Harry shuddered at the sound. Voldemort’s hand was on the cock cage, aiming for him before the toilet. “Good boy,” he murmured as Harry obediently pissed.

As he did, he slouched back a bit, appreciating the warmth of Voldemort behind him, and glanced back. “ _Oh_ ,” he said, spying the burn marks still above the neckline of his robes, left from last night. “Let me – “

And he felt a streak of wetness down his leg as he got distracted, his piss turning to a trickle and then stopping. Voldemort’s free hand on his shoulder nudged him back into place. “Leave it,” he commanded. “And please focus on the task at hand,” he added, exasperated. Straightening, Harry tried again.

And when he’d finished, Voldemort had reached under his balls, scooping them in a handful. They were so swollen by now, and his thumb rubbing circles into them felt like good pain, like rubbing a bruise. And before Harry could protest that the touch was going to get him hard, Voldemort had put his balls down, and was now offering him fitted briefs. “If you piss in these,” he said as Harry pulled them on, “you’ll blow me as punishment.”

His first response to this was _some punishment._ But that would ruin their game. He flicked a wry glance at Voldemort but only said, “Yes, sir.” The briefs were a dark gray, and the outline of the cage was prominent. And he was still, as Voldemort put it, a bit delicate. Well.

The day was mostly normal. Voldemort stopped shooting him these awful pitying looks partway through the day – that were accompanied by emotional little surges, it was all very disruptive and all out of both of their control. He could tell Voldemort was trying to keep his own Occlumency in place. Clearing his mind, counting backwards, helped a lot. He might be a bit _delicate_ psychically as well, either from the drugs or from the utter mess he’d been yesterday.

But now, distanced a bit from yesterday… it had been good. He felt cleaner, brighter. He’d said something about Muggle vision quests to Voldemort that day, and Voldemort had stared and told him that _obviously_ that was a custom that had begun with indigenous wixes and incorrectly recreated by the Muggles who didn’t understand what was happening; why would he assume the reverse. Wanker.

But whatever, it had helped. He wondered if the wixes had shrinks. Probably not. Probably just cheering charms and dreamless sleep and Pensieves. Magic was much better at treating symptoms than causes. Maybe he’d seek out a Muggle therapist. Maybe explaining the magical world to an outsider would be good for him, anyway. (“I’m kind of wixie-famous,” he imagined explaining to a wide-eyed Muggle therapist. Maybe not.)

He spent the afternoon doing a bit of packing. A week, they had a week. They’d be returned here when their days at Cornwall ran long, Moody had said, so he didn’t have to pack exhaustively. Still.

He was writing down the titles of Voldemort’s books that he’d used for his classes when Voldemort found him. He surveyed Harry’s work. “Really, just take them. You can bring them back if I need them.”

“Are you sure?” It was a rather large stack of books. “I can buy my own.”

Glancing at the spines, Voldemort snorted. “No, you couldn’t,” he said. “Most of them are out of print. And the dark arts ones are nearly all illegal.”

“They are?” He flipped back through one of them. “But they weren’t even interesting. I mean – “ he stumbled. “You know what I mean.”

A faintly amused hum. “You’d have a better chance of getting these books into Hogwarts than I would getting them into Azkaban.”

Harry frowned at him. “ _Are_ you going to be alright there?” he asked. Voldemort had promised Azkaban and the Dementors didn’t affect him, but recent circumstances revealed Voldemort’s emotional state to be rather more… dynamic, and permeable, than he had implied.

“Yes,” Voldemort said, and he looked as though he knew the source of Harry’s skepticism. “It will be enlightening, to experience Azkaban. It will clarify my thoughts on prison reform. It will be time to write, primarily. And it will be – rather perversely – a sort of safety.”

It was true; a lot fewer people could kill Voldemort when he was locked away there. “I’ve felt that way here too,” Harry confessed. “That it’s a sanctuary of a sort.”

“It would be incredibly negligent of the Ministry if they let someone kill us before trial,” Voldemort agreed. “Take what you’d like of my library,” he said, nodding toward the wall of books. “I can’t bring much. Though,” he said, his face darkening as he looked over the titles, “some of the books I need are still at my father’s house. Would you get them? I can’t imagine the Aurors would let us stop there between Cornwall and Azkaban.”

“Oh. Sure. Anything else?” But Voldemort only shook his head and summoned a box for the books. “And – “ he added before Voldemort could go, “could I use the toilet?”

It hadn’t quite been made explicit that he couldn’t go on his own, but that’s the way things had worked so far. It was a good sort of embarrassing, to ask permission and help every time he had to piss. And while he wasn’t desperate just yet, he’d rather not risk it.

Voldemort’s eyebrows went up. “Could you wait an hour?”

“Yeah?”

“Ask again then.” And he left. Well, _that_ was going to become something rather more interesting.

An hour later, he was far closer to desperate, as they started on dinner prep. “Can I go now?” He passed Voldemort a cutting board of diced tomato.

Still this game. “Could you wait?”

“No.” He squirmed a bit. “I mean, yes, but… waiting makes me hard,” he confessed, “and I can’t….” Already his balls had swollen to the very limits of comfort of the ring.

“Ah.” This delighted Voldemort. “That is a problem.”

“If you want me to suck you off, you’ve only got to ask,” Harry said, a bit exasperated.

“Oh Harry,” Voldemort said sadly, “I was going to let you go. But now, for impertinence, you’ve got to wait. Another hour, I think.”

This night was going to end with both of them wet, fucked, and thoroughly crazy. He couldn’t wait. “Yes, sir,” he said, pressing a glass of wine into Voldemort’s hand, and tipping the bottle over the pan of bolognese on the range.

In response Voldemort pulled him close, transfiguring a spare bit of kitchen twine into a long, looping chain. “Chin up.” He slung it around Harry’s neck, creating a choke chain. “Since you’ve got to be impertinent today.” And Harry had assumed the slack would be a sort of leash, it was long enough to be, but then Voldemort was pulling down his briefs and performing a spell that welded the end of the chain to the ring of the cock cage. He stared up at Voldemort. “Perhaps this will remind you to be a bit more cautious tonight,” he said, wrapping his hand around the taut chain now running down Harry’s torso. There wasn’t a lot of slack to it; already he felt the tension in his cock and in his throat. It was perfect.

He fingered the chain himself, slender and cool along his naked torso. “I like it,” he said. “How long does it stay?”

“As long as you can stand.”

It did make him a bit more careful about squirming and bouncing and stretching, that every movement could tug his swollen balls just the tiniest bit, but it was enough. And as poised as he tried to be, desperation had set in for real, and that always made him so hard. By the time dinner was nearly ready, his cock and balls were pressing painfully against their cage, and a torrent of piss was about ready to explode from him, and the delicate way he had to move was driving him mad. Voldemort found him drinking wine with his other hand jammed between his legs, and laughed softly at him. “Can I go now?”

“You wouldn’t even want me to allow you.”

He was right, Harry didn’t. But he’d like to beg anyway. “But I’ve been so good, this entire time,” he tried out. “Even if you just let me go a bit, I know I could hold the rest. But it’s begun to _hurt_.” That part was true enough.

“Pouting is extremely unbecoming on you.”

A bit because of the pain and a bit because of the wine, his inhibitions were already gone. He pushed his chair back, running his hand from the bulge of his bladder down to his balls. The weight of his hand made it worse, made him almost lose a spurt of piss into his pants, and he hissed. “Look.” And he stood up very carefully, and Voldemort’s hand was tracing the same path, his fingers rubbing tiny circles over the top of his bladder. Desperation and arousal pulsed through him. “Please – Daddy – “ What Voldemort had hissed that Harry should call him before, sending a shock through them both now. It was complicated, it was maddening. But then he felt the first spurt, warm and damp and thrill-inducing. If he looked down, he was certain it would show. And Voldemort was looking at him hungrily, gluttonously, and he made his decision. He would humiliate himself on his own terms, at least.

Grabbing the front of Voldemort’s robes, he pulled him down into a chair. “Daddy, love, don’t be angry,” he babbled. And the word felt perverse but it all felt perverse, and he could feel Voldemort’s white-hot arousal in their mental connection. He climbed atop Voldemort, settling onto his thighs. The wet dot on the front of his briefs was stunningly obvious, and Voldemort pressed his thumb to it. “I couldn’t hold it anymore,” he said, and it was true; and as soon as he said it, moisture bloomed across the front of his briefs. He groaned. “You’re right, I didn’t want to be allowed to go.”

And then he was pissing buckets, the liquid bubbling down his briefs, over Voldemort’s fingers, pattering along his thighs. “Because I wanted to do it in your lap.” He choked on this perverse statement. “Maybe next time you’ll believe me.” A hot puddle grew between their thighs, faster than it could be absorbed in Voldemort’s robes or run over to the floor, tickling his already-sensitive balls, scent hitting his nose and making his cock twitch.

Voldemort’s hands were very tight on his hips. “ _Harry_.” His voice was strangled. He had nothing more to stay, but his fingers prodded at Harry’s bladder, still so firm and swollen. He pissed so hard it was bubbling over their thighs. His pants, heavy and clinging, were so saturated that they clearly showed the outline of the cage holding his dick in place. His tiny childish penis, wetting himself on Voldemort’s lap, pressed against the firm girth of his erection. He wanted it in his mouth, he wanted to choke on it –

Whether he gave himself away in body language or Legilimency he couldn’t say, but Voldemort’s grip on his hips grew stronger. “Stay,” he said lowly. “And finish pissing on me like the child you are.”

He flushed at the rebuke but it made him grin too. “Yes, sir.” And he shifted a bit, getting up on his knees to feel and to see trickles running along the insides of his thighs. On his knees his cock hung low and heavy, on his knees the collar was pulled a bit tighter around his throat. And pain coursed through him but not panic – _he was safe he was safe he was safe_ – that as much as he ever humiliated himself he would always be okay – He recognized vaguely that these thoughts weren’t his own but that hardly mattered.

He heard the splatter of liquid on the floor; he felt heat steaming in Voldemort’s lap, sodden with his piss. He pressed out every drop, biting back a groan of satisfaction, as the residual pain of having held on for so long settled into something nicer. He was a mess, they both were.

The sensation tripped his memory. As high as he’d been – “Did I wet myself in your lap last night?” he asked. It all felt very familiar, but dream and reality from that time were muddled.

A curve of his mouth. “You did.”

“Sorry,” he said with something like a laugh because christ, there was never a time he wasn’t a childish disaster.

“ _Sorry_ ,” Voldemort mocked, taking Harry’s hand in his own, sliding it up his erection. “You should never be allowed to piss anywhere but my lap, ever again.”

There’s a thought, that made him go hard. He was shimmying backwards, slippery and wet. “I think I have to blow you now.”

Voldemort’s eyes glittered. “You do.” And he shot a freezing spell at the range’s flames because fuck actually crossing the room to turn it off right now, and then he was pulling Harry’s ruined briefs down his legs. Harry was on his knees on the wet floor when Voldemort smeared the wet fabric on his face, along his cheeks and over his lips. “There,” he said. “Perhaps you’ll learn.”

He prickled with shame and it felt amazing. He was pulling Voldemort’s soaking robes out of the way, pulling his erection through the front of his pants so the wet fabric still clung to his balls, so he could press the hot wet cloth to the base of his cock as he put his mouth to the tip.

The chain around his throat had slackened in his kneeling position, until he pulled Voldemort’s hand to his throat. “Choke me,” he muttered around his thick prick, and Voldemort’s fingers were entangled in the chain, pulling it not in a deliberate or conscious way but in small shudders and reactions when Harry bobbed and sucked and kissed. He slid a hand underneath him, to marvel at how sodden everything was, but Voldemort deliciously bucked as his palm caressed his throbbing balls. Raising his eyebrows, Harry pushed his hand farther underneath him, until his fingers pressed his soaked robes to the tight ring of his arsehole. Voldemort made a strangled noise, unconsciously pulling at the chain until Harry was light-headed. Perfect, it was perfect.

It was overwhelming, being smothered in his scent – just being smothered, choked by the chain around his throat and the cock that Voldemort was now thrusting along his tongue. And he was holding onto Voldemort’s knees for leverage against the warm slick tile, bobbing his mouth along his erection. He tasted pre-come dribbling into his mouth. And on one good thrust, the tip hit the back of his throat and he was gagging on its girth, spluttering around it, not sure he’d ever draw enough air. The torrent of come slicked his throat, and Voldemort’s hand was jerking the collar until he saw spots, and finally he slumped, exhausted as though he had just come himself. In a way, he had.

And then Voldemort was dragging him onto his feet, hoisting him onto the table, summoning oil from a cupboard. His look was glittery, hungry. And somehow in Harry’s already-addled state, he panicked. “But it’s not Sunday,” he said, doing a bad job of scrambling backwards. “I don’t want to get in trouble.” He had been so good.

This was the best thing Voldemort had ever heard. “ _Fuck_ Sunday,” he said. “But you’ll leave the cage on for as long as you can tolerate.” He tipped olive oil into his palm.

Harry shivered. It would hurt. But everything he goddamn loved had hurt. He gasped as Voldemort pressed two fingers inside of him, seeking, twisting, massaging – “Oh!” The sensitive spot was swollen and already throbbing, sending shocks through his brimming sack.

Voldemort threw Harry’s legs over his shoulders, leaning in to dart his tongue to the tip of his cock. He was going to get so hard so quickly. A few flitting licks, and his hips bucked on their own. He groaned.

Voldemort fit the cock cage into his mouth messily, sucking hard until Harry swelled to its boundaries. The metal warmed with the contact, and the tension of it provoked the good sort of panic in him. It was too tight and he was too full already – The pressure behind his balls made his head swim, the ring perfectly tight against them. And every caress of Voldemort’s fingers against his prostate made him whimper, in a higher and higher pitch.

It hurt. He loved it. He’d been getting off on nothing but desperation and humiliation and _fullness_ for months now. He could feel his swollen, tortured balls heavy against his inner thighs. Voldemort’s other hand had been braced at the base of his shaft, and now he ran his thumb over his throbbing sack, gently, teasingly. “Oh my god,” Harry whimpered.

And then Voldemort’s mouth was bobbing on his cock in earnest, choking on the cage, his teeth clicking against the metal. Harry couldn’t help staring, flooded with happiness and gratitude and then – _fuck_ – and then a lot of pain, as he grew too tumescent, his cock throbbing as it reached the limits of blood flow. And Voldemort had felt it too, groaning in such a way to reverberate along the entire cage. Harry sobbed.

His thoughts weren’t collected enough to remove the cage at first. Voldemort wasn’t going to. He reached down, the brush of his fingers on his cock where it bulged against the cage, sending shockwaves up into his belly. “Alo – “ He broke off in a breathless laugh as Voldemort twisted his fingers inside his arse decisively. “Alohomora,” he gasped, and the ring fell apart, clattering to the table. Voldemort raised his mouth long enough to pull the coiled bit off, and then plunged his mouth onto Harry’s now-liberated cock once more. He squeezed his legs around Voldemort’s throat, and he didn’t even protest, only pushing another finger into Harry’s arse to hear him squeal.

He wouldn’t last, he’d been too desperate for too long. Voldemort was taking advantage of their Legilimency, bringing Harry close and then withdrawing his mouth at exactly the right moments. It was infuriating. And his firm grip at the base of Harry’s cock held him back, in a way, keeping him at the very edge of full and desperate. Perfect.

But he couldn’t – he was _so_ full, and _so_ needy – the prostate massage was spreading prickly heat through his whole body, a full body arousal like he’d never felt before. And when Voldemort gave a sucking kiss that pushed him over the edge, he really tried pulling back. He was going to come gallons, and he made a strangled noise as he shot forcefully along Voldemort’s lapping tongue. Sucking and sucking, as though he were insistent on draining Harry’s balls, relieving him of this weight he’d carried between his legs for days. He swallowed greedily, making Harry flush as his lips grew slick with his fluids. Nobody had ever looked at him so hungrily.

Voldemort kept sucking until he was empty, beyond empty, until the aftershocks had given way to a warm buzz, until it become a bit deliciously painful and Harry let out a tiny whimper of protest. Voldemort withdrew, and it took Harry a few moments and a few tries to raise himself onto his elbows. Leaning forward, he licked the remaining shiny wetness from Voldemort’s lips, lapping and nipping and stupid and playful. And when Voldemort pulled him off the table with a tug of the choke chain, he let it stay there, dangling against his torso. He wanted the weight of it to grow familiar. Like the weight of the cock cage had grown familiar, and heavy, and comforting. In fact: he reached back, snapping the bits of it together. “Can I keep this?”

“Of course.” Voldemort was scrubbing down evidence of their tryst with a barrage of cleaning spells. “And it’s Muggle, so… if you ever wanted to wear it, it wouldn’t be detected. Unless the Aurors actually undressed you.”

He couldn’t help but smile. “ _There’s_ a thought,” he said appreciatively, and went to go stash it somewhere safe.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Allusions for Chapter 2:
> 
> Kaval – Here, a drug with weed or opioid effects. Named for a Turkish flute.
> 
> “Cocaine would explain so much about the Slytherins” – Stealing this from the fantastic “Hufflepuff is actually the stoner house” post, [here.](http://rereadingharry.tumblr.com/post/11651831077/what-if-hufflepuff-is-actually-the-stoner-house-at)
> 
> “The heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself” is a quote from Plato.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Voldemort departs for Azkaban, Harry departs for Hogwarts. The castle is convalescing, the Aurors are on surveillance, and Kingsley is far more patient than Harry deserves.

_Sunday, June 14._ And that’s how their final week went, mostly. Sex and potions and books and packing. Occlumency when Voldemort announced he couldn’t concentrate over Harry’s _constant anxiety, damn you_. And then it was the morning of the 14 th, and Harry was up too early, nauseated with stress. It wasn’t fair, he thought, that he should shoulder the burden of being anxious for both of them, since Voldemort was unshakeable. As Voldemort was still asleep, he tip-toed from bed to go gag quietly.

Voldemort found him in a scalding shower later, just kind of standing there because the physical pain of a too-hot shower overwhelmed any other thoughts. “Really,” he sighed, pushing Harry’s head backward to scrub out forgotten shampoo. “Would you like a cheering charm? A calming draught? Anything recreational the Aurors would be furious at, but….” Pulling him from the shower, he handed him a towel. “I would fuck you if it’d help, but I don’t know that it would.”

That got a weak laugh from him. “I’d be a really bad shag right now. Sorry.” But the cock cage was on the counter (having been left there from a thorough scrubbing earlier) and his eyes strayed to it. “But….”

Voldemort followed his gaze. “Deviant,” he said, and Harry hummed in agreement. And then he was swinging himself up on the counter, to make everything a bit easier with him seated. Voldemort’s motions were practiced now, and the familiar cool weight around his cock was… comforting. He knew it was ridiculous, but he relaxed marginally as it snapped into place.

“Cheers.” He slid off the counter. “Do you need anything else packed?”

“Mm. No. But you do need a calming draught.”

“I’ll be fine.”

A dry expression. “You won’t be, and more importantly, I won’t be. We still have a day of casting, if you recall. And I’d rather not be working with that much magic with an angsty teenager in my head.”

He pushed down inappropriate amusement at that. “Right. I’ll take a calming draught. D’you want one?”

“Yes, please.”

The calming draught only needed to be reheated in a cauldron (it was a bit… snotty at room temp) but that was great because the Aurors arrived unexpectedly early that morning, when Harry had only just handed Voldemort a warm glass. He groaned at the knock on the door. “Really? Already?”

“A long day,” Voldemort said. “I’ll let them in if you bring the trunks down.”

Normally it was backwards, normally Harry would be the first person they’d see. But… Voldemort had to preserve his magic, not just for today but for whatever awaited him in Azkaban. “Sure,” he said, swallowing a burning mouthful of potion before he went.

By the time he had levitated their trunks from the bedroom to the staircase, Bragg and Brightbone were waiting at the bottom, and caught up the trunks with their own spells. “Cheers,” he muttered, following them to the living room.

Seemingly _all_ the Aurors were there, more than had ever been in their home at once before. He had stopped, without meaning to, at the bottom of the stairs; Bragg made an impatient noise to rouse him from shock. Kingsley was nearby, the first face he saw that he liked, and he gave Harry an apologetic expression. “You need separate detail anyway, and since we’re departing straight from Cornwall….”

“Right.” His glass was empty. “Would you excuse me. Uh, put on a kettle if you want. Or make Voldemort do it. Or….” And he vanished down the basement stairs, trying not to hyperventilate. For Voldemort’s sake if not his own. He siphoned the entire cauldron of calming draught into a flask. Perfect.

He had obviously been missed in his brief absence because the Aurors visibly relaxed when he emerged into the living room. Scrimgeour was in their midst, and offered his hand. “Good morning.”

“Minister.” His voice was flat. He tried again. “Good morning.” His handshake was lackluster, but so be it. “Um, aren’t you worried about security, when the entire Aurors’ department is here?”

(“That’s what I asked,” Voldemort sighed somewhere in the back of the crowd.)

Scrimgeour’s eyebrows went up only slightly. “Kingsley explained you needed separate details,” he said. “Furthermore… we’d been able to keep the location of your casting confidential up to this point.” He looked back at Voldemort now, who was stepping through the Aurors, unhappy with anticipated news. “But I’m afraid it’s been found out. I suppose you haven’t seen the Prophet yet this morning. The area has always been secured, of course. But we’d like to account for any… public reaction.”

Voldemort had taken the flask from Harry and swallowed a long draw at this. “Calming draught,” he explained at Scrimgeour’s look. “Harry has been a disaster this morning.”

“I have, yeah.”

“And any illusion or distraction charms will interfere with the airspace shield,” Voldemort went on. “You’ll need physical barriers and deterrents. Security that looks like security.”

“Security that will attract attention,” Scrimgeour said.

“Yes.”

A moment of thinking. “Alastor.” He turned to find Moody among the Aurors. “Have you got that? What sort of barriers can your Aurors sustain for a day?”

“We’ll try to be quick,” Harry muttered, trying to imagine keeping a shield up for hours. Everyone ignored him.

“Fire,” Moody offered. “Or thorns. Either is self-sustaining.”

“Plan for one of them,” Scrimgeour said, and Moody stepped away to strategize with the Aurors. (Harry had a fleeting nostalgic moment, that he looked just like Wood before a game.) Scrimgeour looked back. “We had anticipated using a distraction charm,” he said by way of apology.

“That would not only be ineffectual but dramatically explosive,” Voldemort assured him. Scrimgeour winced. An awkward pause – it’d take Moody and the Aurors a bit to reconfigure their security plans. So Voldemort asked, “Who was the leak, then?”

Scrimgeour sighed, as a means of taking a couple moments. “Nobody,” he said. “The Prophet won’t reveal a source. It might have simply been luck, or an analysis of the shield’s trace.”

“It seems a great many of your Aurors appreciate the value of mob justice, though.”

“And you?” Scrimgeour sounded slightly strained at this. (And Harry would agree, not that anyone had asked, that Voldemort didn’t have much room for judgment.) “If law enforcement depended on mob justice, they’d put themselves out of a job. And not only because I would sack them.” He gave Voldemort something of a skeptical look. “You have never been anything but safe in the Ministry’s custody.”

“Oh?”

“Stop,” Harry begged, pressing himself between them. “Stop. We’re fine. Of course we’ve been safe.” He had a hand on Voldemort’s chest, which would do exactly nothing if either of them moved to duel. But he could feel how quick and faint his heartbeat was.

“Of course you believe that,” Voldemort said, but he wasn’t peeling Harry off him. “You can’t feel how far the magic here has been throttled. I imagine the Aurors intended to be picking up my body this morning. Certainly, they would assume that the casting today would exhaust my magic, if nothing else.”

Magic, of course. Voldemort was always touchy and insecure about the voids. “I’ll give you magic,” he said, alarmed. “Here – “

But as he was reaching for Voldemort’s hands, Scrimgeour said, eyes glittering, “Just because you’ve ruined your soul, doesn’t mean we intend to kill you.”

Voldemort jerked, pushing Harry away unconsciously. “Is that what Dumbledore told you?” he asked, his voice low and dangerous. “Because he was right. But he did you a disservice if he didn’t tell you the other part of my secret, Minister. That my soul is so _ruined_ , I am unable to die.”

A flicker on Scrimgeour’s features, that something was confirmed for him. “And Harry?” He asked this without even looking in Harry’s direction. “What does Harry have to do with anything?”

Voldemort’s laugh was short and cruel. “If Dumbledore didn’t tell you _that_ , then he didn’t tell you anything.”

Harry didn’t see Scrimgeour’s face at that since he’d fully shoved himself between them now. “Stop,” he pleaded again. “This isn’t helping. I’ll give you magic if you stop.” He only just refrained from pulling Voldemort by the front of his robes. “We’ll be in the basement,” he said to Scrimgeour as he took Voldemort by both hands instead. “Send someone for us when you’re ready.” He didn’t manage to sound respectful, but Scrimgeour seemed a bit too shocked to care.

The Aurors surrounding Moody all looked up in shock as they departed rather agitatedly. They’d been too busy talking about walls of flame or whatever to notice the near-confrontation. Bang up job, Aurors. None of them followed, at least.

In the basement Harry cracked open another calming draught because it was going to be that sort of fucking day. He handed Voldemort the rest of the flask. “You’re an idiot,” he fumed (in Parseltongue, so the Aurors could listen in all they wanted and learn nothing). “Of course they throttled the magic. And if they did have to bring you unconscious to Azkaban, it would certainly make their jobs _easier_. And definitely more pleasant.” He pressed a ball of magic to Voldemort’s palms, a gesture that could not possibly be done with anger or spite, and more’s the pity. “Also, you cannot possibly argue that you care about human rights on principle. As though you haven’t done infinitely worse.”

Voldemort was unmoved. “Yes,” he said. “But this feels so _personal_. He wanted affirmation of… whatever of my Horcruces Dumbledore told him. Obviously not much.”

He still wanted to pick his own fight, because they were all irritable this morning. “Torture generally is personal, wouldn’t you say.”

Voldemort met his gaze with a queer, dark smile. “You have no idea,” he purred, as though relishing the shudder that that provoked. “Nevertheless, if the throttling of magic here was to seek confirmation of my Horcruces – or whatever he believes – then hopefully _that_ ,” and he inclined his head toward the stairs, “will make the same void unnecessary in Azkaban.”

“Where you’ll be alone.”

“Yes.”

Harry frowned at him. “What happens,” he asked, the question he didn’t want to ask and Voldemort didn’t want to answer, “if you go without magic for too long?”

“What an interesting question,” Voldemort said flatly. He looked surprised that Harry still waited for a real answer. “I’m uncertain. It’s unprecedented. Power might burn off my Horcruces, until they’re destroyed in turn.”

He hissed air through his teeth. “Wonderful.”

“You might not die,” Voldemort said in an unencouraging sort of way, “but be trapped in more of a liminal state than I was. I couldn’t recommend it.”

Harry dropped his head in his hands, briefly. “But it won’t matter,” he said. “Because I’ll bring you magic as often as I’m able.”

“Yes.”

Sick, this was sick. He drank calming draught directly from the ladle, until it gave him goose pimples. And then he pressed magic into Voldemort’s flesh, over and over, until the air around them crackled with dryness.

Finally Tonks knocked on the lintel at the top of the stairs. “Are you ready?” she called down. After Harry topped off the flask, they followed. “We had to redo our entire security for today, and there had already been quite a lot of it. But you’ll have a wall of flame now,” she added with a grin as they joined her. “It’s going to be wicked. And quite spectacular.”

“A good show for anyone who comes looking for us,” Harry said.

“Yes,” she sighed. “Honestly, that it took this long for word to get out…. We’ll have better security set up for next time, and we’ll have sent out warnings against trespassing, but this news only broke a few hours ago.”

“No, it’s fine. We’re fine,” he said, and Tonks shot a doubtful look over her shoulder.

They traveled by Portkey. The Ministry had its own set of standard Portkeys, heavy metal discs with numbers on them that reminded Harry of the Muggle Olympics; but when he’d tried to explain what was funny about it, the purebloods gave him the blankest stares.  In any case, Tonks gestured them between herself and Camilla Brightbone, Moody gave the signal, and they were whooshed away.

He always smelled the sea air before they properly arrived. It was nice really, a respite. They arrived on the cliff where they always worked on the airspace shield. He marginally relaxed because this was a certain type of normal.

“Harry Potter!” someone behind him shrieked. “With the Dark Lord! And the _Minister_!”

Not the order he would’ve gone with, but no matter. Groaning, he whipped around, to see a dozen wixes sprinting toward him, holding cameras. (His heart ached for Colin in that moment. He’d been a war reporter and a hero at Hogwarts, before he’d been killed. And he reveled in his sadness for just a split second, before focusing.)

“Why go leaking to the state paper?” one wizard with a handlebar mustache demanded, fishing a quill from his back pocket. “They’ve never even believed you. Now the Times Beneath, we do critical investigation. Real analytical work, you know, not _propaganda_ – “

“No, no, _no_ ,” Bragg interrupted, throwing his barrel-like chest and a strong pulsating shield both in front of the approaching reporters. (Only the mustachioed one was close enough to be caught by it. There was a distinct smell of burnt hair.) “This is state business. Confidential business, at that. You stay a hundred feet away or we prosecute you for trespassing. And also set you on fire.”

“Wait, _what_?”

But with a snap of his wand, Bragg had transformed the shield to a wall of flame, and it was pushing the reporters back at a good clip, really. The rest of the Aurors had spread themselves across the cliff and were erecting the same shields, joining them up until a circle of flame roared around them. It was… impressive. And was going to become sweltering at some point. He wondered if the Aurors would let him climb down to the shoreline below for a quick swim when they had finished.

Moody did some spell that checked the barrier, and approached. “The area is secure, when you’re ready.”

“Thanks,” Harry said. Looking around at the circle of Aurors spaced out to maintain the barrier, he winced. “That looks boring, and hard. Tell them I’m sorry.”

“A boring day is a safe day,” Moody said, as though reciting some bit of Auror training. (It was certainly not his own philosophy, Harry thought privately.) “Once the barrier settles, they haven’t got to coddle it so much.”

“That’s good.” He looked to Voldemort, who was sorting out pouches of arcane elements. “Are we ready?”

“Yes.”

As Moody was going, he said over his shoulder quite casually, “And that’s a lovely chastity belt, Potter.”

Oh Merlin. He supposed the metal would catch the interest of Moody’s magical eye. His ears burned and he might’ve made a noise like a squeak. “Yeah,” he finally said because what else could he do, but Moody had already limped off.

Voldemort found this delightful. “I had promised to send you to Hogwarts looking freshly fucked,” he sighed, “but it seems that sending you obviously _unfucked_ might be the more humiliating option.”

“Bugger,” Harry said, taking the pouch of Mediterranean chalk to begin drawing runes along the shield’s boundaries. “I didn’t think….” And he broke off in a sigh, because _honestly_. They’d avoided magic, but that was pointless when Moody attuned to metal as well, as though he were Muggle security. He’d never be able to look him in the face again. Burning with a deep blush, he moved to help cast.

The work was simple but magically exhausting: a floating and stable Protego, anchored at a few points along the coast and tethered like a hot air balloon. They only needed to refresh the spell at one of the anchors (and thank fuck, because popping all along the island’s outer borders was _awful_ ) for the points at which it had begun to wear. Voldemort had warned that the shield would wear down a lot faster if they were actually being bombed, but happily the Muggles weren’t shooting off their mouths under their new airspace shield. Yet.

Harry was only here as a reserve of magic. He took a seat on a large flat boulder, drawing his legs up, as Voldemort cast the first spell. They really had nothing left to say about this day, so he didn’t.

Voldemort beckoned him over within the hour, though. Normally his magic lasted… well, longer than that, at least. “It’s both strength and capacity,” he sighed, clearly hating this. “Wixen magic is taken away punitively on occasion, did you know? I looked it up. Not legally, obviously, but that hardly stops anyone. The most recent recorded instance was in 1988, a wizard who was declared legally insane and made into a Squib. The Auror who cursed him was never prosecuted.”

“ _Was_ he legally insane?”

This was the wrong question. “As though insanity is ever anything but a political charge,” he said, retying the anchor with a bit too much force. “The courts wanted to take Grindelwald’s magic as well. Dumbledore filed an amicus curiae opposing it. You could look it up. He argued that having magic was a wix’s right, regardless of how it’s used. But you see how conditional any of our rights are, that they’re only granted with limitations or according to political expediency. ‘The right to have rights,’” he quoted with a sigh, “including the question of whether anyone has a right to their magic. If it can be taken away, then that’s a _privilege_ at best. You understand.”

He only did partially, but he refrained from apologizing once more that Voldemort didn’t have anybody more intellectual with whom to share this. “Is that better or worse than the Dementor’s kiss?”

“ _Ugh_ ,” Voldemort said. “The wixes who have been Kissed don’t know they’ve been. They don’t know much of anything, really. Human rights cease to matter when they’ve been rendered, well, non-human.”

Harry pushed magic into Voldemort until he was lightheaded. “And if something happens,” he tried out vaguely, hesitantly, “then… what do you want?”

Voldemort was quiet for long enough that he nearly repeated the question. “You need to retrieve my Horcruces,” he said (they were speaking in Parseltongue anyway, but he still glanced over his shoulder to ensure the Aurors weren’t within earshot). “You need to begin now, as it will take a significant amount of time and effort.” He twisted Ravenclaw’s diadem, still in miniature, on his middle finger. He always wore it now.

He could laugh. What Dumbledore had tasked him with, so long ago, he’d finally come around to. “Where are they? Or how do I find them?” he asked. “Dumbledore hadn’t explained how to, um, hunt them exactly.” He hadn’t even spared the story of how he had found the cursed ring, the one that had killed him. The one that, upon learning the cause of Dumbledore’s death, Voldemort had mobilized his Death Eaters upon Hogwarts, to reclaim last autumn. He felt something like resentment.

“Nagini will come when she is summoned,” Voldemort said. “Hufflepuff’s cup would be….” And he abruptly stopped, pressing a fist to his mouth. “Would be in the Ministry’s possession,” he said flatly. “Whether they’ve actually seized the contents of Bellatrix’s vault yet, it’s already been legally confiscated by the Ministry.”

“But… why?”

An incredulous look. “Because the Death Eaters are being arrested en masse. Because the Black family bankrolled quite a few of my endeavors, so the Ministry feels entitled to their assets. Because they’d probably seize her assets _regardless_ , given that – as I’ve said – ‘rights’ are only privileges that the Ministry chooses to grant at any particular time.”

“Fuck Bellatrix,” Harry said, completely unwilling to go with this sympathetic narrative. “I’m friends with Neville. What she did to his parents is horrifying.” He bit back an ill-thought out wish for the Dementor’s kiss but did say, “The world would be better if she were imprisoned forever.”

Voldemort was unmoved, walking a distance along the shield’s border to fiddle with another anchor. “You’re not intended to _forgive_ her,” he said. “You’re meant to find my Horcrux among her possessions. Whatever the Ministry has done with them. You may not even come into contact with her.” A pause. “And she is imprisoned, in a sense, though no longer in Azkaban. The Ministry has claimed Malfoy Manor as its own. It’s currently a fortress for a number of house arrests, including her.”

Harry really was missing a lot by not reading the papers, he thought; maybe he’d stop thinking of them as being full of such rubbish. He frowned at Voldemort. “ _All_ the Death Eaters? Together?” It sounded like the very worst idea.

“No.” Voldemort touched up a rune in chalk. “Only the ones elite or Ministry-associated enough that an Azkaban sentence would be an embarrassment. They each have a heavily warded suite, I assume with some near-fatal wards at the perimeters. It’s either elf-supported or automated otherwise. You _do_ know what a manor is, don’t you?”

Harry rolled his eyes but the frivolous deviation was nice. “Enough. I grew up very middle class,” he reminded Voldemort. “And Draco and I weren’t exactly spending hols together.” His stomach dropped. “And Draco…?”

“Mm. Unless the papers have got a gag order concerning him, he’s not there. He’s not anywhere, it seems.”

Well, shit. He sighed, circling back in the conversation: “I need Hufflepuff’s cup. It is in Bellatrix’s vault or wherever the Ministry takes seized property. And then…?”

“Then you keep it with you until I give an indication that you should bring it, or destroy it. Or until….” He wouldn’t name the possibility of his death, couldn’t name the thing for which he’d named himself, and had given up his soul to protect against, and was pathologically obsessed with. It would be sad if he hadn’t also traded so many other people’s lives for his own.

“Right,” Harry said anyway. He gathered more magic from the air and passed it off to Voldemort. He couldn’t even say to which of them the weakness belonged.

But after another hour, giving Voldemort magic was beginning to feel like bailing out a sinking ship: the problem was growing faster than he could do anything about. Voldemort’s magic was not quite as dependent on his emotional state as Harry’s was, but… it certainly didn’t help. They didn’t talk about it, because there was nothing to say, but their shared psychic connection was volatile, to say the least. Finally, Harry asked very quietly, “Could I cast for a bit?”

“No.”

He slid his hand up Voldemort’s arm, closer to his wand without touching it. “If you intend to pass this on to me anyway… and if it’s only a shield charm….”  He really hoped he’d interpreted the hesitation he felt correctly when he added, “The Aurors won’t ask. I’ll say I insisted on it, if they do.” Silently Voldemort handed him his wand, still emitting the shield’s reinforcement in a thin iridescent stream. “Cheers,” he said. “There’s tangerines and sandwiches in my bag. You might ask the Aurors for a newspaper.”

“I might,” Voldemort said listlessly, stretching out on the flat rock behind him. Harry wondered idly if he was cold-blooded after all. The next time he looked back, it was because the emotional tension was gone, and he found Voldemort asleep, breathing shallowly. _Poor Voldemort._

Casting was exhausting. They might have to ask the Aurors to bring Pepper-Up or Verve from now on. Voldemort had never indicated a problem. Of course he wouldn’t.

But it also began to make more sense, why the Ministry would keep Voldemort around for this work specifically. It was grueling, it was monotonous. And anyone powerful enough to cast it properly, probably had better career opportunities available to them. He began to think that Voldemort was foundational for their relationship with the Muggles in more ways than one.

Since the firewall had stabilized, the Aurors were no longer obligated to cast it persistently, and most of them were taking a break: they had picnic lunches, and it looked like Rye and Willoughby had just begun a game of exploding snap. Harry grinned. There might be worse ways for the Aurors’ department to spend an afternoon, he supposed.

His smile faded as he saw Kingsley and Scrimgeour approaching. It seemed leisurely, walking the boundaries of the space, peering up into the blue sky or down the cliffs toward the sea. But still, they were unambiguously approaching him. He decided against waking Voldemort, and plastered a calm and determined look on his face.

Finally they reached him proper. “It looks good, Mr. Potter,” Scrimgeour said, peering up at a bit where the shield was stitching itself together with fresh magic. “Of course we shouldn’t expect anything less, from a young wizard already so talented in defensive magic.”

“Thank you, Minister.” He did his best to not say it through clenched teeth.

“Have you cast it previously? I was under the impression you were here as a resource of magic.” He raised his eyebrows. “At least, that is what Voldemort has said. What that means, however….”

“It’s not so mysterious,” Harry said, swishing his wand to level out a patchy spot of the shield. “Our magic is compatible.” (He decided against comparing it with Muggle blood transfusions; neither of them would know what he meant and would furthermore likely be horrified at the idea.) “I can hand off some of my strength to him. He needs it now more than ever,” he added, still looking to the shield so he wouldn’t glare at them. “You throttled the safehouse’s magic too far, you know. If you’re trying to kill him, then you could just kill him.”

Kingsley made a low sound of objection. “There’s due process, Harry,” he said. “We distinguish ourselves from tyrants by following it.”

“Then you won’t throttle the magic of his cell in Azkaban?” And now he did turn around, his arm out so magic could still dribble into the shield, but otherwise not looking after it. “If instead you meant to _prove_ something, by weakening him this much – you’ve proved it. That his soul is broken or whatever. Or if you’d been curious to see how I can hand off magic to him, you’ve seen that too. There’s nothing you can learn from it.”

Scrimgeour, in order to give himself a bit of time and also because it had been a bad day for his knee, took a seat at the other end of the boulder. He was still a few feet from where Voldemort was curled, but still – Harry felt a surge of anger and protectiveness. “If Voldemort has felt himself or his circumstances to be _precarious_ ,” Scrimgeour let the word trip off his tongue, “then it’s only the culmination of decades of dark and experimental magic. It is the entire crux of soul magic to trade health and stability for power. And he would tell you the same,” he said at Harry’s skeptical look. He made the slightest move in Voldemort’s direction, as though to wake him.

“Leave him.” A look of unpleasant surprise. “Please. Sir.” This came out as pointedly insincere. He circled back: “And I hadn’t cast the shield before. I have been setting up the runes.” He nodded to the chalk symbols and focusing crystals covering the ground. “But the spell… it’s not difficult as such, it’s just demanding, in strength and stamina.” (He was building up to another accusation.)

“It seems to be.”

“Voldemort has said there’s a shortage of wixes who are powerful enough to perform the large, single caster spells like this one. How would you even find the most powerful or most adept casters? If Voldemort hadn’t volunteered to maintain this shield, for example.”

Scrimgeour was too suspicious to answer him straight away, but Kingsley abhorred a vacuum. (Harry wondered if he’d developed his deliberate cadence to buy time for his colleagues. It wouldn’t be a bad strategy.) “You’re right. NEWTs don’t directly measure power. Powerful wixes don’t gravitate toward any single profession or association. Even if we developed such an aptitude test…” he frowned, “well, one could imagine more corrupt or dangerous uses for it than legitimate ones.  If a terror group got access to that list and began recruiting from the top, for example. But we might contact the field’s specialists – Defense, in this instance – and test a recommended group specifically for strength and stamina.”

“So, who _would_ take over the shield?”

Kingsley looked vaguely alarmed that his answer hadn’t satisfied Harry. “Should we begin recruitment?” he asked. “We were under the impression,” his gaze flicked to check with Scrimgeour, “that Voldemort would be involved for at least another year. And you might be beyond that. Has that changed?”

“No,” Harry said. “Or, I’d rather it didn’t. But I can only cast with Voldemort. And I’m concerned that – as quickly as he’s deteriorated in the past month – if you keep suffocating him in magical voids, he won’t live another year. I was only curious, why you’re effectively killing the one person who’s doing the most to maintain our relationship with the Muggles.”

A silence, not because he’d scored any great point but because he got the sense Kingsley and Scrimgeour were at odds about what to confirm or deny. Kingsley ceded to the Minister with a nod; Scrimgeour finally answered, “The limitations of magic were well within normal range, for security purposes. The framework was Auror Herzog’s, under Moody’s guidance.” Still, he glanced back at Voldemort. “If we weren’t able to properly account for his deviations – in all senses of the term,” he said wryly, “it is both because we know little of them, and Voldemort would hardly divulge his history; but also because the Ministry’s accommodations might be mistaken by the public for any measure of sanction.”

“Having his name on all your new legislation like you’ll need to is going to look a lot more like a sanction.”

Scrimgeour’s mouth went tight. “ _That_ is a different matter altogether,” he said, and based on their body language, Harry guessed that (like their shared captivity) this was another decision Scrimgeour had made against the Aurors’ wishes. Curious. But he continued: “Moody and Herzog did intend to establish a similar limitation in Azkaban. Of course, it’s all ultimately at the discretion of the Dementors.”

“Right.”

Scrimgeour studied him. “Do you fear for your own safety?”

Would he die if Voldemort died, was that question. He was still bound by a choking sort of vow from even naming the Horcruxes, much less discussing them with the Minister. But he could say this much. “Yes.”

“I see.” A politic moment of faux-consideration. “If the Ministry could work with you on the nature of your… entanglement, for research and security purposes, would you be interested in assisting us? I’d be able to minimize the void if not call it off entirely, in the interest of your safety, if you would.”

Bastard, bastard, bastard. “I’ve got a vow on me that limits what I can tell anyone,” Harry said. “Voldemort will never have any reason to lift it.”

“We could work around it,” Scrimgeour assured him. “Our researchers are quite bright.”

Let them poke around in his soul and magic, in exchange for reviving Voldemort. An alive and angry Voldemort, he thought, was about as good as a dead and mollified one. “Fine,” he said. His chest was already tight with anxiety at the decision. “If you’d also not mention it to Voldemort. I’ll tell him myself.”

“Naturally,” Scrimgeour agreed once more, all smiles and avuncular warmth now, as though he had thrown a switch. “It does seem like the safest option, for all involved. Let me speak to Herzog and Moody.” He accepted Kingsley’s elbow, climbing to his feet. “You know, his breathing does look shallow,” he added as they turned to go. “Will he be alright?”

 _Like you bloody care,_ Harry didn’t say. “I would be the first to know if he weren’t,” he promised instead. They left, at too slow and too deliberate a pace. Harry resisted the urge to shake Voldemort awake, to tell him everything, to trust him to take all of Harry’s political heat. The time for that might be over.

But he did stir, after an hour or so. Harry had moved a bit farther down, now filling in some wind-swept holes along the sheer parts of the cliff. “Hi,” he said as Voldemort approached. “I can finish here, I think.”

“Mm.” Voldemort looked back over his work. “Well done. I didn’t intend….” And he involuntarily shook himself off, as if throwing off the ignominy of falling asleep in public.

“It was fine. I only had to maintain your spell, not cast anything new. The Aurors had a picnic – really,” he said at Voldemort’s expression. “Scrimgeour and Shacklebolt wanted to see how I was doing – _what_ I was doing, really. It was fine. I didn’t let them draw dicks on your forehead or anything.”

“ _What_?”

“It’s a thing,” Harry muttered, not sure Voldemort would believe him anyway. “It happens at Muggle parties, mostly.”

Voldemort sighed something like “Muggles,” and fixed a bit of the runes at one of the anchors. Harry let magic drool out the end of Voldemort’s wand, until the airspace shield looked solid. It would redistribute itself like a liquid, filling in across the entirety of Britain. Voldemort said some other Muggle countries were unhappy that _their_ wixen population weren’t protecting _their_ airspace, but that’s hardly something any of them had jurisdiction over.

Instead of saying stupid things about dicks drawn on foreheads, Harry knew he should’ve told Voldemort about the deal he had made. Maybe he’d want to ensure Azkaban really didn’t have the void placed on it. So he wouldn’t get Voldemort’s hopes up. Mostly, he didn’t want to tell Voldemort how close he was allowing the Ministry to the Horcruxes. It was cowardice, he knew it was cowardice.

What was he even afraid of?

In the late afternoon, the shield reached something that felt like a point of saturation. “Vol?” He looked backward; Voldemort was reading off the Panopticon a distance away. “Voldemort,” he said a bit louder. “I think it’s finished?”

When Voldemort approached, Harry handed back his wand, carefully, so as not to break the dewy strand of magic. “Yes,” he said with faint surprise. “You can tell by the weight of it, near the end. Draw the _Finite_ rune.”

Another thing he was used to doing. When he’d drawn it, Voldemort brought the final strand of magic to the ground, detaching it at the rune as a new anchor. The shield shimmered in the low sunlight above him. Harry’s chest became very tight.

He looked at the Aurors, a good distance away and not paying attention to them. “You haven’t got to do this,” he said lowly, one last moment of begging. “Azkaban… I’m afraid it will kill you. If it’s like you say, if the Ministry will do as it pleases… they’ll kill you.” He was fighting his feelings now, unwilling to let them bleed through the connection, to hurt Voldemort. “I asked Scrimgeour not to allow the void at Azkaban. They said they didn’t have anyone ready to cast this shield if… if you couldn’t, and I wouldn’t. I told them it was stupid to sabotage the most powerful wizard willing to do this work for them. Scrimgeour said he’d limit the void.” And still he choked on telling Voldemort the deal, that he’d let his own magic be scrutinized.

A silence. He grappled with his feelings. He wasn’t much for crying, and thank goodness, but he was still acutely unhappy with the life before them. Finally Voldemort said, “Well done. Thank you.”

“What else would I have done.”

Voldemort drew him in. The touch felt softer and warmer than it’d ever been, only because Harry was so desperate for it right now. “Everything will be fine. You’ll be quite happy.”

“And you?”

“And I’ll be powerful. And I’ll be safe.” He pushed Harry’s chin up, kissing him deeply, kissing him without regard for anyone watching. He couldn’t think any longer. He pressed his body to Voldemort’s, the buzz of shared magic completing him.

Voldemort’s hand slipped lower, slipped between his legs, long nails grazing the cock cage. “I would rather not expend magic on Imperio right now,” he said, “but I require that you don’t embarrass yourself tonight. You may only look impassive. If you do, as a reward, you can masturbate when you’d like, once. And if you don’t, then you’re obligated to wait until the next time we’re together.”

Harry flushed. It was a good requirement. “Yes, sir.”

“Repeat it back.”

“I can’t be emotional tonight,” he said. “If I’m not, I can get off, once. And if I can’t….” _Can’t keep it together_ , his brain supplied. “If I can’t contain myself, then I have to wait.”

“Very good.”

It did make their separation into something more interesting. And something more inane, and inanity had helped. Voldemort nodded them back toward the Aurors. Harry gathered magic one more time, pushing it into Voldemort’s hands urgently, before they’d be taken.

“Harry,” Voldemort said, glancing over with something like amusement. “Your Occlumency is very good tonight. But you’ve forgotten to keep your feelings off your face as well.”

With a sharp laugh that bordered on a sob, he emptied himself of his stupid emotions, squaring his shoulders. They were nearing the Aurors. One last push of magic, grasping each other’s forearms –

Voldemort hissed, pulling back abruptly. It attracted everyone’s attention, and Harry’s insides twisted because he already knew it’d happened again. Vivid red blisters on each of Voldemort’s forearms, where his hands had been. He never knew when it would happen, exactly, but it seemed to be any sort of overflow of emotion.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry.” He tried to disregard the Aurors approaching, Scrimgeour’s particular curiosity. Brightbone was nearest and visibly winced at Voldemort’s outstretched arms. “Let me – “

“Leave it.” His tone was sharp but not angry. And he meant it not just for Harry but also the Aurors, several of whom had their wands out already. And none of them understood what had happened, looking between Harry and Voldemort as though they’d feared a duel had broken out. He was torn between explaining – _not that it was any of their business_ – and telling them to sod off. He kept his gaze on Voldemort instead.

“You can’t go like that. Those are – _christ_ ,” he sighed, breaking off in a shudder. “Those are the worst ones yet.” They looked awful. He would’ve grabbed Voldemort’s arms to fix him, consent or otherwise, if he hadn’t feared scalding him even worse.

And then Voldemort pulled down his sleeves decisively. “A memento,” he said more loudly, “of how very much Harry Potter _loves_ me.” And it was mocking, and it was performative, and it was also real. And if it was meant to stave off any last minute sincere declarations of love from Harry, it worked. He knew he wasn’t to say anything more, to give the Aurors anything more to work with.

“Is everything alright?” Brightbone asked, because nobody else would. Scrimgeour and Moody were observing shrewdly; the rest of the Aurors were somewhere between wary and horrified.

“Is it?” Harry repeated flatly. Tamping down all his feelings, he made his visage a blank slate for now. If he really loved Voldemort, that’s what he would do. “We need to go.”

They might argue with Harry but they wouldn’t argue with Voldemort, who reached for the Ministry’s Portkey to Azkaban without another word. And then the Aurors split up into their choreographed detail: Kingsley and Tonks taking a group of them to Hogsmeade; Scrimgeour and Moody taking the rest to Azkaban. More Portkeys were produced. He didn’t look in Voldemort’s direction again, didn’t want to indicate anything more to the Aurors than he’d already given away at the last moment.

The group to Azkaban left first. Harry didn’t let it show on his face when he thought how simple it would be for Scrimgeour to push Voldemort into the North Sea. Or to just hand him off to the Dementors upon arrival to be Kissed. And then a slender hand was on his shoulder – Tonks’s – and she was saying in a falsely chipper tone, “Shall we, then?” And then he took the Portkey.

Hogsmeade, under the setting sun. Something did loosen inside him upon seeing it. He’d last known it to be crumbling and looted, but of course that had been last year. They had at least fixed the main road back up by now.

“We’ll be switching off the Hogwarts post,” Tonks was saying as they took a Thestral-drawn carriage toward Hogwarts. “Two of us at a time. The Headmaster hasn’t provided enrollment numbers for next year yet – we’ll get those in August – and we may end up with three or four Aurors here at a time. Or not.”

Recognizing that she was trying to make things normal and he was being awkwardly sulky, he snapped his act of happiness into place. “I hope there’s a lot of students back this year,” he said, lightly. “It will be good to have the castle full again.” He smiled in a way that was nearly real. “Have you managed to get the ghosts back?”

Fidelia groaned because apparently she’d had a hand in that operation. “The ghosts are bounded geographically _anyway_ ,” she said, “but we still had a hell of a time convincing some of them that they’d be happier at Hogwarts than Hogsmeade. The shop owners complained,” she explained pre-emptively. “Said it deterred a certain sort of customer.”

“I guess it would. _Oh_ ,” Harry breathed as they rounded a bend and Hogwarts came into view. It looked good, it looked whole. It looked like home. He got the sense that his (sincere) reaction was a relief to the Aurors. That he wasn’t entirely broken after all.

Bragg levitated his trunk to the castle; the rest of the Aurors fell into a practiced formation around Harry. When they approached the front doors, they opened on their own – and there stood Professor McGonagall, her face drawn in a tight smile. “Good evening,” she said, relieving Bragg of the trunk (Harry had tried protesting that he could take it and was rebuked each time, so watched this with resignation). “Mr. Potter. We’re happy to have you back. I expect you’ll continue to do an excellent job instructing our students.”

“Thanks, Professor.” He expected to be corrected that it was _Headmistress_ now, but he wasn’t. Instead McGonagall turned, ushering in the Aurors and charming closed the great doors behind them.

“You’ll learn more at the faculty meeting tomorrow. Ten thirty a.m., please. But for now I am told the Aurors are required to secure your quarters.”

Harry moved to head up toward the Gryffindor dorms; Bragg’s forceful hand on his shoulder directed him down, toward the dungeons. McGonagall joined them. “You’ll have faculty quarters this year. The eighth years – for lack of a better term – who will return will be a bit scattered in terms of lodging, but this seems like a sensible decision. You are also staying the same corridor as Mr. Weasley and Ms. Granger.” She nodded to a statue of an adolescent dragon, who sprang to life and became a doorman, opening a door in the wall that hadn’t existed a moment ago. “This is Abzu,” she introduced him. “Abzu, this is Professor Potter. He’ll be teaching Defense this year.” Abzu either couldn’t or didn’t speak, but snorted a friendly-seeming puff of smoke in his direction. They continued down the corridor, finally drawing before a square red door. “Here we are,” McGonagall said. “You have missed dinner, but I trust you still know your way to the kitchens. You might escort the Aurors there as well, those of whom have been gone from the castle for some time.”

“Have we gotten old, then, Minerva?” Kingsley objected lightly.

“We all have,” she said, with not quite a sigh. “In any case, the Aurors are now authorized to tell you more of the castle’s business. I believe Ms. Granger and Mr. Weasley are out at present, but I anticipate they will enthusiastically fill in any gaps.”

“Great.” Finally she let his trunk lower itself to the floor outside his suite. “Thanks, Professor.”

“Good night, Professor Potter.”

The Aurors hadn’t entered. They had in fact divided themselves by gender: Kingsley and Bragg nearer the doorway, Tonks and Squire hanging back a bit. Kingsley explained: “The protection charm we’ve discussed, we need to apply it to you. But bits of it must be… well, painted on.”

“Oh. That’s fine.” He was out of his clothes more often than he was fully dressed these days, anyway. “Did you make the one with Voldemort’s blood?”

“Yes.” Kingsley was pulling him into the suite; Tonks and Fidelia were beginning to scan his trunk for contraband. “Unless you believe we shouldn’t.” Harry shook his head. “There’s also the matter of….”

But once he’d shut the door, Bragg was shooting spells at Harry. “ _Libero_! _Apolutro_! Mm.” He frowned at Harry as though it were his fault nothing happened.

Harry stared. “What are you liberating me from, exactly?”

Bragg resented him even more for this question. “Suggestion charms. Illusory charms. Love potions.” His glare got more intense with each item. “The Imperius spell generally resists being cast off, but sometimes, with enough distance….”

“Oh. _Oh_ , no, I… Voldemort and I wanted to work together,” Harry insisted. He supposed this was the first setting that the Aurors thought he was _safe._ Poor Aurors. “He didn’t curse me or trick me into it. I know it sounds incredible, and you haven’t got to understand it, but I wanted to be working with him.” He looked between them and found equally unhappy expressions. “And I know it was the Minister’s decision to keep us together, not the Aurors’ department. Sorry he made that decision unilaterally.”

Bragg was unmoved, but Kingsley deflated. There was nothing more to fight about by now, anyway. Instead, taking out what appeared to be a tube of paint and a paintbrush, he studied Harry. “Have you got Muggle clothing on under your robes?”

“Yeah.” He began unbuttoning his robes, but Kingsley raised an eyebrow.

“You’ll need to remove those as well.”

“Oh.” That might be more difficult than he’d thought. More awkward, certainly.

“You may leave your pants on.” Kingsley’s voice was strangled, and Harry wished this task hadn’t fallen to such a nice person. He’d request Bragg do it – though Bragg wasn’t _bad_ , just a bit of a prat sometimes – but that’d probably make everything even more awkward. He threw his robe over a chair and pulled his shirt over his head.

Kingsley was behind him squeezing, really, what could have been paint into a saucer. Bragg was in front of Harry, flipping through the book of arcane spells they needed. When Harry had been in his shirtsleeves, he’d seen Bragg’s gaze flick momentarily to his left forearm. _Twat_.

But he toed off his trainers and undid his belt – loudly, obviously, in case Kingsley changed his mind and told him it’d be unnecessary after all. He said nothing. Harry let his jeans drop to the floor.

Immediately a hiss of shock from Kingsley. “ _Morgana’s_ – “ he began. Composing himself, he said in an authoritative tone, “Letholdus, you need to leave the room.”

Bragg gaped at him – at both of them. _He_ was the one who could see the outline of the cock cage under his pants, Harry thought in some horrid amusement, so what could he be imagining was on ( _in?_ ) Harry’s arse that was worse. He clutched the book against his chest. “But I’ve got – “

“Here.” Harry took the book from him, keeping a finger at the right page. “I trust Kingsley. We’ll be out in a bit.”

If Kingsley hadn’t outranked Bragg, he wouldn’t have left. As such, he scurried out, probably grateful to not be involved in this freak show any further.

Harry finally looked. Bruises, bruises from a really great spanking with a hairbrush days ago; and they no longer hurt so he was no longer thinking about them, but his arse was still stained sickly greens and purples. He was in briefs today, to better hold the cock cage in place, and they were small enough that not much of his arse was concealed beneath them. He couldn’t help it, he started laughing. “I’m sorry,” he told Kingsley. “I, um. Wanted those. I swear. Episkey,” he said, and the bruises were gone. He mourned them, absurdly, because he would’ve liked them as a lasting gift from Voldemort – but for Kingsley’s sake, they were gone.

Kingsley didn’t see the humor in this. “And Moody said….”

“Moody was right,” Harry agreed quickly, before poor dear sweet Kingsley Shacklebolt had to force the words _chastity belt_ (or worse, _cock cage_ ) from his kind mouth. “I’m sorry. If I’d known I’d be getting undressed….”

Silence. Then the click of the saucer being picked up. “The spell begins with runes painted down your sides,” Kingsley said, and his voice was steady once more. “It might be easiest that you should lie down for this. I’ll pull a chair beside the bed.”

“Sure.” And they situated themselves like that, Harry facing the wall and holding the book of runes where Kingsley could copy it. The paintbrush swiped the first symbol onto his shoulder.

“What are you seeking, really,” Kingsley asked, impossibly quiet, as he pushed Harry’s arm off his ribs. “If it’s men, there would be any number of men who would want to date you, you know. If it’s older men, likewise.” An inhalation. “If it’s men – people – who you want to hit you” (he choked on the word just a bit) “then there are other people like that for you, too.” He pulled the side of his pants out of the way just enough to paint a rune on his hip bone. “We would… help you find someone, if you wanted. The Order,” he clarified with a tiny laugh. “Not the Aurors’ department. Though you _have_ made your predilections into an issue of state security.”

Harry choked on laughter at that. “Sorry,” was all he could say. He tried not to kick as Kingsley wrote along the ticklish part of his knee. “You’re right.” He steeled himself: “I could tell you it’s just sex, and at one point it was, but there are other parts to it now. I don’t know,” he sighed. And then Kingsley cast a drying charm on the paint and he had to roll over, now facing Kingsley, to do the other side.

“What other parts?”

Harry carefully looked elsewhere, but Kingsley at the very least deserved his honesty. “That sharing magic feels good. That there’s sort of a… pull, I can’t describe it.” (He really couldn’t, because it was Horcrux-related and his vow would kill him.) “And he makes me smarter, and more ambitious. He makes me care about things. I hate his ideas about blood, and Muggles, and the rest of it,” he added hastily at Kingsley’s growing skepticism, “but he’s become a little more pragmatic, too, recently.” He pushed down the other side of his underwear for him. “I used to, um, get off to how much he scared me” (inappropriate, yeah, but Kingsley’s hand was right alongside the cock cage now so they’d blown past that boundary already) “but he doesn’t anymore. It’s just… normal. You know, relatively.”

Kingsley had just written along his ankle and was now looking away. “Do you think you love him?” he asked. When Harry took a moment, he looked up, alarmed. “You don’t need to answer that. It’s unprofessional, and it’s unnecessary – “

Harry waved him off. “I do.” His voice was steady enough to match Kingsley’s. “Even though Dumbledore told me once that he can’t feel love. It can… hurt him, like what happened at the cliffs. I never mean to. But we can share emotions like we share magic,” he explained. “He doesn’t understand it. But he….” His throat closed up. _He needs me_ , was all he intended to say. How curious. Anything else he tried instead – _He has reasons for keeping me safe,_ or _He values me, in a way_ exacerbated the problem. He sat up abruptly, gasping for air.

“Anapneo.” Kingsley sounded unsurprised. “The vow?”

He nodded. “Sorry,” he sighed. “All I’m saying is, I’m okay. I’m really happy, honestly. Sorry it’s making your job harder. Not just today, but especially today,” he added. “Can I buy you a drink or something? You could probably use a drink.”

“Thank you, but we have an expense account,” Kingsley said. And it might have been a joke. He offered a hand, pulling Harry to his feet. “This takes a few minutes to cast,” he said, arranging the book in Harry’s hands. A swirl of his wand created buzzing strands of magic that stretched from one line of runes to the other, creating something like a cage that precisely fit him. ( _Oh Merlin._ ) Then the spell: chanted, melodic. The language was something Middle Eastern. The bands of magic vibrated gently on his skin, and the chanting was relaxing. It was all soothing, in a way. It all sunk into his skin slowly, including the paint itself, and when Kingsley intoned the last words it was gone.

“Nice,” Harry said.

“Yes. But don’t get reckless,” Kingsley warned. “The spell will protect against harm that’s meant for you, but it can’t shield you from the harm you seek out.”

“Why does everyone always warn me about looking for trouble?” Harry faux-lamented. Kingsley hummed in amusement.

Harry pulled on his robe without his Muggle clothes, in the interest of time. He was going to see the Aurors off when Kingsley said, “Er, everything you said… you know it can’t remain confidential, right? I should have led with that caveat. I apologize. But Voldemort is too high a priority for, well, anyone’s privacy. We’ll keep it all within the department, though.”

Harry choked back a laugh at Kingsley’s apology. “ _Please_ go tell everyone everything,” he said. “Though not while I’m there. But Bragg probably thinks I’ve got the Dark Mark on my arse or something. You can’t let him believe that.”

He let them into the corridor, where Tonks and Squire were seated on a few trunks, and Bragg was pacing. “I’m entirely protected,” he announced to the Aurors. “I can show you to the kitchens, if you’d like, but I’m staying in for awhile. I need to unpack.”

“We’ll go, then,” Tonks said, rising. “Good luck, Harry. We’ll be in touch about… everything. Of course, Kingsley and Fidelia are posted in the castle this week. They’ll do their best to keep you out of trouble,” she said with a grin.

Good lord, he’d have to look Kingsley in the face every day this week. They carefully didn’t make eye contact. And then Harry shook Tonks’s and Bragg’s hands, and wished Kingsley and Squire a good night, and he’d see them in the morning, and then he retreated.

Everything in his trunk just as he’d left it. Including the journal with which he’d communicate with Voldemort. He was right; the magic must have been too benign to draw the Aurors’ attention. Flipping it open, he wrote in Parselscript, **_Are you alright?_**

For whenever Voldemort saw it. If he was allowed his books. If they hadn’t handed him promptly to the Dementors. As he unpacked, he kept one eyes on the page, trying not to think terrible thoughts. He wasn’t allowed to panic tonight. Still, his heart thudded too hard in his chest as a single symbol was inked on the page within the hour. _Yes_.

Thank god, thank god, thank god.

He left it. There might be guards at Voldemort’s cell, the journal might attract too much attention. He began counting backward from a hundred to clear the tangle of emotions from his mind.

 

 _Monday, June 15._ When he woke up to pounding on his door, he’d thought it was still Sunday night, that perhaps the Aurors had forgotten something But a Tempus spell revealed he’d slept through the night without meaning to, deeply. Pushing his hair and robes into place, he got the door.

Ron and Hermione _enveloped_ him, hugging him as though they’d choreographed it. “We were out with Hagrid and Neville last night,” Ron said, “and things ran a bit long and then Abzu said you were asleep and then Kingsley said the Ministry’s security spells would set us on fire if we tried breaking in….”

Harry blinked. “I don’t _think_ there are incendiary curses on my room. But I’ll check with the Aurors.”

“One can never be too careful about such things,” Hermione assured him. She finally pulled back, giving him a once-over. “Oh _Harry_ ,” she sighed happily. “Do you want breakfast? Uh, there might be a bit of a crowd waiting for you….”

Even that was an understatement. The group staying at the castle in June was small, mostly faculty and staff, but fiercely happy to see him. (The suspicion would come later, it had to, but he’d appreciate the warmth while it lasted.)

Neville was only back long enough to take his summer NEWTs, he was telling Harry – “I’ve already been accepted to the Swiss uni, it’s just a formality,” he was saying, his face glowing. Then behind them a voice rumbled, “ _There’s_ my boy,” and he was fully scooped up by Hagrid, held tight against his brick wall of a chest. He appreciated it for a long moment before tugging on Hagrid’s sleeve to let him down.

“I’ve got Care of Magical Creatures again,” Hagrid was saying. “You should come round it sometimes – I know yeh’re not really in classes, but when yeh’ve got the time….” But Harry could see there was something even better he was bursting to tell Harry, and the crowd around them was anxious for it too. And finally Hagrid got to it: “And I’m going ter be a _student_ again!”

“Oh, _Hagrid_!”

“The Aurors who’d been around, y’know, helping fix the castle, they asked the Minister and he said _yes_.” Hagrid’s eyes were bright. “Kingsley – next time you see him, tell him what a good man he is. Tell him I told yeh.”

“I will. That’s wonderful.” He couldn’t stop smiling, as wide as Hagrid was. “Hagrid – “ he said, “tell me if this is a dumb idea, but – could I take you shopping at Diagon Alley?”

Hagrid burst into tears loud enough to shake the Great Hall, and Professor McGonagall, who had been at the edge of this crowd, had to turn away very abruptly.

And so it went. Everyone seemed to only have good news for Harry, seemed to be making a concerted effort to bring him only the best parts of this new world. He’d known Hermione and Ron were co-teaching Muggle Studies (“Tonks got us in _such_ trouble for putting that in a letter,” Hermione said ruefully). Remus was filling in as Head Librarian. After spending the entirety of the war assisting Madam Pomfrey, Lavender Brown was the new nurse, her hair worn short and natural to defiantly show off Greyback’s scars. Somebody had finally explained to Professor Binns what professor emeritus meant, and he had found a quiet home in the countryside to haunt (“no takers on the position yet,” Remus had added). Slughorn had returned for another year of Potions and Firenze for Divination.

“And, uh, you’ll think this is a funny question, from me,” Harry said a bit awkwardly, when the crowd had moved on and it was just Hermione, Ron, and Remus left, “but who’s teaching Runes this year?”

“Oh, you’d heard, then?” Hermione asked, as a bit of their cheer evaporated.

“No?” He thought his question had made this obvious. “But we’d – I’ve been working with runes more than anything, recently. I thought I’d take some classes. Even if I’m too far behind to take the NEWT.”

She gave him a peculiar look. “Well, it’s Malfoy.”

“No.” And he began laughing because of course. Of course Malfoy wouldn’t just disappear from his life; that’d be too easy. “Nevermind, I won’t be taking Runes then.”

“You should ask him,” Remus said. “It’s important work. And we took him on – that is, the Headmaster did – not just because he’s talented in the subject, but because, well, he had nowhere else to go. You _have_ heard about his family?”

“House arrest? Yeah.” The Ministry probably had frozen the Malfoy assets like they’d frozen Bellatrix’s. Malfoy was probably _poor_ now. It was unthinkable.

“He’ll need a seventh year class anyway. We would _pay_ him for a seventh year class, more to the point, if he actually had a student. Since Hermione already took her NEWTs,” Remus said. “You might find him more receptive to the idea than may be expected, is all you should know.”

“And everyone keeps saying ‘the Headmaster,’” Harry said, frowning at him. “It’s not Professor McGonagall, then?”

He thought Ron and Hermione leaned in incrementally to catch his reaction. Remus looked incredulous and amused and apologetic all at once when, steadying himself, he said, “No, Harry. It’s Professor Snape.”

He let out a laugh that was also a groan. “Oh my god,” he said into his palms as he pressed his hands to his face. “That’s why nobody would tell me. Are you _sure_?” he asked, absurdly.

Remus was biting back a smile. “Extremely. And I recommend that you adjust yourself to the idea within the next – “ he checked a pocket watch “ – forty-five minutes, as he’ll be heading the faculty meeting.”

“Merlin,” Harry said, scrubbing his face. “I’ve got to get ready. Can you tell me just one more good thing, so I don’t leave on _that_?”

The three of them looked at each other. “Your NEWT level classes are on track to have some of the highest enrollment rates ever,” Hermione offered.

“I’ll take it.” He went to go press his tie and collect his syllabi.

 

The staff meeting was held in a breezy room overlooking the lake. House elves had strawberry lemonade for them. It was _perfect_. Perfect until Snape and Draco walked in together, faces equally somber. Neither looked at him.

“Good morning.” Snape looked displeased to be exposed to this much sunlight and warmth. “Do we need to make introductions on Mr. Potter’s behalf?” His gaze flickered to Harry with the same amount of loathing it normally held. Which was… comforting? There was nothing in life as constant as how much Snape hated him.

“Please don’t,” Harry said, alarmed. He’d introduced himself to Lyra Nyx, the new Astronomy professor, and Gale Spiraea, the new Herbology professor. Most everyone else in the room were already his professors or his friends.

Snape was going for short bursts of humiliation rather than extended ones, because he did move on. “First, there are now Aurors on the grounds. There will be two stationed at all times during the summer, and potentially more during the school year. If anything requires their security expertise, they may be summoned immediately with an Auxilio spell. Heads of house should make their students aware of this spell, and warn them that abuse of it will result in expulsion.”

“But it won’t,” McGonagall said sharply.

“There is no need to tell them that,” Snape said. “Aurors Shacklebolt and Squire have already been given a roster of everyone authorized to be on the grounds, but you might introduce yourself if that is a sort of thing you’re inclined to do.” His tone made clear how little he thought of such gestures. “Additional security measures are being installed in each dormitory, each classroom, and fully enclosing the grounds. Your magical signature is enough to allow you access, but any unauthorized person attempting to enter the school will face particularly unpleasant consequences.”

And on it went, a meeting of equal parts information and veiled threats. Harry learned that a volunteer curse removal department (led by Bill Weasley, of course) had already swept Hogwarts and were now working on Hogsmeade, “such that it will be ready for students’ weekends in October,” Snape said as though he thought he’d die from inanity.

And you know what? A couple times Harry had to suppress a smile. Had Snape always been funny? Was he funnier when Harry was not the subject of his mockery? Harry had spent the past six months learning to appreciate Voldemort’s dry and caustic wit, he supposed. Or maybe he had just become a more cynical person in that time. Who could say, really.

He’d never wondered what faculty meetings were like when he was a student. The Head Girl and Head Boy were required to attend sometimes. But it turned out to be the not-bad sort of chaos. Even under Snape, who seemed to have a new determination since becoming Headmaster, and it gave him a little less time to be bitter and cruel. Or so it seemed.

And when Harry passed around copies of his syllabi for faculty comment and approval, the initial reactions were generally good. _Surprised_ , but good, such that he didn’t dare ask what they had expected of him. Still, McGonagall raised an eyebrow at the lesson plan for his first day. “Sun Tzu?” she asked dryly.

“Some people think he was secretly a wizard, you know.”

She said nothing but shared an unreadable look with Snape. Snape sneered in his direction: “I see the Dark Lord has attempted to make a scholar of you, if nothing else.”

The room collectively caught its breath. What else could he say to that. “Yeah. He has.” He flipped deeper into the syllabus: “So the first through third years begin with legal distinctions, fourth and fifth years with curses, and sixth and seventh years on the theory of dark magic. Lavender, I wondered if you could come in to teach healing spells sometime? The older students know them, of course, but the younger ones should learn.” No point in saying that the battle of Hogwarts had made healing spells paramount. Lavender, Parvati, and Padma had held emergency sessions late at night to teach everyone, since their curriculum hadn’t really prepared for them for the battlefield as such.

Lavender nodded. “If you’ll make the disclaimer that they’re not to patch each other up without me,” she said. “We also – Ron and I were talking – “ and here she glanced not at Ron but at the senior faculty “ – and we thought it’d be beneficial to restart the dueling club? They could get some hands-on defense from you, and I’d show them battlefield medicine, and Ron wants to teach them about weaponry….” (Ron had become bloody amazing with a magical crossbow during battle. He was nodding along to this idea now, and so was Harry.)

Snape and McGonagall began to object at the same time; he gestured that she begin. “That is all very pragmatic,” she said. “But our students aren’t attending school in a war zone.”

“ _Now_. Sorry, Professor,” Lavender added at a fearsome look.

“Enrollment is already a bit… precarious. The Ministry and the governors would rather we project an image of safety this year. To promote Hogwarts as a fortress.”

It was fucked up but Harry held his tongue. Across the table, Lyra was concerned. “At Durmstrang, the professors would tell us, a well-educated populace is a well-armed populace. Well, they’d tell us in Russian, but.” She flashed a grin. “You don’t believe that here?”

McGonagall sounded very tired when she said, “You will find, Professor Nyx, that the bureaucratic overseers of our school are far more invested in appearance than reality.”

“But – “ Malfoy had been quiet throughout this meeting, but sat forward now. “But the Ministry was foremost suspicious that Dumbledore – Headmaster Dumbledore,” he corrected as Slughorn, sitting beside him, gave him an unsubtle prod to the ribs, “was plotting an insurrection with child soldiers. While the current Headmaster – “

“Is hardly a friend to the Ministry,” Snape interjected. “Though not even the most compromised wizard in this room.”

Harry felt their eyes on him, expecting him to object. “Yeah,” he said. “So?” Because Snape had something more to say.

“ _So_ , the greatest chance of the success of a dueling club – which will nevertheless be abysmal for financial reasons of liability – carry the caveat that Mr. Potter may not be involved.”

He deflated. That, honestly, was reasonable, and he hated it anyway. “That’s fine,” he muttered.

A noise of indignation from Ron beside him. “It’s _not_ fine,” he said hotly. “There are probably _dozens_ of students who are alive right now because of the things Harry taught us.”

It made his insides feel weird to hear this. “I don’t need to be involved. I’ll teach in class and you all work on the praxis bits. If we even get a dueling club.”

“Which you will not,” Snape said. “But Ms. Granger, I advise that you write a petition to the school governors today.” Hermione was taking notes.

“I’ll do it,” Lavender said pointedly. She’d returned to Hogwarts with something to prove. They all had, really.

“Ms. Brown, then.”

And then they all looked down and still found themselves looking at Harry’s classes. McGonagall, unusually… protective? defensive? _something_ on his behalf, said in a clipped tone, “Well done, Professor Potter. Thoughtful work. Shall I file it with the curriculum board?”

“Yes. Thanks.”

“Professor Malfoy.” She turned to him. “For Ancient Runes. Your syllabi?”

“Yes, Professor.” He handed out copies, on much nicer parchment than Harry had used. Wanker. “And enrollment?”

“Modest,” she pronounced grimly. “But all very dedicated students, the ones you will have. Five OWLs students, and currently no NEWTs.”

Remus nudged Harry’s ankle.

“Actually,” Harry said against his better judgment, “I wanted to take Runes this year. Could I take the seventh year class, even if I don’t sit the NEWT?”

Malfoy’s steady gaze met his. “Have you got a pathological need to be the center of _every_ conversation?”

“I didn’t get the chance to ask you earlier,” Harry muttered. “I only got in last night.”

“And we all very much enjoyed your holding court at breakfast. But you’ve never taken Runes,” Draco said. “Perhaps you’d like to sit in with the first years?”

He did not say that Britain’s national security and Muggle relations currently depended on his ability to draw some runes. It wouldn’t help. “I’ll sit in with whoever you want,” he said. “I thought you might appreciate having a seventh year class, is all.”

Draco’s mouth went tight. “I am not your charity case.” His tone was dangerous.

Slughorn had a hand on Draco’s shoulder that was meant to be mollifying and instead looked patronizing. “Come, Harry’s been doing quite a lot of work with runes. Haven’t you read – “

“Yes, we have all _read_ ,” Snape cut him off, unwilling to let Harry be the center of attention any longer, and Harry was so goddamn grateful. “Mr. Potter, Mr. Malfoy may refuse you for any reason he sees fit. If he is in a generous mood, he may let you take a placement test. _Please_ let this meeting proceed without turning it into a press conference.”

Nevermind, Snape was still terrible and he still bloody hated him. “Sorry,” he muttered, though he wasn’t really, and slipped deeper into his seat.

 

It took most of the day – curriculum, enrollment, security, all the logistics of scheduling summer NEWTs and accommodating the eighth years. A few of the new faculty actually groaned quietly (and got scathing looks from the senior faculty for it) when house elves delivered lunch, because it meant they were in for the long haul. Ron put his head down at one point, and Harry kicked him rather hard, if only out of spite because he would’ve liked to have done the same.

There would be a dozen of Harry’s year returning, either as faculty or as students. There were three of his year dead. He hadn’t seen the memorials yet and wasn’t sure he’d seek them out. The rest had taken their NEWTs early, or taken jobs that hadn’t required any, or simply taken a year off. The battles at Hogwarts could have been a lot more consequential, but… they’d taken their toll regardless. At the faculty meeting, the item in its entirety had been Snape saying, “The memorials are still being installed by contractors.” Averted gazes all around the table.

“And finally,” Snape said late in the afternoon, “we have just received a decisive notice from the Hogwarts governors that no new students will be admitted into Slytherin. They will re-evaluate the circumstances in five years.”

Harry didn’t expect, once more, the averted gazes of the entire room. McGonagall’s mouth had gone tight. Beside Harry, Hermione’s hands were clenched fists in her lap.

“The Sorting Hat has been made aware,” Snape went on. “The impact on second through eighth year Slytherins will be minimal. The returning eighth year class will reside in what would have been the first year Slytherin dorms.”

He wouldn’t disrupt the meeting again. It wasn’t his problem to fix, anyway. He studied the Slytherins’ faces for a particular answer – even a particular concern – and found them blank.

“It does simplify the question of accommodations,” Flitwick finally said. McGonagall hummed in half-hearted agreement.

And that’s how it ended, really. Snape told them to have final syllabi for the curriculum committee to McGonagall by tomorrow, and that their next meeting would be in a fortnight, and that more students would be arriving soon for summer OWLs and NEWTs so could they _please_ comport themselves with some professionalism. “And not student robes,” he said with a vicious look at Harry.

“I pressed my tie,” he didn’t even manage to defend himself as everyone moved to go.

“Yes, well done,” Snape said acidly. And once again – it was too familiar, he had grown to love acerbic snark too much. He turned away before Snape saw him grin.

But, when he fell into step with Ron and Hermione, they only got one corridor away before he couldn’t hold it in anymore: “They’re phasing out the Slytherin house?”

“Are you surprised, really,” Ron said. “It only turns out evil wixes. Whether it _makes_ them evil or it’s just got a knack for picking the evil ones already….”

“I was supposed to be in Slytherin.” He couldn’t remember if he’d told this to them before. He still couldn’t tell, as they’d perfected their neutral expressions around him recently.

Ron shrugged, undeterred. “Then it makes them evil, that answers that.” He looked sideways at Harry, a little more cautious. “You’re not going to be defending… him?”

“No.” They hadn’t talked about Voldemort; they wouldn’t talk about Voldemort if his friends had anything to do with it. “It just feels wrong. Incomplete. The founders… must have done it this way for a reason.”

“But their reasons aren’t our reasons,” Hermione said gently. “I hate this too, Harry. We all do. But the school, and its governors… we’ve seen a lot of Death Eaters – and a lot of Slytherins, more to the point – get arrested over the past few weeks. No current students, _thank goodness_ , but some alumni and some parents.” They’d reached the Great Hall, at the early end of dinner, and she nodded to the Slytherin table, with a few more students gathered than the others. “They’re here because their parents are in Azkaban.”

 _Or under house arrest in Malfoy Manor_ , Harry thought. But Malfoy had lingered after the faculty meeting, talking with Slughorn but obviously waiting for Snape. But the students at the Slytherin table – they looked young. Or maybe it was just their timidity, an unusual look to see on a Slytherin’s face, that made them seem younger. They passed through the Great Hall – they’d slip into the kitchens later – and continued toward their rooms. “Those poor kids,” Harry said, glancing over his shoulder one last time. “I’d rather – I mean, the Death Eaters can go to hell, but I’d rather not make all their kids orphans.”

“Orphans?” Ron echoed. “Evening, Abzu.” The dragon let them in, and they all continued to Ron’s suite. “It’s just a prison sentence, Har, nobody’s killed them yet.” Letting them in, he gave it a moment before admitting, “Yeah, they’re sort of orphans.”

Harry looked around; Ron and Hermione were obviously sharing this suite, with a stack of books on one bedside table and a dismantled alarm clock on the other. Hermione interpreted his gaze correctly: “I wanted a study. Professor McGonagall said,” she put on a sterner voice, “’As with all things around here, we are rather more preoccupied with appearances than reality.’”

“Shit,” Harry said. “Is she, uh, okay? I thought she’d be Headmistress.”

“So did she,” Hermione said grimly. “She and Snape are… friends? At least? And she’s still got more of the faculty duties. But before the Sorting Hat decided, there were a lot of meetings, between the senior faculty and the governors and the Ministry. The Minister came by once.”

“Huh.” Another instance of Scrimgeour’s politics he didn’t understand.

“And we’re not sure Snape is pleased, either. Well, is he ever,” Ron snorted. “But he’s been rather….”

“Grim,” Hermione supplied.

“Grim about the whole thing. We at least expected he’d stop the ban on Slytherin students. With him and Slughorn and Malfoy all on faculty, we never thought….”

“Right.” He glanced at the door to double-check that it was fully shut. “Snape hasn’t been prosecuted like most of the Death Eaters, though. Is he going to be?”

Ron and Hermione shared a look. “We disagree, on why he’s here exactly,” Hermione said after a moment. “Ron thinks the Ministry trusts Snape for the same reasons Dumbledore did. Whatever those reasons were,” she added, unconvinced.

“Because Dumbledore and the Ministry have always been such great mates. Sorry, Ron,” Harry said. Ron shrugged.

“But I think he’s here… well, for the same reasons you’re here,” Hermione went on awkwardly. “As a peculiar sort of way of keeping you both in Ministry custody, for now, without it being contentious or embarrassing for them.”

“Scrimgeour said it was one part punishment and one part protection,” Harry sighed. Ron and Hermione gave him matching incredulous looks. “He, uh, didn’t come around very often. And it was really for Voldemort, not me. I think he misses being an Auror.”

“Scrimgeour was a Slytherin as well,” Hermione murmured. “We never thought it’d actually….” And she broke off in a sigh.

Harry had drifted to the bedside table with the dismantled alarm clock, stacking its gears as he thought. “Snape’s defected,” he said finally, “or as good as. From the Death Eaters,” he clarified. “What did he do at the battle? After I was, uh, captured.”

“Well, we don’t quite know,” Ron said with a frown. “He wasn’t fighting. We, uh, didn’t have a lot of time to ask around.”

“But when the Death Eaters captured Scrimgeour, he was in Snape’s possession. And he was until… I don’t know, until the time he handed him over to the Order.”

This was news, apparently. “We thought he’d taken Scrimgeour from the other Death Eaters,” Hermione said slowly. “Or he’d struck a deal, or it was on Voldemort’s orders for some reason, or Scrimgeour fought his way out….” She gave a small smile. “So we didn’t know _what_ happened, as you see. The ones who did – Moody and Kingsley and probably Remus – weren’t at liberty to say. All we knew was that the Minister was alive after all, and the Order was reviving him. That time Moody was accusing Snape of treason, it was because he thought Snape withheld Scrimgeour for too long. But since the time the Death Eaters captured him….” She shook her head.

“Voldemort should’ve killed Snape for that, though.” It was a deeply unpleasant thing to say. “Or the Death Eaters should have. It definitely wasn’t under Voldemort’s orders. He wanted Scrimgeour… well, _neutralized_ was his word, that if he wasn’t killed then at least make him into a Squib and take his memories. That Snape told Voldemort – well, told me to tell Voldemort – that Scrimgeour was dead, and then handed him over to the Order…. He should be dead.” There was no way around it. “And now Scrimgeour’s got a life debt to him. Is that why he’s here?”

Even as carefully as he’d phrased all that, they still caught his omission. “He asked you to get rid of Scrimgeour,” Ron said flatly.

“And I _didn’t_. Obviously.”

“So you set Snape up to die.” Hermione’s voice was tiny.

Fuck. He’d supposed the polite happiness could only hold out for so long. “I didn’t. Snape made his own choices. And I’ve kept Voldemort away from, well, _everything_ ever since.”

Hermione’s voice was even smaller now: “You haven’t redeemed him, Harry. You can’t. And there are such better… _projects_ to put this passion of yours, and your optimism, toward.”

It was irrefutable. Voldemort himself had warned him of the same. His chest was tight. “I know,” he said, and it was sincere. “But…. Nevermind.” He stopped himself. “I don’t want to defend him. And I never will,” he added. “But my magic tempers him. And if he dies, then I die. Which would be _fine_ ,” he said, “since everyone’s been preparing me to die as a martyr as long as I’ve been in this world. And I would if it accomplished something meaningful. Just, there will probably be less chaos in the world if we’re both alive.”

Ron had made a strangled noise at the word martyr. He hadn’t been looking for pity. “Nobody knows how to, y’know, trust you,” he said. “And even _worse_ , nobody knows how to feel about V…” he trailed off hopelessly.

“Voldemort.” Composed of all soft sounds, it could only really be murmured. Whispered. Ron flinched anyway, but went on.

“Lifting the statute of secrecy has been really good so far. And Dad said you recommended him to his new research team, putting magic together with electricity.” He only stumbled over the word a bit, and flashed him a grin. “Merlin, Harry, he’s so happy. It’s all good things that are happening. But we shouldn’t be expected to trust that it’s not… you know, setting up something terrible.”

“Right. I’ve asked the same. He says he wants to be powerful, through any means really, and doing things legally is the best way right now. And Scrimgeour, like, _really_ cares about Voldemort’s suggestions for legislation. They were writing all the time.” A more morbid recollection: “And also… he said, if he runs for Minister, he promises to sentence all the Death Eaters to be Kissed.” His voice had gone a bit flat at this. “So, you know, he’d never be able to get back the same kind of power he’s had with them. And the Ministry seems to be making sure of it, by arresting them all.”

A long silence. Finally Hermione said, “That’s really awful.”

“And I’ll do anything to stop it,” Harry said. “But do you see? Everybody really, _really_ wants to keep me alive, and that’s how we negotiated anything. And I can keep doing it as long as everyone, you know, still thinks I’m valuable.”

This got a small smile from Hermione. “I don’t know,” she said. “Everyone’s a bit less, well, taken with you than they used to be.”

“Bloody tell me about it.” He sighed. “I know none of this is okay. But I promise, I’m trying to make it okay. And you’re right about Snape,” he added. “I need to go see him, actually.” He moved to go. Ron clapped him on the shoulder as he passed, but they were all quiet.

Snape remained in his former office; the Headmaster’s office, for now, stood vacant. (“Maybe next year,” Remus had shrugged. Nobody was eager to empty it of Dumbledore’s presence.) So he crossed the dungeon… and found Auror Squire just leaving Snape’s office.

“Potter,” she said, pulling the door closed decisively. “We hadn’t told you yet that you’re intended to check in every night. How did you know?”

It took him a moment to process this. “Oh. I’m not here for you. I mean, sorry. Good evening.” He flashed her a smile but she looked wary; she was always wary around him. “I need to see Snape.”

“Why?” Her tone was unusually sharp.

 _To undo the death sentence I gave him_ , Harry didn’t say. “It’s confidential,” he said instead. “You can stand guard outside if you’re nervous.” _About what, I have no idea._

But Squire was shaking her head. “We have explicit orders; you’re not to meet alone with the Headmaster.”

“Orders from who?”

“From Headmaster Snape himself.”

“Oh for – “ He moved to knock on the door; Squire caught his hand in a fiery cube, forcing it back down by his side. “But it’s – I owe him something,” Harry protested, shaking off the burning sensation. The hair at his wrist had been singed off.

But Squire was beckoning him away. “We have orders. If the Headmaster wants to meet with you, he’ll schedule a meeting through appropriate avenues.” She held the corridor’s door for him; he followed her out reluctantly.

“Could I ask him at breakfast?” he asked, because he was already down to bargaining, sod it. “You’re clearly okay with us being in the same room, since we just spent the day together. Or am I only a threat when we’re alone?”

The politeness had evaporated from his tone, because it’d already been a long and frustrating day. And Squire deserved none of it, but she was just the last impediment of many. She looked at him with unpleasant surprise. “It’s a bit of both, really.” And her wariness was gone, replaced by impatience. “The Aurors would like to limit your contact, as two wizards closely affiliated with the Dark Lord, capable of collusion. Two of the _only_ wizards affiliated with him who aren’t currently in Azkaban,” she added pointedly. “As for the Headmaster himself… he would strongly prefer not to be alone with you at any time, because he believes you have reason to kill him.”

Holy shit. _Holy shit_. It had the intended effect; he no longer had it in him to be petulant or insistent or angry. “No,” he said weakly.

Fidelia shrugged. “Then I recommend comporting yourself as a more reasonable person,” she said, raising her thin eyebrows. “Are you turning in for the night? Kingsley or I must secure you from the outside, every night, if you are.”

He could hardly think of such practical things now. “I… no. I skipped dinner, I’m going to the kitchens. And then maybe outside.” He didn’t care about food, but he needed to clear his head. “Can I summon you when I’m in?”

“ _Auxilio_ ,” she said, and pointed him rather forcefully in the direction of the kitchen. “Your curfew, like the students’, is ten pm.”

Curfew. Bloody curfew. “Right.” He turned to go. “Uh, do you want anything?”

Her look was unimpressed. “No, thank you, Mr. Potter.” And she left, and Harry took a moment to press his face in his hands before he headed to the kitchens.

The house elves sent him off with cold chicken to eat by the lake. It was perfect. He tossed bits into the water, to see the very tips of the tentacles snatch them up. Finally in the late-setting summer sun, he pulled the journal he shared with Voldemort from his bag.

A day, it had been one day and already he was desperate to tell Voldemort everything, to let Voldemort _fix_ everything. He wondered what he was forbidden from telling Voldemort, much like the Aurors had restricted his information about Hogwarts until he had arrived here. Asking them now, just hypothetically, would be… questionable, to say the least. He inked a quill.

Their earlier brief exchange had faded, and Voldemort hadn’t written anything new, so he began at the top of the page:

**_Snape is Headmaster; McGonagall is still Deputy and the Head of Faculty. Ron and Hermione say that the Ministry assigned him there, but nobody is really happy about it._ **

**_Draco Malfoy is teaching Ancient Runes, since he doesn’t have his estate or family anymore. There’s a lot of Slytherin students already here, because their parents are in Azkaban. But the governors just banned any new students from entering Slytherin this year. Too many Slytherins turn out evil, apparently._ **

**_Everyone wants to trust me but nobody does. They like life without the statute so far but think you’re planning to do terrible things. And I don’t want to defend you but that’s the position they keep putting me in. I hate it._ **

He took a deep breath, letting his head fall back against the tree trunk, before writing the last thing: **_And Snape thinks you’ve sent me to kill him. And the Aurors won’t let me talk to him anyway._**

Occlumency, Occlumency. He tried jettisoning these feelings because he didn’t want to burden Voldemort with them as well. And utterly failed when his heart skipped a beat as Voldemort began writing a response. Pathetic.

But it was brief: _Come to Azkaban, when you’re able._

Of course. Of course he wanted to, but it answered nothing new. **_Why?_** he wrote. (The symbol in Parselscript was stark and angular, so he could write it quite dramatically and satisfyingly.)

Voldemort crossed out his question (arsehole) and wrote underneath, _And you need to take dreamless sleep every night._

He thought he’d slept too deeply to dream last night, but apparently not. **_I will_ ,** he wrote. **_Why won’t you tell me anything?_**

_Because I don’t know what this means._

Well, shit. Pushing the journal back into his bag, he returned inside. It was near enough to ten (he was the bloody savior of the wixen world and he had a _curfew_ ) that he’d turn in. He decided against knocking on Ron and Hermione’s door, but he’d instead just revel in feeling alone tonight.

He held his wand aloft: “Auxilio.” A few minutes later, Kingsley _and not Fidelia thank Merlin_ entered the corridor. “Harry. Very good.” He moved to secure his room.

“When can I visit Azkaban?”

Kingsley’s eyebrows went up. “You’ve only been here a day.”

“I mean, I expect it’ll take some planning on your part. I thought I’d ask early.” He consented to a scanning spell, for contraband. It came back clean.

“Yes. This weekend?” Kingsley suggested. “The Minister requested that you come in within the week anyway, for research. You’ll be working with the Unspeakables.”

“Cool,” Harry said. Maybe the Department of Mysteries would be better experienced not in a state of crisis.

Kingsley was not so enthusiastic. “That the Minister is having you begin with the Unspeakables… it suggests some difficult and arcane magic. And difficult and arcane research to match.”

“That’s fine,” Harry said. “I mean, it’s all the same to me. Though I don’t know what Scrimgeour is looking for, exactly. Voldemort’s been… neutralized if not defeated, after all. You hardly need my magic for any of that.”

Kingsley grimaced. “That information hasn’t been circulated to the Aurors department either.”

“Just like all the decisions he’s made about us. Sorry,” Harry added, though it wasn’t his to apologize for. “If I knew….”

“Knowing wouldn’t change my responsibilities. I’ll schedule an appointment with the Unspeakables.” Kingsley reached for the door. “Good night.”

“Good night.” He pulled it closed from the inside. A glow around the doorframe as he was sealed in. Well. They were saving the savior then, by any means necessary.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Allusions for Chapter 3:
> 
> “The right to have rights” is from Hannah Arendt’s 1952 The Origins of Totalitarianism, where she argues that the concept of human rights is irrelevant if they can be stripped away by a government at any time.
> 
> Abzu – In the Babylonian creation myth the Enuma Elish, Abzu (or Apzu) was the god of fresh water who mated with Tiamat, the goddess of salt water, to create the cosmos. They’re often depicted as dragons. So here: dragon doorman.
> 
> Hagrid returning to Hogwarts as a student comes from this [fanart](http://lulusketches.tumblr.com/post/153706952620/hagrid-going-back-to-hogwarts-after-the-war-and). (No, YOU’RE crying.)
> 
> Draco’s skill in Runes (and tbh, a lot of the fanon interpretations of runes and wards throughout this story) are from [Transfigurations, by Resonant](https://archiveofourown.org/works/59676).
> 
> I added the changes in faculty to the running cheat sheet [here](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zQkSzP-Q-NyG1Qo9ZhTw_iSJBY-QKeygj8fJiviUTfw). Most important is that Ron and Hermione are co-teaching Muggle Studies, Draco is teaching Runes, Remus is the new librarian, and Lavender is the new nurse.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Snape takes a vow, Harry has a nightmare, and Voldemort might understand something of love after all.

_Tuesday, June 16._ The next morning he was up early, to talk to Snape at breakfast. Not because he believed Snape wouldn’t cause a scene if they did this in public (or that Harry himself might, who knew) but that whatever scene they _did_ cause would have fewer witnesses. He had to get a set of faculty robes, he lamented as he dressed. Any excuse Snape had to treat him like a child, he would take.

As he had been yesterday, Snape was at the high table early with a book and a pot of tea. Harry’s heart twinged at the scene, after all the days of finding Voldemort in a similar setting. He slid into the chair beside Snape where Slughorn would sit.

Snape was honestly startled for a moment, before anger blossomed on his face. “I believe you’ve been warned of the many reasons we shouldn’t be communicating.”

“I’ll be quick.” Already he was half on the lookout for the Aurors, ready to shoo him away. But for a few Slytherin students, and Gale at the far end of the high table, they were alone. “I’ve put you in a lot of danger. I’m sorry. I want to craft a vow, that if Vol – “ Snape’s flinch was so intense that he relented, “the Dark Lord tries to kill you, or sends someone to do it, it will kill me instead.”

Snape stared at him for a long moment. “ _Muffliato_ ,” he said, to Harry’s immense relief. “Gryffindors with their savior complexes,” he sneered. “Mr. Potter, I would rather not entangle my life any further in the mess that is your own. Nor would I want to be in your debt.”

“You wouldn’t be,” Harry insisted. “Just, Scrimgeour…. Voldemort never had time to properly react to you giving him to the Order. And that was my fault anyway. I want to put a vow in place in case he wants to. You know that he wants to – that he’s got to – keep me alive.”

Snape looked even more unimpressed. “Take care what you mean when you offer people _safety_. The Dark Lord offered us safety, as well. It’s a familiar strategy.”

Harry bristled: “I’m not here on his behalf. And he hasn’t sent me to – kill you.” He choked on the horrible word. “It’s just the best way I know to keep everyone safe. I made a vow like it with the Aurors, the ones responsible for the safehouse.”

“How generous of you.”

“It’s not really. It was just what I had to do.” He twisted his hands in his lap. “So, would you think about it?”

“No.” At Harry’s look, he narrowed his eyes. “I didn’t even want you _here_. In any capacity. We would all be safer without you in our midst. I can only minimize our contact and hope that you learn nothing of value. Since the Dark Lord seemingly has even more access to your mind now than he’s had previously.”

He thought about protesting that he was practicing Occlumency. Snape would be underwhelmed, anyway. Instead he was going to offer, either out of motivation or out of spite, some horrible news. “Wait,” he said as Snape moved, with impatience and disgust, to leave him. “I just…. You should know. I don’t know why you’re here, instead of having been arrested with all the Death Eaters.” Snape’s face didn’t change; he might never know. “But if it’s protection you’ve got, then just be sure it’ll hold out, if Voldemort becomes Minister. Because one of his campaign promises will be to subject every Death Eater to the Dementor’s Kiss.”

Nothing. Snape’s face was a mask. “I see. And are you helping his political aspirations along?”

He flinched. “Not that bit of it,” he said weakly.

“How liberating it must be, to simply disavow your own culpability in other people’s deaths.” Snape’s gaze bore into him. “Granted, the outcome is the same. But as long as you can consider yourself _such a good boy_ ….”

“Piss off,” he muttered, moving to go. He’d do it another way, then.

Unexpectedly, Snape caught his wrist, grasping it hard until his nails punctured skin. “The Dark Lord would have never sent you to kill me directly, I know that,” he said. His voice was low. “You’d never be strong enough. You’ll never be realistic enough to face your own immorality. And yet, in seeking me out, you’re condemning me to death _again and again_.” He squeezed tighter; there might be blood. “Tell me you understand.”

Harry tried pulling out of Snape’s grasp, yelping when his skin only became stickier with what must be blood now. “You idiot,” he said miserably. “You’re not listening. I’m offering to die for you.”

“Because you’ll only be complete when you’ve died for us all.” His tone was venomous. “Don’t profane the magic of sacrifice with… _this_. Your mother died for too much, for you to appropriate the idea for the sake of a _guiltless fuck_.”

It was vicious, it was the most vicious thing anyone had ever said to him. “What is _wrong_ with you,” he hissed, finally yanking his wrist from Snape’s grasp. His blood had collected under Snape’s nails. “Leave my mother out of this. What the hell.” He had to go before he fell apart, before his reaction to that sucker punch fully hit. He turned abruptly. And though nobody else in the Great Hall had been able to hear the exchange, they had all _seen_ it. They were all staring. Harry kept his gaze low as he left.

 

It was a miserable day and he had nobody to share it with. And some part of it was guilt, and some part was humiliation, that Snape might not be entirely wrong. He spent the morning on his broom, drifting over the Forbidden Forest mostly, until he felt a sunburn bloom on the back of his neck.

By the afternoon, his feelings had given way to a sort of emptiness. That was fine, that was doable. He slipped away with sandwiches to go do work in his room. The students from breakfast had probably begun circulating rumors by now. Not that they’d be any different from any other rumors following him, really.

On the way back to his suite he passed by the potions supply room. Letting himself in, he threw enough ingredients for a batch of kaval into his bag.

Reflexively, he checked the diary when he returned to his room – checked that it was there, mostly, because one day the Aurors would discover it, but then leafed through it just in case Voldemort had written, and he’d missed it. When he found new writing, he cursed himself, dropping his broom and bag on his bed in a hurry.

It was brief, it was always brief: _What’s happened?_ And below that, when Harry hadn’t responded: _I could only tell it involved Severus. Were you offering him protection? Your experiences in my mind are quieter now, either due to the distance or your improved Occlumency._

That was something of a relief, really; Voldemort wouldn’t see everything Harry did. That he was not quite an unwitting surveillance mechanism, yet. He inked a quill.

**_It was Snape. I’ll tell you in person. Kingsley said he’d arrange for me to be at Azkaban this weekend. I’m brewing kaval today, sorry if you feel it too._ **

Nothing. Voldemort had put his half away, so Harry did too. He set up his cauldron.

Kaval’s caramel midpoint was actually his favorite part of it; the giggly lightness it made him feel was better, he thought, than the weightless self-actualization of the end product. Still, it was a different feeling when he was alone. He was finding that he wasn’t really good at being alone. And he was dying to be with somebody, dying to knock on Ron and Hermione’s door and ply them with potions so they’d all be equally dumb (he was fairly sure he’d be terrible company to anyone sober right now) when he decided to check the diary just one more time.

Voldemort’s writing, strokes larger and more dramatic than usual: _You are a fool. The Minister is visiting Azkaban tonight. Please cast a sobering charm on yourself before then. Already, I haven’t been able to revise a draft on inter-world commerce because of you._

Harry eased up on his Occlumency, the sort of emotional breath-holding he’d been doing for the past few days. He wanted to feel Voldemort, wanted Voldemort to feel him. **_Sorry_** , he wrote, even as he was grinning. **_I didn’t know the Minister visited Azkaban._**

_He doesn’t, typically._

Huh. He let the rest of that conversation go unwritten. It didn’t matter anyway, because Voldemort, skipping a few lines, then wrote, _Tell me about your cock cage, Harry._

He flushed, and the body high of the kaval seemed to spread. **_I’m still wearing it. I haven’t gotten off yet, so my balls are huge._** His face was half-buried in his pillow, his off hand between his legs to hold the metal now. He hadn’t thought about it much these past few days, but now the restriction seemed unbearable.

_Leave it on. Where are you?_

**_In my suite._** He frowned. **_Why?_**

 _You need to go somewhere that you might get caught, and you need to piss yourself._ The Parselscript for _piss_ was stark. Shock and disgust and arousal radiated from his belly outward. _You may wank through your wet pants, and you may clean up with Scourgify when you’ve finished. Your robes will conceal a great deal. Don’t get caught._

It was dumb and gross, and he was so turned on by it. _Hurry up_ , Voldemort wrote underneath, _before you get too hard to go._ He couldn’t say which of them the flush of hot amusement belonged to.

Outside, he’d go outside. He grabbed the journal and enough books to ostensibly be doing something out there. It took him a moment to get up, cradling the cock cage as his cock swelled. Voldemort was right, he had to do this soon.

He was striding from his room when a suggestion charm or something like it washed over him, and suddenly he was desperate. He caught himself against a wall, hissing through his teeth, momentarily, until he adjusted to it.

But it was the good sort of pain. Hell, while he was high, it was the _great_ sort of pain, like scratching an itch. They hadn’t fully explored drug-fueled sex in the past couple weeks and he deeply regretted that now. Using one of the smaller sets of exterior side doors, he let himself out in the late afternoon sun.

He wouldn’t be alone: students were spending the day by the lake. The forest… he didn’t know if he could make it that far, honestly. He’d get as close as he could, though. None of the students was looking in his direction. Consciously loosening his grip on his bag and the clenching of his jaw, he set off at a stride across campus.

The cock cage had begun to hurt, weighing down his already-heavy cock. Slipping a hand into his pocket, he held himself through his trousers. He could tell he was already blushing deeply.

A surge of desperation, and another. He couldn’t feel wetness along the front of his trousers yet, but he was so close to leaking. With a glance around – he wasn’t going to make it any farther anyway – he lowered himself against the far side of a thick willow tree.

He was really doing this. His breath was stuck in his throat from the anticipation. He arranged his robes so the back wouldn’t get wet. His bladder was throbbing now. It would feel so good to go, even into his pants. He pushed this anticipation and shame and arousal into their psychic connection. He wanted to share it. One last deep breath and a look around.

He groaned. Malfoy, and Daphne Greengrass, not quite walking in his direction but certainly coming too close. He fumbled for a book to put in his lap; the thickest one in his bag was on magical creatures, and he flipped it open at random. He couldn’t help laughing at the chapter it opened to. Once more, hippogriffs would save the day. “High as a hippogriff,” he murmured happily.

But with that, he felt himself slipping. Laughing might have broken his concentration for a split second too long, because a drop of piss rolled down his thigh, soaking into his pants. And another. He crushed the book against his lap, wincing at the additional weight on the cock cage. He needed to pull it off soon, before his balls were severed (god, _there_ was a thought) but he couldn’t exactly put his hand down his pants right now.

Malfoy and Daphne were entirely too close, probably close enough to see his expression if they looked over. Would see him gasp as a thick surge of piss hit his shorts, as his control gave out. He dropped his head, his eyes fluttering closed as his cock was enveloped in steamy fabric. And then the pressure of the cock cage was too much, was making tears collect in the corners of his eyes. He slipped a hand into his lap. “Alohomora,” he muttered, willing it off. And it took a moment but the cock cage fell apart, the bits of it now shifting in his underwear. Thank fuck. A new surge of desperation and arousal, one he was nearly certain was not his own.

He might’ve made a noise at this, at the relief of pressing his fingertips to his sore swollen balls, because Draco looked over sharply. Harry dropped his gaze to his book, staring at it without remembering to turn the page as a flood gathered in his pants. His arse had a puddle around it by now, and he was still wetting himself; he couldn’t stop it if he wanted to. And then Draco and Daphne were leaving with some alacrity, and Harry went hot, wondering if they _knew_. He felt like the most obvious arsehole in the world right now.

He slipped his hand into his fly when he was alone, dabbling his fingers in his weakening stream. He was so hard, so overwhelmed. Every sensation was heightened, and it felt like it’d been ages since he’d come. He recalled Voldemort sucking his cock as though intent on draining his balls, and his insides twisted. He grinned.

The sodden fabric of his pants hung heavy around his cock and balls, clung hot around his arsehole. He stroked himself through his pants, trying to keep the identifiable motion subtle, just quick flicks of his wrist underneath the textbook. He’d fantasized about public sex – public humiliation, really, just being tinged with perverse pleasure – and he prickled all over now that it was happening. Now that he was getting away with it.

His cock pulsed in his grasp, and he recognized a thrill and panic as he realized that even better, he’d have to come quietly. Silencing charms had been courtesy in the dorms but that’d rather spoil things here; and he’d gotten used to a sort of… performative orgasm in the past few months. He bit down hard on his lower lip. He’d never get away with it. Everyone would know, would know he got off on wetting himself and being humiliated for it, in front of the school – god, he needed to be suspended in the midst of the Great Hall and paddled, his wet trousers hanging around his ankles still –

He shot off with a groan, thick warm spurts spilling over his fingers. Biting his inner lip harder, he pumped and pumped. The kaval extended the orgasm, made it more of a wave than an explosion, until warm happiness rolled from his curled toes to his scalp. “Merlin,” he muttered, luxuriating in the wet stickiness for a long moment, committing to memory how defiled he felt, before cleaning it up with Scourgify. It had been perfect.

He pulled the journal out of his bag once again, flipping it open atop the zoology textbook. Between the kaval, and the suggestion charm, and the sex… he’d lost track of where his own feelings ended and Voldemort’s began. He went pleasantly warm at the idea he’d just gotten Voldemort off too. He hoped so. **_Good?_** he wrote at the top of the page.

 _Perfect._ His writing was small and precise. He had always been able to collect himself quicker than Harry after sex. ( _Was_ that sex? he wondered with amusement. A philosophical question for another day.) _You need to cast a sobriety charm before Scrimgeour arrives._

 ** _I don’t know any sobriety charms_** _._ (And also it seemed like a waste when he’d otherwise have a couple more hours of this carefree happiness. But, greater good, he supposed.)

_Renovo , with the same motion as a cheering charm._

And when he cast it, his head cleared. The happiness evaporated, and the recklessness that led him to wank in public _dear god_ , but a sort of calm remained. **_Thanks_** , he wrote, moving to get up. **_Good luck with Scrimgeour_.** And the emotion that Voldemort _pushed_ at him then, a wry bit of doubt, made him laugh.

 

 _Thursday, June 18._ The rest of the week was spent studying, after McGonagall had informed him he was required to pass the Defense NEWT prior to teaching the subject. “I anticipate no difficulties,” she said at an advising meeting one afternoon, peering over the top of her glasses. “Of course, all your other NEWTs may be taken at the end of your eighth year, given that you are also enrolled as a student.” A pause. “Whatever subjects those might be. Are you still interested in applying to the Aurors department?” (She pointedly did not ask the obvious question, whether the Aurors department was still interested in _him_.)

“Oh. No.” He gave himself a moment: telling her his career plans would make them rather more real. “I’m interested in diplomacy, mostly. We’ll need a lot more of them, with the statute lifted, right? I want to be doing something with it, overseeing the transition or the new relationship or new markets….” He twisted his hands in his lap. “I don’t know what yet, specifically. And I don’t think those jobs exist yet. But they will.”

She, like, everyone else, looked unsurprised by this decision. “You have targeted a nascent field,” she agreed. Flipping through a folder, she looked over at his OWLs. “You haven’t quite prepared for such a career…. Granted, your involvement with the statute would get you a position, NEWTs or not, I’d imagine. But let’s focus, pragmatically, on what knowledge you would actually need for such a job.”

“History,” Harry said. “And Muggle Studies.”

“Yes,” she said. “And one is absent from your OWLs and the other, if you don’t mind my saying so,” she’d raised her eyebrows at his History result, “is dire.”

“I know. I’ve never been good at history, Professor, but I’ll study, a lot.”

“You have returned with a certain studiousness that had been, well, lacking up to this point.”

It wasn’t a dig, just an observation. “Yeah,” he said, and it was all he could say, because he wouldn’t name Voldemort unless she did first. And of course she wouldn’t. “But whoever you hire on for history, I’ll do tutoring with them, and sit in even on, like, the first year classes again. I really want this.”

His passion surprised her. It even surprised him, a bit. But he was not so… content with being content, anymore. “I don’t think that all is necessary,” she said finally. “For now, you might ask Professor Lupin to create a reading list for you. And some intense tutoring. Tell him we’ll pay him for it.”

Ugh, one of the worst parts of being on faculty was realizing that Hogwarts ran on equal parts magic and money. “Right, I will. Thanks.”

“Your other subjects might be more according to your taste,” McGonagall continued. “Transfiguration or Charms would have broad application in travel. Professor Slughorn requested you in his Potions class at least part-time – whether you’d sit the exam is your decision. And you’d like to take Ancient Runes?”

“Oh, yeah.” He shifted. “If Malfoy – Professor Malfoy – will let me. The airspace shield – the one we cast for the Muggles, you know, is based in runes. And….” _Voldemort wants me to_ was about the worst sentence he could think of. “And I hadn’t known how useful they are.”

“Yes.” And the atmosphere had shifted; it always did when he mentioned Voldemort, even so indirectly as that. “It remains Professor Malfoy’s prerogative. You would be his only pupil, so he must decide whether he’d commit all that time to just… one student.”

“To just _me_ ,” Harry finished the sentence as she’d intended to finish it. “I know. I’d learn it on my own otherwise, it’s fine.”

Her eyebrows went up slightly. “You would?”

He shrugged. “I think runes are useful,” he reiterated.

McGonagall folded her hands on her desk. “This new studiousness….” And she shook her head slightly. “I’ll advocate for you, in any case. Though Professor Malfoy can’t be forced into anything.”

“Thanks, Professor.”

“And one last thing. I took your syllabi to the curriculum board. They were all impressed – though you must tell the upper level classes that some of these texts have since been made illegal,” she added with a look. “But they needed to know – how are you making these texts available? A great many of them, to say nothing of the illegal titles, are out of print.”

“Oh.” He tipped his head back, thinking. “I suppose I’ll xerox them,” he said with a laugh.

She frowned. “Is that a spell?”

This was wonderful. “No. A Muggle invention, that makes copies of things. I’ll bring you xeroxed copies of my texts, too,” he promised.

She looked flummoxed but curious. “Very well. We’ll make your students aware. _Oh._ ” And she pulled another parchment toward herself. “And your current registration numbers for your NEWT level is nineteen students. That isn’t excessive, is it?”

He was still smiling. “The DA was bigger. That sounds perfect.” He left to go find Remus, to catch up on seven years of history classes.

 

 _Sunday, June 21._ Sunday finally came, the day Kingsley had arranged for the meeting with the Unspeakables, and subsequent trip to Azkaban. “The Aurors need to trade off our posts anyway,” he said, “so Fidelia and I will deliver you to the Ministry, and next week’s team will take you from there.”

“Perfect. Thank you.”

“Also….” He hesitated. “It’s not something you must divulge, but… did you and Auror Squire have some falling out this week? She’s been rather… ambivalent about you.”

Ambivalent was a kind word. Squire didn’t trust him at all when he was in the vicinity. “A bit. She kept me from seeing Snape when I needed to. And, y’know, told me he’d suspected I’d been sent to kill him.”

Kingsley flinched. “We should have warned you as soon as you were on the grounds,” he said, “that we’d rather minimize your contact. That _he’d_ rather minimize your contact as well. He inhabits his own precarious position, you know.”

“Oh, I know,” Harry agreed dryly as they headed for the Headmaster’s office, to use its Floo. “But I offered to create a vow with him, like the one for the Aurors when we were under house arrest. That if Voldemort tried to kill him, or meant for someone else to, it’d kill me instead.”

Kingsley was quiet at this. “That is generous of you. And you do mean well,” he said.

“You think I shouldn’t do it? Other than Snape won’t let me, anyway,” he added.

“I think that you may only serve as a credible guarantor, if not bargaining chip, so many times. The Aurors’ vow expired when you left the safehouse,” Kingsley said, “but if you do this too often… well, someday something will happen. You see.”

He wanted to protest that Voldemort had already gone months without killing anybody; but he already heard _Well done_ in Snape’s scathing tone at the back of his mind. Instead he said, “That’s it, though. If I keep just one person safe, it’d be Snape. And it’s my fault that… well, not my _fault_ that the Minister is alive,” he said with a faint laugh. “But, you know. It would be different.”

“Yes. I’ll talk to Severus,” Kingsley said. “I can promise nothing. However… more of my hesitation comes from Voldemort’s reaction. He was angry with you the first time, making a vow behind his back, and if you pull the same trick – maneuver – twice….”

“Sure.” It wasn’t a bad point. “He won’t… look, if he wanted to Crucio me, he’d have to borrow enough of my magic to cast it first.”

“ _Well_.”

Harry smiled. “He’ll probably be unhappy. He’s unhappy about a lot of things. But he’s more pragmatic about some things now. And like I said, he doesn’t scare me.”

“Ah.” Kingsley wasn’t convinced but wouldn’t pursue it. And it was the already the most direct conversation about Voldemort he’d had since getting to Hogwarts. “Headmaster Snape has many reasons to not agree,” he said, “but I will speak with him. Auror Squire,” he greeted Fidelia as they approached her station point. “Shall we?”

“Yes.” Stacking her trunk on top of Kingsley’s, she levitated them both away. Into the Floo, each of them one at a time, until Harry was delivered to the main floor of the Ministry. A few people looked but nobody reacted. Cool.

“This way,” Kingsley said behind him as he arrived. “There’s quite a bit of security to get through, to reach the Unspeakables.”

Something unexpectedly stabbed at Harry inside, that he’d be returning to the same place Sirius had died, down those same corridors. “I know,” he said dryly.

Kingsley glanced over, first surprised and then a bit regretful. “I apologize,” he said. “I wasn’t thinking… but we’re going to one of their office corridors. Not their labs.”

“It’s fine.” He followed them both into the lift.

It got harder when they got closer, when he began to recognize a bit of it. They got to that circular room with doors where, instead of picking one, Squire held up her wand as though willing the office door open. One opened.

There were just two Unspeakables in the office in which they finally arrived. The Unspeakables both had forgettable faces and robes that shifted from deep purple to deep blue, and introduced themselves as Unspeakables Lang and Bhatt, and Harry was half-sure these were code names anyway. Kingsley and Squire said goodbye, leaving him in the hands of this duo.

Bhatt began by pricking each of his fingers in turn. “The Minister says you’re the only one who keeps the Dark Lord in check,” she said as though it were a normal conversation. “He said he doesn’t know where we’d be with the Muggles without you both.”

He let her take the perfect little drops of blood from his fingertips. “That’s kind of him.”

She took a cheek swab. “He says you’ve also got a vow on you, that you can’t talk about some parts of the magic you share.”

“That’s right. My throat closes up. It’s fixed with _Anapneo_ ,” he said, “but I’d rather just avoid it. He said that wouldn’t be a problem.”

“Not at all,” she assured him, pulling him into a chair to test his reflexes. “Just a little research to answer a few questions the Minister has.”

“Right.”

“We also – “ she looked up at him now, “have colleagues in the Hall of Prophecies. Did you happen to know – “

“Yes.” He bit back _Of course_ ; news of his fight in the Department of Mysteries had been kind of minimized. “But that’s not really related. I mean,” he thought, “not in any direct way. I guess if I can talk about it, then it’s not.”

“Mm.” Lang looked up from a diagnostic spell, made curious by this. “Your connection’s not bloodwork?”

“No.”

“Mindwork?”

“No.”

“Fleshwork.”

“No.”

“Soulwork.”

He hadn’t even said anything before his throat closed up. “Anapneo,” Lang said as he gasped for air. “A- _ha_.”

Well, there was that. “There’s a Muggle game called Twenty Questions,” Harry muttered after the third set of questions he (didn’t really) answer. “It doesn’t strangle them, though.”

“Mm.” Lang was indifferent. “Is this spell created or affected by violence?”

He nodded. Pre-emptive Anapneo. But he was frustrated with this, and they both saw it. “Right, I think that’s enough to go off for a few weeks,” Lang said, while Harry was still cooperative.

“Let’s get you to the Aurors,” Bhatt added, leading him out.

Tonks and Bragg were waiting in the circular room. And Tonks _did_ remember, had her own memories at the battle. “We’ll get you out of here,” she said, low and serious. “And, well, off to Azkaban.” Out of the frying pan. Back into the Floo, arriving at a shack on the North Sea set up for just this purpose. “From here, there’s a boat. It takes awhile to get to or from but,” she shrugged, “it’s safe.”

The boat only looked like a miserable bit of wood; it was actually sturdy and covered with a heating charm. “Sorry you’ve got to make this trip for me,” Harry said as the boat rowed its way across the sea.

“Not at all,” Bragg said. “There’s much more for the Ministry to do there, these days, with all of the new Death Eaters in there.”

“Right.” He wondered if he should be visiting any of them as well. “Could I meet you in front of the prison in a couple hours? We’ll just talk,” he added at their looks. “I mean, maybe not, I don’t know. Thanks for bringing me,” he reiterated.

They had landed back on the question of why the Ministry was supporting their… relationship. Allegiance. Togetherness, in any case. That now that Kingsley had told the entire department how much Harry loved being spanked, that they’d now just assume it was a conjugal visit. That Scrimgeour insisted upon. Merlin.

He still hated the Dementors but his Patronus was not allowed inside (“for some obvious reasons,” said Tonks). Nevertheless, they directed Harry up a winding set of stairs, to the tower where Voldemort was being held. Very, very isolated.

Harry knocked; Voldemort let him in. He looked… alright. Drawn. But when Harry entered the cell there was clearly magic inside. _Thanks, Scrimgeour._

Voldemort pulled him onto a narrow bed. There was only room enough for it and a desk. Books lined shelves nailed into the stone walls. No windows.

Harry shuddered. “May I?” he asked, gesturing to the expanse of the walls.

Voldemort looked at him with faint surprise. “They let you retain your wand?”

“No. But I think I can do it without.” A few weeks of recreating that charm, he’d gotten good at it. “You’re quite high up, you know. In one of their towers.”

“Just have them reflect the outside,” Voldemort said, watching Harry place the illusions on the wall. “Thank you.”

“Yeah. Of course.” And as he worked he told Voldemort about Hogwarts. About the faculty, his classes, his proposed schedule. He skipped over everything to do with Snape.

“Harry.” By now they sat shoulder to shoulder, deliberately touching because Voldemort’s magic was still weak. “Why is Snape the Headmaster?”

“I don’t know,” he sighed. “Scrimgeour might owe it to him?”

“It’s a prominent position, but hardly a _reward_.”

“He might owe it to Scrimgeour?” Harry suggested instead. Voldemort gave him a look. “I really don’t know. A friend suggested it’s a bit of protection and a bit of punishment, like me.”

“Yes,” Voldemort said, frowning. “Still… Azkaban is filled with Death Eaters. From what I hear. At least half of them are imprisoned now.”

“Dumbledore trusted him,” Harry said. “If that still counts for anything.” He squirmed. “Also, I… could we not talk about him? He said that I might as well have been sent to kill him,” he said with a sigh. “And I don’t want him to be right. He turned me down when I offered to do the same sort of vow I had with the Aurors.”

“Did you?” Voldemort looked vaguely entertained. “You do take the weight of the world on your shoulders.”

“Just you,” Harry said. “If I could just keep people safe from _you_ ….”

Surprisingly, Voldemort nodded. “That does seem to be your anticipated lot, one way or another.”

“Yeah. He said, though – “ He’d buried Snape’s comment since it had happened, it just hurt too much. “He said if I sacrificed myself for him, I was profaning my mum’s. That I was just using the idea of sacrifice so I could have a guiltless fuck.” He pronounced it in the same staccato he’d heard it. “That day I’d been so upset, before brewing kaval, that’s what it had been about.” He hadn’t told anyone, and telling Voldemort now felt… good if not right.

“That is exceptionally cruel.”

“I mean, it’s not for you to go defend me or whatever,” Harry said. “I’d prefer that you and Snape just… never saw one another again, instead.”

“Mm.” But Voldemort was sitting back, considering. “Severus has treated your life with more disregard than that, you know.”

“What?”

A look of surprise. “You _don’t_ know.” Voldemort studied him seriously now. “May I tell you a bit about your parents’ death? And specifically, Severus’s role in it.”

He honestly, probably didn’t want to know. “It was Pettigrew, though,” he said. “Pettigrew betrayed my parents.”

“Well, yes. But… do you want this? Your Legilimency is ambiguous,” he said with a small crooked smile. “Whether you will find knowledge for knowledge’s sake to be a good thing. It will… complicate your relationship.”

Did he want to hear about his parents’ death from the man who had killed them. Kind of. “Please,” he finally said.

“Listen.” Voldemort pulled him in tightly, resting his forehead on Harry’s. “Snape brought me news of the prophecy, when it happened,” he began quietly. “He was remorseful when he realized it referred to _your_ family. He said he loved your mother.”

Harry choked. Voldemort gave him a minute, carrying on in a low tone. “He asked that I should save her, for him. That’s why I didn’t intend to kill her – I certainly didn’t _need_ to kill her, that night. Which is to say, Snape was entirely willing to let you and your father die. For a fuck, if not a guiltless one.”

“Jesus.” Harry dropped his head in his hands. His insides hurt.

“Thus, you and Snape have held each other’s lives in about the same esteem.” Studying Harry, he found him more taken aback by the knowledge than he’d expected. “What?”

“It’s fine,” he muttered. “Give me a minute.” Because beyond this knowledge about Snape, just hearing Voldemort talk about the murders…. Of course they’d avoided the subject, of course there had been nothing to say. But since it had been broached, he took a breath. “Then, I want your memories of the night you killed my parents.”

“Oh, Harry,” he sighed, after a moment. “Why?’

“Because I want to see them alive, at the end. And because I want to know.”

“I’d need a wand,” Voldemort said. “When I’ve got one, I’ll bottle the memory. But I don’t….”

“It’s my decision,” Harry said.

“Yes.”

“But I told him you’d have all the Death Eaters Kissed if you became Minister. And offered the vow then.” He wanted to prove Kingsley wrong, to warn him of this… coercion this time around.

“Ah.” Voldemort’s look was neutral. “That’s generous of you.”

“That’s what Kingsley said. But you….” He sighed. “I’d rather not have to, I don’t know, manipulate you this way. But it might be the only way anyone feels safe around you.”

Voldemort weighed his words. “I am not very interested in killing people right now. I have more subtle endeavors. But I can’t answer for how my next encounter with Severus will go.” He raised his non-eyebrows. “My world would be a much simpler place had we retained control of Scrimgeour.”

“You _do_ have control of Scrimgeour,” Harry said, quite reasonably. “I’ve heard he even comes to visit.”

Voldemort’s face softened now that they were back in safer territory. “Right. _That_. He had a bill about inter-world safety regulations due in the morning.”

“Is your name going to be on it, then?”

“Of course.”

“Cool.” He shifted again. “He said – Snape said – that supporting your campaign with _that_ promise was setting them all up to die.” Obviously he wasn’t fucking done with this conversation.

“It’s not. I know where you stand on Dementors.”

“Maybe I should offer the vow to all the Death Eaters. You try to kill any of them, I die.”

Voldemort’s laugh was strangled. “You already saved the world _without_ having to martyr yourself,” he reminded Harry. “Are you unable to adjust to that?”

“I guess so.”

Voldemort shook his head in some wonderment. “Make your vows,” he said. “Your magic may only sustain a few at a time,” he added, “as it’s a persistent spell. So choose wisely. And do tell me who I’m not allowed to kill.”

He made a point of sounding bored of this promise. Harry smiled, just a little. “And actually,” Voldemort perked up just a bit, as he did with academic questions, “tell me how many vows you’re able to make at once. Vows are soulwork, the same as the Horcrux, and I’d like to know if the Horcrux adds to or subtracts from your capacity.”

Soulwork. He’d already heard the word today. He hadn’t told Voldemort of his trips to the Ministry. Of _that_ negotiation. “Are there any vows that don’t require the other person’s consent?” he asked instead. “Snape has said no. I don’t think he’ll change his mind.”

“Yes,” Voldemort said, “but they all have rather dire side effects.” He tucked a strand of hair behind Harry’s ear. He was endlessly entertained by this. “The poor, misplaced savior,” he crooned.

Harry sighed. “Yeah.”

\\\\\\\ ////

That was it, really. One of Azkaban’s human guards, a quiet peaky one, came to retrieve Harry, when Tonks and Bragg wanted him. He and Voldemort were both so bad at leaving. “Cornwall,” Harry said, mostly to himself as they untangled their legs. They’d see each other at Cornwall.

“Yes.”

It wasn’t just an emotional thing, he thought as he followed the guard down the winding staircase. But he physically felt better when his magic was mingled with Voldemort’s. And it wasn’t even _his_ Horcrux.

He’d apologized for not beginning to look for Hufflepuff’s cup in the past week. He’d apologized for not even collecting his books in his father’s house. Voldemort had been fairly indifferent. Harry couldn’t bring himself to ask what Voldemort was doing with his days. Nor could he bring himself to ask whether he should be stopping in for any of the Death Eaters.

Tonks and Bragg both carried high stacks of parchment out. “Legal matters. Appeals,” Bragg had explained at Harry’s look. “It’s as hard getting lawyers out here as you might think.”

“Ah. Right.” He followed them into the boat. “Can I come back… well, the weekend after next?”

A strained silence, and then Tonks said, “You may.” He got the distinct sense that if it were up to them, he wouldn’t be.

But the boat ride gave him time to… digest things. That Snape had loved his mother, had bargained for her. He hadn’t asked what Voldemort had wanted in return, because it ultimately hadn’t mattered, anyway.

He could see why Snape might have a lot of feelings on the nature of sacrifice, and Harry’s collusion with Voldemort.

Fuck him.

He sat at the bow alone. Tonks and Bragg were sorting through paperwork and didn’t recognize the few times he cast a cheering charm on himself. It wasn’t great – casting your own cheering charm is only about as effective as tickling yourself – but it was enough to keep his shit together, for now.

 

Back at the castle, he stopped by the hospital wing for more dreamless sleep (“You know it’s habit-forming,” Lavender had frowned at him but handed over a large bottle anyway) and then let himself be locked in his suite for the night. But as Tonks was setting the wards, he leaned against the doorframe a little too casually. “I was wondering,” he said, “have wixes got psychologists? Therapists. People to just… talk to. Your dad’s Muggleborn, I thought you might know.”

Tonks gave him a sad smile. “I wish we did,” she said. “You’re holding the most therapeutic thing we’ve got to offer.” She nodded to the dreamless sleep. “And you know we’re always around for you – “

“I know.”

“But I could see the value in talking to someone less… invested in you.” She gave a bit of a sigh. “Another thing we should import from the Muggle world, really. The next bill on scientific exchanges should have something on mental health in it.” A pause. “I know today was difficult. All of it.”

She thought this was about Sirius. And it _was_ , and shit piled on top of shit. “I mean, you too,” Harry said. “You haven’t got to go with me. Well,” he amended with a laugh, “you probably do. But I’d go on my own to save you the trip, if I could. To the Department of Mysteries and to Azkaban both.”

“Cheers.” A pause. “When we filed for your visitation to Azkaban, we found your name already on the list,” she said, hesitantly. “You’d already been added as Sirius’s godson. Of course nobody would have told you then, but….”

That stung. “It all should have gone differently,” he agreed. Cracking the bottle of dreamless sleep open, he raised it to her in salute. “See you in the morning.” He pulled the door closed so she could seal him in.

He pulled out his journal. He’d thought about putting a false bottom in his trunk or something to protect it, but decided that hiding it in plain sight was probably more effective; so right now it was amid the stack of books on his bedside table. He wrote at the top what Tonks had told him: **_The next time you’ve got a tech exchange bill, the wixes need to import Muggle therapy._**

By the time he’d put on pajamas, Voldemort had written back: _We have potions for all those miserable feelings you believe you should suffer, you know._

**_Wanker. You haven’t got to understand it. Just ask for it. Or I might start going to a Muggle psychologist._ **

He couldn’t say whether the vague revulsion and disdain that throbbed through their psychic connection was intended or not. It made him laugh, either way.

One last line, written farther down the page: _And you need to take dreamless sleep tonight._

He frowned. He’d taken it every night. He couldn’t recall any dreams; hopefully he wasn’t just shunting them off on Voldemort. Especially not tonight. He would otherwise dream of his parents tonight. Or Sirius. **_I will_. ** And he swallowed a double dose.

 

 _Wednesday, June 24._ It was Wednesday when he’d wandered into the library, looking for books on the vows that didn’t require the other person’s consent that Voldemort had said existed. But when Remus found him in the stacks that afternoon, he didn’t quite know what to tell him.

“What are you looking for?” Remus settled in beside him, gazing at the same shelf. “Some significant magic here, Harry. You’re not looking to get married, are you?”

Harry choked. “Definitely not,” he said, before looking over and seeing Remus smiling. “I’m trying to create a vow that will protect someone who doesn’t want any protection. Marriage might be simpler, actually.”

By his expression, Remus knew exactly what Harry was doing. “All of your options have a high chance of failure,” he said, but he was summoning some books from the top shelf. “You should read these, but as a… mentor to you,” (he said it hesitantly, and Harry’s heart hurt because of course he was) “and a partner to Severus, I would recommend reconsidering the endeavor. There must be other ways to accomplish what you intend to.”

Harry’s laugh was short. “It’s between convincing Snape and convincing Voldemort,” he said. “And you’re right, convincing Voldemort might be easier.”

Remus made a noise between amusement and horror. “He was unimpressed that you asked Kingsley to convince him,” he admitted. “I wasn’t going to pass along the message he requested, to ‘kindly piss off,’ but….”

Harry took the books on vows anyway, even though his was a different problem than what those were a solution for. “You won’t ask him, then?”

“No.”

“Pity,” Harry said lightly. He tried out a very shitty gambit: “Voldemort thought we were about even, in risking each other’s lives. Since it was Snape’s fault my parents are dead to begin with.”

Remus stared. Harry hoped he’d been right that Remus had already known, that Snape had shared some part of this with him. “Let’s not do this here,” he finally said, his tone a bit too deliberate. Leaving the books on a cart, he pulled Harry into a backroom. “So you hadn’t known.”

“No.” He’d been working at Occlumency, at keeping a grasp on his emotions this week, so he didn’t punch whoever was nearest anytime he thought of Snape. It kind of worked. “And finding out from Voldemort – “

“Was terrible, I’m sure.” Remus’s face was lined with worry; he stepped in so he could ask softly, “But are you alright? Really.” He looked like he wanted to hug Harry, but he didn’t.

He was finding that it was harder to hold himself together when faced with pity and kindness than when he was faced with anger or spite. He banished the tight feelings from his chest. “Yes. I mean… I’d rather know. But I’m tired of just trusting that Dumbledore made the right decision with him. And I don’t want to hear any more of his accusations, when he’s come closer to having me killed than I have him.”

Remus winced at this, and double-checked the door. “No need to allow eavesdropping to become a recursive problem,” he said with a small smile. “He did regret it when he learned it was your family Voldemort was targeting.”

“He _regretted_ that my mum died for me after all, so he couldn’t shag her with my dad out of the way.” Remus looked horrified at this, and Harry backtracked. “I’m sorry. They were your friends. Sorry.”

“So Voldemort told you that part as well,” Remus said. He looked desperately sad. “Harry, I think you may be – you _should_ be – angry at Severus for this. And at everyone who kept this from you, who told you that you should respect and trust him – including me – when you didn’t know….” He tempered his own feelings before continuing, “But I don’t think you should force him into a vow with it. Or certainly not… retaliate, in any fashion.”

It hadn’t even occurred to him. Retaliation. He didn’t need retaliation, upon Snape or anyone else. “I was going to insist on the vow,” he said. “It’s why Voldemort told me, for… leverage. As fucked up as that is,” he admitted.

“Mm.” Remus was frowning. “Be careful. He’ll have better – worse – motives than your happiness. Severus, as one of the only free Death Eaters right now, is one of his greatest liabilities. And irritants, I imagine,” he added with another tiny smile. “And if he can somehow gain access to Snape through you….”

“He couldn’t. It’d be one-sided, just keeping Snape alive.” He gave Remus a dry look. “And I can’t believe this is something I have to beg to do, by the way.”

“He really doesn’t want your protection,” Remus said.

“I don’t care. There’s no, like, opposite of a life debt, is there? That he owes me for nearly having me killed.”

A twitch of Remus’s lips. “If there were, then Voldemort would be correct that you and Severus were about even.”

Harry sighed. “Could you at least tell him I want a meeting?” he asked. “You don’t even have to advocate for me. Just tell him.”

“Harry – “

A moment of inspiration struck. “Tell him if he lets me cast a vow, we’ll never talk about any of this, ever.”

Remus let out a laugh in spite of himself. “Clever.”

“And….” He was torn between leaving it on this relatively light note, and making one last request. “And I’ve also wanted memories of my parents, from people who knew them. I’m picking up a Pensieve this weekend. Could I….”

“Yes. Of course.” Remus’s voice was soft. “Really, we should have offered such a thing to you years ago. Sirius could have…” And he broke off with a sigh. “But yes. I’ll work on it over the weekend.”

“Thanks, sir.” And he was letting them both out, taking the books on vows anyway, just in case. He didn’t mention that the first memory he’d be putting in the Pensieve was Voldemort’s. It wouldn’t help.

 

That evening Fawkes (whether Snape had inherited him personally or by office, Harry hadn’t asked) brought him an incredibly curt note, scheduling a meeting for tomorrow night in the Headmaster’s office. _Thanks, Remus._ So it’d been a good day, so he wasn’t even thinking about dreamless sleep before he fell asleep that night. And his dreams, the first ones he’d had since returning to Hogwarts, were awful.

The darkness around him was smothering; there was a cold floor beneath him. Death Eater masks gleamed above him, the only break in the darkness. “Do it,” a voice wheezed beyond his vision, and there was explosive pain as he was kicked in the face. His arms were pinned, bound, something –

“Again.” A boot connected with his jaw. He thought he heard his teeth crack.

“Again.”

The foremost mask turned back toward the voice. “This is enough,” he insisted, voice ragged. “It’s – “

“ _Crucio_.” And the spell didn’t hit Harry but the reluctant Death Eater, who stumbled and fell forwards. “Dolohov,” the voice said, and then there was another sharp blow to the side of Harry’s head, and he woke up gasping for air. He threw the blankets off even though he was shivering.

It wasn’t a scene he could place. The one commanding the Death Eaters wasn’t Voldemort. Some lieutenant, but he had been out of Harry’s sight. If it was out of Voldemort’s memories… it could be anything, really. Any number of Muggles and Muggleborns he’d tortured. And killed? Harry wondered. The victim he’d been inhabiting… he could say nothing of who he was in that moment. They certainly weren’t invested in keeping him alive.

So Voldemort had been insistent on dreamless sleep, to save him from memories like that. He kept the bottle on his bedside table, and reached for it now. Lavender had said it could be habit-forming; perhaps especially vivid dreams were a symptom of withdrawal. He drank from the bottle. There wasn’t enough information to ask Voldemort what he’d been watching, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know anyway. He stared into the cool dark of his room for a long time.

 

 _Thursday, June 25._ The next night they convened at the Headmaster’s office – not Snape’s, but Dumbledore’s. The portraits normally spent their time in other frames, in more lively parts of the castle, but they were all present now. Remus had come – the mediator’s mediator, Harry thought with affection – and Tonks, to recreate the same vow he’d made with the Aurors. Snape was the last to arrive, letting himself in silently. They didn’t congregate around the desk, but at a coffee table encircled by plush chairs. He sat across from Harry stiffly but kept his gaze on Remus.

Tonks had brought a copy of the first vow, the one that Voldemort and Moody had drafted originally. “It’s tricky,” Tonks said, handing off a copy to each of them, “because the conditions aren’t anything to do with Harry. You may never even know the contract’s been breached, before you….”

“Drop dead,” Harry supplied. “Well, I wouldn’t know much of anything at that point.”

Tonks grinned in spite of herself. “Depending on the, uh, attempted spell, there might be enough magic in this vow to save Severus’s life. But we anticipate that in greater part, just the existence of this vow will be a deterrent and protection.”

“Which means the Dark Lord requires these conditions,” Snape said. “Not Potter.”

“I’ll bring them,” Harry said. It was weird, addressing Snape directly after the time they’d avoided each other. “But he knows I wanted this.”

Snape’s eyebrows went up. “Does he?”

He knew it was strange and unexpected and probably suspicious, from a certain angle. “He just asked that I tell him who was under my protection right now. And told me my soul could only support a couple vows at a time.”

“That’s correct.” A pause. “And what has he requested in return?”

“Nothing.”

Snape snorted. “It’s never _nothing_.” On either side of him, both Remus and Tonks looked similarly doubtful.

“Then it’s my… loyalty? His credibility? Both?” Harry shrugged. “He doesn’t _want_ this to happen. The first time, to protect the Aurors, I only told him after Moody and I had already cast it. But he wants to be Minister, and he can’t start on it until all the Death Eaters are dealt with, right? And this is a rather easier way of letting you go.” He shrugged again. “That could be wrong. I’m only guessing. But even if I’ve got the motive wrong, it’ll still work.”

A stretch of silence. Finally: “Your hand, Mr. Potter.” Snape held out his left, the sleeve falling back so the Dark Mark was partially revealed. Harry grasped his hand, slender and clammy. Tonks slid parchment underneath, so as she began casting, ink dripped from the ribbon that bound their touch, forming the words of the new contract below. Harry did his best to keep his grip strong and steady.

And when she’d finished, Harry began to pull away, but Snape held on tightly. “Wait,” he muttered, as Remus dabbed at the ink. Only when it was properly dry could they let go. Harry resisted the impulse to wipe his hand on his robes.

They said nothing. Certainly not _thank you_ , because it was little better than obligation from either of them. Remus looked stronger tonight, or otherwise Snape more frail, as he put a broad arm across Snape’s shoulders. Maybe it was the setting. None of them much liked being in Dumbledore’s office.

A quiet voice, just before he’d followed Tonks out: “You’ve done a very good thing, Harry.”

He looked back at Dumbledore’s portrait. “Thank you, sir,” he said. “But it was only as much as I had to do.” He doused the candles.

 

Another night in which he’d forgotten to take dreamless sleep, another night of horrible recollection. “My Lord,” someone behind him had breathed. The victim he inhabited this time was kneeling, hands bound behind his neck and head bowed. A shocking curse on the expanse of his back, vicious, until he thought his heart had stopped, the pain in his chest was so severe. There hadn’t been spells last time, Harry noted somewhere in the back of his mind, but for the Crucio upon the reluctant Death Eater. He tried looking back, tried pulling his hands away, and he couldn’t. It was somewhere outside, precarious, a high rooftop or open tower somewhere. It looked nearly like the Astronomy Tower, but why would he dream of the Astronomy Tower. A shock now to the base of his skull, making his vision wobble until he was nauseated, making him blind temporarily. Then, familiarly by now, a sharp kick to the head with a heavy boot, steel-toed. His ears rang. Something had cracked.

If one could black out within a dream, then Harry did. And then he was dreaming of someone pulling his head back and draining a bottle into his mouth. A healing potion, clearing his head, restoring his vision. Only for another go. “Tell us about Potter,” a voice behind him sneered as he was shoved over, heavy boot put on the base of his skull as though ready to simply crush him. “Tell us exactly how you’ll save him from this.”

“No,” Harry tried to say. He couldn’t let this person die on his behalf – but it was a memory, it was a dream. He couldn’t bear hearing his name in the torturer’s mouth anyway. And then –something like a shock, a shove, one that pushed him out of sleep entirely. Had it been death? Had the victim died when Harry awoke? He was shaking. He wrenched the covers off.

The journal. Voldemort said he didn’t dream but he was always attuned to the inside of Harry’s mind. He’d have known, known Harry was… reliving his nights of torture or something. Why now though, why now. He wiped his sweating hands on his sheets before taking the journal from his bedside table. He’d ask what he had seen – he wanted to know, even if it wouldn’t help – and he’d apologized for polluting Voldemort with these feelings. If only he’d been better about taking the potion. His Occlumency during the day was good, but at night he was clearly a disaster. He ached with regret, and flipped open the journal.

Blank. It had been awhile since they’d had anything to share. But as he was reaching for a quill, his stomach dropped. Writing was appearing on the page. In a different hand. In English. _You need to take your dreamless sleep._

He clapped a hand over his mouth so he didn’t cry out. “What the fuck, what the fuck,” he muttered between his fingers. His heart hammered against his ribs. He slammed the journal shut – whoever had the other one couldn’t have known he was reading it at that moment, but now he couldn’t write back, couldn’t write to Voldemort and ask what was happening. And he sure as hell wasn’t going to sleep. Fueled by late night terror and too much adrenaline, he dressed in a hurry.

He had his traveling cloak over his shoulders before he remembered the Aurors had sealed him in. Goddammit. Wards, it was always wards. He felt around the edges of the door for threads poking through. Most of the security was on the other side of the door, but if he could _melt_ enough of it…. Forcing magic into the stray ends, he pulled on them until he felt them snap. He let himself out.

To the Headmaster’s office, for the Floo. “Candle Quay,” he said as he stepped into the flames, and he was stepping out into the Ministry-owned shack on the North Sea. He had to detach a floating Lumos beside him to light the wet streets, but the same boat they’d taken to Azkaban was waiting in the water. It departed as soon as he’d raised his wand.

The wait, the time, was the worst of it. He pulled out the journal again. Finding that Parselscript didn’t have anything quite so idiomatic as _What the fuck_ , and more’s the pity, he instead wrote, **_What happened?_** Nothing. Nothing, but at least he could feel the tense weight of Voldemort’s soul on his own.

He was nearly to shore, embarrassingly, when he realized that those hadn’t been dreams, hadn’t been memories at all.

His Patronus was allowed to accompany him to the front door, at least, so they ran together up the rocky path from the shore. But there was a sickness deep within him that even his Patronus couldn’t touch. “Thanks,” he muttered as he reached the prison, and it vanished. And before he could pull open the heavy iron door, it opened from the other side.

He was staring at Scrimgeour. Why, why the _hell_ would the Minister be here at what must be nearly two in the morning. “They’re torturing him,” he said flatly, pushing past Scrimgeour. “Why aren’t you doing anything about it?” He was running through the cold and cavernous entry hall, nearly to the tower stairs. An unpleasant thought. He raised his voice and let his accusation echo off the stone: “Or were you part of it, Minister? I never saw their faces. What _are_ you doing here?” he demanded, but he was already a few steps up the staircase, ready to run without waiting to hear the answer.

“Harry.” Scrimgeour’s voice was commanding, stopping him in his tracks. “I cannot possibly overtake you.” He approached slowly, his limp deep in this cold wet atmosphere. Harry was shaking with adrenaline, his fingers curled against the wall for stability. “They have been torturing him. If that’s the word you prefer,” Scrimgeour said when they were closer, when he didn’t have to raise his voice. “I will have nothing to do with it. But please… give him the dignity of not being seen like this.”

“It’s a little late for that.” He was still furious but caught at the foot of the stairs. When Scrimgeour reached him, he dropped a hand on Harry’s shoulder, conjuring a bench that protruded from the stone wall and pulling them both seated. His grip was very tight. “I already – I thought they were just nightmares.” He felt curious Dementors congregating behind him in the stairwell. “I need to see him,” he said, half-turning so it was addressed more to them than to Scrimgeour. A pulse of an emotion thrummed back inside him, something like _patience._

“You may,” Scrimgeour said, “though it might be awhile before he’s ready for guests. I’m happy to wait with you. I’ll explain what I can.”

He was boiling inside with anxious fury. “I should wait patiently while they’re torturing him?” he demanded.

“No,” Scrimgeour said. “That part has come to an end, tonight. You should wait patiently while they are healing him. Please, give him this dignity.”

He felt sick. He settled against the cold bench, to wait for his Dementor escort.

“You came alone,” Scrimgeour noted.

“I knew the way. What – who’s doing this? And how can you know about it and not stop it?” He didn’t want to sit here with Scrimgeour, but Dementors would block his way up until the appropriate time. It was the shittiest experience of waiting. And he couldn’t feel anything – normally he could feel more of Voldemort, certainly goddamn _torture_. He couldn’t be dead.

“I believe the other parties have a right to privacy – “

“ _Fuck_ privacy,” Harry said viciously. “They’re killing him.”

“They’re not.” He loosened his grip, as though making an effort to transition from warning to comforting. Twat. “And might I recommend – if Voldemort can feel everything that you feel, then you’re doing him no favors by being angry. He was warned to keep his Occlumency in check tonight. Apparently he’d been letting it slip. Though I don’t believe he intended for you to see anything you saw.”

Deep breath. Counting backward from a hundred. “It was you,” he said, “who wrote that I should take the dreamless sleep.” Of course he’d seen that handwriting before, all over the negotiations and bills that Voldemort and Scrimgeour would write together.

“Yes. He asked me to.”

That shove that had awoken him, had been Voldemort realizing. Keeping Harry out of his head, away from this, as best as he could. “What the fuck,” he muttered. “If you’re just there _watching_ , then that’s even sicker than actually beating him.” He knew he was being profoundly disrespectful but didn’t care.

“I have less jurisdiction here than one might expect,” Scrimgeour said quietly. “I came out tonight to ensure they didn’t kill him. And to review the medical attention he’d receive afterward. It’s really quite good,” he added as though that were meant to cheer Harry.

“Yes, _well done_.”

Scrimgeour gave him a sidelong look, the sort Harry recognized from their time in the safehouse as the politic distance with which he’d treat Voldemort. “A great many wixes think he should be killed, you know. _Killed_ , not given the Dementor’s Kiss. I get a large stack of letters each day asking why I haven’t killed this monster yet, the wizard who terrorized our world for _decades_.”

Was he meant to be sympathetic to this? “And what do you write back?”

“That he’s useful. And that we need peace, for a time.” Scrimgeour lifted one shoulder in a tired shrug. “And it’s true enough. But it leaves many of my constituents unhappy. Voldemort and I agree… this is a sort of catharsis. The families of the wixes he’s killed or tortured have been especially persistent. And, I believe, ultimately satisfied.”

Harry’s stomach twisted. “You’re inviting people out here as bloody _entertainment_?”

“ _Shh_ ,” Scrimgeour chided. His hand was still on Harry’s shoulder. Wanker. “No. We’d arrange visitation, for the ones who want it. They are only ever spectators – that’s all they care to be, I believe. But Potter, the abuse would happen regardless. There might as well be – forgive me – a benefit to it.”

Sick, this was sick. He was going to be sick. He stared at the ground, thinking. “It is the Death Eaters, then,” he put together. “If everyone else will only _watch_. I saw the masks – it’s why I thought it was only a memory of Voldemort’s, at first. But you make them – “

“The guards make them,” Scrimgeour interjected.

Harry shot him a deeply unimpressed look. “The guards make the Death Eaters torture Voldemort. To… prove something? Prove their innocence?”

“Goodness, no.” And Scrimgeour sounded mildly amused at this, goddamn him. “The continued cohesion of the Death Eaters within the prison would be… problematic, of course. Voldemort’s presence would particularly foment rebellion, or dedication, or violence. The guards do what they can to break down such loyalties.” A pause. “The masks, he thought, would look like poetic justice to the witnesses he’s deemed _thick_. A bit of showmanship on his part.”

“This is hideous,” Harry muttered.

“You see how such an exercise might put citizens’ minds at ease, concerning the possibility of the Death Eaters reunited until Voldemort at some point. Of course, the most fanatic and influential among them, we thought it wise to keep them elsewhere.”

“Voldemort said that you’re keeping the ones who’d be an embarrassment to the Ministry under house arrest instead.”

“Voldemort has made you prematurely cynical.” Sighing, he continued, “If this doesn’t look like justice to you, it’s because you have a fairly… strenuous idea of the term. But Voldemort has become quite pragmatic these days.”

“You can’t tell me he’s _agreed_ to this.”

“No. He’s _resigned_ to it. We knew that Dementors have little effect on him. That the guards would create a performance of conquest and submission some other way.”

“He didn’t want human guards,” Harry recalled. “He said it was because humans are cruel, and Dementors are predictable.”

“He was correct.”

“You still insisted on them.”

A weary look. “If you’d like for this to simply be my fault… it is the Minister’s job to absorb blame for a great many things. But you must recognize at least some of the instances in which I’ve made unilateral, unpopular decisions about you and Voldemort, for both of your sakes.” A corner of his mouth curved up. “The Aurors department is very frustrated with me, for one. You and I both seem to have exhausted our political capital on Voldemort’s behalf.”

“But why. Why would you do that, why would you care?” he asked Scrimgeour once again.

Another tiny shrug. “I must give you the same answer I give all my constituents: because he’s useful.”

Harry’s adrenaline had gone, so this only annoyed rather than infuriated him. He was suddenly exhausted. “You know less than you think you do about destroying him,” he said with scorn.

A look of surprise from Scrimgeour. “I don’t intend to _destroy_ him,” he said. “Goodness, my machinations would be so much simpler if that were all I wanted.”

“What, then. Manipulate him, coerce him?”

A small smile. “Dear boy – “

“I am neither,” Harry snapped.

“Mr. Potter. I’m afraid we must still keep some secrets from each other. Ah.” A cold clamminess marked the approach of a Dementor. Using Harry’s shoulder as leverage, Scrimgeour got to his feet first. (And Harry would’ve given him a hand, and it made him vaguely resentful that Scrimgeour didn’t trust him to. He wasn’t a complete prick, not even to the Minister.) “It seems that you’re summoned,” he said. “Will you be able to find your way home from here, afterward?”

“Yes. You should go.”

Scrimgeour frowned just a bit. “When you return to Hogwarts, do check in with Aurors Tonks and Bragg. Apologize to them profusely. I’m sure they know you’re here – but I’ll inform them anyway.”

“I will. Thanks, sir.” He was already a few steps up the staircase.

“And Harry?”

He tamped down his impatience. “Yes?”

“Just this time, your Patronus should accompany you.” He looked to the Dementors hovering behind Harry. “At my request.”

It wasn’t a bad thought; he was already reaching for his wand. “Why?” he still asked.

“It may do you both some good.” He said the words lightly. Ugh. “Goodnight, Mr. Potter.”

“Goodnight.” And his Patronus took a few tries, and perhaps didn’t shine as brightly as usual, but it was here and it was leading him through the congregated Dementors on the stairs, up the winding path to the highest tower. He was filled with dread and he couldn’t even say whether it was his own or Voldemort’s.

Voldemort’s, definitely Voldemort’s, because it crescendoed when he knocked on the door, finally. His Patronus pawed at the ground, lighting up the stairwell with a brilliant blue glow. The door opened.

Voldemort looked… fine. He looked probably better than Harry did. “Harry,” he said, very softly, and something broke within him.

He didn’t want to touch Voldemort yet, didn’t know if any sort of contact would be accepted. “Can my Patronus come in?”

Voldemort looked past his shoulder at the buck. “Yes.” And he held the door for them both.

They ended up on the bed, again. The Patronus settled in a corner, casting the room in a soft glow. “I’m so sorry.” He took a shaky breath. “I thought they were dreams – or memories – _god_.” And his voice cracked, and Voldemort was undressing them both so more of their skin touched, so magic pulsed between them, because his magic was so weak right now, the most obvious lasting effect of the night. He lay his hands on Voldemort’s legs, pushing all his magic in, wishing he could drain himself. “How long – ?”

“Oh, since the beginning.” Voldemort sounded positively casual. Harry made a choking noise. He’d been here almost two weeks now. Two weeks of being abused. “The old, influential families – the ones without Death Eaters, generally, but even some with – are quite upset I’m still alive. To see me beaten” (he said it so much more steadily than Harry could) “is only a few hours of my life. It is cathartic for them. And then they shall… move on, politically.” He raised his eyebrows. “You see, the families with seats in the Wizengamot, I need them. It’s really quite sensible.”

“It’s sick,” Harry muttered. Hearing his own sulkiness, he drew back. “Sorry,” he said. “You don’t need to, whatever, deal with me as well tonight.”

Voldemort pulled them both backwards. Harry used enough magic to expand the bed outward; it blocked the door and he’d have to put it back, but for now he slipped beside him. “Scrimgeour told me… a lot,” he said, in case it’d save Voldemort the explanation. “You can’t…. It isn’t right. He seems more _resigned_ to it than he says you are.” He said the words as a prickly thing.

“Yes.” They were both on their backs, staring at the ceiling and not each other, because it was easier to speak this way. “You see how much it effects, in terms of justice. For the Death Eaters as well. Public opinion might have moved on from Kissing them as well, in involving them now.” A queer half-smile on his lips. “That they think living in fear of me is the crueler option. And they do want the crueler option. But if they are saved from the Dementor’s Kiss, I know that’s very important to you.” And his tone was light, mocking.

“I’ll find whoever’s asking for this. Influential wixen families who hate you.” His stomach clenched. “Enough of them that it’s happened for nearly _two weeks straight._ ”

“Oh, some of them return.”

“ _Fuck_ these people,” Harry exploded. “Don’t they see they’re not making the world any better, not they even _want_ to. But when they’re getting off on torture, it makes them no better than….”

“Than me, yes,” Voldemort finished his sentence for him. “Do you see, though, the advantages of that? To implicate _everyone_ in the violence. To humanize me or dehumanize them all. When I run for Minister, now these people will think that I was only as drawn to cruelty and violence as they themselves were. And _they_ are good people, good citizens.” He sounded perversely proud of this maneuver. “Thus, so perhaps am I.”

“What, are you running on the platform that we’re all fucking terrible and cruel?”

A hum of amusement. “You know, I should.”

“I’m not letting this happen,” he said firmly. “I’ll talk to them. I’ll come stay with you every night. And I won’t take dreamless sleep before, to pretend this _isn’t happening_.” His voice shot high and hysterical at the last few words, and his anger was back in place, burning inside.

“No. Listen.” Voldemort wrenched him sideways, so their faces were inches apart. (If he had a nose they’d be touching, was the absurd thought that flitted through Harry’s mind.) “You don’t intend to, but you’ll make it worse. Yesterday… you must have seen yesterday? It’s inexact, what I can tell of your consciousness.”

“Was that the time when they kicked your teeth in?” Harry asked coldly, because his anger just had nowhere to _go_.

Voldemort hummed in a mollifying way and let the obvious answer, _No, that’s every time_ , pass. “I only realized later that you’d witnessed it. Why it hurt so much worse than usual. Because it was _recursive_. Experiencing you, experiencing me, being beaten.”

“Oh god,” Harry whispered. “I’m sorry.”

Voldemort shook it off. “Like Legilimency during sex, but much worse,” he said dryly. “Tonight… we stopped, so Scrimgeour could tell you to take dreamless sleep.”

“I recognized his handwriting.”

“Well, it looked like _mercy_. And like weakness. They redoubled their efforts.” His chest rose and fell in a sigh. “I’m not protecting you for protection’s sake. You shouldn’t find it patronizing.”

“I made it all worse.” His voice was tiny.

“Well.”

“Just say it.”

“You have made it all worse,” Voldemort agreed. “Though it was helpful tonight, that you waited. We assumed you’d try to throw yourself in the midst of things again, as the savior.” A moment. “Like the way you’d tried to save your godfather.”

This entire conversation already felt like a knife between his ribs, and that was the twist of it. “I was going to,” he said. “I’m sure the Dementors would have stopped me. But Scrimgeour told me to wait. He stayed, actually.”

“Good,” Voldemort said. “Harry… you can’t see me like that. It won’t help. And I fear that it will corrupt you. If you come, you’ll wait. And you can’t skip the dreamless sleep. They waited until you would be asleep, because I find the contact of our consciousnesses more predictable then. And they take my magic,” he said flatly, “first off. So you need to maintain your Occlumency, even if I’m unable to.”

“But I won’t pretend – “

“You’ll pretend nothing,” Voldemort cut him off. “I’ll demystify it for you. You will know that abuse happen, most nights, generally with an audience of upstanding citizens but occasionally with only the guards and the Death Eaters. It is always the Death Eaters, I suppose to further implicate them.” He’d fallen into a cadence that was not quite calm, but flat. “There are curses that drain magic, of course, but they typically prefer to just bleed me. Partial healings are administered, to prolong things. And they never allow me to leave with scars or bruises. A shame, as this body is so young as to be unblemished, and I’d rather bear some marks of what it’s been through.” A breath: “And you didn’t wish me a happy birthday. Four years, yesterday.”

Four years since the graveyard, since Voldemort had killed Cedric, since being – Harry had always thought of himself as – the cause of Voldemort’s return. He hardly found his voice, and it was inappropriately sticky with grief when he muttered, “Happy birthday, then.”

“Thank you.” Voldemort continued: “After they’ve taken my magic, it generally proceeds in the same way. More physical abuse than magical, but really what the spectators ask for….”

“They fucking take _requests_?” He was going to throw up. He’d turned away from Voldemort, listening with his back turned to spare them both.

“Azkaban guards aren’t a creative or clever lot, really. _Harry_ ,” he snapped suddenly. Harry jumped. “You need to keep your Occlumency in place. What is the point of recounting this otherwise?”

Oh. _Shit_. “Sorry. Give me a second.” Deep breath. His Patronus was still present in the corner. It looked as if it were asleep; and he focused on the warm safe glow. Enough to sustain him. He rolled back over to face Voldemort, gaze impassive. “And then what?”

Voldemort was watching him. He’d made it into a bloody test, a feat of endurance. _Two for flinching_. “The physical abuse, you witnessed. There might be a pipe involved, or a plank, or a hammer…. One night Dolohov broke each of my fingers in turn. One of the witnesses said that it was to ensure I’d never write legislation again. The magical abuse… well, like the masks, it underscores whatever sense of poetic justice they look for, that they use all of my own spells. The ones I created, and the ones I taught them. I had favored the ones that begin as physical torture, but carry the psychological trauma of making its victims believe they are dying. A shock and chest pain as though we’d stopped their heart,” he said, and Harry nodded minutely that he’d seen that one. “Choking and nausea as though they’d inhaled poison gas. Or the pain and sensation of a limb being crushed, even when they could see it unharmed. Some of them would swear that it was their unbroken bodies that were the delusion.” He gave Harry a moment; Harry only looked back, flinty. “I haven’t experienced them before. I am… less impervious to my own spells than anticipated.”

Of course all of his torture would be about gazing into the abyss of death. Of course such a thing would burrow into… whatever he had in place of a soul. “You thought you’d die like your victims had died,” Harry said. A jolt in his consciousness that didn’t belong to him – Voldemort, surprised at Harry’s steadfastness.

“Yes. But of course they’d never kill me. My death,” and Harry could feel him gag on this word, “would be too valuable in securing other political opportunities in the future. This is all only for sport.”

The only way he could avoid being devastated was being angry instead. “Like the Muggles you tortured? Were they for sport?”

“They were.” And it’d become a more equitable competition now, who would break first, whose disruptions rocked them both. “But I had always been more invested in torturing the blood traitors. They must realize just how endangered they are. They would live, though. The ones who died gave me no options otherwise. Perhaps some of them didn’t _deserve_ to die, but they _had_ to nevertheless.”

They were sitting up now, each wrapped in a blanket. Harry’s hands were still on Voldemort’s legs. He thought he could hear his heart thudding in this small still room. “Do _you_ deserve to die?”

A flurry of emotions as Voldemort’s Occlumency broke, faster than he could anticipate or process. But his voice was steady when he answered, “Yes.”

It probably hurt Harry worse, honestly. Looking away, he pushed all his feelings out. They only hurt. Only hurt himself, only hurt Voldemort inasmuch as he could be hurt. Apparently more than either of them thought. Only got Cedric killed with his well-meaning stupidity, only put his classmates and most of the Order in stupid, stupid danger when he’d rushed the Ministry for Sirius. Only put everyone in his entire life in danger now, only in exchange for a _guiltless fuck_. It wasn’t worth it, wasn’t worth selling the whole world and losing his own soul for a dying psychopath.

He was rapidly untangling himself from the blankets, fastening his traveling cloak around his throat. Voldemort’s magic was restored and he wasn’t responsible for staying any longer than that. He’d said nothing, didn’t know what of this had been conveyed through Legilimency or their emotional connection. “I’ve got to go,” he muttered as he reached the door.

“Your Patronus.”

He half-turned back. His stag still slept in the corner of the cell. “Oh. Sorry.” He moved to wake it.

“No, it’s – “ Voldemort was looking between them with interest. “You wouldn’t be able to maintain it, if you were in fact as… cynical as you might feel right now. I’ve never seen a Patronus sustained for so long, actually.”

He shrugged, a little too emotionally exhausted to care right now. “I’m just good at it. So?”

“No, you’re just _good_ ,” Voldemort corrected. “Perhaps you don’t see what an asset that is.” A shadow of a smile. “I wondered why the Minister would send you along with it.”

Harry was no longer leaving, but stood uncertainly in the middle of the cell. His Patronus still slept. Its presence warmed the cold space. “Dumbledore would tell me how important it was that my mother loved me, and that she’d sacrificed herself for me. But the people I’ve cared about, I’ve only gotten killed. Or maybe I’ve got to die for it to do any good?” His tone was biting. Voldemort’s eyebrows went up.

“Maybe,” he agreed. “But….” A sigh. “I made a decision a very long time ago not to pursue such magics, the ones based in love and vulnerability. I recommend your decision be different.”

“Oh. But, then I should go. If you don’t want to _corrupt_ me, that is. I can’t….”

“You are either especially steadfast or especially protected. Likely both.” Voldemort studied his face. “I don’t understand what you’re feeling right now,” he said slowly, “and it is hardly thinkable that I could offer any sort of consolation.”

It probably hurt him most in the moments when they faced Voldemort’s… inhumanity. Psychopathy. Brokenness. Whatever it could be called. He wanted better for him. “I wouldn’t ask you to. I know,” he muttered, because naming this brokenness with any specificity seemed unkind. They just wouldn’t name it, if they didn’t have to.

But Voldemort went on. “I can, however, tell you what I understand of love, as a virtue. In terms of magic,” he added, because Harry hadn’t _meant_ for his expression to be dubious, honestly, and he felt terrible that it happened anyway. “It will help.”

“You haven’t got to do this,” Harry mumbled, but he let himself be pulled back into bed.

A breath, for composure. “There are other ways to fracture a soul than through murder, of course. Less dramatic ones, but.” They were touching again, pressed together along their side to share their magic, so Harry felt Voldemort shrug. “So when you can’t witness my abuse because it will corrupt you, that’s what I meant. I’d rather you didn’t witness… not violence per se, but _cruelty_. It will break you.” A pause. “Much of the cruelty to which I exposed others – not just opponents, but the Death Eaters themselves – was focused on neutralizing them as threats. It erodes one’s capacity for magic.”

“You think I’m powerful because I’m innocent.” He didn’t mean it to be patronizing, but.

A faint look of surprise. “You’re hardly innocent,” he corrected. “You are powerful because you aren’t cynical. I won’t let you become cynical.”

“Oh.” He was transfiguring the blankets into softer, warmer ones, pulling them across their shoulders. He wasn’t really looking at Voldemort, he could just feel how tired and frail and vulnerable he was. He couldn’t tell which of them was unnerved by this.

“For a very long time, I thought of cynicism as the antidote to weakness. That nobody could hurt you if you already expected the worst from them.” He pulled them lying down curled around each other, anticipating sleep after the exhaustion of the night. Voldemort’s mouth was right above his ear; his voice was impossibly soft. “I thought my mother was a fool for dying of what looked like grief. That she’d invested her trust and love in terrible people, and that she’d earned the shameful death that came to her.”

“I’m sorry,” Harry murmured, because it was a horrible idea to carry around.

“But recently I’ve begun to see cynicism and grief as… complementary pain, not opposites. That cynicism is its own sort of weakness, to be so affected by the world before the world has even happened.” A slight curve of his lips. “I would rather not appear so weak. So… broken.”

It hurt like being stabbed. “Vol....” He moved to turn over, but Voldemort caught him by the shoulder hard.

“You may only listen,” he said. It might be too much to watch him in this moment. “Though you may drop your Occlumency,” he added. “It’s not necessary anymore.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.” And when he relaxed his control, it hurt them both a bit, but in a good way. Voldemort continued: “Invulnerability and vulnerability grant access to different types of magic. There are debates to be had – theoretical ones, not moral ones – about which access has more of an advantage. That you can’t – and shouldn’t – cast the Unforgivables. That I can create a Horcrux but not a Patronus.”

“You can’t?” he asked, surprised. It was a difficult spell, but his faith in Voldemort’s talent was boundless.

“May I borrow your wand?”

“Yes. Not if it’ll hurt you.”

“Mm. I’m not actually certain.” He took Harry’s wand. “Expecto Patronum!”

A burst of magic, hot but undefined, lit the room. Then a hiss of shock and pain as it rebounded, surging back into Voldemort’s hand. It shot up his arm, darkening his capillaries, so he was marked with a jagged fractal pattern from fingertips to his shoulder. Harry’s Patronus had awoken with a start, and was now watching silently.

“Oh my god.” And Harry was reaching for his wand, steadying his mind enough to cast a healing spell.

“Leave it,” Voldemort said, even as he handed back his wand. “It doesn’t hurt. And as I said, I’d prefer to be marked. That the guards have healers on hand is the most disingenuous part of their abuse.”

Harry wanted to argue. He didn’t argue.

Voldemort went on: “Patronus aside, there are questions of to what extent vulnerability or invulnerability better benefits the strength, capacity, or stability of one’s magic. Love has only ever seemed like a weakness – that you people would devote so much of your time and your _selves_ being concerned about each other.”

Saying it like that, it sounded absurd. He had to laugh, a tiny bit. “I don’t know why, either.”

“You ask if you must die to effect the strength of sacrificial magic. And it seems that you wouldn’t – that the sacrifices of love and being loved in themselves confer a sort of power. Not so great as the power for which I’ve exchanged my soul, but… something,” he sighed. “Something I hadn’t seen or anticipated before.”

“So, do you regret it?”

A noise of scorn. “Will your next question be whether I feel remorse?”

“What?” Harry half-glanced back. “No. Maybe? Should I ask that?”

“Ah.” Voldemort settled beside him. “That is the dominant theory about magic that injures the soul, that the damage is alleviated with remorse. I find it… maudlin.”

He couldn’t help it; he found Voldemort’s indignation funny. “You heard it from Dumbledore, then.”

“Of course,” he sighed. And he might have found his own resentment a bit funny too.

“But you want the sort of magic you get from love, now.”

“The sort of strength and capacity specifically, but yes.”

“Does it matter that I love you? Because I do.” It came to him easily. He wanted it to be a normal thing to say. He realized he was likely the first in Voldemort’s life.

Voldemort almost certainly felt the throb of sadness that accompanied that thought, and didn’t comment on it. “It does,” he said. “I had wondered why…. A Horcrux is a sort of vessel,” he backtracked, beginning again in a didactic tone. “And a reserve of magic. But I’d found I was deriving more power from your presence than I would the Horcruces contained by objects. That your emotional investment amplified my magic. You tried explaining love once as a circumstance of keeping another soul safe within oneself, and… that might be truer than either of us realized, at the time.”

“It was a metaphor,” Harry protested.

“But it wasn’t.” A moment’s pause. “But I don’t understand… if such a thing is true, then the most beloved wix should be the most powerful one. I don’t mean that in an abstract or political way,” he pre-empted Harry’s thought, “but a literal one. The most beloved wix should have the greatest capacity for magic. I assume this is true; but the ones who don’t take advantage of their strength are exercising _another_ sort of sacrifice, that in turn makes them even stronger. It is unfair, really.”

“Or they don’t know. Or they don’t want anything, I don’t know, grand.”

“Yes. Why anyone would forego the chance to be powerful….” He shrugged. “In any case, I was unaware of this magic until… you. I would like to benefit from it. Which, I suppose, misses the point,” he added. “I’ve begun to suspect, as well, that being hated is as enervating as being loved is strengthening.”

“Shit,” Harry said.

“Quite.”

“But that can’t be right,” he frowned. “Or else every dark wizard would fail.”

“Well, they all do, eventually,” Voldemort said, as though he considered that a character flaw. “But loyalty of our followers may have provided the same strength. And you forget just how steadfast most of the population’s indifference truly is.” Harry hummed in some amusement. “I have no delusions that I should be _beloved_ ,” and he said it as a distasteful word. “And I would never appeal to the populace as they’d prefer, in the simple and sentimental ways. But just keeping you around… accomplishes a great deal. You carry such a small fraction of my soul,” he said with a bit of a sigh. “But it always feels so much more stable, in your presence or when you’ve shared your magic.”

The glow of magic between them now was so strong, he couldn’t even feel its boundaries. “Of course.”

“But as part of this… endeavor, I need my Horcruces. I’d like to be able to re-absorb them. They’ve grown apart from me for so long – I assume they will each be a significant infusion of magic.”

“I know. I’ll try to bring them.”

But Voldemort had more: “And I’d like you to retain yours. As the only extant Horcrux of mine. At least for a time.”

It wasn’t a bad request, but. “Why?”

“Because our world only works if I have an obvious stake in keeping you alive. And I can’t love you yet.”

His insides were melting with pity. “You haven’t got to – “

“No. Listen. I _can’t_ love you yet. I’d like to… _try_ , at least.” And he sounded so frail, forcing those words out. “Presumably reciprocated love carries more power than unreciprocated. But within the next year… the abuse will be much more tolerable if I am invulnerable emotionally. If I remain inhuman.”

It hurt so much. “I hate this,” he said quietly.

“That is the negotiation,” Voldemort said. “That love is proportionate to the ability to feel pain. Another reason you may not witness the abuse,” he said. “I fear it would become unbearable.”

The idea horrified him. “Does it hurt now?” Already he was trying to pull away.

Voldemort held him down. “I prefer it,” he said. “And I deserve it.”

“Don’t.”

“Oh, yes.” He said it with grim relish. “But that is irrelevant. What _is_ relevant is whether you’ll consent to my greed, in keeping you around for a year, in order to benefit from your love without returning it.”

It was unromantic, it was a transaction, but was strangely thoughtful and generous otherwise. “Of course,” he said.

“And, even if it’s possible to rescind or reclaim Horcruces, you’ll keep yours for the year. As a perverse sort of commitment.”

It was late (late enough to be early, really) and they were both a bit punch drunk, so Harry suddenly adored the absurdity of this. “Couldn’t you have just given me a ring.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

A poke of Legilimency and a flare of understanding. “Oh. No, wedding rings are an abhorrent Muggle tradition,” he said. “And also I’m not proposing to you.”

“Good. Of course I’ll keep your Horcrux safe.” He rolled over, tucking his head below Voldemort’s chin, placing a sucking kiss at the hollow of his throat.

“Thank you.”

And even as Harry finally dropped off to sleep, he could feel that Voldemort lay awake, full of loud and complex worries.

 

 _Friday, June 26._ He left Azkaban mid-morning Friday. He’d see Voldemort at Cornwall over the weekend, but surrendering him to the prison until that time was… shit. It was all shit. He offered to leave his Patronus, but it would only evaporate, probably before he was off the island.

They didn’t talk about love anymore. Nevermind, since neither of them was exactly an expert at it.

He knew returning to Hogwarts would probably find him in the most trouble he’d ever been in. He wondered if they could give faculty members detention.

When he took the Floo back from Candle Quay to Dumbledore’s office, the first thing he saw was a flash of Tonks’s hair. Bracing himself, he stepped out.

She’d been sitting behind Dumbledore’s desk – just sitting there. So when he finally got back, she looked at him silently and wearily, raising her wand to summon Bragg. “Just wait,” she said, when he began making excuses for himself.

Not just Bragg, but McGonagall, Snape, and Moody as well, all wearing the same drawn expression. And they were all so angry at him that none of them could decide who would yell at him first. “Sit down,” McGonagall said finally, gesturing to the low table where he’d made a vow with Snape last night. ( _Was it only last night_?) And he did, but they were all too agitated to sit themselves, so ended up hovering over him really. It was unnerving. “What – “ she began, but broke off, her nostrils flaring.

“I can explain,” Harry offered to the room. “But I haven’t got to.”

An awful silence. “Please,” Snape finally said.

“They were torturing him,” Harry said, and his anger and sadness once more emerged explosively. “They’ve _been_ torturing him, with the Wizengamot for an audience. I – well, it’s not a dream if it’s really happening,” he said with a bitter laugh. “But I saw it, last night. I didn’t know what it meant, at first, I just knew something was wrong.” He looked around at their unsurprised expressions. “You knew,” he said flatly. “You all know he’s being fucking tortured, and you let it happen.” (Somehow nobody rebuked him for language. There were a million other things to rebuke first, he supposed.)

Bragg shifted: “We didn’t _know_ so much as _expect_ ,” he said. Harry let out a sharp laugh that sounded nothing like a laugh. “He’d always expected it as well. It vindicates people – people who have lost family members, people who deserve vindication. It’s a fraction of the pain he’s inflicted. Maybe you should be full of righteous anger for his victims instead,” he finished, raising his brows.

He should. He couldn’t account for why he didn’t. “Shacklebolt said that due process separates us from tyrants.”

“Potter, the Ministry and Minister haven’t got to justify themselves to you.” Moody’s grip on his staff was tight, and his magical eye was examining Harry’s bag. “Voldemort himself was realistic that there would be retribution. He only warned that he can’t be killed, and asked that you’re shielded from it all.”

“He said he didn’t want me to get _cynical_.” His pronunciation was precise and vicious. “But finding out that the entire Ministry – that _everyone_ – knows he’s being tortured and just bloody _lets it happen_ – “

“It is out of our hands.”

“Is it?” he challenged. “Because that’s what the Minister said last night as well.” (Surprised looks from McGonagall and Snape at this; he ignored them.) “And it seems rather funny that nobody is actually responsible for this. That everyone’s hands are tied.” He moved to stand to match them; he felt ridiculous being surrounded by them as though it were an interrogation. Moody slammed his staff across the chair’s arms, pinning him down.

“Some things – particularly things at the edges of legality and jurisdiction – do _just happen_.” His voice was dangerously low. “As Aurors Tonks and Bragg would have told you last night, if you’d gone to them _like you should have_.”

Right, he hadn’t apologized to them yet. He would lose so much of his furious momentum if he did it now though. “So it wouldn’t have actually changed anything,” he said. “I gave him his magic back afterward. Did you know they just bleed it out of him?” He relished the winces that got across the room.

But not Moody. “I did,” he said. “As I’ve also been there on the Ministry’s behalf. If you believe in due process so much, you’ll stop flitting around behind the Ministry’s back on ill-conceived and misinformed _rescue missions_.”

A hiss from somewhere within the room. Of course they heard echoes of Sirius in that, how Harry had gotten him killed. And Harry was still much better at controlling anger than grief, and he scrambled to do so, pushing his fury to the forefront to crowd out the rest of it. “Piss off,” he said, and this time he did get to his feet, shoving the staff away. “What a hateful thing to say.”

The Aurors had their hands on their wands now. As though he’d fucking duel Moody. “We need your wand,” Moody said, unmoved. “And that book you write in. You’ll be locked in your room through the weekend, until the Ministry decides on Monday what to do with you instead.”

It would’ve been fine, if infantilizing, but – “Cornwall’s on Sunday.”

“Voldemort is a powerful wizard,” Moody said, unimpressed. “It’s only a shield charm. He won’t need you there.”

“It will kill him.” He’d never get through the spell without the supplementary magic of Harry’s.

A very cold smile. “By now, you should trust that the Ministry specifically will _not_ kill Voldemort.”

Fuck this, fuck all of this. He was trapped, and he was wrong, and his anger wouldn’t hold back his competing feelings for much longer. He dropped his wand on the coffee table; it clattered to the floor and he didn’t move to retrieve it. Let them goddamn get it. And then the inky blue journal he shared with Voldemort. He leafed through it: the only writing that remained by now was Scrimgeour’s warning. Also dropped onto the coffee table, making far too loud a noise. He knew he was being petulant but didn’t care.

Moody was too furious to speak – he never held himself together well in the face of Voldemort’s disrespect, so he certainly wouldn’t for Harry’s. With a lot of wordless looks they decided Tonks would be the one to walk Harry out. Her hand on his shoulder felt unbearably patronizing, and he scarcely resisted shaking her off.

They’d descended three floors before he broke the silence: “I didn’t mean to get you in trouble. Or Bragg. Would you tell him?”

“ _Merlin_ ,” she sighed. “You should probably be more concerned with the trouble _you’re_ in. We don’t quite know how to punish you yet, before trial, because breaking down Ministry-sanctioned wards and _breaking into Azkaban_ are… I can’t even explain how illegal,” she said with a tired laugh.

“I didn’t break in,” he objected. “Scrimgeour literally held the door for me.”

“So you bypassed the wand dropbox to get in. And then – if our alarms are correct, you handed Voldemort your wand for him to cast… something.”

It was a little impressive they knew this. He supposed it was a little like the trace on minors. The outlaws, each getting infantilized in their own way. “A Patronus,” he said. It didn’t matter but he was telling her anyway. As though it’d vindicate either of them. “He was explaining how _good_ and _uncorrupted_ I was, magically. And showed me that he can’t conjure a Patronus.”

A split second look of surprise from Tonks. And then a deliberately neutral expression, internalizing this knowledge. “How interesting,” she said blandly.

“What?”

“Nothing.” They reached his corridor; he probably imagined that Abzu’s smoke rings were a little more reproachful today. “But you should relay that to the Unspeakables next time. They’d be very interested.”

The response he wanted to offer, of course, was that the Unspeakables and everyone else could get bent. He said nothing.

Tonks was re-tying glowing wards across the front of his door. “You melted these,” she said with a sidelong glance, one part admiration and one part exasperation. “How did you _melt_ them?”

With some gonzo bits of magic that no real wix would ever try. “I’ll tell you if you get my diary back,” he offered.

Tonks did not find this particularly funny or charming. “It doesn’t really matter,” she said. “We thought we’d forego a repeat by putting a void over your room instead.” And indeed when she swung the door open it was a bit like opening an icebox, as a blast of anti-magicked atmosphere caught him. “Elves will provide for you, mostly. An Auror will be stationed in the corridor at all times. You’ll know more by midday Monday.”

But he knew that if he spent the weekend in the void, a weekend during casting at Cornwall no less, it would kill them both. Or something worse than death. This was his last chance. He scrubbed the anger from his face, scrubbed everything but a very honest expression. He took a breath.

“Voldemort will die without my magic. _Anapneo_ ,” he cast urgently as his throat began swelling at these words. “I’m a reserve for him, for his magic and his… soul. _Anapneo_. It’s not even that we’d both die, it’s that we’d both probably be trapped in the living death that he’d been stuck in after he tried to kill me. _Anapneo_.” And the suffocation got worse each time, that the panic and the struggle set in a bit earlier with every statement. “ _Auxilio_ ,” he said, hoping it still worked wandlessly, because he wanted Auror backup present for the very stupid thing he was about to do. “Because he’s bound to immortality by a set of Horcruxes.” He wheezed the word but didn’t have time to repeat himself. “And I’m one of them.” Crumpling, he passed out before his head hit the floor.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Allusions for Chapter 4:
> 
> Much of the prison abuse scene is inspired by [Voldie’s Book Club, by cheryl bites](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/3439784/1/Voldie-s-Book-Club).
> 
> "It wasn’t worth selling the whole world and losing his own soul for a dying psychopath" - Mark 8:36.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry collects memories after the Ministry takes his. Voldemort recovers Hufflepuff’s cup if not yet its magic. And then Harry tops, and they’re both rather disgusted-intrigued-compelled by vulnerability.
> 
> (Warnings that the chapter opens with pretty visceral claustrophobia. And later, the sex scene contains (the Mudblood version of) raceplay.)

He couldn’t be sure he’d even awoken some point later, because he found himself completely unable to move. The space was completely darkened, and his paralysis also robbed him of enough differentiation of sensation to tell what he was lying on. He did think he was lying down, at least. He had just enough range of motion to blink. It was unsatisfying. His glasses were gone.

This became very terrible very quickly, in fact. Claustrophobia set in. Panic set in. He couldn’t tell if he was breathing, couldn’t see or feel his chest moving. Nor could he feel where his arms or legs were, if he was tied up or restrained. Not that he’d even be able to struggle. He squeezed his eyes shut, hoping he was still dreaming, so he didn’t have to face this horrific, disembodied existence. But then he feared he wouldn’t be able to open his eyes again, that he’d make himself blind along with everything else. He opened his eyes wide, staring resolutely into the perfect burning blackness. He’d start hallucinating soon, in this sensory deprivation. If he wasn’t already.

He tried wrenching his mouth open to cry out for help, scream, anything. And he either _was_ hallucinating or was slipping back into dreams because he’d imagine he’d opened his mouth just a little bit, unclenched his jaw just a bit, to find himself no closer to being able to scream than he was. Same with his body: he’d will movement into his limbs, the tiniest bit, enough to wake him from this fugue. And he’d dream-hallucinate that he could nearly move his legs, could inch farther toward what he hoped was the edge of a bed, to throw himself off and wake himself properly. He was hot, he was suffocating. He was more convinced that he wasn’t breathing, that his lungs were as immobilized as the rest of him and he’d suffocate here, abandoned in the dark.

He looked for movement in the darkness. Prayed for it. Hallucinated bits of light, an indication of a door opening or spell being cast, anything. The silence and the darkness burned.

It took a while for any recollection to return. He couldn’t think, he was too panicked to pull together his thoughts. But the Horcruxes. He’d told someone – the Minister? The Aurors? – about his Horcrux. “His” Horcrux. And now he couldn’t feel it, couldn’t feel the familiar weight of Voldemort’s consciousness on his own. Shit. He pushed all his feelings into that space.

Maybe he had already died, or something like it. Maybe Voldemort had. And now he was caught between worlds, tethered here by the magic of the Horcrux. Because a proper afterlife would either be more lively, or distinctly less. This consciousness amidst nothingness was terrifying.

Something under him – around him – shifted. He was sure it was another hallucination. And then it _jolted_ and he was sure he was properly awake if still blind and paralyzed. He tried to speak: nothing. And then the darkness around him cracked open.

Cold light, but _light_. He was cradled in some sort of bubble, floating at chest height in an empty room. Diagnostic spells encircled the bubble. He couldn’t make out the words without his glasses, but a great deal of the text was bright red. Good.

“Oh Rowena’s tits,” a witch behind him said. “ _Finite_.” And the body bind spell was gone, and he shot up, gasping for air.

“How do you – I tell _everyone_ in my entire life how bloody claustrophobic I am, and I still get locked inside a pitch-dark _egg_? _Christ_ ,” he snapped between deep breaths. He thought he might vomit. He was shaking. He couldn’t get purchase on the inside of the cage, as it seemed sleek by design, and he couldn’t get his legs under him well enough to jump out.

The witch was curiously looking over some of the diagnostics. “This doesn’t say you’re Muggleborn though?”

 He’d just never got into the habit of swearing like a wixie. “I’m not, really,” he said, brief. They really had better things to talk about. Grabbing one cracked edge of the egg, he swung himself over the side awkwardly. His legs sort of didn’t work and he sort of misjudged the distance, so the witch winced and slid a cushioning charm beneath him, so at least he’d land in a heap softly. But this feature-less room wasn’t much more comforting. He looked up at the witch with an impatient glare.

“My name is Patrice. I’m an Unspeakable,” she offered. “You’re in the Department of Mysteries, again.” When he had sorted out his legs, she handed him his glasses and nodded him to the next room, that looked like an office by way of the Divination classroom, with low tables and poufs in place of desks and chairs. They sat on poufs opposite and she conjured a tea set. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “That stasis spell was supposed to hold… well, longer than that. Well done, you must be very powerful,” she said with a small smile.

“That was _horrible_.” He wasn’t in the mood. He was beginning to suspect that the Department of Mysteries was staffed entirely with Nice People who were also slightly twits. “What’s happened? The last thing I remember is telling someone that I’m a… _Anapneo_ ,” he wheezed as his throat closed rapidly. He was getting good at casting that spell wandlessly.

Patrice too looked impressed. “A Horcrux. Yes.” She poured tea, giving him a moment to catch his breath, even though what he really fucking needed was a calming draught. “We pulled all your memories already. You can have them back,” she said at his alarmed look. “Auror Tonks thought that seeing the Dark Lord’s attempt at a Patronus would be elucidating. And, well, while we were in there….”

“There being my head.”

“Er, a Pensieve full of your memories, but functionally, yes. We, ah, found most of the answers we needed. For everything. We hadn’t asked for your memories because we hadn’t expected him to confide in you as he has. Or we expected him to lie. If we’d known, the Unspeakables Bhatt and Lang would have foregone their guessing game.”

“Where is Voldemort?” The question he’d really wanted to ask was _how_ is Voldemort, but he might not be able to handle the answer.

“Azkaban. As always. We haven’t formally made contact yet, to discuss what we know of his Horcruxes.”

“Horcruces,” Harry muttered, because even though it was a dumb word he couldn’t bear to hear it in her mouth, as though she knew anything.

“Horcruces, then,” she agreed pleasantly. “So all he knows is what he could ascertain… psychically? Though Legilimency? You both make mention of being in each other’s minds but don’t particularly explain how. At least not in the memories we’ve watched so far.”

“What’s today?” he asked suddenly. Realizing she knew too much and there wasn’t enough drama taking place around him to be the same day.

Patrice glanced at a lunar chart projected on the wall. “Friday. July the third.”

“It’s been a _week_?”

“We had a lot of material to review,” she said a bit defensively. “A great deal to learn, and more to research. It’s been quite a week for us all.”

“Condolences,” he snapped.

“Oh no, not like that. The Ministry extends its appreciation for your time and your memories. We don’t monetize memories, of course, but we will pay you for your time. Your intel on Voldemort is invaluable.”

He hissed through his teeth. “It’s not _intel._ We’re… together. What are you doing with all of this information, anyway? I asked the Minister why they didn’t just kill Voldemort, and he said that’s not what he wanted.”

But Patrice was shaking her head. “We’re researchers, not politicians,” she said. “The Department of Continuing Security requested that we study potential sources of Voldemort’s power. And your part in it. Any sort of soul magic is dodgy work – _elegant, powerful_ , but dodgy.” (Harry absurdly flashed back to Ollivander warning him of Voldemort doing “great and terrible things.”) “But now that we’ve confirmed it, and gathered up all the research we could get… we weren’t told what comes next. It’s not our job.”

He could only imagine terrible things. “Did you find anything I don’t know?” he tried out. It wasn’t the right question, but.

“We tried taking off the vow,” Patrice said. “But we couldn’t. I suppose it stops when you’re not actually informing someone of something they didn’t already know. That’s… generous. And complicated, magically.”

Voldemort had cast it when they were in captivity, held at the sanatorium. When he thought he was dying and would take Harry with him. “Yeah. He’s, y’know, talented.”

“Oh, we never doubted….” But Patrice had more to tell him. “We also tried removing the Horcrux from your soul.”

Oh god. No. “I would die.” Especially if they ripped it away. As they would. But… he couldn’t feel Voldemort’s presence. “You didn’t do it, did you? I can’t….”

“No,” she said. “We came to the same conclusion. Or the same _guess_ , at least. Horcruxes are rare and under-studied anyway, but to put one within another wizard….” She broke off, shaking her head. “So we studied it instead, within the past week. Most of my researchers had never encountered a Horcrux before; none of us knew they could be contained in a living being. You were quite a good case study,” she added cheerily.

Ugh. “Until you found out you couldn’t remove it. You didn’t even ask me if I wanted it gone.”

“Why would we _ask_ you?” She was flummoxed. “It would seem to be a foregone conclusion. If you had declined, that would be evidence of self-preservation magic by the Horcrux, but little else. Don’t you feel, I don’t know, _contaminated_?”

He had thought the term early on, when he’d first learned of his Horcrux. And before that, when he’d shared his blood with Voldemort, when he could be possessed by him. But recently…. “No,” he said. “I’ll keep the Horcrux, if I can.”

Patrice only shrugged. “One point in favor of self-preservation magic, then,” she said. “You can hardly make decisions outside of the Horcrux. Who could say what you’d really want, absent it.”

“I _can_ say,” Harry said. “But it doesn’t matter. How close did you come to killing me?”

She flinched. “Well. We received you in bad shape. The Hogwarts nurse has very good instincts. You owe a lot to her. She had to cut open your throat, though?” Patrice touched the corresponding spot on her own; reaching up, Harry found a circular scab. “She said it would heal in the next couple weeks. Said it’s one the Muggles came up with.”

He’d have to bring Lavender chocolate or something. “Cool,” he said. “But the Horcrux.”

“Yes.” She saw she hadn’t avoided this line of questioning. “We tried quite a bit – healings and evaporation and a manipulation of time. A precise severing of your soul may work, but that all relies on conscious magic decisions. You’d have to, well, create your own Horcrux with good enough aim to take out the piece of his soul instead in that moment, and….” She skipped the obvious bit that Harry would need to kill someone _else_ to accomplish this. “Half a dozen specialists had a go at it. None of them could fix it. We did manage to make your scar a bit less prominent, though?” She said it uncertainly, now second-guessing how he’d react to the news.

Damn right she should second-guess herself. Harry’s hand went to his forehead. His scar did seem smaller. “I need a mirror,” he muttered, getting up. Patrice stared. No matter. One of the cabinets had a reflective glass front, and he approached it. Pressing his fingers to his forehead: “ _Diffindo_.” His scar split open. Blood blossomed under his touch.

Patrice made a strangled noise. Presumably she thought she’d be in for an easier day at work than this. “Let me – I’m going to fetch the Pensieve of your memories, and then I’ll summon the Aurors to return you to Hogwarts.”

Harry was examining his re-opened scar in the glass. He wondered if he’d bled this much first time, if Hagrid was obligated to mop blood from his tiny face. Patrice was gone and he felt mildly bad for scaring her, but _really_.

She returned with a brimming Pensieve and something that looked like an ornate silver chopstick. “Here,” and she twirled a memory onto its end. “You’d think it goes back in your temple, but memories actually get re-absorbed into your throat,” she said as though telling him an interesting bit of trivia (he supposed it was) before bringing the shimmering strand to the hollow of his throat.

He peered into the smoking depths. They’d taken _everything_. He saw some moments from when he’d first been abducted from Hogwarts by Voldemort last autumn, when he had been desperate and scared and ultimately so grateful. Some from their time in Jordan, then at Hogwarts when they’d used it as a fortress. In various captivities: the first safehouse amidst the mechanisms of Apparition, the mental hospital established by the Muggles, the underground safehouse where they’d spent May and June. He saw Azkaban.

And a lot of sex. God almighty, there was a lot of sex, and a lot of fetishes, and a lot of… well, scenes Harry hadn’t thought he’d ever be sharing. He couldn’t swirl the Pensieve without some scene of him in a nappy or being tied up or getting a spanking emerging from its depths. He’d never look the Aurors in the face again.

Patrice was watching but wasn’t going to volunteer anything further without Harry’s lead. “You took everything,” he said.

“Since November. Moody said that’d be a sort of start date.”

“And you looked through it all?”

She flushed. “Oh no,” she began. “There’s not enough of us to get through months of material within a week. We’ve looked through the bits we imagined were most relevant. I took the memories related to soul magic. Other departments had other interests.”

He wanted to be an arsehole to someone who deserved it. “Could you summon the Aurors now, please? Moody, if he’s here.” He dropped the first memory to the hollow of his throat.

The memories were cool on his skin but made him warm inside. A sort of mental fog that had settled around him was lifted. And it was good, picking back through these recollections. (There was _so much_ sex.) He’d gotten up to the negotiation with the Muggles a few months ago, Voldemort’s truce and their contract for the airspace shield and house arrest, when Patrice led a group of Aurors in. Not Moody, but Gawain Robards at the front, the head of the entire DMLE. Tonks, Brightbone, and Bragg followed.

Harry still had his hands full with the Pensieve. “Hi,” he said. “I hope you had a lovely time prying through my head.”

Robards had never been impressed by either him or Voldemort. “We learned quite a bit, yes.” He took a seat on a pouf across from Harry, his long legs forcing his knees out at odd angles. The others hesitantly did the same, peering into the remainder of the Pensieve. “Some of it was in Parseltongue, though.”

He could laugh. He hadn’t thought of it. He wished he and Voldemort had used Parseltongue exclusively; now he couldn’t even recall which of the most revealing conversations had been in which language. “The Ministry hasn’t got a translator?”

“Well, no. Not for Parseltongue. We’ve held onto copies of your memories, so we could bring someone on if we wanted. But we think we’ve gotten all the most important information already.”

“You’ve made copies.” His voice was flat. “And who all gets these copies?” (Tonks, beside him, was uncomfortable. Good.)

“The Aurors, and each specialist in the Department of Mysteries that worked with you.” Robards motioned to the delicate string of memory on the dowel. “They’re quite fragile, you see, and we wanted to return yours in good condition.”

“And the Ministry has a right to them,” Brightbone jumped in, better anticipating his irritation than Robards had. “Anything to do with Voldemort is of primary importance. The Minister signed an executive order to draw and duplicate all relevant memories.”

“Brill,” Harry said. “Did he come take a tour of my sex life too, or did you just brief him about it afterward?”

Everyone but Brightbone had the decency to look embarrassed. “He only got a summary,” she said. “We could pass our department Pensieve along if you think it’s important.”

Brightbone was a terror but at least she was upfront about it. Better than the rest of them, so blushing and apologetic for this intrusion. “You might as well.” He swirled the Pensieve a bit too hard, drawing up the memory of the day the Aurors had first told them of Germany’s ultimatum, of Azkaban. Much of that day had been in Parseltongue and he swallowed it like a secret.

Robards, watching this, trying for a softer tone: “I don’t suppose we could negotiate anything in exchange for your translation?” he asked.

“Like what?” He scooped up an adjacent memory, that same day. Struggling not to piss his jeans; being left in the wet clothing for hours, obviously and childishly; sucking Voldemort off as he bounced in desperation. Voldemort revising his contract with Scrimgeour while he got blown; Harry hoped they all appreciated _that_. Anyway, he left the images defiantly visible as he scooped up the memory and took deep satisfaction at everyone averting their eyes.

“Like clemency, mostly,” Robards said. “Like having an Auror stationed _outside_ of your suite rather than _inside_ of it.”

He really didn’t care about all that. “What about in exchange for ensuring that Voldemort doesn’t get bloody tortured any longer?”

Robards was unimpressed. “As has been explained to you, that’s not in our jurisdiction.”

“You’re the bloody _law enforcement_ ,” Harry enunciated. “Please enforce the laws.” An awkward silence. “Oh,” he said with a dark laugh. “Torture’s not illegal, then.”

“I’ll repeat Moody’s warning that we’re not required to justify anything to you.”

“ _Ah_ ,” Tonks said suddenly, leaning in. The memory in the basin now was pitch black. “Would you – you aren’t required to explain any of this. Or translate for us. It, ah, would go against self-incrimination laws. But we couldn’t tell quite what was happening here.” Darkness, and then a lighter shade of dark when Voldemort had thrown open the closet door, because it was _that_ night, the night he’d gotten high and locked himself in a closet and revisited his shitty childhood.

And he realized, with no small measure of relief, that that was the other bit missing for the Ministry, that the Legilimency-or-something-like-it wasn’t preserved in these memories. How could it be. Its absence cheapened the sex but preserved him from letting the Aurors in on his childhood. He’d rather they witness his shagging and nappies and bondage a thousand times, than the vulnerability and the… abuse. (It still felt like the wrong word; maybe it always would.) “It’s nothing,” he muttered, scooping it up quickly. Tonks didn’t protest.

Near the end, he tipped the basin to collect his last few memories. Working on the airspace shield together. Offering Scrimgeour himself as an object of study in exchange for Voldemort’s magic. ( _Shit_. He had nothing to bargain with any longer.) Last one: his time in Azkaban. His Patronus; Voldemort’s failed attempt. Vulnerable and invulnerable magic. Love – Voldemort trying to explain love to _him_. Trying to explain he’d try loving Harry, if it wouldn’t hurt so much. His promise to keep the Horcrux safe, to tether Voldemort to the world and to something like feelings. It was a long memory, and it took awhile to catch it all up on the dowel. And it was all in English. It was probably the most helpful and revealing thing they’d seized from him.

Patrice had entered, probably just to show them out, but she too saw the memory being collected. “My colleague who researches love found this… well-done,” she said, watching as the memory absorbed itself into Harry’s throat. “It’s all theoretical, what he told you, but it’s credible. If he weren’t… _you know_ , he’d do good work here.” A pause. “We should have realized we couldn’t take your Horcrux. _Shouldn’t_ , really.” Before he could thank her she ruined it again: “But my colleague is fascinated by the idea of loving something without a soul.”

He did not chuck the Pensieve at her but did drop the silver dowel in it a bit heavily. “He has got a soul,” he said. “ _Obviously_. We’re trying to reunite it, even.”

He got up and the Aurors followed. And then – a moment’s pause, when the memories had settled – he went flush with anger. Fury, from Voldemort, the sort he’d grown unused to feeling. Another trickle of blood emerged from his scar. “ _Oh_ ,” he muttered, and Bragg grabbed his arm to steady him as his vision blurred. “Voldemort is furious,” he muttered, to explain the abrupt reaction.

“At you?” Robards asked. He was being led out.

“Mm. I can’t say. Probably.” He was dabbing away the blood on his face until Tonks, wincing, shot a healing charm at him. “I need to see him.”

A skeptical look from Robards. “No.”

“I can fix things in ways you can’t,” Harry said. His head hurt too badly to form a more nuanced argument. “Patrice said you hadn’t spoken to him yet about… all this.”

“We have other ends, and other means.”

The only bargaining chip that remained was translating his memories, and he’d really rather not. He fell quiet, and the Aurors seemed relieved of it.

Back at Hogwarts, the corridors were still. The void had been removed from his suite, but the wards and the Auror stayed. Tonks and Bragg would switch off, she said. “We thought – Cornwall last week went poorly,” she said in an undertone as she drew new wards across his door. “He made it – an hour? He said we couldn’t give him magic ourselves, you were the only compatible one. And he couldn’t explain the mechanism of it anyway.”

Shit. “Uh, yeah. He says my magic is more intuitive than anything he knows. I think he just means I’m doing it wrong.”

A faint smile. “So the shield will be a bit… ragged next time you see it. A week from Sunday.”

Oh thank god. It was too long to wait, but it was something. “And what, we just hope the Muggles don’t start a war until then?”

“That’s _exactly_ what we hope. At all times.” She leaned against the finished doorway but didn’t usher him in. “I hope you think I made an acceptable decision, taking you to the Ministry. We assumed you spoke of the Horcrux because you wanted it gone.” A sharp look. “Though you chose a right stupid way to do it. Lavender had to do an emergency tracheotomy. It was a progressive vow, not an unbreakable one – _obviously_ – but you still risked quite a lot.”

“No, I want to keep my Horcrux. Really,” Harry said at Tonks’s look. “Just… you need to trust us, when we might die without each other. Or _not_ -die, really,” he amended.

She squirmed. “You hear how suspect that sounds.”

“Yeah. But. I think we’ve grown together too much. Specifically, I think he’s too dependent on my magic, or soul, or something, for us to really be apart. I want it, I’m not obligated,” he added. “You saw in my memories how damn badly I want it.”

She tried to smile and failed. “I didn’t know they’d be _that_ invasive, honestly. I tried asking them for, y’know, less. But I don’t exactly make the decisions there.”

“Nobody does, it seems.” Which was a shitty thing to say when she was sort-of apologizing. “Kingsley had warned me there was no right to privacy where Voldemort was concerned. And Voldemort warned me there’s no such thing as _rights_ at all, only privileges.”

She winced. “That’s cynical of him. And you.” But she was reaching into her bag. “Here. You’re allowed your wand. And you’re… not _not_ allowed the journal.”

It would help. Voldemort’s anger still pulsed deep within him. “Thanks,” and he tried to say it like they were friends instead of temporary opposition. He let her lock him in.

Flipping open the journal: while their conversations naturally faded, the Aurors had forced the text back onto the page with Revelio. Happily, it was all still in Parselscript. He wrote on a new page, **_Are you alright?_**

He was holding down the overflow of Voldemort’s anger as best as he could, trying to press a request to pick up the diary back through their connection. Long minutes later, he began putting his things away, arranging his potions table. Finally new words appeared on the page, somehow cold and furious:

_You could have died._

His eyebrows shot up. It wasn’t the rebuke he was expecting. **_I know. I’m sorry. What did you see of it all?_**

_Enough. I felt the pull on the vow. For as long as they kept you unconscious, the connection served as a mirror, amplifying my own experiences._

He meant that torture had been especially shitty this week. Harry winced. **_I thought you intended for your Horcruxes to become less critical. And you would have died, if your most powerful Horcrux were locked in a void for as long as they wanted._** It felt gross to write of himself in those terms. But Voldemort thought of him in those terms.

A long pause before Voldemort wrote again. _Am I correct in intuiting that they gathered everything?_

 ** _Yes. I’m sorry._** He hadn’t known memories could be worked with like that. **_They put the past half year of my head in a Pensieve. But none of them know Parseltongue. At least._** He wished they’d spoken it more. Exclusively. And then he could feel Voldemort tallying up every conversation, that the Ministry had stolen. **_They took copies. They said it wasn’t admissible in court._**

 _I should hope not. That seizure was incredibly illegal anyway, but you’ll find that matters to precisely nobody._ Another long pause. _Whatever they’ve learned, they would have learned at some point._ It wasn’t forgiveness, but resignation. Harry would take it.

**_The Unspeakable said everything about love and power was right. You could work there if you wanted._ **

A flutter of skeptical sarcasm pushed through their connection. _Shall I get my name on all their research in addition to all their legislation?_

 ** _Can I do anything to fix this?_** Harry wrote. **_I feel like I’ve ruined everything._**

_No._

**_I’ll be at Cornwall next weekend. If you want me there._ **

A thick line drawn through the second sentence. _Of course_ , he wrote underneath it. _I’ll draw my Horcrux closer than ever, now._

Weird. Objectifying. Fair. He needed to keep Voldemort alive regardless. **_I won’t go slinging myself into any more danger,_** he wrote as a promise.

_I doubt that._

Voldemort was… something. Angry with him and needy at once. Dependent on him, Harry thought, feeling sick. Shit.

**_I was also going to make kaval to pass the time. Is that okay?_ **

A pause. _Limit yourself to the evenings_ , Voldemort wrote. _I write in the mornings._

And got bloody tortured in the evenings. Either he felt Harry’s concern or the follow-up was just obvious: _It might help._

 ** _Tell me if it doesn’t_** _._ Skipping a line:

**_I do want to fix this._ **

It was all too late, and all too fucked. **_I’ll convince the Ministry to give back your Horcrux._**

_Yes._

**_I tried telling Robards that I’d translate the Parseltongue if he stopped torturing you. But he said he doesn’t have the jurisdiction._** Writing it down so starkly twisted his stomach.

_He doesn’t. Keep your Occlumency in place tonight._

**_I will._** He needed to start brewing; the potion had to be ready by midnight. **_I am sorry_.** Nothing.

Right. He began sharpening his potions knives, ready to alleviate something for them both that night.

So he spent the night high and alone. The kaval blunted his anxiety and guilt to a distant pain in his gut. And while at times the high made him lose his grasp on his Occlumency, the sudden stab of pain would always bring him around. He wanted to feel it – it was shitty that Voldemort would experience it alone – and he knew it just wouldn’t help. Nothing he did particularly helped.

_Saturday, July 4._ By the next day, Bragg offered him the chance to rejoin Hogwarts properly, over lunch. Dean and Ernie had joined Ron and Hermione – they were back for summer NEWTs – and when Harry approached, they all uniformly gaped at him. “Hi,” he said, lowering himself into a chair gingerly because he was _sore_. Whatever had been done to Voldemort carried through and made him bloody sore. “I, uh, can’t talk about the Ministry. How are NEWTs going?”

They launched into complaining with gusto – and it was good, they all felt this commitment to making everything feel normal. Not just on Harry’s behalf, either; but so that Dean wouldn’t have to talk about Seamus’s death, and Ernie wouldn’t have to talk about Susan’s. NEWTs were from the time before; they were safe.

At least until their plates had been cleared, when Ernie stared down at the table. “I haven’t seen the memorials yet,” he said. “I brought flowers.”

“Of course,” Hermione agreed. “We haven’t planned all of the space yet, but the wall is finished. We wanted it done before the new school year.” Tucking away her books, she rose to show him. “Do you – ?” She looked questioningly at the rest of them. Facing the fact that ‘normal’ would be a fleeting thing in their world these days, they followed.

Set in a wide fourth floor corridor, the memorial wall shimmered faintly, emitting the same sort of steadying magic as a Patronus. Large cylindrical bricks had been set in the wall, bearing the names of the deceased; as they rotated slowly, they showed etched scenes of what must be memories. Small bowls beneath each collected those memories. It was beautiful, it was perfect. His chest was tight.

Hermione and Ron had helped with the installation, and had already added their memories, but Harry, Ernie, and Dean were drawing their wands. “ _Memini_ ,” Hermione said softly, stepping back to give them something like privacy. It was the same spell to draw out memories for a Pensieve.

Putting his wand to his temple, Harry added recollections of the Quidditch cup to the bowl under Seamus’s name; a few late nights when they were both up finishing last minute essays, floating books to each other from their beds. For Susan he added the first time she’d summoned her Patronus at the DA; the brave way she still entered the Great Hall the day after her grandparents had been murdered by Death Eaters. For Collin, one memory of the chattering first year photographing him and Lockhart together; and another as a fearless sixth year running toward an explosion, camera held high. Harry only paused at Crabbe’s, but noted his bowl brimmed with as many memories as the others. He wondered if Malfoy had been by.

And the faculty, of course. Professor Sprout, Madam Pomfrey. Filch had been secured away in an enchanted safehouse; Madam Pince had retired and left the country. Professor Trelawney was dying of a wasting curse, and would get a memorial within the next few months, he was sure. Charity Burbage, the Muggle Studies professor, had disappeared, and her body not yet been recovered. And the others: the house elves, the centaurs, the Aurors.

The conflicts had been brief and scattered: Voldemort had attacked Hogwarts in mid-October and called off the effort a month later, when Harry had been in his custody. Hogsmeade was a setting for firefights between Aurors and Death Eaters; Diagon Alley primarily faced damages in relation to periodic looting. It could have been worse: really, they had all anticipated it would be. Part of the adjustment for them all, in fact, would be adjusting to how _little_ time the battle had taken from them. And part of Harry’s adjustment, he was realizing, was that he no longer had the expectation of heroism and martyrdom on himself. That somehow he’d bypassed all that. The months of planning his career, his NEWTs, the rest of his life – he realized that he hadn’t taken it seriously before because he hadn’t expected to live to see graduation, not really. Of course it was a relief, but it was also its own sort of burden, planning to live beyond his teenage years.

Leaving Dean and Ernie, he found Ron and Hermione in an adjacent corridor, waiting. He slid to the floor beside them: “I think we should get therapists at Hogwarts this year,” he said. “Muggle ones, if wixes haven’t got any.”

Ron was shaking his head. “Hermione said the same thing,” he said. “You just… talk? And it helps?”

“That’s what I’ve heard.”

“Lavender and I are working on it,” Hermione said. “Wixes, for all their cleverness, are really stunted as a society in a lot of ways. No offense,” she added in Ron’s direction.

“I dunno. Are Muggles more… fragile?” Ron asked doubtfully. “Or more anxious? I guess if I had to drive and use electricity and get all my cuts sewn shut every day, I’d be nervous too.”

“Stitches don’t happen _every_ day,” Hermione corrected him, but she was smiling. “As medieval as wixen society is, I suppose we should be grateful we’re not still stuck on humors-based medicine. Or possession.” Leaning her head back against the wall, she looked sidelong at Harry. “But you should get a therapist. Really, you probably should’ve had one _years_ ago,” she sighed. A pause. Now that they were a bit more alone, she asked, “Are you alright? After… the Ministry?”

“They took all my memories. It was awful. I got them _back_ ,” he said as Ron and Hermione’s alarmed look. “Just… I can’t tell what the Ministry wants with Voldemort exactly but they’re a lot closer to it now, in any case.”

“They’re reluctant to kill powerful wixes,” Hermione agreed. “Or, you know. Kiss them. They’re a resource.”

“Right. _Oh_.” And he was looking to Ron now. “Do you know what the Ministry does with seized property? What did your dad do with Muggle artifacts he found?”

Ron frowned. “I could ask. Some things got uncharmed and sold back to the Muggles. I think the really bad ones got incinerated.”

“What about… what would happen to the seized Gringotts vault of an imprisoned Death Eater?”

Their eyes went wide. “Blimey, Harry,” Ron muttered. “If he’s sent you for some artifact of the Malfoys’… better leave it there. It’s probably cursed to the Omphalos and back.”

“Not Malfoy, Lestrange. And I think I can handle it. It’d just cause problems for anyone else.” The vow, still in place, kept him from saying anything about Horcruxes they didn’t already know. “Or, at least, do you know if they’ve actually cleaned out the vaults yet? It’s for a good reason,” he added. “It will keep everyone safer. I’m just… doing it all the hard way.”

Ron snorted. A pause. “Dad doesn’t work on all that anymore, you know,” he said. But before Harry deflated, he added, “But Bill might have, to contain anything cursed in there. I’ll write him.”

“Thanks.” They trusted him if not his plan. They _trusted_ him. It was a good feeling.

 

 _Sunday, July 5._ Bill wrote back promptly, so Harry got his response the very next day. The Lestrange vault had been cleaned out; the most dangerous artifacts were being studied by the curse-breaking department. “ _There’s some nasty artifacts among them_ ,” Ron read out over Sunday’s dinner, “ _but very historical. Some of it might have been grandfathered in, before hate crimes against Muggles and Muggleborns were quite so illegal_.” Harry and Hermione both snorted at this. “ _The Lestranges will be charged with possession, and anything we can’t return will be either incinerated or neutralized and sold at auction_.” He looked up at Harry. “What you’re looking for is probably in the ‘really cursed, really illegal’ pile, isn’t it?”

“Well. Maybe.” The magic of Horcruxes might be too arcane for the curse breakers to even look for, or recognize. “Ask him if he’s found anything with Hufflepuff’s crest on it.” He didn’t know how coy he had to be about this.

An incredulous look from Ron. “I don’t think there’s been a single Hufflepuff in the entire Black or Lestrange line,” he said. “And if it belongs to… the Dark Lord,” (The world had mostly dropped the ‘You-Know-Who’ nonsense these days, since he was so proximate to their politics now, but most of them were still working up the courage to speak Voldemort’s name. This was the current compromise.) “he wouldn’t own anything except Slytherin’s, would he?”

“Well. He’s sort of… cursed a very old artifact. That belonged to the founder.”

On his other side, Hermione’s fork clattered to her plate. “No.”

“If anyone else finds it, they’d probably destroy it to destroy the curse.” Certainly the other Horcruxes that had been destroyed – the diary, the ring Dumbledore had collected – needed destructive magic to break the Horcrux. If Voldemort was only re-absorbing it, it might survive. “I’ll get it back intact, if I can. So it can go to a… wixen museum?” he concluded doubtfully.

“Either it’d be studied, or it’d be displayed here,” Hermione said. Ron had flipped the parchment and was writing a reply already. “But _why_ – did he not _know_ – was he going to use it as ransom – “ Hermione’s nostrils flared, and it was great. He loved them both and all their ridiculousness.

“It’s complicated,” he said. (Complicated by not being able to explain the Horcruxes.) “He wants… something else more than he wants it to remain cursed. So we’re switching it out, if we can.”

Shaking his head, Ron passed the letter to Pig. “For the good of historical preservation,” he said with a grin in Hermione’s direction. She remained unimpressed.

 

It was nearly curfew, and he was heading to his suite, when he found Malfoy waiting next to Abzu. “Uh, hi,” he said, slowing his pace. “Your room is… not in this corridor. I don’t think?”

Malfoy gave him an irritated look. “No. I was waiting for you.”

Harry had the absurd thought that he was quite alone, and if Malfoy wanted to body bind him and break his nose again, he probably could. “Oh.” His hand was straying to his wand. “Why?”

“Don’t be a twat,” Malfoy snorted when he recognized the motion. “It’s about Runes.”

“Yeah?”

Malfoy seemed frustrated at Harry’s lack of conversational skills. “ _Yeah_. I wanted to tell you, in advance of tomorrow’s faculty meeting. That if you still want to take Runes, I need a seventh year class.” A pause. “I won’t make it easy. I’d quite happily fail even the savior.”

“Oh. Thanks.” He nodded to Abzu. “Would you come in?”

A skeptical look. “To your bedroom?”

“There’s a sofa, and a table. You haven’t got to sit on my bed,” Harry promised. “If I’m your student – your _only_ student – then you should know what I know about Runes already.” Malfoy followed him down the corridor, albeit reluctantly. “And you should give me some remedial reading, you know.”

Bragg was waiting for him, and looked at Malfoy with mild suspicion. Harry sighed and tried sounding formal or authoritative or something: “Auror Bragg, Professor Malfoy. He’ll be teaching me Runes. We won’t be long.”

Bragg nodded, still skeptical. “Professor,” he greeted Malfoy as he pulled wards out of their way.

Draco didn’t comment until the door was closed behind them. “You have your own _Auror_?” His tone was incredulous. “They really will do anything for you.”

Harry looked at him, surprised, and then laughed. “You prat, it’s a _punishment_ , not a reward. Why, do you want one?” He dropped his bag on a sofa.

“Of course not. But for _you_ , security has always gone the extra mile.” Draco surveyed the room and apparently found it no better or worse than his own, because he didn’t comment.

“Uh, maybe.” Harry was pulling out books, and the spiral notebook where he and Voldemort had worked out the airspace shield’s runework. “It’s definitely a punishment. I’m kind of in the custody of the Ministry, you know.” Pause. “Or maybe you don’t. I don’t read what the papers think happened, anyway. Sit down,” he said, since Malfoy was the sort who needed to be invited. He brought his books to the coffee table between the sofas, sitting across from Malfoy.

“It’s been… speculative,” Malfoy said carefully. “And some of us must distance ourselves from him, these days.”

Harry winced. It was a little shitty of him to characterize this as being in the Ministry’s custody, since so were Malfoy’s parents, and they hardly had the freedom he did. “Voldemort and I stayed in a safehouse of the Ministry’s until I arrived here. He’s in Azkaban now, for….” He sighed. “For a lot of reasons. Mostly because he wants to be. I’m sorry about your parents. And everyone else.”

Draco stared. “And I _still_ don’t need your sympathy,” he said, picking up the runes books.

“I thought you’d want to know.” Harry nodded to the books. “I read those for the basics on runes. For the… you know we cast a shield together, over Britain, for the Muggles?”

“It has escaped nobody’s attention.”

“So I haven’t got to _understand_ the runes, I just have to draw them. But I’ve liked using them so far. And Voldemort wants me to learn them properly.”

“Does he,” Draco said flatly.

“That doesn’t mean you’ve _got_ to. I wouldn’t… threaten anyone like that. God.” Harry was mildly horrified. “Forget that part. I want to learn Runes, and I want to know how I should be catching up to be ready for a seventh year course.”

Draco was looking through their notebook now, though. “You just cast Protego?” He was incredulous. “Over the entire _island_?”

He had laughed too, when Voldemort first told him. “Yeah. There are anchors to hold it down and runes along the edges to sustain and fortify it. It’s not difficult because it’s arcane, it’s difficult because it takes a bloody lot of magic.”

“So you’re not really doing anything skilled at all.”

“I am….” He wondered if Draco knew of batteries. Almost certainly not. “I am a reserve of magic. And I set up the runes. And I keep peace between Voldemort and the Aurors.”

“Right,” Draco said faintly. Then, ripping a blank sheet from the spiral notebook, he began on a reading list: “You’ve got no history. Angler, all the volumes of Ringwald. A grammar workbook by Bell and Kegan. And the practice exercises by Schuyler. When you finish these by the end of this month, I’ll give you August’s reading list.” He fixed Harry with a stare. “You know I’ll do my best to fail you.”

“I can see that.” He took his reading list happily. “Thank you. Uh, Professor.”

Draco didn’t even dignify this. He handed back Harry’s books and rose. “Do you still see him?” he asked, lowly, after he’d moved to go.

“Yes. Sometimes. I won’t mention you, I don’t want to put you in any dangerous positions – “

But Draco was shaking his head. “Give him my regards.”

“Uh, really?”

Draco shot him a look. “Yes, _really_. Whenever he informed on all the Death Eaters – everyone who’s now in Azkaban, or prestigious enough to be under house arrest in _my_ manor – “ he stopped himself; they wouldn’t talk about that apparently; “he didn’t implicate me.”

“Why, what does he want from you?” It was a callous question and shot right out of his mouth.

Draco’s lips went tight. “Nothing, so far. If he does want anything, I’d probably hear it from you before anybody, wouldn’t I.”

Harry recoiled. “I’m not a part of this.”

“Oh yes, you are. Just because you haven’t got the Dark Mark… or have you?”

Harry pulled up his sleeve furiously. So did Draco. Nothing.

“Maybe, when he was informing on them, he just forgot about you,” Harry tried lightly. Trying to fix this.

A twitch of Draco’s mouth. “Perhaps. But if he hasn’t.”

“I’ll pass it on.” He moved to see Draco out. “Will you be in my Defense class?” he asked, as a side note. “I haven’t seen the roster yet.”

“Ah, no. But it does promise to a be a spectacle.”

This seemed unfair. He rolled his eyes at Draco. “It’s past my curfew,” he said. “This is the hero treatment you’re so jealous of.”

“How embarrassing,” Draco drawled, nodding at Bragg as he left. And then Harry was locked in again. Another night of kaval and Occlumency and dreamless sleep. Managing his psychic connection to Voldemort was getting more and more detailed, these days.

 

 _Tuesday, July 7._ News from Bill Tuesday morning: there was a cup with a badger crest in Madam Lestrange’s vault. “ _However_ ,” Ron read out, “ _a curse breaker delivered it to the Minister, at his request. He said that it was of personal interest._ Is the Minister a Hufflepuff?” he asked as an aside.

“Slytherin. But he should be preserving such significant historical pieces.” Hermione was still feeling protective of Hufflepuff’s chalice.

But Harry had let his spoon fall stickily atop his porridge. If he _didn’t_ know, then it would kill him. And if he _did_ know… well, then it was Harry who didn’t know something critical. He’d double-checked: every conversation in which Voldemort had named Hufflepuff’s cup had been in Parseltongue. Either the Ministry had gotten a translator, or… something.

Both Ron and Hermione were looking at him with deep concern. “Can we do anything?” Hermione asked. “Stealing an artifact from the Minister sounds… about as foolish as stealing it from Gringotts, really. Though there are probably fewer laws about it.”

He looked for the Aurors: Tonks, eating breakfast at the far end of the Hufflepuff table with the new Astronomy professor. He rose. “I’ll be right back.”

“ _Harry_.” Hermione’s tone stopped him cold. “Bill probably wrote that in confidence. It can’t be something that’s widely known. _Please_ don’t get him sacked.”

Right. He didn’t sit, but sagged where he stood. “It’s not safe for him to have it,” he muttered. “It’s… the same sort of curse that possessed Ginny. And killed Dumbledore.” This tugged on the vow, but obliquely. He cast a quiet Anapneo on himself anyway.

“Then he’s going to destroy it,” Ron said. “That sort of magic… it isn’t subtle. He’d feel it.”

Harry bit back the horrid statement, _It was too subtle for Ginny._ “No,” he said instead. “Or else he’d just leave it with the cursebreakers.”

Ron shrugged. “Maybe it’s too illegal for them to handle.”

“Is that a thing?”

Ron shrugged again. “Or maybe the Minister is _bored_. Going from the Aurors’ department to, I don’t know, paperwork has probably driven him spare.”

 _That_ was likely enough; he got the sense that either negotiations with Voldemort or the times he had joined them in Cornwall were a sort of respite.

But by this time Tonks had intuited that Harry had _some_ sort of crisis, and approached. “Wotcher,” she said, frowning at him as he came. “Alright?”

“I need to be in touch with the Minister.”

Her eyebrows, a slightly darker pink than her hair, went up. “If you’d like a meeting, they’re all arranged through Anjelica Dawson.” His secretary. “Of course, it’d take a couple weeks… if he’d like to see you at all.”

“But this is important.”

“That’s what they all say,” Tonks said dryly, taking a seat beside Hermione. She buttered a piece of toast.

“I thought anything to do with Voldemort was _top priority_ ,” Harry said (though he too was compelled to sit, so he wouldn’t be the prat literally talking down to Tonks). “That the Ministry will break every rule for.”

“But you don’t know anything new about Voldemort,” Tonks said. “The Minister’s seen him more recently than you have.”

 _That_ was… something. He forged ahead. “Could you pass along a note, at least?”

“I could.” She reached for her bag; Hermione was quicker, pressing parchment into Harry’s hands. “Is this something you could say anything about?” Tonks added.

“Yes. But not here.” And he silently willed her to realize it was about a Horcrux, that she already knew of it but Ron and Hermione didn’t.

Writing would also be tricky because the vow inhibited him from writing much; it could be intercepted and read by anyone, and then Harry would have inadvertently informed another person of the Horcruxes, and then Harry would die. It’d be really rather shit. Instead he wrote:

 _Minister: The object you got from the Lestrange vault is seriously cursed. It doesn’t need to be destroyed, but I think I’m the only person who can handle it and be unharmed._ (He wasn’t even positive on _that_ , that his own Horcrux would protect him from the others. Ginny had been possessed and he had not been, but perhaps that’d only been a matter of time.) _Voldemort could neutralize the curse and then you could keep the artifact. Let me bring it to him._

Signing his name along the bottom, he re-rolled the parchment. “Here.” He pushed it toward Tonks. “Thank you.” She went to Floo it.

And then, nothing. No response, no reaction. Tonks and Bragg said they had heard nothing and seemed entirely unconcerned about it. At the very least, Harry picked his Daily Prophet subscription back up so he wouldn’t have to learn by reading over Hermione’s shoulder that the Minister had been killed.

 

 _Thursday, July 9._ He took Hagrid to Diagon Alley on Thursday (“Of course I wouldn’t’a gone without yeh,” Hagrid grumbled good-naturedly), picking up the Runes books and a heavy marble Pensieve while he was there. While Hagrid was poking his thick fingers between the bars of the feathered salamander cage in the pet store, Harry slid up beside him. “So I had this idea,” he began. The Pensieve was clutched against his chest, unwieldy and obvious. “I wanted to see more of my parents’ lives. All of it. Could I have some of your memories of them? It’s not a hard spell, the same as we used for the memorial wall, I’ll show you if you need….” He was babbling. He stopped.

To his surprise, Hagrid was already beaming at him. “Professor Lupin asked around for yeh already. We were just waiting on the Pensieve and… e’rything else.” He waved his meaty hand vaguely. “He thought it might be a birthday present, but no reason to wait any longer now.” Hagrid gave him a wink. “Go see ‘im when we’re back at the castle.”

Harry as good as floated back. He didn’t even stop to put his shopping in his room before running to the library.

Remus was having tea with Snape, and it didn’t even slow Harry down. “Hi, Professor. Hi, Headmaster. Um, I finally bought a Pensieve, and Hagrid said I should come see you.”

Remus rose, smiling. “Yes,” he said. “I’ve asked everybody. Everyone is a bit… nostalgic these days with the memorial, already. Digging through a few more memories was a simple thing.” He summoned a stand filled with what looked like test tubes, filled with shimmering recollections. Names and dates were on each cork: the faculty, the members of the first Order, some classmates that Remus must have kept in touch with. They were almost all from their era at school, Harry realized with a jolt, because they’d hardly lived past that age. In four years he would have surpassed them. “It’s perfect,” he said softly.

“Sirius got to your parents after your birth a few hours before I did,” Remus sighed. “He never let me live it down. And of course, their time as Animagi would be a significantly different recollection than mine.” A pause. “And, ah, I included the conversations about making Sirius the Secret Keeper. Leave them if it won’t help, but I thought, if you were looking for _significant_ memories rather than happy ones….”

It was just what he wanted. “Thank you,” he said again. He’d say it forever.

“And in that same vein, I asked Severus for… anything, really.” Remus sunk back onto the sofa beside Snape, who was looking with practiced indifference into his tea.

“And I declined,” Snape said flatly. “As I haven’t got many fond memories of your parents to go around.”

“But – “ He saw the significance of Remus asking; and suddenly getting a memory from Snape became the most important thing. “But without you, I wouldn’t even know my dad was kind of a prick,” he said, the most absurd objection.

Remus made a noise. “I did go rather light on that, yeah,” he murmured.

“And I want – I don’t know – something complete. I want the bits with Pettigrew, and I want to know that my dad could be awful.” He almost added a bit about his mum – but it was part of their agreement, that Harry could protect Snape in exchange for never mentioning Lily. Instead his stupid mouth volunteered something even more inflammatory. “And I even want to know how they died. I’ve asked Voldemort for… that night.”

They both went chalky. “Harry, _no_ ,” Remus croaked. “There is a line between being… steadfast, and just being cruel to yourself.”

“I already know half of it. I hear my mum begging to save me whenever Dementors get too close,” he said, even though Remus _knew_ that already, and Snape probably did too. “You’re right. I’m gathering significant memories, not happy ones. So I want….” He looked to Snape, who was very still and pale. “I want to know that he was awful to you. That’s important to me. I can’t apologize on his behalf or anything, I just… believe you as much as anyone, about him.”

A long silence. Snape reached out, finally, to take a handful of empty tubes from the stand. “You are a masochist,” he said, but his tone was less acerbic than usual. “While your father was a sadist. It makes a certain amount of sense.” He drew his wand.

Remus poured him tea while Snape considered his work. Harry began swirling a few of the dozens of memories in their vials – James and Sirius acting out in Transfiguration; the boys’ dorm over Christmas holidays; James trying so desperately to get Lily’s attention that one day he’d taken a running jump into the lake for her. _Prat_ , Harry thought, and he was smiling.

And Snape and Remus were curled up on the sofa facing each other when he looked up, as though they’d forgotten about him. “I’ve got the sortings, I’ve got their time as Head Boy and Head Girl, I’ve got their graduation,” Remus was listing off.

“Did you have the night you nearly killed me?”

“I did, actually,” Remus said. “But your perspective would be more helpful than mine.” Snape looked at him with faint surprise, and then extracted a shimmering memory.

Three vials, of his father being terrible, lined up before him. A moment of hesitation by Snape, and as he drew out a fourth, he said, “Your mother. Before Hogwarts.”

Harry took it from him directly, still warm. A mischievous redhead girl – _so_ young, how could his mother have ever been so young – swirled in the memory.

“Thank you, sir.” It was more than he could’ve ever asked for, more than he’d ever expect. The stand of vials before him looked like… _wholeness_ , like another entry point into reclaiming his shitty childhood. Remus’s hand lay atop Snape’s forearm; he looked more unsettled than Snape himself did.

Harry moved to go. “Wait.” Snape was reaching for another vial, drawing out a thicker memory with a different spell. “ _Please_ relieve the burden of all the horrific moments of your sex life I was forced to witness.”

Oh god. Harry burst out laughing, in spite of himself. “Sorry,” he said. He hadn’t thought of it in such a long time, but Snape was right, there was no reason Harry should be able to look him in the face. He’d witnessed Harry tied up in a nappy, in his original abduction last autumn. He would have recognized the sex magic, essential to that potion. He’d likely worked out the stupid, erotic, complex relationship he had with Voldemort before anyone – before Harry himself had, really – and only sent him a warning to choose his allegiances. If he had seen glimmers of Harry’s sex life through Legilimency, though, that could be blamed on nobody but himself. Still. “Are you sure you won’t need to blackmail me with this sometime?” he asked as Snape twirled off the end of the strand.

“If the Aurors are to be believed, the details of your love life are being disseminated rapidly enough that it shall all soon be common knowledge, and therefore useless.” Snape was reaching for a quill, so that he could carefully write _Potter’s perverse desires_ across the label. “If I ever must learn of these things again, I’ll have to Obliviate myself.”

“Oh, I would’ve cast Obliviate for you,” Remus said mildly.

Harry took this vial gratefully, putting it a little apart from the others, for obvious reasons. “Thanks, sir.” He was blushing, but it was a simpler sort of discomfort than he’d otherwise leave on.

Snape hummed in the most minimal acknowledgment. “Also, the Aurors wanted to see you.”

Oh, shit. “Right. Thanks.” Slinging the bag with his Pensieve over his shoulder, he cradled the stand of memories so, so carefully against his chest. Priorities.

It made no difference because Bragg was in the dungeons anyway. “Should I get your door?” he asked, surveying Harry’s cargo.

“Oh god, thank you.” He mentally took back every bad thing he’d ever thought of Bragg. Well, most of them. “Snape said you wanted to see me. Do you want to come in?”

“No. It’s very brief.” And Bragg was pulling a cigarette-thin roll of parchment from a breast pocket. “From the Minister.”

Oh thank Merlin, finally. He’d lived this long, at least. “Excellent.” And Bragg apparently wanted nothing to do with this matter because he excused himself as Harry was opening the parchment.

_Mr. Potter: I recognize your concerns, and I have my own. Cracking the chalice’s curse carries as many risks as allowing it to remain, I have been told by the Unspeakables. Nevertheless, Voldemort has insisted on it, and as the person most susceptible to its dangers, his input weighs rather heavily. You’ll have the chalice, and the task to break its curse, on Sunday. If all goes well, we hope that you’re amenable to the responsibility of returning the artifact to Hogwarts thereafter._

That was it. Holy shit. Scrimgeour knew the Horcrux was a Horcrux, and somehow opposed removing it while Voldemort was arguing in favor of doing so. He had so many questions. Taking out the diary he shared with Voldemort, he wrote the first of many atop a new page: **_Are you and the Minister friends now?_**

He began arranging the Pensieve’s memories as he waited for a response. Remus had warned him that putting the memories of multiple people in the Pensieve at once could cause them to “well… _congeal_ is the best word,” he’d said, wrinkling his nose. So, one person’s memories in the Pensieve at once, siphon them out and re-bottle them, next person’s memories. He wouldn’t know where to begin.

A response from Voldemort some time later: _You need to bring as many books on Horcruces as will fit in your overnight bag. Look for books with theories of rescinding or re-absorbing them, though there probably won’t be any._

**_And then you’ll improvise it?_ **

_Yes._

He had his off hand pressed in a fist against his mouth. They were doing this. He was ridding the world of Horcruxes as Dumbledore had charged him. And Voldemort’s motives and the Minister’s equally flummoxed him. He went to go look for books in the Headmaster’s office.

Or rather, he went to go beg for access to the office, because whatever enchantments held the office door closed were presumably well beyond him. So he’d have to ask Snape, for the second time in a day – for the second time in an hour, nearly – for a favor. He could try McGonagall, or the Aurors, or hell, the new caretaker. But he had a sense that begging Snape was part of the mission.

He stopped by Snape’s office first as it was nearer than the library anyway. Empty. But farther down the corridor, there was a conversation that he could faintly hear from the Potions classroom.

Snape, and Slughorn. The latter lit up when Harry knocked. “ _There’s_ my lad,” he boomed, handing a ladle off to Snape so he could cross the room, clapping Harry on the back. “We wondered when you’d be by. Have you brewed anything interesting recently?”

 _Wixie drugs_ , he didn’t reply. “A bit,” he said instead. “I’ve learned about acid-catalyzed potions recently, sir. And potions that can be taste-tested. I had no idea….”

“Ah, yes. Liability matters,” Slughorn said sadly. “Certainly we’ll get to the theory of it – perhaps not the praxis – in our NEWTs class. You _will_ be in my NEWTs class?” he added with a frown.

“I’d like to be,” he said, and he was mostly sincere.

Snape cleared his throat. “Mr. Potter, you’ve disrupted our progress on a batch of Wolfsbane, so unless you’d like your favorite werewolf to have a very unpleasant night tonight….”

Oh shit. He hadn’t even realized. He should’ve said something to Remus earlier, and he cursed his inattention. “No, of course not. But sir, I came to ask for access to the Headmaster’s – to Dumbledore’s office.”

Slughorn looked intrigued but Snape was bored. “No.”

“But – you haven’t even asked what I want.”

“You’re entitled to nothing in there, so the answer is clear.”

“I am, though.” He didn’t want to do this. “Dumbledore asked me, before he died, to destroy Voldemort’s Horcruxes.”

Slughorn made a sudden, strangled noise. “Take this conversation _out_ of my classroom,” he said in a high voice.

Snape looked profoundly unimpressed, but moved to go. Harry followed a few steps, then turned back. “It wasn’t your fault, you know,” he said. “Voldemort – Riddle – had two Horcruxes before he asked you for anything.”

Slughorn looked nauseated. “He couldn’t have. He was so… charming. We thought he would be so successful.”

 _Well, in a way_. “You haven’t got any books on Horcruxes yourself, do you, sir? I know the subject is banned,” he added quickly. “But Dumbledore would have been researching it, we assume.” That _we_ hung slightly too heavy in the air. He looked between Snape and Slughorn. “But Voldemort wants to… absorb? rescind? his Horcruxes now. And there might not be texts on that.”

“That can’t be correct.” Snape, behind him, still disdainful but uncharacteristically curious now as well. “The Dark Lord has spent his entire life seeking out immortality, at the expense of everything else. You believe he’s simply _changed his mind_?”

“His magic is… limited these days,” Harry said carefully. “He thinks reclaiming a Horcrux will infuse his strength again.”

“And you want that for him.”

Harry twisted his hands together. He could speak about Horcruxes generally before them both, but only Snape knew that Harry was something of a Horcrux himself. “He’s more… stable around his Horcruxes. He says he can feel more. If he’s made more human again….”

“Then he could be killed again,” Slughorn finished.

Harry jerked, an unpleasant sensation surging through him. “Yes,” he said. “But that’s not what I meant at all.”

“Potter’s quite taken with the Dark Lord these days,” Snape said, as though to excuse his behavior in the nastiest possible way. “Come. I’ll let you into the Headmaster’s office.”

And suddenly he didn’t want to be alone with Snape, but – sacrifices. He followed.

They were on the third floor before Snape broke the silence that had settled. “You are doing nothing noble, you know.”

“I know.”

“And you’re hardly the first young idealist he’s seduced.” He let Harry choke on this before adding unhelpfully, “Not merely with words.”

“I’m not doing this for myself,” Harry said. “And I thought you made yourself forget my sex life earlier today, anyway.”

“The details, yes, but the general impression will remain a lifetime.”

“Yeah, well, sorry.” A pause. “Voldemort wants his Horcruxes back, but Scrimgeour doesn’t.” He recapped a bit of finding out about Hufflepuff’s cup; leaving Bill’s name out of it of course. “Do you know why that might be?”

They’d reached Dumbledore’s office, and Snape prodded at the door to make all the criss-crossing wards visible. They apparently had to be tied in a certain pattern for the door to open, so he worked as he thought. “If it is an issue of national security, perhaps he wishes the Dark Lord to be weaker, to be defeated at some point. To devastate him and then cut his ties to the world by destroying the Horcruxes afterward.”

“Maybe.” A pause. “Do you think I should be working to undo the Horcruxes?”

“I think you have already made so many terrible decisions, one more will make no difference.”

Harry blinked. “It’s the difference between Voldemort being dead or alive.”

Snape completed the knot and let them both in. “And if he lives, then he’ll become Minister, and the Ministry’s inanity will strangle him slowly. And if he dies, then he dies.”

“You can’t actually be indifferent.”

“I _must_ be indifferent,” Snape said fiercely, “as a means of self-preservation. You don’t get a moral pass for your _sincerity_ , you child.”

He winced. “I know.”

“Do you? Good afternoon, Headmaster,” Snape added in a different tone as Dumbledore wandered into his portrait.

“Good afternoon, Severus. Harry. What a nice surprise. Visitors to this office are rare these days. Though it does allow me to work on Phineas’s birthday scarf in secret.” He held up a green and purple scarf dangling between knitting needles. “You wouldn’t expect paintings to get cold, would you?”

Given the amount of times he’d seen paintings get sloshed, he would really, but didn’t say this. “Sir, I’m looking for books on Horcruxes. We thought, with your research, you must have some.”

“Ah. Yes.” Dumbledore moved to a frame nearer his bookshelves. “Unfortunately a great part of knowledge only resided in my enfleshed self. I thought it would be unwise to contain such information in a medium so accessible as a portrait. And my artist – a lovely man, really, but also a bit of a gossip.”

Once again Harry silently swore at the living Dumbledore for how little information he had imparted. “Well – Voldemort is doubtful there will be much published on the subject anyway. He wants to… absorb them, or something.”

Dumbledore’s reaction was far less skeptical than anyone else’s when they had learned this. “Does he regret them, then?”

“I asked him that,” Harry sighed, sitting on the arm of a sofa. (Snape, suddenly behind him, _squawked_ and pushed him seated proper. Harry had to fight back how hilarious he found this indignation.) “He got, uh, annoyed with me. Annoyed with _you_ , really. Said all the theories about soul magic and remorse were _maudlin_.”

Dumbledore shrugged minutely. “Then he is welcome to find another way. Tell him to publish it if he does. But all my relevant books would be behind the Muggles Studies shelf. If Severus hasn’t moved them.”

“You know that I haven’t.”

The Muggle Studies shelf, hilariously, was the one that looked like children’s books – primary colors and patronizing photos on all the covers. He pulled them aside, peering into the deep bookcase. Apparently nothing. “Revelio?” And another row of books, old and small with cracked spines, slid into his reach. He took them by the handful.

“Excellent,” Dumbledore said, as he stacked these books on an end table nearby. “Of course, you should ask Headmaster Snape if you may borrow them. This is, after all, his office.”

“It is not,” Snape said very quietly as Harry turned to him. “And _please_ take the books,” he added in a more imperious tone. “I advise that you burn them when you’ve finished with them, so no other clever and exceptional teenagers can pursue their terrible plans.”

Dumbledore winced. “Severus and I differ,” he told Harry, “on the question of whether any knowledge is too dangerous to remain in existence.”

Harry had begun flipping through the books. “I’ll bring them back,” he said to Snape, “and you can decide what should happen to them then.” But when the fourth book in a row was in a foreign language – one was German, the rest he could only guess as some sort of Slavic – he made a frustrated noise. “But none of these are in English.”

They both gave him surprised looks. “Well, no,” Dumbledore said gently. “A few are. But most of these books were stolen from Grindelwald’s library.”

He hadn’t expected it. “Sir?”

Dumbledore moved into his teaching tone: “You had learned from the memory of Professor Slughorn that I had banned the subject of Horcruces upon becoming Headmaster. And I worked to expel all information on the subject from Hogwarts well before Tom Riddle had any aspirations to create one.”

“You didn’t do it for him, then.”

“No. Although I wish….” He broke off in a sigh and began again. “My measures were due to Gellert’s persistent interest. When we were young, immortality appealed to us both. Though now I can recommend, posthumously, the great relief of death. I wouldn’t forego it,” he said lightly. Snape, behind him, made a noise to indicate how much he found this to be in poor taste. “Gellert had his books. As he’d been banned from Durmstrang, I thought he might come seeking to expand his library from Hogwarts’s shelves. I pulled everything on the subject, keeping it all behind personal protections in my own office, when Tom was only a second year. And I was able to hire a mercenary to steal Gellert’s library as well. He would never tell me whether he had created a Horcrux. But certainly, he’s more studied on the subject than nearly anyone in the world.”

“Other than you and Voldemort.”

“Apparently,” Dumbledore agreed. “I never found out how Riddle first learned of Horcruces. I fear that at some point he found this cache in my office. In which case I ultimately only traded one immortal dark wizard for another.” A pause. “I had also wondered whether he’d ever been in touch with Grindelwald directly. His obsession with immortality was well publicized, even then.”

“I can ask,” Harry offered. “Even if it’s just, whatever, a question of curiosity, at this point.”

“But it’s not,” Dumbledore said. “Do you see? If the answers that Voldemort seeks aren’t in these books, then he might consult with Grindelwald directly.”

“Wait, he’s _alive_?” Dumbledore winced at this – at, Harry assumed, his own painful ignorance. “Sorry. I know he was in prison. I thought he’d died there.”

“He is alive. In some sense. He’s kept in Nurmengard, high in the Swiss mountains.”

Asking the Aurors to arrange visitation between the two most dangerous dark wizards of the era sounded like just about the least likely thing he could think of. “I’ll suggest it,” he said anyway. “And also….” It was irrelevant and he’d ask regardless. “Voldemort said you testified at Grindelwald’s trial. About a wix’s right to magic.”

“I filed an amicus brief, but essentially, yes.”

“I want to read it.”

Dumbledore’s eyebrows went up. “Of course. Severus, do you know where my legal papers are?”

“Yes.” Snape was pulling open a drawer. And winced. “Though perhaps some of those files should be kept in more secure locations?” He was almost certainly looking at his own trial.

“It is _your_ office,” Dumbledore reminded him.

Near the back of the drawer, a fragile and yellowed paper. Snape spelled a clean copy for him. “Thank you, sir,” Harry said.

Dumbledore was still frowning. “It wouldn’t be admissible at Voldemort’s trial,” he said to Harry. “And portraits are not legal entities, ourselves.”

“No. I don’t think he’ll need it. I was just curious.”

“Curiosity suits you,” Dumbledore said. “I hope it goes… as well as such unfortunate matters may go.” His expression was unreadable.

“Me, too. Thanks, sir.”

“And Harry….” The slightest hesitation. “You may well be a good influence. But… I did love Gellert, once. I don’t believe it helped, in the end.”

That hurt. He hurt for everyone’s sake. “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t ask for your sorrow,” Dumbledore said. “I do ask whether you can be brave.”

He took a breath. “Yes, sir.”

“Very good.” He gave Harry a moment to shove all the books into bags. “If you’ll excuse us, Severus and I have some terribly bureaucratic issues to discuss.” Snape looked especially drawn, and like he’d rather be anywhere else, but nodded. Harry doubted it was actually bureaucracy they’d be discussing.

“Sure. Thank you,” he said to Dumbledore. “Thank you,” he added to Snape. Silently he motioned Harry out.

 

It was a small collection, really. With a shrinking spell he could fit them all in a single bag. He found three English language ones among them. ( _Crux_ , one merely said in stamped gold letters across its worn leather cover. It could’ve been mistaken for a bible.) He read none of them, and scarcely looked at the illustrations. They looked… horrifying. Apparently part of the process involved something like a Dementor’s Kiss, pressing one’s mouth to the recently dead and sucking hard to draw out their soul, that then was spun around the object in ritual knots. The illustration left the faces blank and anonymous. They might as well be Dementors. He shoved all of these books into a bag and stashed them beneath his bed. He skipped dinner that night.

 

 _Sunday, July 12._ Sunday morning, packing for Cornwall. Tonks had already told him what Scrimgeour and Voldemort had alluded to: that after they’d finished with the airspace shield, they’d both be returned to the safehouse instead, to work on the Horcrux. He had a great many questions about how Voldemort had negotiated _that_ deal. In any case, late that morning Tonks and Bragg brought him past the castle’s wards, handing him a Portkey to the cliffs.

They arrived first. It was a damp, gray morning along the cliffs, which offset the transparent airspace shield better than sunlight. So Harry could see just how ragged and worn it was, when he squinted upwards. “You couldn’t have brought me out after all?” he asked, dreading the effort before them. “Even if last time, I was supposed to skip this as _punishment_ or whatever.”

“Well, and you were quite unconscious in the Department of Mysteries,” Bragg said reasonably.

It looked like… failure. Voldemort never really handled failure, so his insides hurt, imagining when he’d finally given up without Harry here last time. He set his bags on a nearby picnic bench. Voldemort would have the ritual elements to even begin the runes, so they were just obligated to wait.

Long minutes later, two pops in quick succession. One, Voldemort flanked by Aurors, presumably arriving from Candle Quay. The other, the Minister with his security detail. He carried a dark, glittery bubble himself; it was only since Harry knew that he was bringing Hufflepuff’s cup that he could discern its faint outline within.

Voldemort and Scrimgeour recognized each other before either of them noticed Harry. “Take it,” Scrimgeour said in a strained voice. “It’s warped _all_ our charms. It’s probably infected Madam Lestrange’s entire vault.”

Voldemort took the bubble and popped it gently, so the cup fell into his hands. “I’m quite happy to relieve you of it,” he said. “A Horcrux will only damage those who intend it harm.” Harry had just approached; Voldemort scarcely looked at him before passing him the cup. “Harry can handle it quite easily, for example.”

It was warm and magnetic, not an unpleasant sensation. Still, he was not a fan of being part of an object lesson. “Uh, yeah,” he muttered. “Should I put it somewhere safe, then?”

“Keep it,” Voldemort said. “We’ll need it, today.”

Scrimgeour still looked unhappy. “You know my concerns.”

“I do.”

“If you’d wait – even for a few months. You’re exposing yourself to a foolish amount of risk.”

“And it’s my risk to take.”

“Of course, but….”

Voldemort pulled the ritual elements from an inner pocket of his cloak, passing those to Harry as well. “Go begin on the runes.”

He was being gotten rid of. “Are you sure?” he asked, looking between Voldemort and Scrimgeour.

Scrimgeour: “Yes.” Voldemort: “Harry, _go_.” Fine.

He dropped the cup into the bag of Horcrux books on the way. “Don’t touch that, it will kill you,” he said to Rye and Willoughby, the two nearest Aurors. With a look of alarm, Rye cast a glowing cage around the entire picnic table. Oops.

The shield was looking bad: there were holes he’d nearly be able to crawl through. The Muggles couldn’t see it except with infrared (interestingly enough) so they’d only take the wixes’ word for it that the shield was in place, but if nuclear war began they’d be exposed to at least some of the radiation, like this. He drew the runes thickly.

Voldemort joined him in a quarter hour; Scrimgeour disapparated; the rest of the Aurors looked uncomfortable. “What was _that_?” Harry asked, forgetting that he and Voldemort weren’t really okay.

“It doesn’t concern you.” He switched them to Parseltongue; they’d probably speak exclusively in Parseltongue forever now.

“What risks are you taking? And why does he care?”

“It doesn’t – “

“Is _he_ trying to keep you from getting killed, too, is that why you’re angry at him?”

There it was. Harry felt anger just barely caught with Occlumency. “Yes, actually. Even though neither of you understand enough to make informed decisions.”

He didn’t know what he’d expected the fight with Scrimgeour to be about. Not that. He blinked and backed down: “I know you think saying sorry is useless. I did think it’d kill us both if they took my magic. Or rather, since I’m the only one that can give you magic back, it’d trap us both in really shitty fugue states.”

Voldemort was twisting the edges of the shield into strands, anchoring it along the runes. “Perhaps,” he said.

“And that _terrifies_ me,” Harry went on. “The fucking Department of Mysteries, I woke up from their… whatever too early, and I was a body bind and trapped in total darkness. It was awful,” he said with a bleak laugh. “And at first I thought I _had_ died, and that I was stuck in the bit just before death like you had been.”

A pause. “Not a bad guess. You’ll know dispossession by its icy sort of agony, though.”

“ _Ugh_ ,” he shuddered. “If I ever step out in front of a bus or something, please come find me and just kill me properly. Here.” And he was handing back the ritual chalk, exchanging it for a pouch of focusing crystals.

Voldemort was quiet. They might be alright. So he could broach the other thing he had to ask: “But when they pulled all my memories – bloody _all_ of them,” he said as an aside. “They saw so much sex. But I noticed – every time you told me about Hufflepuff’s cup, we were speaking in Parseltongue. And the Ministry didn’t get a translator. And I didn’t translate anything for them.” He looked over. “So why did Scrimgeour request that the curse breakers bring it to him specifically? Did you tell him?”

Voldemort’s look was indifferent. “In a sense.”

“Just _tell_ me,” he groaned. A pointed silence, like every pointed silence he got when he was asking about Azkaban. “Oh. Because they tortured it out of you,” he said bluntly. He got a small nod. “ _Christ – why –_ “

“Shh,” Voldemort chided him. The Aurors were starting to look over. (Shouted Parseltongue was probably the most confusing thing, he thought.) “Hold this.” He’d pulled a section low and taut, as the target for the first Protego. Harry took it, Voldemort cast a rather strong shield charm to begin infusing the airspace shield, and finally he turned back.

“It was hardly how I’d choose for anything to happen,” he said. “I’d rather the Ministry have never learned of my Horcruces. I’d rather deploy or collect them quietly, with nobody’s knowledge at all. But as that seems rather impossible – “ and he still had an unpleasant stare fixed on Harry “ – the alternative is to involve them in collecting that Horcrux. It seemed simpler than sending you to loot Gringotts,” he added, raising his eyebrows. “But even before the Ministry learned anything from you or from me, Dumbledore had shared _something_ of my Horcruces with Scrimgeour. He hasn’t divulged what, specifically.”

“He said you ruined your soul,” Harry recalled.

Voldemort sighed. “Indeed.”

“So Scrimgeour got the cup for you but also hates the risks you’ll take with it.”

“It’s not a security risk, or a national one, or any sort that concerns him.”

“A personal risk, then.”

“Yes.”

God, he hated these guessing games. It was always Azkaban, whatever Voldemort wouldn’t properly explain to him. “Because it will make everything about Azkaban worse,” he put together. “You told me you couldn’t love me this year because it’d be better for you to not have feelings yet. And the Horcrux….”

“Will restore a part of my soul that then can become damaged, and injured, and cynical.”

Harry sagged against a nearby stone. “Oh.”

“Reclaiming the objectified Horcruces will be less precarious than taking on yours. Yours is imbued with love,” Voldemort said it as though that were terrible, and in some ways it was, “and I imagine will be both more complex and more painful a process. But this… I am trading small amounts of vulnerability for a great amount of power.”

He was on Scrimgeour’s side, already. “And then they keep torturing you, and then they break that bit of your soul that’d otherwise be preserved. And then you’re more bitter _and_ more vulnerable. What then?”

Voldemort, for his own bloody reasons, found his indignation nearly charming. “I am making this decision to be more powerful,” he said. “Not to be happier.”

“No shit.” But he saw Voldemort’s grip on his wand quiver for the first time and he was at his side instantly, laying a hand on Voldemort’s elbow to transfuse magic. “But you wouldn’t – like the Minister said – you wouldn’t wait until next year?”

A silence, and then Voldemort said in a small and measured voice, “Without the infusion of the Horcrux, I may not live through the year.”

He may as well have sucker punched Harry. “No,” he insisted, because Voldemort was always so bloody paranoid and alarmist and so certain of his proximity to death. “You are ridiculous. I’ll give you magic – I’ll make the Aurors bring me every night if I’ve got to – “

“Harry.” He felt through their connection as Voldemort emotionally steadied them both. “I’ve chosen to do it this way. I don’t need your understanding or your support, really. But you asked, and I don’t withhold information from you.”

“I hate this.”

“As you’ve made clear to everyone who will listen, I’ve been told,” he said dryly.

“And somehow it’s all nobody’s fault and nobody’s responsibility.”

“Yes. Please leave it,” Voldemort said. “It… as I’ve said, my abuse is cathartic for those families. I will hardly be _apologizing_ ,” he said the word with profound distaste, “so I believe that violence will serve as proper expatiation instead.”

“Ugh.”

“I might leak the rumor myself,” Voldemort said. “That some sort of arcane magic – no use printing ‘Horcrux’ in the papers, nobody’s heard of it – has made me feel pain more acutely. Some wixes would find that very satisfying.”

“ _Ugh_ ,” Harry repeated.

Voldemort gave him a moment to be properly disgusted and disappointed before adding, “The kaval helps, you know. Though my Occlumency slips sometimes, as a result. I hope you haven’t noticed.”

Hardly: he’d practiced with any twinge of fear or pain or hatred that broke through, to push his own Occlumency into place. Though it was still the worst reminder. “No,” he said. “And good. I’ve gotten good at brewing it. And then I take dreamless sleep every night, a few hours later.”

“Mm. Thank you.” He laughed dryly. “Thank you for picking up potentially two addictions, on my behalf.”

“Sure.” Voldemort’s magic was stable once more; he dropped his touch. “When I went to get Dumbledore’s books on Horcruxes – which, I hope you can read Romanian or something – he wanted to know how you’d ever found out about them. He’d pulled all the books from the library because he was worried about Grindelwald, not you, he said.” He looked up. “Also, he thought, if you couldn’t find a way to absorb the Horcrux, you might ask him. Grindelwald.”

Voldemort hummed with interest. “You brought his books?”

“Yeah, they’re….” He gestured behind them. Still on the picnic table, still enclosed by Rye’s cage. “He had an entire shelf. He said he had most of them stolen from Grindelwald.” A pause. “I tried reading them. At least, looking through them. They are… horrible.” It was probably only due to the dreamless sleep that he hadn’t had nightmares, of sucking souls from the gasping mouths of corpses.

“Oh. Yes. Don’t read them, it won’t help.”

“Snape thought they should be burned.” At Voldemort’s look of mild curiosity: “He had to let me into Dumbledore’s office. He’s not using it, himself. It’s just kind of… stayed as is since his death.”

“Mm. Well, I’d happily burn them when I’ve finished with them, but only to stave off competition.” He shrugged. “Otherwise, knowledge is inherently worth preserving.”

“Dumbledore thought so too.” It wasn’t even a dig but Voldemort made a noise of faint disgust.

“But Dumbledore would disagree that there are more effective ways to suppress and undermine knowledge than by merely burning books.” With a swish, Voldemort finished a large patch in the shield, and moved them a bit farther down the cliffs.

“I told Snape I’d bring them back, anyway.” He summoned his bag and pulled out stonefruit for them both. “But… _were_ you in touch with Grindelwald? You’ve never talked about him like you knew him.”

“I did, actually. Or rather, we corresponded, but never met. He told me that Dumbledore had taken his books. He offered to tutor me, but….” Voldemort shook his head. “Child soldiers live brief and ignominious lives. I would be very bad at being a follower, anyway.” Harry laughed at this. “But before I’d left school, and was in a position to do more meaningful work, he’d already been defeated by Dumbledore. Who was a _mess_ that year, incidentally,” he added.

“You’re such an arsehole,” he said, but lightly. “I got a copy of his brief too, the one you told me about. I haven’t read it yet.” It’d gotten tucked in the front of one of the Horcrux books; he’d have to rescue it.

Voldemort looked faintly surprised. “Good boy.”

“What? I read sometimes.”

“You do.” A pause. “Being in touch with Grindelwald isn’t a bad idea, really. Nobody at Azkaban, Nurmengard, or our respective Ministries would agree to it, of course. But, if in a few months, we haven’t worked out a reversal for the Horcrux….”

“A few _months_?”

“Well, yes.” A skeptical look. “You thought it’d be finished over the weekend?”

“Scrimgeour seemed to think it would be. He asked me to take the cup back to Hogwarts when it was safe.”

“Mm,” Voldemort frowned. “No, even the most established elements of Horcrux magic are deeply experimental. Another reason to not wait a year to begin. Because it could take that long.”

“I hope it does,” Harry said, stubbornly. Voldemort gave a non-committal hum.

 

Restoring the shield took forever. Harry didn’t ask and Voldemort didn’t volunteer how badly he’d done without Harry, last time. Mid-afternoon, Harry reached for Voldemort’s wand. “Here. Doesn’t it make more sense for me to do it directly, than to give you magic that you’re just passing along?”

“No, because magic doesn’t work like that.” But he handed over his wand. “Fortunately, since you’ve got my Horcrux, your magic is mine for the purposes of the shield.”

“Guess I’m stuck with it then, if I’m meant to do upkeep on the shield forever. _Oh_ ,” he recalled. “The Department of Mysteries tried removing the Horcrux. It didn’t go well, they said.” He offered it just because he thought it would amuse Voldemort. “And they tried getting rid of my scar, too.” He pushed his fringe back; his scar was still slightly warm and raised. “Until I used Diffindo to rip it open again.”

Voldemort made a noise between amusement and disgust. “Count yourself fortunate you didn’t get thrown into a mind healing ward for that,” he said. “We’ve been declared insane for less.”

“Yeah,” Harry said happily. “I don’t know. I don’t know how I could possibly be me without them.” He let Voldemort run his thumb across his scar. “Anyway, you should… do something else for awhile. Go read some of those awful books.” And Voldemort lit _right_ up at that and brought the bag of books over, to read in Harry’s proximity. And it was good that they didn’t have to travel back to Azkaban after this, because the shield still wasn’t finished by the time the sun had set. The Aurors were restless, Voldemort had slept a bit and read a couple books and was anxious to actually begin work on his Horcrux, and Harry was downing Pepper-Up like his life depended on it.

“Here,” Voldemort finally said, and he was carrying the chalice. “Hold onto this, I’d like to see if you can siphon its magic.” Harry took it in his off hand, Protego still dribbling from Voldemort’s wand in the other.

“D’you need your wand? Or mine?”

Voldemort reached into his pocket quite casually, and Harry sort of blushed. “You’ll recognize these runes,” he said, drawing a string of symbols up Harry’s forearm.

“The ones I broke Hogwarts’s invisibility wards with.”

“Yes. But any sort of powerful force…. I’ll try to infuse you with the Horcrux’s power, and not its malevolence.” But that might have been a joke. The chant of a mantra, and a groove opened in the warm air above his wrist. He felt the weight of magic hovering there, then – _zap_! Voldemort diffused it. The shield glowed bright for a second, lighting up the night sky above them.

That was great. It somehow invigorated Harry as well, seemingly recharging his own magic. “You need to do that for yourself,” he said, “Not for me.”

“That’s the idea, yes. Magic is renewable, so you haven’t consumed anything of mine,” he added at Harry’s look. “Again?”

And like that, the shield was solid and luminescent within a half hour. The Aurors had wandered closer, curious; some of them gave Harry faint looks of horror upon seeing the chalice. Whatever, they could all go home now.

When they’d completed everything, Brightbone was sorting out Portkeys. “The Ministry… the Ministry… the safehouse.” She handed a silver medal to Harry. None of the Aurors moved to accompany him.

“You’re not coming?”

She raised her eyebrows. “Should we?” she asked. “The Minister says to write if you require anything; otherwise we’ll collect you on Wednesday morning.”

Oh thank god. “Thanks,” he said. Trading Voldemort the Portkey for the books, they were off.

The safehouse was dark and musty when they arrived; Harry set all the lights in a blaze upon walking in. “How did you do this?”

“What?”

“Convince them to let you come here to work.” He slung the bag of books on an armchair because he didn’t want to hold the fucking things. “If only for a couple days.”

“Mm. It will only be feasible until your school year begins.” He’d been thinking about this. “After that, we might block out the weekends instead. Refresh the shield on Fridays, or continue doing it Sunday but close out the time with it instead.” A tiny shrug. “I merely go where I’m told,” he said with false innocence.

“Right.” Harry had pulled out the cup, setting it on a high shelf. It didn’t _look_ evil. It didn’t look any different than how he’d seen it in the Pensieve. “Your Horcrux did good work today. Not me,” he said with a laugh at Voldemort’s dry glance.

“It should. There’s probably an unsafe build-up of power within each of them, that should be dispersed initially.”

An unpleasant thought. “Is that what killed Dumbledore?” The Gaunt ring had killed him one way or another, poisoning him slowly until something rather… dramatic happened one morning, the Healers couldn’t guess what. The ring had fused itself to his body, not just to flesh but sinking in to fuse with bone. Much of the fighting at Hogwarts had been Voldemort’s attempt to reclaim it, destroyed as it was. He would’ve cut off Dumbledore’s hand if he’d gotten the chance. They had never talked about it.

But now Voldemort made his expression neutral, hearing the precarity of the question. “No,” he said. “He would have expected the build-up. He would have anticipated the number and severity of the curses too, if not which ones were used specifically.” A pause. “Really, he shouldn’t have died.”

“And yet,” Harry said icily. He regretted asking.

“And yet,” Voldemort echoed. “Somehow the answer at which I continue to arrive is that he _wanted_ to die. But I can’t fathom why.” He saw Harry’s expression and sighed. “We would be trapped in something closer to a real war if he were alive, if that helps,” he said.

“It doesn’t.”

They moved into the kitchen, pulling out fruit and cheese and wine, even if Harry thought he might be too exhausted to drink. “But I realized recently,” Harry went on as he sliced a wedge of camembert, “I never imagined I’d make it to graduation. We were never meant to survive this long.”

“Right. And everyone, it seems, feels this sort of restlessness. Perhaps not as acutely as you.” Voldemort’s glance was wry.

“People still died. It seems like their deaths are so much… stupider if it wasn’t even a war.” He worried a grape between his fingers. “There’s a memorial wall at Hogwarts. It works a bit like a Pensieve.”

“Do you find it effective?”

“Yeah.” Pause. “And I got a Pensieve of my own, too. Would you….” He didn’t know if he had to repeat his request. He didn’t know if he _could_.

“You want to see how your parents died.”

“Yeah.”

A sigh, and Voldemort went looking for an appropriate container. “Are you certain?” he asked. “Really, it’s not…. I fear that this will make you cynical, too.”

“How generous, that you want to protect me from knowing how and why you _ruined my life_.” It was more dry than angry. He was too worn down to be angry at the moment. “I want all of it. The bits with Snape and Pettigrew. I asked Snape for other memories earlier, but I couldn’t… I don’t know, it felt too personal.”

“Intensely,” Voldemort agreed. He had a row of small jars before him; with a swish of his wand he transfigured them into iridescent etched glass with swirling patterns. “For the occasion,” he murmured. Reaching across the island, Harry pressed magic into his hands.

The first memory. “Severus and the prophecy.” The second. “Learning of your birth.” As he passed jars, Harry was labeling them carefully. “Finding Wormtail and persuading him. Severus bargaining for your mother.” The slightest hesitation before the fifth. “All Hallow’s Eve. And,” he pulled the last jar to himself decisively, “my death.”

The jars were warm in Harry’s hands. The air of the kitchen was too fragile, too anticipatory. “Thank you,” he said, and Voldemort snorted because it clearly wasn’t the right thing to say. “I don’t know whether I’ll ever watch them,” he said. “I just wanted to have them.”

“Of course.” Quiet. And then Voldemort was cleaning up with a wave of his wand, casting unspillable charms over their wine glasses to bring them upstairs. “Would you sleep in my bedroom tonight?” He’d wandered to the living room, tucking his Horcrux under one arm and selecting books from the bag.

“Yeah.”

“Not sex. There’s too much reading to be done, and so little time, and the day has been long,” he sighed. “I’ll shag you tomorrow.”

Harry smiled a bit at this. “I already said yes.”

“And you’ll have to avert your gaze from my horrifying books.”

“You’re ridiculous. I’m going to be asleep.” He brought their wine glasses upstairs; Voldemort followed with an armful of books. And Harry ended up curled beside him anyway, reading over his shoulder. Looking, at least. “German?”

“Yes. Or, well, dwarven, but German dwarves.”

“Huh.” And, his head lolling onto Voldemort’s shoulder, he was asleep.

 

He hadn’t considered that he was used to sleeping on a cocktail of kaval and dreamless sleep these days. His dreams were vivid and disorienting and awful. The same tower he’d seen before. Cruel, creative magic. A spell that felt as though thick wet concrete filled his lungs, pushing up his throat and out his mouth – he couldn’t breathe, _he couldn’t breathe_ –

Everyone was wearing masks; he might only know the Death Eaters from the civilians by how crisp their robes were, or how ragged from the imprisonment of Azkaban. But it didn’t matter because his vision was bad already in the darkness and now graying around the edges. The concrete hardened, weighing down his throat, trapping his tongue crushed at the bottom of his mouth –

He was shaken awake. He was gasping for breath, his hands at his mouth to dig himself free, his chest heaving –

Voldemort caught his hands, pulling them by his side. “Stop,” he said. “I should’ve – “ And he broke off with a sigh. “We haven’t got kaval. We do have dreamless sleep. Whether this is withdrawal or just… warranted, really.” It was probably hours later, the bedroom dark. He’d woken Voldemort, and the panic still hadn’t dissipated. Voldemort was untangling the sheets from around Harry’s legs. “Since your subconscious is being exposed to a great many terrible things, even if you’re properly unaware.” Something of a guilty look. “I don’t know how long you might have to take dreamless sleep. Certainly beyond this year.”

“I _hate_ this,” Harry said viciously. He mopped his face with his shirt. Voldemort’s hands at his legs grazed his wet pajama bottoms ( _goddammit_ ) and he didn’t even say anything, just cast Scourgify with a touch. He always pissed himself when he was suffocating, even when he wasn’t really. “I’ll be back,” Harry muttered, rolling from bed.

He returned with two vials of dreamless sleep; Voldemort had re-lit a few lamps and was waiting with the nappy bag. “Was that real?” he asked as he settled back onto the bed.

Voldemort frowned faintly. “I don’t know what you saw, precisely. And I don’t _want_ to know,” he added, and his voice carried the edge of a plea. Harry recoiled. “It is likely real, or near enough. But what difference does it make that you should know?”

“It just… does. I don’t know. Maybe it doesn’t. But I want to see the night my parents died, to… know I made it out. And maybe I want to know what they’ve done to you to know you’ve made it out too.”

They were cleaned up; bottles of dreamless sleep drunk; and Voldemort was extinguishing the lamps again. “Made it out _alive_ ,” he muttered, “is the phrase.”

“Well, kind of.” They only touched enough that his magic could sort of stream into Voldemort’s as they slept. “It was awful,” he said softly, willing his chest not to heave in panic. “Like my throat had been cemented shut.”

A pause. “Ah, yes. _That_ one.” They weren’t looking at each other now. “Not one of mine, I am ashamed to say, because it is clever. Those people… aren’t typically clever.” He sighed. “It’s the thing about followers. Ingenuity can’t often be rewarded.”

 _Ugh_. Harry bit back an apology that his torturers weren’t creative enough in their abuse, and only hummed instead. Voldemort continued: “There has been particularly no ingenuity recently. Do you see? Now I must only _endure_. As you say, to make it out.”

“Alive.”

 

 _Monday, July 13._ In any case, it felt good to be back here, and that was stupid, how much he loved imprisonment. He woke up alone, to find Voldemort in the reading nook downstairs. He’d carried the chalice with him. “Like a dragon hoard,” Harry said uselessly, passing him to put on tea. “Your shiny diadem and your shiny cup.”

“And my shiny Harry?” Voldemort suggested innocently. “Yes. I’m reclaiming them in order of portability, really. The diadem is simpler to keep than the cup. The locket will be as well.”

“Do you know where the locket is?”

“No,” Voldemort sighed. “Do you?”

“Dumbledore didn’t know.” Voldemort made an unhappy noise and returned to his books.

Harry was really actually banished when Voldemort was reading his Horcrux books for the sake of his innocence or whatever; instead, he had a pot of tea and began working through the Runes workbook Draco had assigned him. He had spun a beginner’s protection spell in runes across the kitchen doorway, and he didn’t _mean_ for it to work like an electrical fence exactly, but Voldemort wasn’t expecting it when he strode in a few hours later, and hissed when a lattice of burn marks were seared into his chest. There was a smell of overheated fabric, and a moment of anger made it through their Occlumency.

“Oh god. I’m sorry.” Harry jumped up but he was laughing. “Are you alright?”

Voldemort had stepped back, now looking at the runes etched on the lintel. “Yes. You wrote a fehu backwards. But it’s apparently more effective that way.” He raised his non-eyebrows at Harry. “Do you know how to take it down?”

“Uh, not yet.” He brought his book to the doorway. He could walk through his own wards of course; it only inconvenienced Voldemort. “I’ll have it down in a bit. Can I get you something?” He strummed on the ward suspended between them a bit. “Sorry.”

Voldemort shook his head minutely. “I only wanted to offer that, I want you to fuck me today.”

Harry’s heart thudded, a single staccato, and he thought he was blushing. “Really?”

“Well, not if you’ve still got that terrified piglet look about you later.”

He rearranged his face with a self-conscious grin. “Yeah. I mean, I’d like that.” The tiniest squirm. “What do you, y’know, want?”

“You haven’t done this before.”

“No. Only with girls.” _A_ girl, really, even though he was weirdly shy about naming his own relative inexperience. And Ginny had been vibrant and uninhibited but not kinky like this, so… most of this was very new anyway.

 Voldemort fingered the wards between them lightly, testing them. “Anything that hurts emotionally,” he said. “Anything… vulnerable. Since you’re so taken with my expression when I come, anyway.”

“Mm,” Harry said appreciatively. “I am, yeah.” He saw it now. Voldemort just didn’t lose control. But tonight. Tonight. He swallowed. “Then, would you piss yourself, as well?”

Voldemort shuddered. “As though that weren’t a given with you,” he mocked. “Yes. I’ll keep the Legilimency open, as far as I’m able, so you can get off on how utterly horrifying I’ll find it.”

A deeper blush. “Thanks.”

And after that, runes weren’t quite so interesting, even if he did figure out eventually how to dismantle the wards he’d strung up. But he spent most of the afternoon staring at the runes workbook without taking in anything, as he planned for sex. He was going to have to wank first, so he didn’t shoot off as soon as he touched Voldemort. He slipped his hand along his inner thigh, where he was half-hard.

Voldemort would know anyway. And while he might find it funny to know Harry was wanking at the kitchen table like a particularly unrefined teenager – well. Instead he went to join him in the living room.

He had a notebook in one hand and the Horcrux book bound like a bible in the other. He didn’t look up until Harry sat on the arm of his chair, swinging his legs into Voldemort’s lap to press his bare toes into his groin. “Hi.”

“Finally,” Voldemort said. “ _Please_ say you’ve come to wank.”

Harry blinked. “I have.” A grin. “Sorry. That must have been distracting.”

“You have no idea.” Voldemort coolly switched out his book for a non-English one so Harry couldn’t read it. “And then?”

“And then I practice my rope charms a bit, and then I tie you up and fuck you.” Even saying it made his belly coil. He was still waiting for Voldemort to rescind the offer. He still wanted Voldemort to tell him what to do.

He didn’t. “Good.” He slipped a hand between Harry’s legs, running a thumb over his erection. “And now?”

“I don’t know. I thought it’d just be dumb to pop off as soon as I’d touched you.” He was leaning into Voldemort’s teasing fingers already.

A noise of dissatisfaction in the back of his throat. “The charming and self-conscious naïf is generally a good look on you,” Voldemort said. “But tonight, could you _please_ make some attempt at being imposing.”

Imposing. He’d be imposing. His backhand caught them both by surprise. A flare of humiliation and pain, strong enough to breach their Occlumency. Voldemort jerked as though to reach up, consciously stopped himself, and looked up at Harry with a glittery expression. “Good.”

“Don’t patronize me. I need your Legilimency,” he said as he undid his fly. “All of it.”

“Of course.” Voldemort put his books aside because wouldn’t it be a tragedy if Harry came all across them. And then he felt the push of Legilimency opening between them, felt his arousal and a tense sort of anticipation. And then it opened farther, and he was unexpectedly desperate to piss. He thought Voldemort had cast a suggestion charm; he grabbed the base of his cock as he willed away the bursting feeling. But it wasn’t _his_ , it took a moment to realize. He looked at Voldemort curiously. “You haven’t… I mean.” He tried on a more dismissive tone. “What the fuck.”

A flash of whatever Voldemort felt in place of self-consciousness. “I haven’t used the toilet today,” he said. “I thought you’d appreciate it. At times I’ve… waited,” (he choked on the word and it was _exquisite_ ) “to pass along the sensation. To make your desperation worse.” He hadn’t touched Harry but his eyes were on his erection, which twitched at the confession.

“You bloody romantic,” Harry said, and already his head was swimming as he began stroking himself. “Tell me everything you want me to do to you tonight.”

“I can get you off without you touching yourself,” Voldemort said. Harry’s cock shuddered in his grip.

“That’s not an answer.” But he dropped his hand, and they were both focused on his erection poking straight up from his lap. He was already embarrassingly close.

A flush, which he felt in Legilimency even if it wasn’t visible on Voldemort’s face. “I have never lost control,” he said. “But I want the things you feel, when you’re just… thinking of nothing at all. Like when you just _burn_ when you’re getting spanked, like it’s the best and worst thing in the world.” His voice had gone low, he was stiff beneath his robes but didn’t touch himself. “Or when I’ve tied you up to splay you open, so I’ve got access to the soft and vulnerable and embarrassing parts of your body, and you couldn’t even stop me. Or when,” a faint queer smile, “I can see everything you want with Legilimency and I’d make you ask for it anyway, because admitting these things aloud humiliates you so much.” A pause. “I have never asked anyone for anything. I don’t know that I will… _like_ it. But I’ll be immersed in hating it, at least.” Harry’s cock throbbed hard in his lap; a drop of pre-coming glistened at the tip. Their shared sensations buzzed within him; arousal and desperation both nearly unbearable. But, control. Control was erotic in its own way. He leaned back as though indifferent to his own arousal.

Voldemort went on: “That’s what I’d like to capture. That horrified feeling, the one that makes your skin crawl so badly that it hurts.” Harry hummed because that was it exactly. “When you’re wetting yourself, and you’re so obviously a childish failure, _doubly_ so because you wanted it anyway. Or that you’d chain yourself in nappies, to give you the sense of being helpless, even though you wanted it desperately. Though I can’t – please don’t put me in a nappy tonight,” he added. “It looks too… _resigned_ to a loss of control.”

“I’m telling you now that you’ll be pissing on yourself.” His balls were tight between his thighs. He was going to explode. And the blush that erupted across Voldemort’s face just might do it.

“I am going to piss on myself,” he agreed. “But… allow the fiction that I held out for control as long as possible.” He shifted; his desperation was really rather acute now and talking about it didn’t help. “And tell me what a humiliating failure I am, when I do.” (What a failure _he_ is, not what a failure _it_ is, Harry noted in the back of his addled mind.) “I want to be splayed open and told how disgusting and inadequate I am. I want to be _furious_ with you, do you understand, for how debased you’ve made me and how humiliated I feel, because fury is its own shameful loss of control.” A pause. “I want to cry in front of you.”

That did it, a boiling sort of fire enveloped him and his hips pumped violently of their own accord and he barely moved in time to push his cock into Voldemort’s mouth. “Just – _ugh_ – leave it,” he muttered and then he was spurting thick ropes of come across Voldemort’s tongue, his hands clenched on his shoulders for leverage and for his own control. And his load was thick, for how long he’d been at the edge of arousal. Voldemort didn’t suck him off, he wasn’t meant to, but offered his mouth as a warm receptacle. His hands were on the back of Harry’s thighs, steadying him, and all of their combined effort went into refraining from a violent facefucking.

He dribbled the last of it across Voldemort’s lower lip. Voldemort, perfectly, said nothing but looked up, his mouth brimming with come. “Wait,” Harry said, sinking onto his lap because his thighs wouldn’t stop quivering. The pulse of disgust that he felt, the humiliating task of simply holding Harry’s come on his tongue, was perfect. He kept his mouth open. He was starting to salivate.

Harry was able to climb off a moment later. Disgust, he could do disgust. What he’d say next was going to disgust _him_. “Right. Don’t swallow. Just, push it out of your mouth, so it runs down your robes.”

Voldemort squeezed his eyes shut and this time, Harry let him. Tipping his head forward, his tongue let his load spill across his lips. Bright splatters ran down his chest. He didn’t spit properly, but when his mouth was emptied, he looked up at Harry with a peculiar expression. “That was _horrifying_ ,” he said thickly, in something like admiration.

“Yeah.” He was grinning.

“ _Christ_.” (He’d gotten Voldemort to swear like a Muggle and the night had only begun. He was so happy.) Voldemort’s hand reached for his wand, and then he stopped. “May I cast Scourgify?”

“If you wanted to. But you don’t.”

Voldemort’s look as he squared his shoulders composed in spite of his straining erection and stained robe, was the most amazing thing. “Right,” he said.

“Do you want – ?” He nodded to his lap. “Or would you rather wait? I need, like, half an hour.”

“As I am not seventeen, I will wait.”

“I’ll be eighteen at the end of the month,” he said uselessly as he went to prepare.

Rope charms, rope charms until they were effortless. Leather strap, buttplug, lube. Into the wardrobe for the perfect trousers to ruin.

Finally: “Are you free?” He peered down the staircase. Voldemort had gone back to reading, but with one hand pressed between his legs. Perfect.

“Yes.” He moved to join Harry.

“Uh, should I make you crawl up the staircase or something?”

“Where _do_ you get these ideas,” Voldemort muttered, pushing Harry’s hair behind his ear affectionately as he reached him. “Bedroom?”

“Yes.” Of course he’d used Voldemort’s bedroom and not his own, and he regretted that bit of normativity now, but no matter. “Have you got trousers on?”

“No.” They entered the bedroom and he picked up the pair Harry had left on the bed. “But these are good trousers,” he objected even as he was unbuttoning the bottom of his robes. “How will I bring myself to wear them again, after this?”

“Be grateful I’m not putting your wand up your arse, so you’d never be able to bring yourself to do magic again. Robes off, and on your knees.” He had the ropes charm poised in his fingertips. “Oh, and Legilimency. I shouldn’t have to tell you.”

“Yes, sir.” Voldemort was facing away from him, but his posture was as crisp and perfect as his tone. They would do this right, then.

Voldemort’s arousal and desperation once more bolstered his own. Control, as rigid as his cock. Harry would do something about that. “Here, wait.” He pushed Voldemort onto the bed before his fly was done, tugging down the back of his trousers. The buttplug was meant to stretch him a bit, but to make everything… _heavier_ as well. If he could angle its tip to press on his bladder, he would. Voldemort’s arse was as pale and narrow as the rest of him, and Harry had pressed the buttplug against his hole before he made a noise.

“Harry.” A mildly strained tone. “If you intend for that to be uncomfortable, then I can take it dry. But if you mean for it to be pleasurable….”

Shit. He’d even gotten the lube out, he just wasn’t thinking. “If you’re really going to complain about it,” he sighed, but he was twisting in fingerfuls of lube, fingering his arse as though this were a thing he did all the time. (It was a thing Voldemort did to _him_ all the time, which was not quite the same.) “You’re tight,” he muttered. He didn’t know why he was surprised. “I guess you don’t really get fucked. I mean, like, penetrated.”

Voldemort shook his head. “I’m _tense_ ,” he corrected, “because I need the toilet desperately.” And even that confession burned with shame. Even though it was self-evident, in his posture and in their Legilimency. Harry slipped his free hand over Voldemort’s hip to rub his lower belly, to find his bladder, swollen and warm in his narrow frame. Voldemort hissed, took a moment to compose himself, and then added, “And your ideas of the relation between power and penetration are facile. Though I suppose I haven’t demonstrated any differently to you. _Circe_ ,” he groaned as Harry pressed his fingers in hard, pushing downward to find his bladder. Already on his knees, Voldemort couldn’t throw his legs together, but his thighs twitched.

“You are the most patronizing arsehole,” Harry said, exchanging his fingers for a lube-slicked buttplug. “But only for now.” Voldemort took in the buttplug methodically, consciously relaxing and enveloping each of its ridges. “And I hope this makes you feel more like you’re about to piss yourself.” He tugged the trousers back up, reaching beneath Voldemort to do his fly.

“Well, I _am_.” His tension was not quite irritation but it was close. Harry sat back for a moment, waiting for him to compose himself, physically and emotionally, before he continued.

“Who has fucked you, then,” he asked as he bound each of Voldemort’s hands to the headboard. His tone made clear that he was obligated to answer. To confess, as it were.

“Mm. Useless people. Nobody you know.” His tone was falsely casual.

“I must know some of them. I’m tying your ankles to your thighs,” Harry added, moving down the bed. Voldemort had done it to him awhile ago, tying his legs bent double while he was kneeling, and it was the most precarious and infuriating position, making him feel he’d tip over at any moment. He’d make Voldemort feel precarity in as many ways as possible, tonight.

Voldemort said nothing but raised his bare foot toward his thigh. His toes were long, and when Harry put his mouth around the biggest, he made a repulsed noise. “Don’t,” he said, but he couldn't properly pull away. Harry could feel the prickle of disgust spreading down his legs even as he said, “And you wouldn’t know who I’ve fucked because they’ve mostly been Muggles.”

“Muggles?” Harry lifted his mouth to laugh, and the surge of Voldemort’s irritation was amazing. “ _Why_? I’d thought your Death Eaters would be queueing up.” He moved to Voldemort’s other leg, and sucked on that toe too just to be petulant. Voldemort gave a little kick involuntarily, overwhelmed by the sensation.

“I return to Muggle London,” he said. “Or Muggle Athens. Or Muggle Marseille. And the Death Eaters…. As I told you earlier, sex is indistinguishable from vulnerability. An orgasm is necessarily a loss of control. It would threaten my power. And their morale. _And_ this is a horrible conversation; would you please just ask again how disgusting it will be to piss myself?”

Harry grinned. Voldemort’s back was tight, and his legs quivered already. He cast a cushioning charm beneath his knees as a gesture of goodwill. “Why Muggles?” he asked again. “Doesn’t that offend your purist sensibilities?” He was crossing the room to get the strap. “Don’t get any of them pregnant, you’ll get more halfbloods. Well, quarter.”

He _felt_ Voldemort’s reaction before he saw it: searing anger, hatred, shame. There, that Voldemort wanted to lose control emotionally, he had hoped that’d do it. “What?” he said with false innocence as he settled onto the bed. Voldemort said nothing, his head down. A slap of the leather along his shoulder blade. “ _Answer_ me.”

“You’re not so clever as you think you are.” Voldemort’s voice was tight. Harry began slapping the leather down his narrow sides rhythmically, leaving tiny rectangular marks with the end. Voldemort’s tone was even, still: “Nor should you believe purebloods’ ideas about Muggles anyway. The ones who have never met a Muggle, what value are _their_ ideas. But I speak from experience, I – _ah_ ,” he broke off as Harry landed a stinging blow that wrapped from his back to his soft stomach. “Do you intend to beat my politics out of me?” he demanded.

“Maybe, if I’m goddamn lucky.” _Swish-crack, swish-crack_. Stripes on his mid-back, parallel to his spine. Because of the location, and because of how thin and pale he was, bruises were forming almost immediately. It was… satisfying. “Keep lecturing, and I’ll hit you as hard as I am horrified.” He dribbled a little lube onto Voldemort’s back, to make it sting more. The next smack had a beautiful high-pitched ring, and Voldemort jolted. Harry felt it too, felt his own back begin to warm and sting. It was delicious. “You speak from experience?” he prompted.

Harry’s beating was quick and sharp, stinging rather than thudding, and Voldemort could mostly speak through it: “Muggles are _cruel_ , Muggles are _ignorant_. Wixen evolved to be a better type of human and we’ve been relegated to living off scraps in the dark like _rats_.” They smouldered. He wouldn’t even be able to say which of them owned the emotion because it burned so brightly between them.

“And you?” Harry asked. “Do you feel dirty? Have you been infected?”

A sick twinge at the back of Voldemort’s throat, felt by Harry. “Yes,” he said, and Harry was so surprised and so affected that he lost the rhythm of his swing. “And it feels grotesque. It feels monstrous. _Harry_ ,” he ground out, because the strap had dropped to his side. “Fucking finish what you’ve started.”

His insides twisted on themselves, not so delicious as dangerous. “Lick your lips and then close your mouth,” he said, sliding up the bed. He was holding onto Voldemort’s outstretched arm, looking into his face for the first time. Voldemort looked back at him steadily. His tongue darted out of his mouth, wetting his thin lips.

Harry measured the slap before he gave it, so the very tip of the strap hit his lips. He yanked it back as soon as he heard the _crack_ , and a beautiful purple welt blossomed there. Voldemort couldn’t help but flinch as the strap landed, but he didn’t resist or pull away.

Harry felt disgusted with himself, what he’d do next. “Say that you’re a Mudblood.” The word felt obscene in his mouth.

Voldemort laughed harshly. “With more conviction than _that_ , Potter.”

 _Smack_. The strap, not on his mouth but along his cheek. “Say it.”

“I am a Mudblood.” And they both felt the revulsion of the statement. He closed his mouth and Harry smacked it again. His lower lip was growing puffy.

“Again.”

“I’m a Mudblood.” Prickling shame and humiliation and revulsion, more than anything Harry could properly evoke. He leaned into the horrible feelings, relishing them.

“Again.” Harry had slid back. The strap was tight against his throat now.

“I’m a Mudblood.” His eyes had fluttered closed; he was drowning in things he hadn’t felt in such a long time. Harry jerked the strap and he went light-headed. It wasn’t as bad as all the other times he’d suffocated in Azkaban, of course –

Harry’s hand faltered at this. “I didn’t mean to – “ he began, and Voldemort made the most frustrated noise. “Again,” he said instead.

“I’m a – _Mudblood_.” The strap snapped against his throat made his voice crack, maybe. Harry fell into something of a rhythm: yanking the strap tight until their vision had gone gray, until his hand slackened. Deep breath, and again. Until once when his vision grayed and there was a split second of wet warmth in his pants. He jerked. “Harry,” he said weakly, as though he hadn’t felt it too.

“I know.” Harry’s hand was in his crotch, his fingers pressed to the head of his cock. “It’s only a little,” he said. “Can you hold it while I fuck you?”

They both knew the answer to that and goddamn him for pretending they didn’t. “Yes,” he said anyway.

Harry slid back behind Voldemort. A thin wet line ran down his inner thigh and his legs quivered with the effort of holding on.

Voldemort jerked in surprise when he cast Diffindo, ripping open the back of his trousers and pants. “Can’t take them off,” he said as though it were an apology. “You’ve got to go in them.”

Voldemort only shuddered. In response, Harry tipped the buttplug in the right way to prod his exhausted bladder. A surge of panic and another spot of wetness. He ached from holding on.

Harry pulled the buttplug out slowly, not to be torturous but to be kind. “Alright?” he asked as he twisted more lube inside him, because one of them felt sick. It might’ve been himself.

“Yes.” And they could feel he wasn’t really, that he burned inside with shame, but it… helped? It nicely complemented his wet pants, in any case, he thought. And he hadn’t even _gone_ yet.

Harry was grabbing Voldemort by the hips to re-position him, to re-place him on his bound knees more comfortably, but if his fingers squeezed along the edges of his bulging bladder, well. Another instant of panic. The wet spot must have grown fractionally larger. His face was hot with the horror of it, his chin dropped to his chest.

The tip of Harry’s cock was at Voldemort’s entrance when he muttered, “I haven’t done this before.”

Voldemort’s sigh was deep and terrible. “Do you need _instructions_?”

“No. Maybe.” He was swiping his cock along the lubed entrance because that already felt good. “Just in case, I’m, y’know, bad at it.”

“Now is not the time,” Voldemort said through gritted teeth. “If you’re bad at it, then it’s because I don’t deserve better. _There_.”

He couldn’t help it, he grinned. “So angry,” he crooned as he pushed forward. “So impatient. _Ahh_ ,” he groaned as Voldemort clenched around the head of his cock. He rocked forward once and again, driving himself deeper. It was precarious on Voldemort’s part, balanced only on his knees, and Harry’s grasp on his hips just didn’t help. And when he was in deep enough, his rhythmic thrusting became wild, messy – because through their Legilimency he could feel how fucking close that made Voldemort. “I am trying to make you _slosh_ ,” he murmured against Voldemort’s back. A noise akin to a whimper.

And an unambiguous whimper moments later, on a hard thrust and a slip of his hand along Voldemort’s torso. A hard stream in Voldemort’s pants, spreading along the inside of his thighs. Harry moved a hand there immediately. “It’s okay, you can hold it,” he said softly, even as his next thrust elicited another burst of piss against his palm.

“Harry – “

“What does it feel like?” He bore down on their Legilimency, consuming the shock and humiliation greedily, but he had to hear it properly. Quick shallow thrusts drove out more moisture.

Voldemort ground against his fingers, the layers of wet fabric full of friction between them. “Touch me.” His voice was ragged. “If I’m harder I can hold the rest of it, I’m certain – “

His hand slipped upward, smearing wetness across Voldemort’s swollen lips. “Not an answer.”

“This is _awful_. I can’t – “ He drew a shuddering breath. “I don’t lose control.” He was mildly hysterical.

“I know,” Harry said softly. And he was pulling them both backwards, with himself seated and Voldemort bouncing on his lap. Voldemort’s weight drove him in deeper, and again Voldemort tensed at the invasion, before consciously relaxing. Every shiver deep within him was magnified in the head of Harry’s cock.

And he could watch him wet himself now, see Voldemort’s lap over his shoulder as his trousers grew shiny and saturated. It ran over his own legs, wetting the bedspread. Harry dropped a hand into his lap. “Good, you’re being very good,” he was murmuring against Voldemort’s neck, just under his ear.

“I can’t stop.” His voice was a whisper. And Harry could feel him _trying_ , and it was delicious. His lower half was too exhausted, kept tense for too long so now all his muscles were too weak to catch.

Harry felt his mortification, and panic, and pain. He luxuriated in it. “Tell me what it feels like,” he asked again.

“It fucking hurts,” Voldemort snapped, and Harry bit his shoulder as though to punish his impertinence but really it was to contain a devious grin. Taking a breath, Voldemort tried once more: “It hurts, in a frustrating way, when I try to stop. The weight of the wet fabric is… provocative. And the friction of how my pants rub when you thrust. _Mm_ ,” he grunted as Harry pushed his hips upward, demonstratively.

And Harry was so close, filling Voldemort, their bodies shuddering in rhythm. The scent of piss filled his nose, filled the room. Moisture was trickling from Voldemort’s cock, down his balls, down Harry’s, light and teasing and wonderful in a way that made his vision blur. “Nearly there,” Harry murmured, a promise and a plea.

Voldemort said nothing but pushed open their Legilimency further, until all of the shame and humiliation and ambivalent relief was flooding him. He was shaking, he was vulnerable. Harry scrambled to grab his thin hips as he jerked upward, overwhelmed, shooting come deep inside Voldemort. Marking him, defiling him with slick fluids. And Voldemort pushed himself backward, wanting Harry deeper. Their Legilimency was consuming them both, searing and loving and receptive. Harry forgot to breathe.

Voldemort patiently let him still beneath him, rocking onto his knees to let him up when he was ready. And when Harry crawled up the bed, he disintegrated the rope charms with a touch, giving Voldemort time to stretch out his extended shoulders and his cramped thighs. He’d finally stopped wetting himself, but the wet expanse of his lap was prominent, obvious. Harry could feel that he wanted to cover it. He didn’t.

“You’re so good,” Harry murmured again, because he was all sweetness and light after coming. “But I need you to finish pissing before I let you get off.” He took a handful of trousers, squeezing so their moisture trickled back onto Voldemort’s cock. “You’re not too hard to go?”

Voldemort looked down at his lap with mild despair. “I haven’t debased myself well enough for you?”

“I know you’ve still got to. I can feel everything you feel.” And right now he still felt the pressure and concern of a full bladder. Though that might be himself, actually. “Here.” Rearranging Voldemort’s legs and pulling his own pants back on, he climbed into his lap. “Can I go too?” he asked, knowing it was already their favorite thing.

“ _Harry_.” Voldemort looked to the ceiling. His throat moved as he swallowed. “I’d rather – “

“I know.” He rested his forehead on Voldemort’s prominent collarbone. “I won’t even be watching,” he said, teasing. “Let me – “ And he summoned all his favorite feelings, pushing them through their Legilimency before explaining them aloud. “It’s always just felt good,” he said, sinking into Voldemort’s touch. “To feel helpless, and to feel safe at the same time.” He hadn’t softened enough to piss yet but he kept the warm sense of relief at the forefront of their connection. “That is wasn’t just about how humiliated I’d feel. Although it was that, too,” he added. “But that you were willing to deal with it, and with me. That you were patient instead of disgusted. Ready?” he asked, because he thought he could let go now, and it’d probably make Voldemort go too, whether he wanted to or not.

A rise and fall of his chest. “Yes.”

He arranged his cock in his lap, letting go at a trickle. Beneath him, Voldemort tensed, feeling the same. He kept talking, to keep things normal and quiet and good. “Even when you were just indulging me last year, before we’d done anything – that you’d put me in these stupid, intimate moments. That I had to rely on you, that I had to give my own control over to you, and you were… thoughtful with it.” His piss ran down his thighs. Voldemort’s stream tickled his arsehole, and he might have to come again in short order. “Even when I hated you. It was generous.”

“That is called Stockholm syndrome,” Voldemort muttered. His mortification had softened, that he was reluctant but he was intrigued. He had no choice but to relax incrementally, if only physically. Something warm pulsed within him.

Harry grinned. “Maybe,” he agreed. “But it still felt really good and kind. And it feels….” They wouldn’t speak of love. He’d already made Voldemort too vulnerable; he was scared that speaking of such a strong thing with his mind and soul so exposed would hurt him. “It feels like safety, and like trust, more acutely than anything else I’ve ever felt.” He slid a hand beneath himself, pressing a palm to the bubbling stream at the front of Voldemort’s trousers. “That nothing I could do would disgust you. That failure,” and he stumbled on the word because he’d never had to say it aloud before, “stupid, deliberate, disgusting failure like wetting my pants was okay. That I’d be okay.” His hand was flat on Voldemort’s trousers, not rubbing yet because he couldn’t get hard yet, just… holding him. Voldemort had his eyes shut, and Harry still felt a twinge of denial alongside everything else. “That I’d never been able to fail before. And I don’t think you have either.”

A flare of amusement underneath it all. “Don’t psychologize this.”

“Well.” The last of his stream dribbled down his arsehole. Voldemort didn’t stop. He’d been so full. “I want you to feel safe, and taken care of. That I’d never be disgusted by you either. I want you to give up _completely_ , and know that it will be okay.”

“It’s hardly a dangerous thing,” Voldemort objected, but his voice was soft. His eyes were still closed and Harry could feel how much of his self was elsewhere.

“I think you find vulnerability to be the most dangerous thing, actually.” It was half prompt and half rebuke. Voldemort didn’t answer. “So you’re going to finish wetting your pants into my mouth,” Harry said, crawling off his lap. Voldemort shuddered in disgust, attempting to push him away.

“That is hideous,” he said.

“Yeah,” Harry agreed happily. “I want you empty. And I want you to savor being helpless, being a failure, for just a moment.” He’d positioned himself between Voldemort’s legs, peeling off his saturated trousers but leaving his pants. They clung heavily to the outline of his cock, and he swiped his tongue across the tip. “I’ll give you a suggestion charm if you’d like. If it’s difficult.”

Voldemort was staring down at him. His stream had once again faltered, even though Harry could feel he still had to go, that he could piss forever. “I can’t,” he said quietly, and there was the note of hysteria deep within him once more. “Not with your face – this is private,” he insisted, and for a moment he wasn’t confident or accomplished, but young again, too young and wound too tight, out of necessity because all the rest of it was weakness, he’d never survive like this –

“Close your eyes.” Harry’s voice was calm and commanding. “Do you trust me?”

“I trust _nobody_.” But his eyes were closed.

He could feel Harry’s mouth curl along the tip of his cock. “Don’t psychologize this,” he mocked. “I’m giving you a suggestion charm. Not to make you trust me, _obviously_. But just so you can finish going in your pants.” Voldemort heard the creak of the bed, and then there was a warm current of magic. (Had _he_ taught Harry the suggestion charm? He couldn’t recall. It wasn’t bad.) The same panic, the same struggle to hold on, overcame him, and of course he was exhausted. He moved reflexively to catch the long spurt that escaped, and Harry caught his wrist.

“You’ll lose control,” he said calmly, licking the drip off his shaft. “And I will fucking love you for it. For making this sacrifice for me.”

 _Sacrifice_. It was piss. But then Harry’s mouth enveloped his cock, loosely so he wouldn’t get too hard, and the… _starkness_ of his failure overwhelmed him. He didn’t want to piss in Harry’s mouth, didn’t want to obligate him to swallow it. He couldn’t stop, though, he might never stop. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, horrified, when he couldn’t hold it back, when a stream leaked onto his tongue. He tried pulling away, squirming out of reach. Harry’s grip, one hand on his thigh and the other behind his arse, was surprisingly strong. And he was pushing… some warm and foreign emotion through their connection. Safety, perhaps, or acceptance. He could feel Harry’s mouth convulsing to swallow, as he wet himself in long streams that he couldn’t control. The only disgust he could feel was his own.

The suggestion charm shifted from eliciting desperation to eliciting _surrender_. He couldn’t, he couldn’t. Even as defiled as he already was, even as he pissed hard through his pants into Harry’s mouth and his arse was growing slick as Harry’s come slipped out of him, pooling underneath him. He was right, he’d never failed. Who would want to? Who would crack themselves open for the unworthy world, who would offer their throat to be ripped out. He was never meant to survive. Neither was Harry. Neither of them, to put it lightly, had had much in the way of caretakers.

 _Oh_.

And it wasn’t just their childhoods he thought of, how inane, but… all of it. That Harry had desperately sought out support and caretaking wherever he might find it, and still, he couldn’t safely fail, except with him. And somehow, for the first time, _failure_ and _safety_ felt as though they went together.

His belly had gone slack and his head was back against the headboard. His eyes were closed, immersed in these ridiculous feelings Harry made him feel. That Harry just pushed into his head, and he was still _there_ , unwilling to give Voldemort any sort of emotional privacy in this moment either. His hands were in fists and he consciously relaxed them. Harry hummed at the gesture, making him jolt. As though he were proud of him. As though _Harry_ were proud of _him_. Nevertheless, he tried: as though it were Occlumency, he drained himself of misgiving and humiliation and shame and fear…. _Fear?_ he wondered. No matter; it was gone by now anyway. He had never been so empty. He might lose himself in that chasm.

His stream dribbled to an end, Harry lapping at the last spilled drops. And all that was left was… relief. Not just physical relief, but something psychological as well. That Harry had been witness to such failure, and such vulnerability, and just… embraced it. Adored it, if the smile curved around his cock were any indication. He couldn’t even quite put together what he’d been afraid of, before. And this safety, this support (was it love? It had to be love, everything he’d been told of it) burned worse than the humiliation.

“Alright?” Harry mumbled around his cock; and he couldn’t find his voice so he nodded. And then Harry began to blow him, _through_ his sodden pants, and it was perverse and it was wonderful and it was… _Harry_. He was going to get carpet burn in his mouth. But the fabric was so saturated that it transferred all the sensations anyway, probably magnified then, and the friction of it was novel and delicious. He tangled his long fingers in Harry’s wild hair.

He was obligated to suck more than bob, with the briefs in the way. Harry knew him well enough by now anyway, would press his tongue and his lips in just the right way. Sliding a hand beneath him and tugging away a legband of his pants, Harry was fingering his arse again, rubbing his ejaculate back into his hole. And Harry also knew how jumpy he got with fingers in his arse, and it amused him deeply. He’d always been vulnerable with the boy, then. He was good, he’d only ever used it for good. Only him. He tilted his pelvis upward, to press his erection into Harry’s mouth deeper and to offer up his arse. And when he threw a leg over Harry’s shoulder, it was an expression of abandon and of trust as much as anything. He could do that much for him.

It was quick: he’d been aroused for long enough, pushed through a great many emotions but arousal was always among them. The perversity of being swaddled in wet, defiled fabric helped. The lingering relief in his taxed lower belly helped. Harry’s sense of security and acceptance that he’d shared so freely… helped, and also hurt him, but that was a part of it. He arched and came into his pants, provoking a new sort of shame. As though he were twelve again and furious with the lack of control over his own body. Harry sucked the stickiness from the fabric a bit, but most of the sensation stayed. And when his tongue pressed his come onto the head of his cock, the combined remnants of arousal and disgust gave him visible goose pimples. Harry laughed, pressing a sucking, painful kiss to the sensitive tip of his cock before withdrawing.

He lay there. He couldn’t think properly. Harry would clean him up when he thought he should. The Impervious charm on the mattress (there just for Harry, before now) kept any of this from being absorbed, so piss pooled in the indentations beneath his body. It was somehow even more disgusting after he had come, after arousal wasn’t holding him so captive to ambivalent desires.

Harry was thrilled, and pulled them both lying on the soaked sheets. “God,” he muttered happily, pushing a hand under Voldemort’s arse to witness the puddle. “Would you – “ He corrected his tone. “You’ll stay in this until I say otherwise, of course. You can wear your wet trousers the rest of the night, too, since you’ll be rather accident-prone anyway. No point in ruining anything else.”

Voldemort gave him a look of mild desperation. “Really?”

Harry softened. “No. Though you should. Just stay here, for now. Here.” And he cast a warming charm on all manner of wetness in their bed. “So it doesn’t get clammy,” he explained.

“Well done. We wouldn’t want this to become _disgusting_.”

Harry crawled over him to press a decisive kiss to his swollen lips. “Your bloody mouth.” And he flopped essentially atop Voldemort then, holding him. He was like hugging a cat, stiff and unreceptive. “Are you alright?” he asked. “I mean, mostly.”

Voldemort’s laugh was short and dry. “Mostly,” he agreed. “I’ve never… surrendered in that way before.” He struggled on the word. “Not just in sex.”

“I couldn’t tell how you felt about it. I couldn’t tell how _I_ felt about most of it,” Harry added with a laugh.

“You were quite clever.”

“But not imposing.”

“Merlin, no.” A pause. “I should Obliviate you.”

It was both a threat and light-hearted all at once. “Mm, nope,” Harry said. “You’ll have to live knowing that I’ve seen you wet your pants. Like, a lot.” His hands were still dabbling in the wet fabric because his tolerance for this was much higher than Voldemort’s. Voldemort had begun shrinking away from the bed, as though he could minimize contact; Harry didn’t remark on this squeamishness. Instead he said, “You’re lucky that nobody would want to know this about you, so I can’t use it for blackmail.”

Voldemort made a noise of disgust in the back of his throat. “Put away your notions of blackmail. I am shameless anyway.”

A long moment. Finally Harry, tentative: “I hated calling you a Mudblood. I never want to do it again. But I thought it’d make you angriest.”

“You were correct.” He was withdrawing his Legilimency now, slowly, untangling the strands of whose thoughts were whose. “It’s fine. You provoked some feelings I hadn’t felt in a very long time.” He didn’t mean good ones. He added with some hesitation, “That sense of impurity – that sensation you so enjoy, the sort of repulsion at being trapped in your own filthy skin and wanting to claw your way out – led me to research Horcruces to begin with. Well, to research soul magic, in search of some sort of… amputation. That it also carried immortality, though – it felt like fate.”

“No.” His heart hurt. “I’m sorry.”

Voldemort shook his head. “I’d forgotten the feeling,” he said simply. “And I’d forgotten the allure of the death drive as well. It has been too long.”

Harry pulled Voldemort facing him, alarmed. “You wanted to kill yourself?” he asked, horrified. It sounded like the least likely thing.

A faint smile. “Of course not. I wanted to _destroy_ myself. Or my self, as it were.” A pause. “I need to be alone for awhile, Harry. And I need you to refrain from asking about it until I’d like to tell you.” He took in Harry’s tragic expression. “Don’t,” he said with some amusement. “I’m quite happy. You did well. I just would like to be alone. Go sleep off your orgasm, as usual.”

Harry pulled himself together, flashing him a broad smile. “Right. Yeah.” He got off the ruined bed. “Should I clean up?” he asked. “And – “ the bruises looked worse from this angle. Christ, _he’d_ made those darkening stripes all down Voldemort’s back “ – can I heal you?”

“You are forbidden from doing either. Pass me my wand.” Voldemort looked like he’d make himself struggle with disgust for awhile. His skin was still visibly prickled with intensity of it. Tossing his wand beside him, Harry left and did in fact go to sleep off his orgasm.

 

It was rather a lot of time to spend on sex while they’d ostensibly been given two days to work on the Horcrux by the Ministry. But, since Voldemort was measuring success in months rather than days at this point, Harry decided it didn’t make such a difference. Voldemort came down to dinner clean and poised and really quite fond of Harry. But they wouldn’t talk about it. Maybe never. And he wouldn’t ask if the abuse at Azkaban included stripping him, that he wouldn’t be able to keep those bruises to himself. He set himself to being happy instead.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Allusions for Chapter 5:
> 
> The Unspeakables trying to remove Harry’s Horcrux and scar – Harry’s insistence that he should keep the scar, and make it more prominent, is thinking with disability studies and crip theory: that to refuse a ‘normal’ or assimilated body is an act of political resistance.
> 
> “Cursed to the Omphalos and back” – In Greek myth, the Omphalos is a sacred spot marked by a rounded stone, that literally is “the belly button of the world.” It is adorable. (And you’ll see more of this later, but I write British wixes as non-practicing eclectic pantheists. Stealing myths from everyone!)
> 
> Voldemort’s sexual history with Muggles is from [Catullus 16, by eldritcher](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4472828/chapters/10166102).
> 
> Stockholm syndrome – a psychological coping mechanism whereby captives fall in love with their captors. Voldemort accuses Harry of this a lot, and he is wrong.
> 
> Death drive – In psychoanalysis, the compulsion or attraction toward death and destruction. It’s not about suicide, but about normal human attraction to dangerous or destructive behaviors. Voldemort is naming his own obsession with death, violence, and immortality as related compulsions here.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Of course Voldemort would find love more torturous than hatred. 
> 
>  
> 
> (Warnings: Most of this chapter is about prison abuse. Be careful.)

_Tuesday, July 14._ Voldemort would bring back some of his books to Azkaban but leave the chalice in the safehouse, it was decided, because somehow this space was the less enervating one. And this was negotiated, Harry found out midday Tuesday, through the same type of journal Voldemort had given Harry, but one owned by Scrimgeour. “His is red though,” Voldemort said helpfully. “Yours is blue. And also he’s passed it off to Moody at the moment.” And indeed there was a different hand (one written with a quill in a clenched fist, it looked like, unsurprisingly) along the page.

“And I’ll ask again, are you and Scrimgeour friends?”

“Does it bother you?”

“No.” And it wouldn’t. “I’ll just stop slagging on him in front of you, if you are. And I’ll stop slagging on you in front of him, too,” he added with a cheshire grin.

“Please slag,” Voldemort said serenely. “You do know I am writing his legislation, yes?”

“Uh, I didn’t. You are?”

“He is an Auror at heart. He was appointed to be Minister in wartime. He assumed he would be handling military strategy. Insofar as our insignificant population could support a _military_ , of course.”

“That’s the theme these days, isn’t it.” Harry brought a teapot to the kitchen table. “There was meant to be a war.”

“Mm. So the circumstances he faces instead, of Muggle relations and the repeal of the statute, would have been my specialization instead.” Pause. “Well, if I had become a politician instead of a dark wizard.”

“Is this… course correction?”

“Hardly,” he scoffed. “I had assumed, when I was younger, that everyone encouraging me toward the Ministry did so to smother my ambitions. To neutralize me under the weight of inanity. Now….” His eyes glittered. “Now I’ve avoided this inanity, and I write their legislation.”

“You haven’t been elected yet,” Harry pointed out.

“I haven’t. The point is, the Minister is grateful that I’ve saved him from _his_ inanity, which is drafting bills. Have I told you that every politician may be bought?” He’d perked up, as though this were urgent. There was to be a lecture.

“No, but – “

“Scrimgeour is taken by something like _adventure_. This is all quite exciting to him, and he will still spend as much time among the Aurors as he can justify. Fudge, the simplest of creatures, could be bought literally. Bagnold, his predecessor, with prestige – she grew up middle class, you know, so longed for entrance into elite spaces and the like. And _that_ ,” Voldemort sighed, “is how Lucius and Narcissa have avoided prosecution up to this point. And the rest of them, really. That the Death Eaters were mostly drawn from historically prominent, elite wixen families. Even the ones who no longer had money to spend themselves. There was always money somewhere, to negotiate things.”

“I don’t want to know this,” Harry muttered. He was holding his tea cup to his chest, ready to leave.

Voldemort went on anyway: “They never believed, these elite families, that their savior – if you’re not too possessive of the title,” he added, flashing his sharp teeth in nothing like a smile, “would come from poverty, a halfblood orphan, with no pedigree, that _they_ knew of at least. At times I could parlay it into a benefit – that _even_ the halfblood saw the sense in their ideas of purity, _even_ the halfblood believed in upholding these traditions, this culture, without dilution. The Death Eaters never believed I was a pureblood. In many ways, it was more significant that I wasn’t.”

So being called a Mudblood had struck deep yesterday. Harry wasn’t allowed to apologize for it again. “Bellatrix thought you were,” he said instead. His tea cup was still pressed to his chest, as he listened, intrigued and horrified.

“Bellatrix,” Voldemort said with something nearing affection, “is quite mad.” He sighed. “I tell you this to underscore how little difference there is. That the flattery, the lifestyle, the elite posture that I learned from the Death Eaters – I learned _for_ the Death Eaters, really – has equal application among the Wizengamot. That we’ll hear the same appeals to culture and tradition from them as those with which I enticed the Death Eaters.”

“You’re not all the same,” Harry said, irritation flaring. “The Ministry doesn’t torture Muggles.”

“No?” Voldemort asked, falsely innocent. When Harry blanched, he relented: “No, it doesn’t. But when they begin sentencing Death Eaters, take note of the ones they kill first. It won’t be the elite, and it won’t be the upper class. It _would_ be the animals – Pettigrew, the werewolves – if they could actually find them. Instead, they will make do with the poor, unglamorous, and un-pedigreed wixes first.”

“I – “ Harry was looking at him wide-eyed. He hadn’t been ready for this. “I don’t want anyone to die. Can’t I do something?”

“Likely not,” Voldemort said, indifferent. “But that’s not the point. The point is, what has separated my politics from the Ministry’s up until now has been not content, but tone.”

“And murder.”

His lips twitched. “And murder,” he agreed. “I am not asking that you agree with my politics. I’m asking that you be critical of the polite, well-spoken, hateful structures of power that only don’t announce themselves as such.” A minute sigh. “You suggested once that I run on a platform of misanthropy, that we are all nasty and brutish creatures. I think it would be liberating to enter this confession into the political realm.”

His grip on his teacup had loosened, a bit. He didn’t know enough of wixen politics, Voldemort’s or otherwise, to really hold his own, but Voldemort didn’t seem to expect him to. “I’d do it,” he offered. “Give speeches like, ‘Everyone is awful; at least Voldemort’s honest about it.’”

“Good boy.”

“But then… people get stuck, don’t they? There’s no reason to change anything, or to want to make anything better. But you do. Your resolutions… mattered. The bills you’re writing now matter.”

“Ah, yes. The question that remains after the resignation sets in. Why do it anyway.”

“Well?”

“Why not just curl up and quietly wait for death?” Voldemort mocked. “Because it’s not what I _do_.”

The follow-up to that of course was _why_ _not_ , but he’d have to unearth Voldemort’s obsessions and neuroses one at a time. “Obviously,” he said instead. He was no longer too frozen to pour another tea.

Voldemort was thoughtful, frowning. “You are asking, really, how to inspire and subsequently mobilize the masses. You should have some sense of it yourself.”

“I have never done anything to deserve their attention,” Harry objected.

Voldemort raised his eyebrows in doubt. “We attract rather different types of people,” he said dryly. “So _how_ to inspire people is not a fruitful question. _Why_ to inspire them, however…. Both magic and politics are meant to manipulate the world. Because we can. Because living with squandered potential is, first of all, irresponsible. But secondly, it will kill you inside.” The slightest hesitation: “The years in which I was dispossessed, ambition was all that held my self together. It would have only taken an Obliviate to kill me then, I think. Or leave me… something much less than human. And less than alive. I feared that I would die if I stopped. A sort of metaphysical treading water. I still might.”

He didn’t want to know of Voldemort’s precarity; it gave him odd and panicky feelings. “What about everyone else?” he asked. “Why shouldn’t they give up. The ones who _can_ die.”

A skeptical look. “I imagine the answer has got something to do with _love_ ,” he said scornfully. “The only thing all you terrible people talk about.”

He choked on his tea, and had to stop to wipe his face. “That, yeah.”

“It’s probably just as well that most of the population is indifferent, though, to their own potential. An internalized social control.” He took the teapot from Harry. “You don’t need to know all of this. I have no interest in making you cynical. Only, people will ask.”

“About?”

“All of it,” Voldemort said grimly. “If you are not regularly accosted by both reporters and angry civilians, it is only because everyone involved with Hogwarts’s security has toiled to ensure you wouldn’t be. As I am rather inaccessible to them.”

“Yeah.  I mean, nobody’s come round so far. And my friends, ah, find it embarrassing? We don’t talk about… any of this.”

“With the trials, that will change rapidly.” He looked at Harry’s unhappy expression. “There is nothing you can do,” he assured him, in a way that sounded not at all reassuring.

“There must be, though.”

“Let the purebloods kill one another,” Voldemort said, and the bitterness of his tone was startling.

Harry stared into his tea. It couldn’t be right. It wasn’t right. “Will the trials be open? Public, that is.”

“Oh, I don’t know. My sense of things comes from recent… restlessness at Azkaban. That uncreative torture can’t hold their attention much longer. And _do_ stop looking so tragic whenever I speak of Azkaban,” he added in irritation. “You know your sympathy makes everything worse.”

He rearranged his face, knowing it was really his Occlumency that was the problem. “Right,” he said, because he wasn’t allowed to say sorry. “I’ll… tell you about the trials when they begin, then. If they begin.”

“Thank you.” It had apparently been what he’d wanted, because he returned to his books. Harry worked on his Occlumency in order to keep the sick feelings to himself.

 

On Wednesday, the Aurors came. Voldemort was ready to answer for the progress he’d made on the Horcrux (which, Harry really would have liked to hear himself, because from his perspective there had only been a lot of reading) but none of the Aurors wanted to know anything about it. Books were packed. Permission to visit Azkaban was secured. They left.

On Thursday, the trials began.

_Friday, July 17._ He only found this out on Friday, when an unusual number of owls greeted him at breakfast. Reporters, none of them from the _Prophet_ but from _The Times Beneath, The Unexpurgated Gazette, The Spark_. None from the _Quibbler_ either, he was disappointed to find, if only because he missed Luna. Both Ron and Hermione had beaten him to breakfast, and were impatiently curious about the owls.

“Trials,” he said with a sigh after opening the first one. “They want a comment.” All the comments he had in him were unnecessarily rude, so he set the envelopes aside. Ron offered each of the owls toast.

Hermione had furiously opened the Prophet, and Ron had Harry’s copy, but there was nothing. “Of course,” Hermione said grimly, flipping (perversely) to the entertainment section as a last measure. “Best to do it without fanfare, I suppose.”

Harry looked to the Gazette’s letter, the only one to name names. Gibbon, Jugson, the Crabbes. Insignificant people. Unglamorous people, as Voldemort had predicted. The richer and more pedigreed wixes would be cause for fanfare. “Scrimgeour said Voldemort can’t have a trial yet because the Ministry hasn’t got the resources. And, uh, I can’t either,” he added. “That the… drama it’d cause would create chaos, that they wouldn’t be able to control.”

“It was the opposite last time,” Ron volunteered. “Mum and Dad said, at least. That all the trials people wanted and expected came first. The Lestrange family was the very first to get sentenced.”

Bellatrix loved that, he assumed. “It should….” But he didn’t know, really. He thought of Stan Shunpike, a useless figure pushed into everything as a distraction, a decoy. But this was different, if they were doing it in secret. “I guess it doesn’t matter,” he said. “But Voldemort said – I know, I’m _sorry_ ,” he said as they flinched, because it really was the worst way to begin a statement, “he said that the Ministry would kill the Death Eaters in order of, uh, prestige. Or wealth or class.”

“Because the rich ones have got money to postpone their trials?” Hermione guessed.

“Because the Wizengamot doesn’t want to kill its own kind.”

It wasn’t meant to sound as harsh and cynical and violent as his friends’ expressions made clear it was. “I don’t know why you listen to him,” Ron said, his voice tight.

“Maybe it’ll be wrong,” Harry said. “I hope it is. But so far….” He looked to them, about to suggest something that’d probably go over poorly. “I’d give that to the papers, as a comment. Not to ask why they’re killing the elite ones last, but why they’re killing the poor ones first.”

They both dropped their gazes to their plates. “Maybe,” Ron said, finally. (The word _poor_ always resonated with him; Harry tried not to abuse it.) “But you don’t know anything yet for sure. Maybe they’re not doing it that way. And also,” his gaze flitted up in some amusement, “doesn’t the Ministry already, y’know, hate you?”

He laughed, not expecting this. “They’re annoyed by me,” he agreed. “But they still think they need me. I don’t know why, though.” Shaking his head: “I’ll wait on it, I guess. I just… didn’t want him to be right.” Ron and Hermione had nothing to say.

But nobody else knew, apparently. He wouldn’t be the bearer of this news. Snape was dour and indifferent as always; Draco sneered at him as usual when they crossed paths. He took his diary and some revision for his Defense NEWT down to the lake.

**_It’s begun. Nobody knows, but I heard from the reporters who all want a quote. I have nothing to tell them._ **

Voldemort didn’t write back. He was hopefully immersed in some painfully boring bill, unbothered by the rest of the world. Harry flipped through some inversion spells. He cast his Patronus as practice, as though it weren’t his best spell already, and the stag ran a few laps round the lake before settling beside him.

His heart skipped when he saw the line of Voldemort’s that he had missed: _Yes. Sheer violence has stagnated. Perhaps it is intended as psychological abuse for the remaining Death Eaters. Perhaps it is only disposing of evidence._

Harry pulled his Occlumency into place well enough to not expose Voldemort to his sense of horror. He hadn’t known – of course the Death Eaters would be abused as well. Perhaps not _as_ abused. Or perhaps so; they were significantly more disposable, after all.

**_A friend said it went the other way last time, that the prominent ones were put on trial first._ **

_Bagnold had to disavow elite Death Eaters quickly. The Ministry was better equipped for spectacle then than it is now. The public yearned for spectacle in a way that it doesn’t seem to, this time. It may be a legitimate strategy, anyway: eroding an organization from the bottom up will neutralize its power, without inciting the cause through martyrdom or anything like it._

Harry dropped his head backward against the tree trunk. He was right; the Ministry was dismantling the Death Eaters in an entirely undramatic fashion. **_They’re killing a lot of people just to neutralize you_** , he wrote, feeling sick.

_Or imprisoning them, yes. Presumably, I am worth more than they are, collectively._

**_This is awful._** He scored the word heavily.

_Empathy seems exhausting_ , Voldemort wrote instead of anything helpful. Harry drew a thick line through it to indicate his displeasure.

**_I told my friends your suggestion, that they’d kill the poor ones first as well. I want to tell it to the journalists, let them print it._** Maybe he’d find it a more compelling idea than Ron and Hermione had.

_In a much better world, you could offer such critique readily. I would write it myself, but for your observation that the Ministry is prosecuting these wixes in order to save me. It might look ungrateful._

Ugh. **_That is not how either salvation or gratitude works._**

_If it mollifies you at all, convicts have more legal protections than detainees. Slightly more_ , he amended. _They might have better treatment once they are sentenced. And if they get Kissed, then they are rewarded with a quiet room in St. Mungo’s for the rest of their lives. This liminal legal space might be the worst of it._

**_I thought it was just you_** , he wrote, elliptically, because he couldn’t bear to see the word ‘torture’ on the page. **_And I thought the Wizengamot were only at Azkaban to watch._** He was sucking on the knuckle of his thumb, unconsciously, as though that would soothe all of the things he felt right now.

_If you heard this from the Minister – that is true when he is present. There is decorum to maintain._

There was no way to put into words, simple written words, how much this sickened him. And how much he hated feeling so much pity for loathsome people. It would make him more cynical than Voldemort himself ever had. **_I’m coming to Azkaban tonight_ , **he wrote. **_I’d rather know._**

_You will not._

**_Or I’ll skip dreamless sleep, if I’ve got to. I assume that would be worse for you._ **

A pause. _I’d rather you were here in person, then. But I’d prefer you forget about this entirely. They’re quite disposable people, anyway. Save your empathy._

He ignored that. **_Would the Aurors know about how the Death Eaters are being treated?_**

_Moody warned you against anything that looked like a rescue mission._

It still fucking hurt. It was still so out of line. **_He did. Did I tell you about that?_**

_I felt it. And you may come, but you mustn’t look like you’re on a rescue mission, is the point._

**_Right_** _._ His mouth was tight around his thumb, his teeth worrying the nail. One last thing: **_Are the Dementors there, where they take you?_** It would determine whether he could get away with wearing his invisibility cloak.

_These are human concerns. Or they’ve been ordered to stay away._

**_Good. I’ll be by tonight_. ** Sighing, he dropped his hand on the back of his Patronus, as though petting a dog. The stag looked startled.

The Aurors this week were Herzog and Kingsley, and thank goodness for that because he had the increasing sense that Kingsley was the only one who liked him. Even Tonks got a little exasperated with him, more often these days. He shoved his Defense notes back in his bag and went to prepare.

He couldn't remember the last time he’d used his cloak. The battle at Hogwarts, sometime. He winced when he took it out because it still smelled like smoke, from the fires that had been set in the Forbidden Forest. These days he was more inclined to just defy the rules (and _laws_ , actual laws) openly. He tossed it on his bed.

A stupid amount of potions, glass jars clinking as he arranged them in his bag. Kaval, dreamless sleep, and calming draught just in case. He put the calming draught at the top. His travel cloak, laced with waterproof charms. Chocolate.

He went to find Kingsley.

In the Great Hall. He somehow looked unsurprised to see Harry. “I’m going to Azkaban tonight,” Harry said, sounding too abrupt. “I’ll be back in the morning. Sorry,” he backtracked. “I mean, I’d ask permission but I’d go regardless.”

Kingsley was at least a half-step ahead of him. “You’ve heard that the trials have started.”

“Was I not supposed to know?”

“The public was not meant to know. And sometimes, that includes you.”

“I hate it more than Voldemort does,” Harry said. “And I don’t understand the lengths you’re going to protect him. I _appreciate_ it,” he amended, “but I don’t understand it.”

A slight pause. “Such things were never my decision,” Kingsley said. Right. He’d forgotten Scrimgeour and the Aurors were at odds on this. “But, similarly not my decision, the Minister has asked that you’re given relatively free access to Voldemort.”

“Thank you.” He tried sounding as sincere as possible. “I can go alone. Unless you or Herzog want to come.” Which would ruin his barebones plan but he assumed his offer would be rejected. Kingsley was already shaking his head.

“Check in tomorrow morning,” he said. “And,” he hesitated on his words, “you should stay away from the Death Eaters, if you’re inclined to….”

“Save them?” Harry offered when Kingsley faltered.

“Yes. You can’t save them.”

“I know,” he said, and it was true. “I won’t try.”

“Good.”

 

He left at dusk. Voldemort didn’t need him to bring anything but his magic, he said. Maybe it was a function of the flat, small medium of writing, but he seemed particularly resigned. It made Harry feel guilty. But not so guilty that he wouldn’t go. The night was cool and wet. Anxiety gnawed at his stomach as he stepped into the boat from Candle Quay.

Other boats were already pulled onto the shore, but the grounds were quiet. Nevertheless, he pulled his invisibility cloak over himself immediately. No reason to invite anyone’s attention or questions.

He had to insert his wand in a dropbox beside the iron door for it to admit him. A token clattered into the slot, to reclaim it later. In another setting, it would be charmingly anachronistic. There were Dementors on the ground floor, who drew back when he entered. Someone from the Ministry must have commanded they keep their distance from Harry, so they were no longer nearby but _there_ nevertheless. He was allowed to be here, he was meant to be here. He strode to Voldemort’s cell.

Voices, not directly before him but close. Casual tones, too casual for the setting. It had to be citizens or guards; he assumed prisoners would be too broken for such tones. He reached the landing nearest them but didn’t seek them out. He’d see them soon enough. He continued upward. Knocking, he only slipped off his cloak as Voldemort opened the door. “Hi,” he said in an undertone.

He really was resigned, he could feel as soon as he entered. He’d hoped he’d wrongly inferred it. “Why are you here?” Voldemort sighed.

It was a horrible feeling. “I’m sorry.”

Voldemort shook his head minutely, taking his cloak as a distraction that then became real interest. “What is this?” It was oddly beautiful, mercury running between his long pale fingers.

“An invisibility cloak. I thought it’d be… well, not better. More honest if they didn’t see me.”

“Undoubtedly. Where did you get it?”

It felt good, it felt momentarily normal. “I inherited it, from my dad. Dumbledore passed it along in my first year.”

“How whimsically irresponsible of him,” Voldemort said with distaste. “It’s daemon-made, but I can’t say anything beyond that. Bar the door, if you really don’t want to be found.”

He cast an Impervious charm on it, to stay between now and the moment Voldemort would be fetched to goddamn torture. “Uh, demons?”

A slight eyeroll. “Greek, not Christian. Just, mm, unrecognized forces more powerful than what we know to exist. What Muggles might call magic, wixenkind would call daemonic.” He handed it back.

“I really don’t know,” he said apologetically. “I’ve only used it to, like, sneak into Hogsmeade. It’s probably a waste.” He was opening his bag, passing chocolate over and arranging the potions along the desk. “Do you want any of these now? Or… afterward?”

“You really are doing this.” Voldemort was opening the kaval, taking a sip from the jar before handing it off to Harry. “You are here to watch me be beaten.”

It curdled his stomach. “No.”

Voldemort shot him a look. “Oh yes, you are. Along with whatever Death Eaters are pulled from their cells. Recently it has functioned as… interrogation, really. The things the Wizengamot beats out of them here will surface again in court, if Gibbon and Jugson were any indication.” A cold smile. “It couldn't happen anywhere else, to anyone but detainees.”

He regretted this deeply. “I haven’t got to… or I’ll tell the guards I’m here. They wouldn’t….”

Voldemort was shaking his head. “You wanted this so badly that you presented me with an _ultimatum_ ,” he said dryly.

“I did. I’m sorry.” A breath. “I’ll stay out of the way. And I’ll just – _go_ , if I can’t keep my Occlumency together.” He took a long draught of kaval, and at least a few of the terrible feelings receded. “Sorry,” he said again.

Voldemort had pulled them both onto the bed. There was no point in methodically giving him magic, as it’d just be taken (goddamn _bled from him_ ) soon, but there was a crackling warmth wherever they touched anyway. They split the remainder of the kaval, sinking into the warm peace it brought. It helped with the waiting, at least.

The benefit of Voldemort’s cell being atop a high tower was that approaching footsteps echoed in the stairwell from a great distance. It was nearing one a.m. when they heard them approach – two people, their voices carrying even farther.

“I’m putting a silencing charm on you,” Voldemort said, getting up to prepare. “You can break it if necessary?”

“Yeah.” He had his invisibility cloak in hand, poised to slip out the door when it was opened. His voice seemed to be swallowed as Voldemort cast the spell, he threw on his cloak, and the door opened.

Two wizards in the dark striped robes of Azkaban guards. One was the peaky guard who’d been here when he had come with Tonks and Bragg; the other had a thick face and dead-seeming eyes. They both faltered to find Voldemort in the center of the room, apparently waiting for them. “Good evening,” Voldemort said.

“Hands out,” the dead-eyed one said. They had both approached, and Harry stepped past them into the doorway. “Why do we _always_ gotta do this?”

Voldemort offered his thin wrists; the guard snapped on a dull pair of Muggle handcuffs. “Why _have_ you always got to do this?” he agreed. An infuriating smile was on his lips. “As everyone knows – well, perhaps you wouldn’t, but every _real_ wizard knows I duel my opponents before killing them. To do otherwise is uncivilized.”

Squibs. He hadn’t realized the human guards of Azkaban were Squibs. And the peaky one had just drawn a nightstick, smashing it into Voldemort’s non-nose before any of them had time to react. He turned abruptly, to block Harry’s view of his bloodied face. “Enough of _that_ ,” the dead-eyed one said, grabbing the handcuffs to pull Voldemort along. Blood bubbled down his face but his look remained indifferent. “’Ey’ve already got Macnair out.”

And Harry was scrabbling out of the way, casting a hasty cushioning charm where each of his steps would fall on the stairs, to muffle the sound. But Voldemort spoke to fill the silence. “Macnair? Already? From what I’ve heard of the trials, Bones and Hart haven’t even recognized the Crabbes’ role in the disappearance of the Muggle Studies professor. Are you quite sure you’re done with them?”

Their looks were hesitant. “Bowersock is downstairs,” the dead-eyed one said finally. “Tell him yourself.”

“I suppose I must.” The peaky one tightened his grip on the nightstick but only shoved Voldemort down a corridor. Harry followed.

It all felt familiar, not just the tower he knew they were approaching but the passageways themselves. He supposed Voldemort was right, his subconscious was absorbing this all each night even if he didn’t dream it. It was helpful, that he could be near enough to the doors they’d take that he was able to slip through each time. He might be obligated to take dreamless sleep forever.

A flimsy wooden door opened to the cold, familiar tower. A semicircle of people were already there: another two Azkaban guards, on either side of a bloodied and dazed Macnair. Four wizards in Wizengamot robes, chatting as amiably as if they’d been on a fishing trip. When Harry got closer, he found that the most gregarious one had brought a flask of firewhiskey, and was passing it to the others. Utter, utter wankers; he’d have pitched the flask off the tower, given the chance. And in a corner, looking a great deal less at ease with all this than the others, were a young witch and wizard in common robes. They looked related, and not much older than Harry himself.

“That’s it, is it?” one Wizengamot member asked.

“Ah, no,” the head one, who must be Bowersock, replied. “Dolores is joining us, and Madame Avril. They thought they’d come support their former colleague, they said.” Bowersock glanced at Macnair, who had paled. “It is always a disappointment to learn of a Ministry employee’s conflicting loyalties. By the way, Walden, oughtn’t you be kissing the robes of your master right now?” His gaze flitted mischievously between him and Voldemort, and Harry saw just how cruel it was to bring Voldemort and his Death Eaters together. “I understand your kind get tortured for not showing proper deference.” He nodded to the guard who held Macnair; he let go and he crumpled to the ground. “Go on, beg. We wouldn’t get you in trouble.”

Voldemort hadn’t looked at Macnair, hadn’t looked anywhere but at Bowersock. “You did a terrible job with the Crabbes, if Hart has already put them on trial,” he said. “There’s no need to torture Macnair tonight, until you’ve learned from the Crabbes what happened to Charity Burbage.”

Bowersock’s grin faltered. “If you’re trying to _save_ Walden….”

“Of course not.” Glancing down, he found Macnair had inched closer, murmuring apologies, pleas. With a sneer, he trod on his fingers. “I’m telling you that what you are doing is unrelated to either _justice_ or _truth_.”

“There is time enough for the Crabbes,” another Wizengamot member cut in. “But tonight we have Broderick Bode’s children here. They deserve answers about his death.”

Voldemort turned his gaze to the brother and sister. Harry stood beside them now, out of the way, and he could see the muscles in the young man’s jaw go tense. “You look just like your father,” he said to them softly.

The man was frozen by this, but the woman was angered. “What did you do?” she demanded. “And _why_? We were told it was a freak accident, we were told the Ministry _regrets it deeply_ ….” Her tone was intensely bitter.

“They don’t,” Voldemort said flatly. The woman made a strangled noise.

The sound of metal behind them, as another member of the Wizengamot had drawn a long knife. “Disregard Voldemort,” he said to them both, though he was clearly irritated himself. “He is much less intimidating when his magic is gone. And much less clever as well.”

The dead-eyed guard had tightened his grip on the handcuffs Voldemort wore, as though he would… run? fight? He did neither, in any case, but watched the wizard approach him indifferently. “Bright. How would you like me?” he asked, polite but for the circumstances.

“Don’t pretend to be civil,” Bright snapped. He conjured an awkwardly-sized table behind Voldemort, vanishing the handcuffs and attaching each of his wrists to a leg. He was sprawled enough to be back on his elbows but he couldn’t fully lie back. And suddenly this was a _spectacle_ , a ritual moment rather than a social gathering. Harry moved along the edge of the circle to see Voldemort’s face. His eyes glittered in the same way they had before Harry had beaten him. Harry pressed a fist to his mouth, disgusted by how easily they moved into this position. He wondered how many times it had happened before.

Bright pulled open Voldemort’s robes, exposing his pale and narrow chest. “Are you certain you wouldn’t rather slit my throat?” Voldemort asked. “It’s really very cathartic.”

“No.”

“And much less cruel,” Voldemort added, perfectly positioned to watch as Bright twisted the knife into the soft spot above his hip. There must be an artery there; when the knife breached flesh there was a strong pulse of blood, before it fell into a stream along his side. Voldemort’s mouth was tight, and he took a moment to catch his breath, and then looked up at Bright: “Unless,” he asked, “you like the cruelty?” There was the tangy smell of blood in the air, and it seemed like a self-evident statement.

“I’m not you. I’m not your Death Eaters.”

“No?” But Bright stabbed him a bit too thoroughly above his other hip and he hissed in pain. His Occlumency slipped for the first time and Harry gasped. The silencing charm concealed him.

“We didn’t think he would bleed,” Bright said to Bode’s children as Voldemort slumped against the table. “Red like a wizard, even.” Twin streams dribbled off Voldemort’s sides. In the dim light the puddles may as well have been black. Harry’s head swam, and he had to look away. “The Minister requires he keep his magic in his cell. I assume you blew him for _that_ concession,” Bright said as an aside to Voldemort; the crowd laughed nervously. “But of course he’s got to be neutralized around civilians. It’s only security.” Voldemort was fading rapidly, Harry could tell. The air was thick with the scent of blood. Bright pushed the table slightly out of the way, unconcerned.

The wooden door swung open again and the crowd turned. Harry choked: he hadn’t put together that _Dolores_ meant Dolores Umbridge, another woman at her side and both of them wrapped in fur-lined robes. “My apologies,” Umbridge said. “Gawain had a dinner party… not very good, but time got away from us regardless.” She surveyed the group. “Good, very good. And Walden?”

“Here.” One of the guards dragged Macnair to his feet. He avoided eye contact with either of the women – with any of them, really.

“Such an embarrassment,” Umbridge smiled at him as though sympathizing. “Why don’t you tell us a bit about your time with the Death Eaters? Perhaps there’s been a mistake?”

Her treacly tone was well suited for the circumstances. Macnair was pushed kneeling, his hands clasped behind his head. He didn’t beg, he didn’t respond at all until the abuse began. When the second Wizengamot member cast a spell that made Macnair choke, heaving for breath. “I didn’t know,” he gasped, when he was able. “I thought – we’d preserve this world. Keep it _safe_ – “ And the wizard cast the curse again and Macnair’s throat closed up.

Harry’s face was wet. He didn’t want this, this Ministry or their _fucking_ ideas of justice. Voldemort’s fading consciousness was making him a bit woozy, try as he did to keep his Occlumency between them. Nobody was looking at Voldemort now anyway, as Macnair gasped and spluttered and pled that his father had told him fantastic lies about the Dark Lord, and he’d gotten in much too deep much too fast, he’d wanted out but of course nobody got out…. Harry inched toward Voldemort.

Voldemort jerked when Harry pressed his fingertips into his palm. He had to be subtle, keeping the invisibility cloak over himself. He broke the silencing charm with a wordless _finite_ ; he’d put it back afterward. “Let me give you magic,” he breathed in Parseltongue. Voldemort’s dull gaze searched for approximately where his face would be, and he mouthed, in English, _No._

He didn’t know what would happen if he tried to stuff magic into Voldemort non-consensually. “But you can’t – “

“It will _fucking hurt_ ,” he said, in as fierce a whisper as he could manage in Parseltongue. And while angrily-whispered Parseltongue probably sounded like nearly nothing to the humans, it did attract their attention. Bowersock, the nearest, turned.

“You disagree, then?” he asked, as though Voldemort had been listening to Macnair. “Tell us, was Walden a _good_ Death Eater?”

“What does that even mean,” Voldemort muttered.

Bowersock vanished the table and Voldemort crashed to the stones, landing hard enough that his skull _bounced_ a bit. Harry slammed a hand against his mouth, pushing a silencing spell between his teeth before he cried out. Awful, fucking awful. He’d murder Bowersock himself if he got the chance. Bowersock’s boot into Voldemort’s stomach prodding him to sit up, and Harry recognized the steel-toed shoes from all the times he’d been kicked by them, by proxy. Voldemort took a long moment on the ground to compose himself before even opening his eyes. “Macnair was a disappointment, at the end,” he said flatly. He hadn’t moved, making Bowersock and the rest of them lean in to listen. “At one point he was better at cruelty than nearly anyone in my ranks. When I’d learned he’d killed Bode with a _houseplant_ ….”

“Did you torture him?” Bright asked, with something like eagerness.

Voldemort gave him a look of utter contempt. “Did I, Walden?” he asked, glancing at Macnair, who was currently curled fetally from some psychological spell they’d cast on him. “I don’t recall.”

It took Macnair a very long time to find his voice. “No, my Lord.” He gagged on the words, since speaking them and not seemed to be equally dangerous. “Bode had already been too much of a spectacle.”

“Right,” Voldemort said, in that same dismissive way as he sometimes said it to Harry, and Harry felt a flicker of possessiveness, over a stupid word. “So, at the end, Macnair grew tired of violence. Or reluctant. A great disappointment,” he said to Bowersock and the rest of them.

A profoundly unimpressed look. “Once again, if you’re trying to save him….”

“I won’t _save_ anybody.” Voldemort had attempted climbing to his feet; Bowersock put a decisive boot on his throat. “As I’ve said before, I’d kill every Death Eater myself. But you would preserve that responsibility for yourself.”

“Poor Walden,” Umbridge sighed, glancing back at him. “Did you hear that? Your Lord would kill you without a second thought.”

“Yes,” Macnair said, coolly, and Harry had to deal with feeling a split second of respect for him.

“Everyone would be a martyr, for the right cause,” Voldemort added as though it were helpful.

Bowersock reached for his wand in frustration, but the fourth Wizengamot member, the quietest one up to this point, frowned. “Even you?”

A thoughtful hum. They were all _listening_ , and Harry found it bizarre. Maybe they really could torture him one month and elect him Minister the next. “Yes,” he said finally. “But all of my causes have already been realized.”

This stopped them all short. Including Harry. If he meant the dissolution of the statute… that was striking. Maybe he was lying; maybe he was speaking nonsense. But rather than pursue that: “It hardly matters,” Avril said scornfully. “Potter’s memories have been passed all around the Ministry by now. We all know of your Horcruxes.” The word didn’t quite fit in her mouth. “We all know you can’t die.”

“As I have warned everyone from Scrimgeour on down,” Voldemort said dryly. “Well done, catching up.”

Her mouth tightened. “I suppose that makes these nights of interrogation a bit less worrisome, then. No fear of consequences.” With a swirl of her wand, a cascade of liquid fire poured from its end, expanding toward Voldemort. He’d have to crawl out of the way to avoid it, if Bowersock inched his foot off his neck, and of course Voldemort had more dignity than to struggle. He let it approach rapidly.

“Did you see that Potter’s his catamite?” Bright said happily, looking over Voldemort to Avril. “The Aurors swear he’s not enchanted, but….” He shook his head.

The lava touched Voldemort’s robes, searing the fabric. He flinched as a wave of it lapped at his legs. Avril still held the string of it attached to her wand, and she swung it back and forth to create a sort of tide. The smell of charred flesh overtook the smell of blood.

This was horrible. This was _casual_. Harry managed to aim a silent Impervious at Voldemort’s legs. The muscles in his back relaxed minutely.

“Did you see that he’ll ask Potter to tinkle on him first?” Umbridge returned sweetly, relishing her superior gossip. “It’s really very….” She broke off with a theatrical shudder, dropping her gaze and fingering a necklace beneath her blouse.

_Tinkle_ , for the love of God. He had never been so repulsed. “Yes,” Bright said, laughing. He looked down at Voldemort. “We all assumed you didn’t have a cock, you know. Thought it’d gone the same way as your nose, you miserable animal. But if you have… shall we piss on you?” he asked, half-reaching for his belt. “So you may think fondly of your boyfriend. We’ll even let you bring yourself off afterward.”

Avril had retracted her lava, too scandalized and intrigued to pay attention to it. “And the Death Eaters?” Umbridge asked, leaning in so her necklace swung from under her blouse. Voldemort’s Occlumency slipped – he must have _let_ it slip, because shock and urgency seized Harry. The necklace. The _locket_. Holy shit. “Did you sodomize your Death Eaters?” A curl of her mouth, so unpleasantly familiar from her time at Hogwarts. “Either as punishment or reward.”

“Why does everyone assume I fucked my Death Eaters,” Voldemort muttered, but Harry could see how distracted he was, even if nobody else could. “It is a shame we’ve only met so recently, Madame Umbridge. You would do well as a Death Eater. I do have a special fondness for self-loathing halfbloods.”

“ _No_.” She went fiery, whipping out her wand, and while the spell was silent, it _had_ to be Crucio, even from the bit that bled through the Occlumency. The crowd pressed in as Voldemort thrashed, with horrible strangled noises. Harry summoned all his disinterest, all his dispassion, as he scooted around the edge of the crowd, looking for a vantage point. It’d have to be a severing charm, which he’d only known to work on cloth and parchment, things that would actually sever. And then Umbridge cast a curse that shredded Voldemort’s lungs, he was wheezing, Harry was wheezing, and the crowd was thrilled. Their bloodlust had been rather sedate up to this point.

One of the Wizengamot looked around. “Penzey, Knapp,” he said to the guards. “Bring Macnair.” And everyone but Macnair knew what would happen, when a thick wooden plank was pressed into his hands. “Prove your allegiance. Prove your Lord means nothing to you.”

Macnair weighed the plank in his hands. Voldemort was clawing at his chest, and Harry could see how it spasmed, how hard he struggled to breathe and to keep the sensation apart from Harry. He had the severing charm in his fingertips, poised for the right moment. When Macnair finally swung, there was a great cheer, the crack of all Voldemort’s teeth in his mouth; and Harry shot the severing charm at exactly the clasp of Umbridge’s locket. A cushioning charm – and thank god he’d been casting them already tonight so it came easily – caught the locket before it hit the stone. Umbridge, fuming, shoved Macnair forward, noticing nothing.

He swept the locket away with his foot, positioning himself so the cloak covered it before he picked it up. Heavy, warm, magnetic. He probably should have felt it as soon as Umbridge had arrived. One last thing that may well fail: he tried his first wandless Geminio.

It wasn’t very good: the false locket felt a bit too light and crumbly to the touch. It’d have to do, though. Edging forward once more, he dropped it conspicuously.

Umbridge looked, and the rest followed her gaze. “Oh!” Her high-pitched laugh. “A family heirloom, you know. We are purebloods quite a long way back,” she said. She would’ve fixed Voldemort with a stare, but Voldemort was in a bloody heap on the ground. Harry looked away. And now, he only had to wait. He cast a very bad cheering charm on himself and settled in.

At some point, they’d had to stop to pour a sanguination potion down Voldemort’s throat – his breathing was _so_ shallow. At some point, the attention returned to Macnair proper, as they cast shocking spell after shocking spell to extract information on the other Death Eaters, the war crimes he’d committed, and the ones he hadn’t. As the shocking spells came whether he did or didn’t give them an answer, Harry concluded that these Wizengamot members were not very bright. The guards were delegated more physical torture. At some point, the firewhiskey got passed around again, and then a bottle of schnapps from under Umbridge’s fur coat. At some point, Bowersock hauled Voldemort off the ground and propped him up on another table.

“Long night tonight,” he said, though Harry was sure this was a completely unexceptional night. “Tell us a bit about shagging Potter. We’ve all already seen it, but….” He gave a lopsided grin. “I should like your confession.”

Voldemort was shaky, dazed, unable to move even without restraints. “You’re sloshed,” he muttered through a mouthful of broken teeth.

Bowersock’s grin grew larger and worse. “No, I’m _pissed_ ,” he said as if it were clever, and he really was undoing the robe at waist level. “Guess we’d expected you to be queer, since why would you end up looking like _that_ otherwise.” He gestured vaguely toward Voldemort’s face.

Voldemort lifted his hand, agonizingly, to his mouth. His magic was nearly gone but he used the last of it to put his teeth back together, because it was very important to him to speak this retort clearly. “Because, Quintus, your own portrait of virile masculinity is so compelling.”

Bowersock’s face rather proved his point, as he went impotently scarlet even in the dull night, and Harry was momentarily reminded of Vernon and shoved into a very bad place emotionally. He was near enough to Voldemort to see him wince, and assumed his Occlumency had given out. _Sorry_ , he mouthed, even though of course Voldemort wouldn’t see it.

And then Bowersock’s cock was actually out and the feeling of the space had shifted again: not the perverse gala of torture before, but something quiet and anticipatory and complicit. Bode’s children had departed some time earlier, so now only the Ministry employees and the guards encircled him. “Tell us about your boyfriend,” Bowersock said.

Voldemort’s gaze was indifferent, and all the more infuriating for it. “Just piss on me,” he said, bored, even as he shook with exhaustion. “Since you badly want to.”

Bowersock faltered; clearly he’d expected something closer to tearful begging. He recovered, though. “Yes, _my Lord_.” He really was quite drunk.

Before Harry saw him do it, he saw the reaction to it ripple through the crowd: simultaneous shock, the various laughter and disgust and disbelief and satisfaction. And he couldn’t feel anything at all from Voldemort, because that was how he’d used the last precious bit of magic and consciousness, to goad Bowersock into this. “Wake _up_ ,” Bowersock said severely as Voldemort’s posture wilted and his head slipped from the edge of the table. He was pissing messily on Voldemort’s concave stomach, and the only thing that made it through the Occlumency (oddly) was how much it stung on the various contusions of his thin skin. He squirmed and, unable to pull his robe around himself adequately, pushed Bowersock’s aim toward his trousers instead.

Bowersock guffawed. “Hard yet?”

“Of course I’m not hard, you twat,” Voldemort muttered; but his voice was too faint, his demeanor not nearly horrified enough. Bowersock clearly thought he was wasting this grotesque moment. His stream, audible against the saturated front of Voldemort’s trousers, faded to a dribble. He was angry, and embarrassed, and for an awful moment Harry thought he might shove his dick in Voldemort’s mouth or something equally terrible. Instead, he stepped back.

“Well done,” Voldemort said acidly. He couldn't move, he was pallid, his hands shook, and he was wet with piss, and somehow he still held all the power and attention in the space. It was… captivating. “Anyone else?” he offered. Nobody moved.

His hands slipped off the table, grasping the edge to pull himself off. It was a… _feeble_ gesture, awful to watch, made worse by the crowd’s fascination and hesitation and proximity and distance. Finally, at the limits of their discomfort, Bowersock cast a Mobilicorpus or something like it, to support him rather than properly levitate him. An Azkaban guard moved beside him (not touching, he was never especially touchable but especially not now).

Before they departed, Voldemort caught Umbridge’s eye. “A family heirloom, you said?” He nodded to the fake locket. Harry didn’t see how she couldn’t tell. It’d probably disintegrate within a week. “Which family?”

“Selwyn. My grandmother.” Her fingers played at the chain.

Voldemort’s short laugh was a terrible sound, terrible enough that everyone flinched for their wands. “Then perhaps you ought to give a visit to Anatoly Selwyn, a great Death Eater, now also imprisoned. Wish him well on my behalf.”

Her smile looked stamped on her face. “I come from a rather more respectable part of the line.”

“ _Respectable_ ,” Voldemort sighed, glancing around at the gathering pointedly. And then his footing slipped, Bowersock’s Mobilicorpus barely caught him, and it was clearly time to get him to a Healer. Behind him, the other three guards were surrounding an equally dazed but much cleaner Macnair, his arms pinned behind his back. The door was left open and Harry followed.

At a landing, Macnair was prodded down and Voldemort across, into a narrow corridor. He hadn’t thought about it before, that the healing itself might be a privilege. Of course it was. He stayed a few long paces behind them, carefully casting a cushioning charm on each stone before stepping there. At last Voldemort was pushed into a room, where a Healer waited in the doorway. Bowersock and the guard were left outside.

“Crazier than a shithouse rat,” Bowersock said, amiably. “You know he wants to be Minister?”

The guard shot him a skeptical look. “Is he… important?” he asked. “I don’t read the papers, I just do my job. Makes it easier. I only know that he gets healed and the rest of them don’t.”

“Well.” Bowersock thought. “A bit. The Ministry needs his magic, for bits of our security. He’s very powerful, you know.”

“Because of the boy.”

“You know Potter, then?” Bowersock asked with faint surprise. “I haven’t worked out what they’re doing.” He shook of the train of thought with a laugh. “Well, we all know _what_ they’re doing, but I haven’t worked out what they need from each other magically. We’ve all asked Rufus – er, the Minister – and he says he’s not at liberty to tell.”

“I thought he’d be here tonight,” the guard said. “The Aurors at Hogwarts sent word he’d be by earlier, but we haven’t seen him.”

_Oh shit._

Bowersock had frozen at this as well. “Potter was supposed to be here?”

“Yep.” The guard was startled by Bowersock’s reaction. “It’s more common than not for civilians to cancel. We assumed….”

“But what if he _didn’t_ , what if he’s _here_?”

“Voldemort was alone in his cell when we got him.” The guard, bless him, was utterly indifferent.

Still, he had to go. He didn’t know what would happen if Bowersock found he’d been a spectator to the abuse, but it would almost certainly involve an Obliviate charm and revocation of his visiting privileges. Another flurry of cushioning charms as he backtracked.

But Azkaban was labyrinthine as a security measure. He thought he’d gotten back to the outdoor tower but the door was different. The only stairs nearby seemed to lead _up_ somehow, so he couldn’t even return to the atrium to start over. And it was so dark, and he couldn’t light the way with Lumos obviously. All the cells he passed on this floor were empty. Shit.

And then, in the darkness, he nearly ran _into_ a Dementor and it was a terrible sensation, icy and desperate. He looked up into its hood. “Can you take me to Voldemort’s cell?” he asked in an undertone.

The Dementor hovered. Enjoying his panic, he realized. Feeding off it. His insides had gone cold and he couldn’t breathe properly. Somewhere in the back of his mind he heard his mother screaming. “Please,” he said. “I’ll give you all the horrible feelings I’ve felt tonight.” He still spoke in a low tone. He was going to get caught. He’d be caught, and he’d never get to see Voldemort again. The idea was unexpectedly horrifying.

The Dementor drifted in a direction decisively, and Harry tried following. “I watched him get tortured tonight,” he said. “I watched all these people who are meant to _protect_ him abuse him instead.” He offered up his disappointment and nascent cynicism to the Dementor. “They didn’t know – they wouldn’t have done it if they’d known I was there. But I had to stay there, without _saving_ him. Just trusting that these people who come out to _hurt him for fun_ are somehow also kind enough to not kill him.” And the Dementor sucked up his fury, his pain, his fear. “It was _awful_. I don’t normally see him… helpless. I don’t think anyone does, really.” And he’d worked himself up and there were tears in the corners of his eyes now and the Dementor feasted on it all. “That they made him _suffer_ , that they _humiliated_ him. That they can call it interrogation if they want but they didn’t even _ask_ him anything. He’s just the… least human victim, and that made it so much easier for them. But they’re all the _same_. That if they think he deserves the abuse, then so do _they_.” His voice had crept up, his whispering a lot less effective now. The Dementor had stopped. “I hate this, I hate all of this. _Oh_ ,” Harry said at the Dementor’s gesture, because they were at the staircase leading to Voldemort’s tower. “Thank you. Thanks so much.” And he sprinted up the staircase, because he needed to be in Voldemort’s room before Voldemort himself was.

The door was open; presumably it was kept with prisoner-specific wards rather than traditional locks anyway. He pulled off the invisibility cloak, shoving it in the bottom of his bag. And the locket, warm and magnetic – he was oddly reluctant to remove it but it needed to be hidden. He tucked it in the middle of the cloak, and tried arranging the bag on the desk to look as if it’d been flung there haphazardly. He grabbed a book at random, along with a bar of chocolate, and tried to slow his breathing. He couldn't, he couldn’t, he was listening too anxiously. And either Voldemort had been restored with enough magic to keep his Occlumency fully in place or he was still unconscious, because Harry could feel nothing.

Voices passed, probably a quarter hour later, as the Ministry officials left. Harry picked up a quill, ostensibly to work on the runes workbook he’d set in his lap, but really he only ended up driving it into his thigh.

Finally. _Finally_. Voices and footsteps on the staircase. Harry did his best to look pulled together. The door opened.

The guard blinked at him. “You are here,” he said with faint surprise. “When did you get here?”

“I don’t know. Not long ago.” He stood to receive them – not just the guard and Voldemort (who looked perfectly indifferent, wonderful man) but also, for some ungodly reason, Bowersock. Whom he wasn’t supposed to know, and certainly wasn’t supposed to stab in the face like he wanted to. He held back his fury as best as he could. “The Minister told me I should always wait while you all are, y’know, torturing him.” The guard flushed at his cold tone; Bowersock did not. “So I waited here.”

“Harry, please don’t antagonize the Chancellor of the Wizengamot,” Voldemort said mildly. “Goodnight, gentlemen.” Their parting looks were suspicious but they left quietly.

Voldemort leaned against the door, listening, until they’d descended the staircase; Harry then cast Impervious, Muffliato, and a distraction charm for something like privacy. And then they just looked at one another: Harry was near-devastated and Voldemort near-giddy, so it’d take a bit of negotiation. “I need a shower,” Voldemort said in Parseltongue, finally, peeling off his robes. They were clean, at least. “You may join me or wait a few minutes longer.”

“You’ve got a shower?” Harry asked in disbelief.

Voldemort motioned him into the toilet. “A luxury reserved for elite and political prisoners. I assume it is as much for your… peace as my own. Though it benefits greatly from a warming charm.” He was undressing them both, decisively, because physical contact never felt so good as when they needed to hand off magic. “What happened?” he asked, turning on the spray in the minimal stonework shower. Harry obliged with a warming charm and pulled them both in. “Did you stay?”

“I did. I followed you to the Healer’s. And then the guard mentioned that Kingsley had sent word ahead that I’d be here. And, uh, I had to ask a Dementor for directions back, and like, give it all my negative feelings? So sorry if, at the end, you felt all that.” He pushed magic into Voldemort’s narrow body as he soaped him up; the sensation was fascinating.

“I assume you were sufficiently bored that you won’t feel the need to return.”

“ _Bored_?” Harry was incredulous. “I was _horrified_. I don’t know how they can do _any_ of that and still think of themselves as the bloody good ones.” He’d been tamping down his feelings but it wouldn’t work for much longer. “I hated watching you take it all. I hated watching you bleed, and feeling you pass out, and wonder if this blow or this curse would be the one that went too far to and you _died._ ”

“Of course I won’t die, don’t be ridiculous.” Voldemort pushed Harry’s head into the stream so he could shampoo it; against his better judgment, the feeling of Voldemort’s long fingers in his hair could nearly make him melt. “Magic,” Voldemort requested in return, and Harry pushed warmth into his stomach, where he had been bloody _stabbed_. Jesus. “As I’ve said, they’ve run out of ideas. And that… helps. Though they don’t usually ask about you,” he added apologetically. “But it seems your fetishes are as famous as you are, now. And he’s never pissed on me before. That is the… _nearest_ to sexuality this has ever come, and really, it was nothing.” He said this all as though it were okay.

“No,” Harry said. (He’d been rubbing circles into Voldemort’s back; he glanced over his shoulder at Harry.) “It looked so _awful._ Like he would’ve done anything to get the right reaction from you. That he was so… frustrated, and desperate, when you weren’t more horrified or whatever.” Again he thought of his uncle, how much more infuriated Vernon became when Harry didn’t fight him. He saw that same fury, that same abashed rage, in Bowersock tonight, and it still made him panic. “How do you know that _next_ time….” And then his throat was swelling with grief and he could say no more.

“I don’t,” Voldemort said, quite calm. “But I’ll keep my Occlumency in place if it does. You’ll never be exposed to it.”

“I’m not worried about _me_ , I’m worried about _you_.” In lieu of towels, he cast a drying charm on them both. They still clung together like lovers, magic coursing through each other, as they returned to the cell. Harry widened the bed and fluffed the blankets.

Voldemort hummed. “I don’t think I could be _more_ disgusted with humanity, honestly.”

“You can’t know that.” They didn’t bother to dress; the increased skin contact would help. That they would fight about sexual assault while nakedly spooning did not escape either of them. It made Harry feel so much grosser. “And I – Christ. If _these_ are the lawmakers, then what hope have we got? How do they ever take themselves seriously?”

“Mm,” Voldemort said appreciatively, as though it were a valid question. “You are seeing the breakdown of the concept of law, that much is true. Particularly at the limits of society – both the sovereign and the outlaw have a much less obligatory relationship to the law than regular citizens like yourself. Or really, that we each are defined by our relation to law, and categorized as such. Who ends up as the outlaw in power and who ends up as the outlaw persona non grata…” he gave a tiny shrug, “is, I suppose, the essence of politics.”

“And you want to go from one to the other.”

“Yes. Though more appropriately, current circumstances drag the sovereign lawmakers _down_ more than they elevate me. But it casts doubt on us all equally, I think.”

“You are mad,” Harry said, and there was more grief in his tone than wonderment. “Do you think this is _funny_? Is it a game?” He was going to go on, but Voldemort interrupted: “It’s got to be.”

“What?”

“I don’t understand why you’d prefer I be devastated. Like _you_.” Voldemort summoned a bar of chocolate for himself and the calming draught for Harry, though it was a solution to a different problem than the one he had. “All of this grief – well, first of all, it is very indulgent,” he said. “But more importantly, it will only escalate the situation. Bowersock stopped because he was _bored_ ; do you think he would have done so if I’d been pleading and sobbing all over myself? Granted, I _have_ , in the past, and it was _awful_.” He paused to take a sip of the calming draught himself. “But the monotony of their abuse – the _ineptitude_ of it,” he sighed, “rather gives me an advantage.”

“You keep saying how bad they are at torture, as though you’re offended by it.”

A baring of his teeth. “I am. Done well, it is the most intimate thing in the world.”

Harry shuddered. “You’re a psychopath,” he muttered.

“That’s exactly it, though. No, Harry, listen, this is important,” he said because Harry had squirmed away, horrified. “Psychopathy, clinically at least, is an inability to empathize with others. Torture – proper torture, that is – is its inverse, because it exactly draws on that empathy. Perversely, of course, but it’s an exercise in empathy all the same. Legilimency is nearly a necessity, to find your victim’s weakness and exploit it. Their greatest fear. And either enact it, or better, mock them for it.”

“Stop,” Harry pleaded. “Please stop.” Voldemort looked faintly surprised. “I want… I know it’s stupid, but I want to think better of you.”

A cold burst of laughter. “That _is_ stupid,” he agreed silkily. “I say this to indicate… what all _that_ is hardly rises to the label of torture. It’s hardly schoolyard bullying. So I will continue to perform indifference, as a sort of de-escalation. You know the sort,” he said delicately. Had Harry told him much about his uncle? Had he just plucked it from Harry’s head, like everything else? When Harry nodded minutely, Voldemort continued, “And perhaps they’ll find themselves so frustrated as to do something horrifying, _finally_ , but I imagine it’s more likely that they just end up either bored or ashamed of themselves, and bugger off eventually.” He took in Harry’s expression. “Good torture is more intimate than sex,” he added softly. “The precarity of being completely exposed, and completely understood, by someone who only wants to destroy you….” A glittering smile. “It fosters some queer relationships.”

He probably didn’t mean themselves. Their relationship had originated, in an unlikely enough way, out of love instead of hatred; out of safety instead of precarity. He didn’t know what it meant. But it didn’t matter because Voldemort continued, “So I want you to fuck me tonight. My thoughts kept returning to how much better you’d been at it. How much better you _would_ be,” he amended. “Not yet. Not until I’ve got all your magic. But….”

He’d assumed being touched was the last thing Voldemort would want. Obviously there were a great deal of intimate details he didn’t know about him. “I thought this would go different,” he said as though it were an apology. “I thought you’d be… broken.”

“So that you could fix me?” His tone was dry.

“No. Just hold you together.”

“Ah.” A pause. “You are, though. Albeit with magic rather than sentimentality. As though there’s a difference.” He shifted, to look at Harry. “Speaking of sentimentality, have you got the locket?”

“Oh. Yes. _Christ_ ,” he said, and for a moment Voldemort’s happiness was infectious. “Should I have it out?”

“Just for a moment. It’s been a very long time since I’ve seen it.” He let Harry up, wrapping himself in a blanket. “Your mother must have taken Felix Felicis when she was pregnant. I was certain I was hallucinating. As though there’s any reason…. _Ah_ ,” he sighed as Harry extracted the locket from the folds of his invisibility cloak. He took it gently, dropping the chain over his head. It might have been a trick of the light, but his complexion looked warmer in its presence.

“I should have felt it, as soon as she’d arrived,” Harry lamented. “I mean – depending on how long she’s owned it, I should have felt it when she was at Hogwarts in my fifth year. Fudge appointed her here,” he said at Voldemort’s inquiring look. “It was awful. Have I shown you this?” He held out his hand, where _I must not tell lies_ still shone faintly. “Detention. _She_ would appreciate well-done torture.”

Voldemort ran his thumb over the words lightly. “You do amass interesting scars, don’t you.”

“Bloody maniacs.” Still, he let Voldemort pull the blanket back around them both.

“I knew it’d been taken. One of the Death Eaters – well, a defector, I had to kill him – had some thoughts in his mind that he shouldn’t have known. But I didn’t discover them until he was near dead, anyway. How Madam Umbridge got it…. Maybe she’s some part of the Black family, though I doubt it.”

“Black?”

“Regulus. Your godfather’s younger brother. He was too young when he approached me, back when I thought it best to seize followers right out of school, before they otherwise knew what they wanted from their lives. I wasn’t surprised that he defected.” He relayed this in a dispassionate tone, his fingers still dabbling with the locket’s chain. “He knew he would die, then, when he sought my Horcruces. But he never learned how to destroy them.”

Sirius had died without knowing. It seemed like such a tragedy. They could have been freedom fighters together, two renegades from the Black family. Harry moved to open the locket; Voldemort stilled his hand. “Sirius didn’t say much about him,” Harry said. “But he never knew he was brave. Or, just, good.”

“Scared and full of regret, more like,” Voldemort corrected. A mocking smile. “We’ll vindicate your new anti-hero regardless. He’d like the Horcrux gone, and soon it will be gone.”

That somehow made him feel better. “I’ll find a way to bring it to the safehouse,” he said. “Unless you’d rather keep it here.”

“No. You should.” And Voldemort slipped it off, returning it to Harry who put it back in his bag. He was staring at his long hands in his lap. “That’s it, then. Apart from summoning Nagini. And actually extracting each of them. But having them together… it represents _decades_ of my life.”

“Yeah?” Harry said cautiously, because he didn’t actually know what emotion swirled inside Voldemort now.

“Decades that will now be _finite_. Merlin. Time has never felt like a resource before. Just a measurement of more interesting ambitions. And now….” A terrible sigh. “Now I’ve wasted so much of it. Perhaps that shall be my remorse and repentance,” he said with an unpleasant smile. “To deliberately dismantle my life’s work. ‘All that I’ve written is straw.’”

He was saddened and a bit bewildered at this. “But – Vol – then you’d only be dying as much as anyone.”

“ _Exactly_ ,” he said acidly.

Harry blinked. “And anyway, I’m keeping my Horcrux. I want to,” he said at Voldemort’s suspicious look. “I’m not just offering because you’re, y’know, pathetic. So you’ll outlive me, and I’m only seventeen.”

This somehow helped less than he thought it would. “Seventeen,” he scoffed. “But you’re so very young.” Before Harry could take offense, he went on, “I had two Horcruces before seventeen. And twice the body count,” he added with perverse satisfaction. “I’ve been obsessed with immortality for as long as I could remember. Before even learning I was a wizard.” A thoughtful pause. “Merlin knows what I would have become if I didn’t have magic to offer immortality, actually. I’ve never lived in a world in which I’d allow myself to _die_.” He said the word as though it were crushed glass in his mouth.

Harry was out of his depth. “I can’t….” He shook his head. “I’ve told you, I never thought I’d live past Hogwarts. I’ve never lived in a world where I would survive,” he said with something like a smile. Voldemort was unamused. “Can I bring you Nietzsche or something? We can get sloshed and talk about death next weekend,” he promised. “I didn’t bring the plonk this time. I didn’t know how this was how the night would go. Or I could brew whatever wixie drugs go best with existentialism.”

A flicker of amusement. “An injected potion known as tiwala. Possession of the ingredients is illegal.”

“Bollocks.”

“Quite. Also, Muggle philosophy… I’m sure I’ve quoted some at you” (Harry snorted in affirmation) “but it’s rather useless for wixes on death. Oh, and metaphysics, for obvious reasons. Our existential dread takes rather different shapes, a bit because of different lifespans but more because of… gratification. That we can conjure nearly anything, make ourselves feel anything, manipulate time and space themselves under the right circumstances. It’s a wonder more wixes don’t want to rule the world, not only because our exceptionalism is self-evident but also because, by all accounts, we should be _bored_.”

Harry stared. “We could do better for the Muggles,” he said cautiously. “I mean, we’re beginning to.”

“Fuck the Muggles. We could do better for _ourselves_. I have wondered whether the laws of transfiguration are imposed – not by ourselves, obviously, but by some higher being – to keep wixes either from killing ourselves from ennui, or becoming gods.” A sigh through his non-nose. “So wixen philosophy is a small and peculiar discipline. I’m not even certain what’s been published recently…. But you could do better than Muggle existentialism, is the point.”

He had gotten himself to a better place emotionally. He always did when telling Harry to read more books. “When the Muggles asked what I was a lord of,” he added conversationally, “I told them death. The Aurors were very displeased.”

“That’s not even a bad answer.”

“I thought not either.”

A moment of silence for Voldemort’s misunderstood sense of humor. Then Harry asked, “Should I take the diadem too? Or do you want to keep it?” He reached for the miniaturized diadem around Voldemort’s middle finger.

He spun it. “Leave it. Another artifact Hogwarts can have when the Horcrux is removed.”

“The Ravenclaws will be so happy.” Their magic brimming, he pulled back. “Alright?”

“Yes.” He leaned back, stretching feelings into his extremities. And then, reaching back, he managed to cast a wandless rope charm on his own wrists, securing himself to the headboard. And then there they were. Voldemort looked at him with a dangerous, glittering expression. “And now you need to fuck me.”

The magic had made them both feel warm, and connected, and safe. “Right,” Harry said, pressing down his ambivalence. He moved in to suck and nip at Voldemort’s collarbone as he thought.

It would feel weird, to put him through the same paces the Wizengamot had. He’d already been sprawled out like this, vulnerable like this, so recently. Before Harry could offer to switch, Voldemort saw his hesitation, and pulled at the ropes decisively to shorten them. “Hurt me,” he said lowly, “in the way that they never could.”

His insides twisted. “You haven’t had enough abuse for one night?” It came out harsher than he intended.

Voldemort was dubious. “No.” A pause. “You need to recast this,” and he tipped his head back vaguely to indicate the prison at large, “as we recast the violence of your childhood. To turn it into mockery and inanity… means that it means nothing. Please make it mean nothing.”

It wasn’t his place to argue. He did see the point. “Give me a minute.” He climbed off the bed.

“If you don’t keep that tragic expression off your face, I shall Obliviate you. I don’t even need my wand.”

Goading. As he’d goaded Umbridge to distract her. It was all a little too proximate. He squared his shoulders. “You’re wrong.”

His eyebrows went up. “Doubtful.”

“Hurting you would be easy. Loving you is going to be much harder.” He went to get their clothing from the toilet.

Voldemort was intrigued but frustrated when he returned, fully clothed himself but with only Voldemort’s pants. “I suppose I’ll be pissing in those?” he asked wryly.

“Yeah.” He tossed them on the bed and went for water.

“You might be a fetishist, clinically,” Voldemort said, raising his voice so Harry could hear him from the toilet. “ _Can_ you get off to anything else?”

Harry glanced back. “I assume you’re mocking me because you’re uncomfortable. You always do.”

“Yes, I am. And I do.” He looked curiously at the glass Harry brought back. “A suggestion charm wouldn’t be enough?”

“A suggestion charm wouldn’t make you feel helpless. I need your Legilimency.”

Unquestioning, Voldemort ceded their connection, so a swirl of emotions overwhelmed him for a long moment, arousal and trepidation and something like trust. He pulled Voldemort’s pants up his bony legs and lifted the glass of water. “Here.” He pressed it to his lips.

It was unbearably awkward, and Voldemort’s cool control throughout gave him goosebumps. He got it wrong at first, tilting the glass too fast so it overwhelmed Voldemort, running down his chin and spattering on his chest. Again, and he was angling his head awkwardly to suck at the water. It embarrassed them both. He looked feeble. They both hated it when he looked feeble. The movement of his throat was prominent, and his gaze was on the ceiling, and all his control was on accepting this. Harry tipped the glass a little, so he might spill it if he didn’t pay attention, and Voldemort shot a dark look over the top of the glass. His throat bobbed faster.

At the end he turned his head, taking a breath because Harry hadn’t let him breathe properly throughout. “Is this erotic?” he asked, and his irritation was excellent.

“Shh. Yes, it is.” He slid into the corner to prop himself up, pulling Voldemort into his lap. “Ugh, you’re pointy all over,” he complained as his bony arse dug into Harry’s thighs.

“My apologies.” Pulling himself up by the ropes, he tried settling into a more comfortable position. Still pointy. It would do.

Voldemort was cold in his touch, and he cast a warming charm into a blanket before throwing it over his bare shoulders. “It’s stupid how much I love you,” Harry said. His mouth and his hands were in all tender and vulnerable places and suddenly Voldemort was his own version of self-conscious. When Harry licked a long trail up his side to his exposed, hairless armpit (of course he was hairless all over but Harry still found it fascinating. It made him look so delicate), Voldemort _jerked_. Harry’s gaze flitted up. “Ticklish?”

“That is an… unnerving sensation. And disgusting.”

_Ticklish_. He rejoiced, lapping at his armpit to feel the flood of frustration it produced. Tension, exasperation, disgust… and something positive within all of it. He couldn’t say what. He moved to his nipples, soft and small and dark against his skin. He worried them in his teeth, feeling them harden. “Tell me what you’re feeling,” he murmured, because that was always the best and worst of it. The confession.

“I’d rather you beat me,” Voldemort said.

“Obviously.” He moved from one nipple to the other, leaving it pert. “Why?”

“Because this is obscene. All of it.” He jerked as Harry bit, not too hard but just hard enough, before composing himself enough to continue: “Does anyone truly like this? Feeling helpless. Pitiable. Sick.” And it was true, there was a vague nausea inside of him, a sort of despairing helplessness.

“I want you to trust me.”

“I trust nobody.”

That again. “I fucking know. You said I should torture you, so I _am_.” His mouth curled around his nipple; Voldemort was looking at the ceiling to feign indifference. He sucked at his solar plexus and felt something… warm. Good. Voldemort tensed as though it hurt him.

His hands slipped around his waist. “Could you wet yourself for me? Please.” He could only feel disgust and hesitation.

“Maybe.” But he was quiet, he was tense. Unhappy, in a way. Harry rearranged his legs, rearranged his cock.

“I’m giving you a suggestion charm.”

“Right.”

And he did, and it was much too strong. Voldemort hissed, one hand jerking at the ropes to hold himself instinctively but of course he couldn’t. He threw his thighs together instead. There it was, within the Legilimency, the familiar panic and pain and shame. Harry reveled in it. “Sorry,” he laughed, because he had pushed a sense of desperation into him much too acutely. He reached to hold the base of Voldemort’s cock, to make him feel just a moment’s respite, and for the first time Voldemort sagged against him, forgetting himself in his relief. It was perfect. It might be the nearest thing to trust that Voldemort would ever express. “Ready?” He eased his touch.

“Yes.” His gaze was still on the ceiling.

“Go ahead, sweetheart.” His tone was soft, whispered against Voldemort’s shoulder, and the word felt wrong. He was as inexperienced saying soft sweet things to anyone as Voldemort was at receiving them; all the pulse of discomfort between them hurt. Voldemort’s narrow chest rose and fell and – nothing.

“I can’t,” he murmured a moment later, shifting in Harry’s lap as best as he was able. His cock twitched in Harry’s grasp but he could feel that he was more anxious and exasperated than aroused.

Harry was pulling off his tie, holding it to the light to ensure it was sufficiently opaque. It’d helped him, at least, to make the world around himself recede momentarily. He’d prefer to watch Voldemort’s face, as he did when he came – but he could already feel that’d be too much. They were both overwhelmed with feeling and meaning and touch; and Voldemort had extended all of his Legilimency anyway. It’d be redundant. He dipped his head forward and Harry knotted the tie behind his head. “Is that alright?”

“Yes.”

Voldemort’s laconic answers and the ambivalence he felt through their connection was making him anxious. “We haven’t got to – “ he began.

“Harry.” Voldemort was stronger when he didn’t have to look at him. “We do. Hold my cock.”

“That’s ‘hold my cock, _sir_ ,’” Harry corrected, and everything got easier, their connection flooding with warmth and amusement. He slid his hand into Voldemort’s pants, holding the fabric away a bit so the sensation wasn’t quite so acute, and Voldemort let go. The warmth ran over his hips, into Harry’s lap, and Harry groaned.

It felt good, it was a relief to them both, and it made Harry a bit stupid. “Good boy, you’re being very good,” he babbled, even though he’d never known anyone less like a _boy_ in his life. He pulled his hand away, letting the stream press through the saturated fabric, bubbling hot and ticklish over the head of Voldemort’s cock, and he pushed the sensation on to Harry. He was getting hard and he knew Voldemort could feel him, pressed against the back of his thighs.

He just wanted to be… sweet. He wanted Voldemort to feel vulnerable and he wanted to make him feel safe. “There you go, love,” he said gently, and it felt awkward in his mouth as well. “You’re alright. Everyone has accidents, you’ll be alright.” And he was now pulling from his own script about which he fantasized sometimes. Voldemort had to know. “You’ve been holding on for a very long time, but can just let go. We’ll take care of you.”

A glimmer of something new, something gentle and piercing and uncomfortable but not bad. Trust, it had to be trust. “Don’t stop,” Voldemort breathed, his psyche elsewhere.

Gently Harry dissolved the ropes that held his wrists. Voldemort’s hands slipped, coming to rest on the wet sheets, and he gathered them in fistfuls. “Oh god,” he said, and then he was stopping himself, attempting to climb off Harry’s lap.

Harry caught his hips, pulling him down. “You need to finish,” he said firmly. “You wanted this, you wanted to feel helpless, and small, and humiliated. And you wanted to feel as though you’d have no choice but to trust me.” Voldemort’s breath hitched at the word; Harry continued: “That it would make it easier if it were out of your control. So, you need to give up everything.” He slid his hand into Voldemort’s pants once again, to hold him. “You wanted to wet the bed, so you need to wet the bed.”

It was a statement Voldemort had made to him last autumn, under different circumstances, indulging his stupid fetish to coax sex magic out of him. He recognized it too, and snorted. “I know you still wank to that.”

“I know you do, too,” Harry countered (though he didn’t. He liked the fiction of it, though, and the flush he felt within Voldemort indicated that he might not be far off.) “Here, love.” He leaned back, stretching them both out a bit. In a softer tone, back to the sweet patter that made them both ashamed and transfixed. “You need to finish weeing.” The childish word twisted something within him, within both of them. Drops of piss ran over his hand and between Voldemort’s legs. “It’s okay to feel young, and to feel helpless. You’re safe here. Tom,” he tried out softly, and the response was acute, worse than the time he’d called him a Mudblood. And then, control, painful and deliberate and fascinating to behold. “Tom, Tom, Tom,” he muttered against the swoop from his shoulder to his throat, his breath hot against the skin briefly before his lips came together in a kiss each time. “I love you. I want you to feel safe, even if it hurts you. I want to understand why it hurts you.”

A last shimmer of moisture on the front of his pants, and a deliberate appreciation of the relief he felt. Humiliating, it was all humiliating, and… worth it? Something like that. Voldemort slid his hands beneath himself, feeling how wet Harry’s lap was, how ruined the bed was. He had never had a chance to be young before, they both thought.

Harry shifted him, to press his forehead against Harry’s collarbone, holding him there. It could only ever be a childish, submissive posture. “Harry….”

“What are you so afraid of?” he asked, impossibly soft. Something about that question _hurt_ ; he didn’t realize it’d evoke the sentiment until he felt a stab of it.

“You don’t need to do this,” he muttered, and he wanted to climb off Harry’s lap and he also didn’t, didn’t want to break all the delicate strands of unfamiliar feelings that were now strung between them. He wished his wrists were still bound so he could pull at the ropes demonstratively without getting up. He stayed. “You don’t need to… care for me.”

“Of course I don’t.” Harry’s tone was amused. “That’s rather the point, isn’t it. That I just want to. And that… you _let_ me, in any case. Whether you want it. Do you?” His tone was neutral, curious. Harry asked so little of him, honestly. Harry and his infinite patience were much more than he ever deserved.

“I don’t know.” It was embarrassing how his voice got lost against Harry’s chest. “If you wanted to hear me say, though, I’d say it. I’ll tell you I love you, if you’d like.”

An unexpected painful feeling, and Voldemort couldn’t even say which of them it resided in. “No,” Harry said, after what felt like an eternity.

“I _want_ to love you, you know.”

“I know.” They moved together with the force of Harry’s exhalation. “I’d rather you loved yourself, though.”

It hurt, unexpectedly. Harry’s bluntness, Harry’s sincerity, made him so good at hurting him. “I don’t – “ Voldemort began to protest, moving to sit up, to pull the tie off to look Harry in the face and tell him he was wrong –

“Tom,” Harry said firmly, pulling him back into that childish pose and precisely proving his point. A moment in which they both struggled against the waves of feelings. “Just, stay with this,” he murmured, feeling that Voldemort was full of an uncomfortable vulnerability. “You’ll be alright, I swear you’ll be alright.” One hand was on the side of Voldemort’s face, holding him still against Harry’s chest. His thumb rubbed the soft spot beneath his ear, behind his jaw. It’d be a good position to soothe an upset child. And it was novel and it was shameful and it was good. “Good boy, very good,” Harry was mumbling against his scalp. His lips were full and warm. “Could you cry for me, sweetheart?”

He had told Harry last time that he had wanted to cry in front of him. He hadn’t; he hadn’t thought he was able. But being held as though he was a miserable child did, somehow, stir some misery within him. He shook his head minutely but didn’t move.

“Then just stay,” Harry said, scooping up behind Voldemort’s knees to prop him better seated in his lap, shifting him away from his receding hard-on because it wasn’t like that anymore. “Here, I don’t need your Legilimency. If it’d help, or whatever. Just… feel a little helpless, and a little young, for awhile longer, alright?”

It was perverse. He’d rather Harry beat him. He’d at least rather Harry fuck him, to make this all into an extended sort of fetish. But to just wallow in feelings for their own sake… it was nauseating.

Harry felt it, some part of it, before Voldemort rescinded the Legilimency. “What _are_ you so afraid of?” he asked again, and Voldemort didn’t answer but untangled their consciousnesses rapidly, for something like privacy. Harry didn’t comment but only held him close.

 

They didn’t have sex that night. It was strange. Voldemort was lost deeply in thought for a very long time, and Harry summoned the jar of dreamless sleep so they wouldn’t have to move. He nudged Voldemort into something like alertness when he felt himself nodding off. The magic between them somehow burned differently tonight. “I’m going to sleep,” he said softly. He’d Scourgified everything and dropped the lights with magic already. He reached to take his tie from Voldemort’s face and found it wet. Voldemort’s gaze was huge and shimmering and… _lost_ , honestly. “Sorry,” he said, scrubbing at the tear tracks with his thumb, embarrassed to have interrupted something. He had the distinct sense that Voldemort would’ve left, putting distance between them to compose himself if he could, but of course he couldn’t, here. It felt exploitative. “Sorry,” he said again. “Should I go?”

A watery grimace. “Idiot,” Voldemort said fondly. “No, you shouldn’t go. Honestly.” He took the proffered half jar of dreamless sleep but didn’t open it. “I’ll be awake for awhile longer. Thank you.”

Harry fell asleep still holding him.

 

_Saturday, July 18._ Mid-morning Saturday, Harry was preparing to leave Azkaban. Empty jars of the potions repacked, his tie thrown in his bag because it was too much of a mess to wear (and also because he now fucking cherished it, but nevermind that). A bar of chocolate to recover from the contact with the Dementors. He re-charmed the windows with a significantly brighter scene than was actually outside; he touched up the warming charms around the room’s perimeter; he cast Scourgify on everything _again_ because, christ, they’d made a mess last night. He wore the Horcrux at his throat, beneath his robes, going so far as to cast a sticking charm to bind it against his chest. A last look around. “Anything else?”

“No.” Voldemort rose, Harry thought to see him out, but he took him by the upper arms, squaring off. Very seriously, very solemnly, he said, “I love you.”

Harry’s first impulse was simply _What_? and his second was to argue, so thank god neither of those came out of his mouth. “I love you, too,” he said, and waited.

“I had planned to say it as you left, so I didn’t have to look at you.” He hadn’t let go of Harry’s arms. Harry didn’t want him to. “But that would be cowardice.”

A breath. His insides hurt, and he didn’t want to return this gift of vulnerability with _pity_. He couldn’t do this wrong. “I love you too,” he said again. “You haven’t got to…. You know it’s dangerous. That they can use… it, me, against you. That they _will_ , if they’re already saying those stupid things they said last night.” He wasn’t doing this well.

“You won’t be in danger.”

His heart broke. “That’s not what I meant.”

“Oh.” A frown. “But that’s the risk you people all run, then, isn’t it? And yet… for some reason, everyone still gravitates toward this risk. I thought it was because everyone was weak, or ignorant, but… perhaps not.” (Voldemort’s exceptionalism extended to love itself. It was charming, in a pitiful way.) “Last night…. Asking to be hurt and trusting that person _anyway_ is what you all mean by love, isn’t it?”

Harry thought. “In a way,” he agreed, quietly amused.

“I told you before that I’d try loving you after this year, in less precarious circumstances. But I don’t believe it’s necessary to wait. I would be impervious to these men regardless. And,” a breath, “I’ll be vulnerable to you regardless. I hated last night, you know. I was quite miserable.”

Harry’s eyebrows went up. “I know. I felt it.”

“It was worse afterward, when you didn’t.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No – _Harry_. That you _can_ hurt me is a function of our magic, the Horcrux and Legilimency and so on. It is, in its own way, average. That you _don’t_ , however, amazes me every time.”

Christ. Again, he did his best to keep his pity away from their connection. “It shouldn’t. And also, your standards are very low.” He held Voldemort beneath his elbows. Gently, without pushing too much emotion into the connection, so as not to scald him.

“Perhaps,” Voldemort said. “But everything that you’ve given up on my behalf…. Things that would benefit you, things that would enable you to live a normal, happy, traditionally successful life….”

“I don’t want it anyway,” Harry interrupted. “I mean, I do want to be happy, in a way. But I don’t like the look of success. And I definitely don’t like normal.”

“That is probably for the best,” Voldemort said. They’d drawn closer together, unconsciously. Their shared magic was a force of magnetism. “But watching you make irrational choices. Disadvantageous choices. It’s not how humans were meant to work. So I thought.” A hesitation. “But, that you’ve been so happy and confident in making wrong choices… perhaps I’ve been mistaken.” He was uncomfortable. He let his discomfort bleed through the Legilimency. Its own bad, irrational, beautiful decision.

Harry wanted to laugh. He wanted to cry. He wanted to crystallize this moment in amber and hold it delicately before himself forever. “Thank you,” he said instead, and kissed him. The sheer relief that Voldemort felt at this acceptance – as though he ever would have responded differently! – would have made him cry all over again.

His head swam with the declaration; his heart pounded. _No_ , he realized with incredulity a long moment later as he leaned into Voldemort. The Horcrux was pulsating, in time with his heartbeat and presumably in time with Voldemort’s as well.

It took Voldemort awhile longer to recognize it. (This confession really had distracted him _so_ much. Poor Voldemort.) He pulled back with an expression of disbelief, putting his hand down Harry’s robes without decorum.

“Sticking spell,” Harry explained when he couldn’t withdraw the locket.

“Ugh, that is _horrible_ ,” Voldemort said, and he did look sincerely disgusted with the circumstances. “Soulwork is meant to be _subtle_. It’s meant to be _beautiful_. Not… this.” He gestured vaguely at Harry’s chest. “I apologize on behalf of my Horcrux. I’d only be able to learn more with wandwork. I assume the effect will fade with distance. It doesn’t hurt, does it?”

“No. You?”

“No.”

Harry put his hand over it to muffle if not dull the movement. It throbbed in his fingers. “Tell me again that you love me.”

A grimace. “Yes. That.” He was thrilled and he was miserable, and Harry was scrambling to put his Occlumency relatively into place because it kind of hurt, being exposed to this excess. “It has been… helpful, spending so much time in your psyche. And painful,” he added with a frown. “But helpful.”

“I’ll keep it open, when I can.” Harry laughed. “I mean, I’m shite at Occlumency anyway, so. But it doesn’t feel bad. It just feels normal now.”

“Thank you.” They’d drawn together once again; Voldemort tipped his head back to compose his thoughts and Harry took the opportunity to lick his neck. An amused hum. “I suppose asking of the advantages of love would be missing the point?”

“A lot, yeah.” Anything he could say about it wouldn’t help. He and Ginny had had a good relationship, had been partners and confidants, but they’d had a teenaged relationship, only accelerated by a war. He suddenly doubted his ability to be the one to coax Voldemort toward… anything emotional, really. It was a bigger responsibility than he was equipped for. “But…” he began hesitantly. “I’m not, like, great at love. The only other people I tell that I love them are Ron and Hermione, when I’m pissed. Could I buy you a book on it or something?”

Voldemort was painfully amused by this. “Why are books so recently your solution to everything?”

“They’re not _my_ solution, they’re _yours_ ,” Harry corrected. “And anyway, do you understand – I just don’t want to do this _wrong_.”

“Your empathy is exhausting,” Voldemort sighed. “Yes, I understand. As though it could ever be anyone else.” A pause. “I’ve drawn you in now to not only be my proxy of magic, but my proxy of sentiment as well. You really should feel exploited.”

“I don’t,” Harry said firmly. This was hurting them, the touch and sincerity and magical reciprocity keeping them in contact for too long, too direct a sensation on too sensitive a soul. (And he did mean _a_ soul. They were the same, they had always been the same.) Occlumency helped a little but he didn’t want to break their connection; it was the only thing holding both of them and each of them together.

Voldemort felt the overwhelming sensation too, and pulled back. He was gazing above Harry’s head into the middle distance, thinking. “You asked at one point whether I _can’t_ love or I _don’t_ ,” he said. “I suppose that now becomes a relevant question.”

He didn’t know what to say to that. Some cheery encouragement clearly wouldn’t be right. Neither would pity. Neither would either affirmation or doubt. “I don’t expect anything. Anything in particular,” he clarified. “If that helps.”

Unexpectedly Voldemort groaned, burying his face in Harry’s mop of hair. The shudder Harry felt, he first assumed was sobbing and then realized was laughter. “I do _not_ deserve you,” Voldemort said, his voice muffled. “If I truly wanted the best for you, I’d tell you to go find a functional relationship instead.”

“You’re ridiculous,” Harry said affectionately. And when their magic was near enough to untangled, he was able to go. The locket still thudded against his chest.

The boat ride back from Azkaban gave him time to think but didn’t particularly clarify anything. Voldemort loved him. Was trying to love him. Was questioning whether he was able to love him. Was making himself vulnerable to physical abuse, just because he thought Harry was owed some sort of emotional reciprocity. So, as thrilling as it was (he hadn’t thought of this as something he’d wanted, until it happened), it was equal parts depressing.

And he could share it with no one, because they’d all be incredibly justified in extreme skepticism. _Of course Voldemort says he loves you. That’s how he lures people in. By telling them they’re special._ It didn’t overly concern him, but he knew it’d concern every other person in his life. So, a secret.

And then there was everything else about that night. Christ, it had been a long night. Of course they tortured the Death Eaters. He knew what he saw was hardly exceptional – it had been, if anything, a gentler night than some. Another thing he couldn’t share with the world, not because they’d be skeptical at this but because they’d be indifferent. The Wizengamot would do as they pleased; he assumed they were only accountable to themselves. He’d look for Macnair’s trial in the papers in a few weeks, then. Presumably he’d face Bowersock once again in that setting.

Candle Quay, to the Headmaster’s office. The room was darkened, and he had a single moment of inspiration. Lighting some of the torches, he looked over the desk at the empty portrait frame: “Professor Dumbledore?” Hopefully he was right out of sight.

The knitting needles appeared before Dumbledore did; he gave a furtive look around. “Phineas is away?”

“Uh.” A quick glance at the other portraits. “Yes.”

“Excellent.” He brought himself fully into the frame. “I am told it’s a beautiful summer’s day, and yet here you are.”

“Yes, sir. I’ve only got one question.” He worried the tie in his bag, the one stained by Voldemort’s tears. ( _Voldemort’s tears._ It sounded like a vulgar contradiction in terms. Profanity like Ginny’s favorite, _Merlin’s tits_ , except actually horrible.) “You’ve told me you don’t think Voldemort could love. You told _him_ that, too,” he added, in case the real Dumbledore hadn’t told his portrait artist of Horcrux-related conversations.

“I did.” And Dumbledore set down his knitting, recognizing the weight of this conversation. “He was quite impervious to any touch of humanity even before coming to Hogwarts. A tragedy of upbringing in part, but as he grew up his antipathy became increasingly – how should I put it – _indulgent_.”

_He was eleven_ , Harry didn’t retort, because Dumbledore had shown him the memory of the orphanage and he’d had the same sense of the young Tom Riddle. He had never been human. Would never be human, perhaps. “He… I can’t say that he’s changed or anything. I don’t know,” he said. “But he asks me about love now, and I don’t know what to tell him.”

“He’s finally seen the use of it?”

Harry was startled by Dumbledore’s cynicism. “Maybe. I mean, he told me about different types of magic based on soulwork, that sort of thing. But more recently, he’s just… he’s spent a lot of time in my head. We share magic, and feelings.” No need to say the latter mostly happened in sex, it seemed like a given. “He says I’m really happy to be making irrational decisions. He’s… curious, is all.”

One of the strengths and weaknesses of the portrait over the real Dumbledore was that the portrait couldn’t do Legilimency, and he was beginning to recognize now how foundational that had been to his interactions with the real Dumbledore. The portrait, in any case, frowned. “And he wants to understand the basis of such irrational decisions? I don’t disagree with his definition,” he added, “though it’s not the entirety of it. And doesn’t reach the theories of love and magic.”

“He wants to understand. He… trusts me, and whatever of mine he’s felt, enough that he won’t dismiss it any longer.” He waited: nothing. “And you can tell me I’m being thick, as well. I know.”

“You’re not being thick,” Dumbledore said. “Before he pursues any magical theories of love – I assume he intends to; there are distinct advantages to it – tell him that I have long wondered about the implications of Aristophanes’s speech on soulwork generally and on Horcruces specifically. I don’t have a _Symposium_ to offer you,” he said, glancing at his shelves, “or else I would.”

“Muggle?” Harry asked, surprised.

A smile. “Even Muggles understand injuries to the soul. One shouldn’t dismiss them out of hand.”

“Right. _The Symposium_ ,” he repeated.

“No doubt you’re aware how foolish this gesture is,” Dumbledore said, as gently as he could to indicate he meant no offense. “Hopefully the foolishness has enough sacrificial magic imbued in it to protect you both.”

It was the first time he’d heard Dumbledore express hope for Voldemort’s well-being. “Sir?”

“To return to your question – Voldemort may be able to love as soon as he is able to die.”

“We’re working on his Horcruxes.”

“And it gives me a great deal of hope.” A faint smile. “I will refrain from making such declarations about whether he is able to be saved, out of respect for how little he’d appreciate them.”

Harry choked on laughter. “He wouldn’t. But I would.”

“Mm.” Dumbledore thought. “He might be able to love, to a point. I assume you’re retaining your Horcrux, for the connection?”

“Yes, sir.”

“But if he is – that is not, in itself, a solution to anything. Though I don’t know what sort of things trouble either him or you these days,” Dumbledore said politely. “If this is important to you, then you should ask yourself why. Ask what any of this would accomplish, if he regained the capacity for love in general or the ability to love you in particular.”

Harry saw they weren’t talking about Voldemort any longer. He didn’t know enough and certainly didn’t feel comfortable enough to ask about Grindelwald. “What if it doesn’t?”

“What if it _does_ ,” Dumbledore pressed. “And if not for you, then for him. I’ve never known Voldemort to allow anything so shameful as living without purpose.”

Harry didn’t either. “He’s doing everything _right_ , though, sir.” He shouldn’t be defending Voldemort to a painting. He shouldn’t be defending Voldemort at all. But Dumbledore… had always mattered. To both of them. “He’s given up his Death Eaters. He’s got a sentence in Azkaban. And he spends most of his time drafting bills for Scrimgeour.”

Dumbledore’s eyebrows went up at the last point. “Fascinating,” he said, sincerely. “When you next see Severus, incidentally, would you ask him to commission a painting of newspapers nearby? I understand that previously the portraits had remained informed by proximity; however, that’s no longer the case.”

“Yes, sir. He writes Scrimgeour’s bills. And puts his name on them, I think. We all…. Everyone thought we’d be in a war right now. So everyone’s going spare now that we’re not, and we’re all just stuck in the wrong places.” _And we all thought you’d still be alive_ , he didn’t add.

“You saved a great many lives in negotiating us away from the war.”

_Negotiating_. It sounded so formal. “Well, there hasn’t quite been the all-clear yet. That will be when the Death Eaters are all sentenced, and Voldemort is Minister. He won’t stop until then.” He didn’t know if Dumbledore knew of his aspirations. He didn’t react in any case, only humming in mild amusement.

“Is he aware how stunningly inane the Minister’s position generally is?”

“He must.” Harry paused, weighing a confession that wasn’t his to make: “But he might appreciate it. He’s… tired, like everyone else. Sometimes, when we can feel each other’s thoughts, he seems relieved.”

“His previous tactics did seem both exhausting and shockingly direct for a Slytherin. More subtle politics would suit him.”

Harry looked up sharply. “He doesn’t want the same things as he wanted then. This isn’t an _infiltration_.”

“Perhaps you should leave his campaigning to him,” Dumbledore said, and this time his gentle tone sounded patronizing.

Harry shook his head. “Sorry, sir,” he muttered. “I’ll pick up the Symposium.” He turned to go.

“Harry?”

“I know I can’t save him,” he said reflexively, a sort of disclaimer these days, before even looking back.

Dumbledore was faintly surprised. “Dear boy, I was going to tell you I believe you _can_. Uniquely so. I would only question whether you _should_.”

It might be a more painful gesture to forgive Voldemort and integrate him into public life, compared with the support his victims’ families should get. He knew it wasn’t the most selfless decision. “He lets himself be tortured in place of apologizing,” he said.

A pause as Dumbledore took this in. “I’m not surprised,” he said finally. “I suppose he finds it much easier to hate than to love.”

“Well, so do all the Ministry members who abuse him.”

“And that too is a tragedy.”

Harry’s temper flared at the incessant gentle dispassion. “You could have done something,” he said, and there was no way to make that statement but in an accusatory tone. “He had nobody. And you were the only one to recognize how fucked up he was and you did _nothing_. It doesn’t even matter that he hated you, because he cared so much about what you thought. He still does,” he said, and it felt like sharing a secret, that all the feelings that arose in Voldemort at Dumbledore’s name belied the simple distaste he presented.

The portrait didn’t chastise him for either language or profound disrespect. He took a moment to ensure Harry had nothing more to say, then: “The exact reasoning for my distance from Tom Riddle died with my real self,” he said, and it was the most fucking unsatisfying answer. “But I imagine… I had quite a lot on my mind, in that era. It was painful,” he said carefully, “to confront a student who so reminded me of a young Gellert – perhaps more sedate, but as ambitious, as charming – as I also was forced to confront Gellert’s own circumstances. Perhaps I wanted to disavow anything like fate that similar beginnings would always achieve the same ends. I suppose that when I was alive I had an awful lot to say to you about the power of choice?”

It was a real question, not a rhetorical one, so Harry couldn’t just silently fume. “Yes, sir.” His heart hurt.

“Only in hindsight do I see that it was my choices, not his, that were the significant ones.” Dumbledore was near grief and it was horrible to witness. “Though I was in Gryffindor, it was well beyond my school years before I did anything that might be called brave,” he said. “Perhaps I hesitate at your youthful bravery, only seeing how long you must live with its consequences. You may think such caution is cowardice,” he said with a glimmer of a sad smile. “If he’ll hear such things, tell Voldemort that I apologize. He is… no less broken because of my decisions.”

It was the second time today someone much wiser than him, a _mentor_ to him, both of them, had confessed cowardice. It made him feel as though his world were crumbling. “Yes, sir,” he said, and he found he and Dumbledore couldn’t quite look at each other. “I’m sorry.”

“As am I.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So here’s Quintus Bowersock, the Chancellor for the legislative branch of the Wizengamot. He is going to be consistently awful and every scene with him will probably contain abuse. But I also want to put in a warning now, the relationship that he and Voldemort will have is going to be really fucked up. I want to keep honest with Voldemort’s character, that he will use _everyone_ in his life for his own advancement; and if that includes his abusers, so be it. Voldemort expects to use the abuse for later guilt or blackmail or other political gain, and Bowersock would be influential enough to get Voldemort the office of Minister relatively quickly. So Bowersock is going to have a role as both abuser and protector, and they’re each going to think they’re getting something out of it, and – it’s just going to be really fucked up. Sorry.
> 
> And since we’ve met the important OCs of the Wizengamot now, a brief explanation of how I attempted to fix whatever the hell is happening with the Wizengamot in the books. It’s a bicameral legal body, legislative and judicial. The legislative branch is led by Chancellor Bowersock and Vice Chancellor Apollo Bright. The judicial branch is led by Amelia Bones, the Prime Justice; and Taz Swinton, the Deputy of Justice. Marcellus Hart is the lead prosecutor in the Death Eater trials. The Wizengamot has 51 voting members and a non-voting Mugwump who is meant to mediate. 1/3 of those members must be descendants of the Sacred 28; the other 2/3 are elected by district.  
> \-----
> 
>  
> 
> Allusions for Chapter 6:
> 
> “we are all nasty and brutish creatures” – Voldemort is alluding to a famous quote from Thomas Hobbes, in which he says human life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
> 
> “Torture is the most intimate thing in the world” is echoing a conversation from [Voldie’s Book Club, by cheryl bites](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/3439784/1/Voldie-s-Book-Club).
> 
> “All that I’ve written is straw” – allegedly the deathbeds words of the Catholic theologian St. Thomas Aquinas.
> 
> Nietzsche and existential philosophy – philosophy interested in the ways humans reckon with the inevitability of death and the meaninglessness of their lives.
> 
> “By all accounts, we should be bored” – This entire passage is thinking with a similar scene in Lev Grossman’s _The Magicians_ , when their teacher says existentialism and being disillusioned burnouts comes easier to people with magic, because they can do _anything_ , so nothing is challenging or interesting to them. (Go read _The Magicians_ , it’s really good.)
> 
> Plato’s The Symposium is a treatise about the nature of love. You’ll see it again in the next chapter.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry has a birthday, and Nagini is captured. Later, Voldemort has a bad reaction to murtlap.
> 
> (Not a real warning: I am such a sucker for hurt/comfort, you’ll see it used indulgently here and in the next chapter. Also warning, this was one of three chapters which made the author cry.)

_Friday, July 31._ He held this conversation deep inside his heart for the next few weeks, because Voldemort would absolutely not be receptive to the portrait’s apology. Apart from the shield charm the following weekend, the rest of his time was consumed by his Defense NEWT, scheduled on the Friday of his birthday so it’d be satisfying to get sloshed immediately afterward. And anyway, he hadn’t had a chance to pick up a _Symposium_ before then anyway. Might as well leave it.

Ron and Hermione met him in the Great Hall. And Ginny. He hadn’t realized Ginny would be back on campus, and he was smiling stupidly when he saw twice the amount of ginger hair as he was expecting. Even though they hadn’t properly broken up yet, even though they hadn’t really talked since Harry had been put under house arrest. Ginny looked fairly happy to see him too. “Hey. How was the NEWT?”

“Good. Fine. Someday an examiner is going to die in the middle of one, though. Hogsmeade?”

“Reservations at Satya,” Hermione confirmed. “Luna had excellent things to say about their bubble pipes.”

“She’s on a hunting trip with her dad,” Ginny added. “But told me to tell you that she’s asked the Blibbering Humdingers to, ah, blibber good wishes for you tonight.”

“Luna’s brilliant,” Harry said.

“I was going to ask, though – can Tonks come?” Ginny added. “I know it’s a bit awkward, your being….”

“An enemy of the state?” Harry finished.

She flashed him a grin. “Yes. That. But don’t worry, tonight she’ll be coming as my date and not your jailer.”

Harry and Hermione reacted, but Ron fully choked. “You’re dating Tonks?”

She gave him a pitying look. “You are so thick sometimes.”

“I just didn’t know – “

“Maybe you were confused because Harry and I never properly broke up?” she suggested. Turning to him: “I am officially breaking up with you,” she announced. “I don’t date men who shag dark lords.”

“Good, you’ve got better taste than that,” Harry agreed. And god bless Ginny for making this okay, for making this easy and good and warm. “Have wixes got any breaking up rituals?”

“Ooh, I’ve had a few burn parties,” Ginny said, a grin curling her lips.

“Let’s do that,” Harry agreed.

Ginny went to find Tonks. Ron looked at Harry with a very confused expression. “Is everyone gay this year?”

 

Tonks’s company was easier to deal with than he’d assumed it would be. Maybe he should take the Aurors out drinking occasionally, to demonstrate there were no hard feelings. “After all, we should’ve been colleagues by now,” Tonks was saying when they were all a few firewhiskies deep. “We were really looking forward to having you around, you know.”

“You _do_ have me around,” Harry pointed out.

She gave him a crooked grin. “Well.”

They were in a far corner of Satya, a fluorescent bubble pipe on the table casting the space in a strawberry-banana glow. And, because they were all a bit uninhibited, Ron leaned in. “What’s he like? Y’know, when he’s not trying to kill you.”

His friends had previously shut down all talk of Voldemort. Maybe Harry had too, himself. “Mm.” Ron poured him a shot as he thought. “He’s not kind, or gentle, or good,” he began.

Ron looked dubious. “Harry, if you’re saying you go for arseholes, I’ll have to…. Ginny will have to fight you herself,” he amended at his sister’s look.

“I. Uh, maybe, actually.” He didn’t really want to explain that he got off the best when Voldemort acted just utterly dismissive of him. He took the shot, winced at it, and poured one for Ron in retaliation. “Some if it’s to do with the Horcrux,” he said, and they must’ve all already known because his vow didn’t suffocate him. “That we can share magic. It’s really… warm, and magnetic. And emotions and sensation, good ones.”

“So you’re saying the sex is better?” Ginny asked, and the entire table but Harry blushed.

He gave her a brilliant smile. “I’m saying, learning Legilimency might be worth it.” And she was laughing and the rest of them looked mortified. It was fantastic.

The night only got stupid awhile later, when a group next to them, getting louder and louder, swelled into their space. They were probably a decade older, and twice as drunk. (Which was bad news because Harry was _quite_ warm and fuzzy.) A woman hovered at his elbow, looking back toward her friends. “I can’t,” she was laughing. “No, you. You do it.”

“Do what?” Harry asked her, finally.

She had something clutched in her fist and, startled that he was actually speaking to her, flung it on the table. A plastic soother rattled on the wood, _so_ visible and _so_ absurd. The other group was laughing, cheering. “Say it, Talia,” one of her friends urged the woman.

“I can’t,” she protested again, but she was bright pink and laughing. Finally Talia turned to deliver the punchline: “Happy birthday, baby,” she squeaked, and dove back into her crowd of friends.

Well. Shit. He was going to become more famous for his fetishes than the whole savior thing. It might be a welcome change of pace, honestly. Gryffindor bravery and drunk untouchability jointly kept him from dying of embarrassment. “Thanks,” he said, pocketing the soother. (“Oh, Harry, don’t,” Hermione moaned behind him.) “I’ll tell you how we fuck if you buy me a drink.”

Tragically, none of them actually wanted to know, and he poured himself another firewhiskey instead. “It’s fine,” he said to the table. “I mean, I don’t know how they know, but it’s fine.”

Hermione found her composure first. “There was a blind item in the Prophet a couple days ago. Nothing… I didn’t think it was obvious, but some of them would guess right just by chance.”

“Really?” Harry said, fascinated. “How’d it go?” He might pick up a copy himself. He was really very drunk.

But Hermione wouldn’t repeat it for him, and then Tonks felt obligated to apologize on behalf of the Ministry, that _of course_ illicit copies of his memories were going to get shared, as widely as the Ministry officials had distributed them themselves. “Seven different departments….” She shook her head in exasperation. “If we find anyone selling copies, we’ll confiscate and fine them, but I dunno we’ll be able to trace the leak.”

Ginny touched Tonks’s arm and passed her the hose of the bubble pipe. “You’re off duty,” she reminded her.

“Selling _copies_?” He hadn’t known that was a thing. “Of, like, all of it?”

“Probably? Maybe just, y’know, the scandalous parts. Last time something like this happened, it was the memories of the previous Undersecretary’s affair. But he was, uh, not so fit.” Realizing what she had said, she shoved the hose to her face.

Harry was fishing in his bag, pulling out the diary he shared with Voldemort. It was not so late; Voldemort might catch his note right now. He had to know. “You need to…. I don’t care if they’re passing around my sex tape,” he said to Tonks. “But everything in there about Voldemort – about his Horcruxes – anyone could use it against him.” He reached for his wand instinctively to cast Anapneo; somehow the vow wasn’t suffocating him, and he _knew_ Ginny hadn’t known of the other Horcruxes already. “Huh,” he said without explaining, and took Ron’s proffered quill.

He couldn’t think in Parseltongue, he had to sound it out as he wrote. The table went quiet.

**_My memories are for sale now, apparently. Probably all of them. Everyone will know about your Horcruxes too. I’m sorry._ **

He scrubbed his face as though rubbing sobriety back in. It didn’t work.

“He’ll be fine,” Tonks said quietly, at last. “You’ve got them all anyway, don’t you?” (He’d caused a minor crisis among the Aurors when he’d announced he’d brought back the locket to Hogwarts and needed to move it to the safehouse immediately.)

“He’d just want to hear that people will know he’ll be… slightly less immortal.” It sounded dumb even as he said it; he had to laugh. “Sorry,” he said, shoving the diary back in his bag. “You’re right. It’ll be fine.” He took the bubble pipe’s hose.

After a long moment, Ginny asked curiously, “What’s a sex tape?”

 

It took them quite awhile, once Ron had learned the concept, to dissuade him from his insistence that they should study a sex tape in the Muggle Studies class. “But ‘Mione, you were just saying how sex is one of the first ways any culture diff- differ- _defines_ itself.” It was the time of the night that he’d moved into sweet, fizzy, fruity drinks (one of Harry’s favorite quirks of his) and he had sloshed a bit of his fluorescent pink drink in vehemence.

Hermione passed him a napkin. “Well – yes, but – “

“You don’t want to give any of the students a Muggle fetish,” Ron said knowingly.

“What the fuck,” Hermione sighed.

When they’d paid and left, they had a bit of time to wander Hogsmeade. While they started at Honeydukes, Harry was (for the very first time in his life) eyeing the sliver of a used bookstore across the way, wedged between Madame Puddifoot’s and a board games store. He caught Hermione’s eye. “Would you come look at books with me?”

She looked confused and then concerned. “Textbooks? Professor McGonagall thought your syllabus had already been finalized.”

“No, other books. Not for me,” he clarified, and that seemed to make his point. They left for the bookstore.

_Zuzan’s_ , the name was painted directly on the lintel in purple paint. A bell tinkled. “Evening, Hermione,” a cute male clerk greeted her as they entered. His eyes went to Harry and his smile glittered. “Mr. Potter. Welcome.”

“Hi. Um. Thanks.” It would never not be weird to be recognized. He embraced the awkwardness and just asked, “Have you got any philosophy?” Hermione stared.

But they got themselves situated along one of the back walls, in a philosophy, religion, and myth section. Hermione had left him, pulling books with titles like _Circe’s Will_ and thoroughly off in her own world. Harry pulled a promising-looking book and settled into a plush chair.

Ron, Ginny, and Tonks found them forty minutes later, and were confused as hell. “What…. _Magic and Eternity_?” Ron read the cover from the top of his stack. “What is _that_?”

“They’re not for me,” Harry muttered, pressing the stack to his chest. It was the most effective way to shut down questions, apparently, because Ron went a bit pale.

“Have you got Muggle books?” Harry asked the clerk as he brought the stack up to the register.

“Muggle Studies? Take a left at the cat.”

“Just… Muggle. Books they wrote themselves.”

“ _Oh_ ,” the young man frowned at him. “A bit. Not much. What are you looking for?” He was pulling an ordering sheet from under the counter.

A few minutes later, they were departing, Harry and Hermione clutching their respective bags. “Those look hideous, by the way,” Ginny said, giving him a sidelong glance.

“Not for me. But… it makes sense, doesn’t it? We can do _anything_ , nearly. And we’re somehow still making ourselves live normal lives as though we don’t manipulate time and space regularly.” He shot off a flock of birds drunkenly, waving a wild hand. (The birds themselves weaved as though drunk, and looked rather relieved to dissolve in a few moments.) “ _That_. We can create life without _thinking_ about it. What do life and death even mean, when we can manipulate it all so easily?”

Ginny was somehow more sober than him even though she’d had more to drink. “If your next line has anything to do with _ruling the world_ , I swear to Morgana….”

“I’m not going evil. Christ. Doesn’t it make you all just feel… empty though?” He looked around at the group, all in various stages of disbelief. “Nevermind.”

Ron slapped him on the back, congenial but obviously a gesture at making him shut up. He gave a weak smile.

Back at Hogwarts, Tonks excused herself (“Letholdus likes some time for a nightcap,” she said). The rest of them would re-convene at Gryffindor tower, where Ginny was staying, for their burn party. Harry went to go find some talismans.

But he didn’t really want to part with most of it. Photos, cards. Ginny had gotten him heated, waterproof flying gloves one year that were his best pair. He thought about bringing his Weasley jumpers but, well, it wasn’t Molly he was breaking up with. He cherished those anyway. He took the crossword books Ginny had sent him in house arrest. And a jar of kaval, as usual, to make life for Voldemort a little easier.

Hermione and Ron were already there, with chips and cold chicken from the kitchens. “Oh thank fuck,” Harry said, sinking in before the platter because it was the drunchies part of the night. “Cheers.”

“The elves say happy birthday,” Ron said. “They, uh, might be bringing a cake around.”

“Oh my god.” He picked at a drumstick. “I couldn’t find much to burn. Hope Ginny does better.”

“Not really, no,” Ginny said, emerging from the dorms as if summoned. “That hairbrush is the only thing that will keep my hair from going all poofy in the summer. And the Bowfuckle poster covers up some holes in our dorm wall that rather shouldn’t be there.” Harry raised his eyebrows; she cleverly didn’t elaborate. “I’ve got the cards out of some of the chocolate frogs you gave me, though.”

“I’ve got your crosswords,” Harry said, equally unimpressively. “I don’t think we’re good at this.”

“No,” she sighed, taking chips. Harry took her cards, and his books, tossing them into the hearth. It was the least dramatic thing.

And then something was poking him in the thigh through his jeans; he reached into his pocket and found the soother from earlier. “Ugh. Burn _this_.” He pitched it as well, and it melted efficiently across the tinder. “Sorry about that,” he apologized again. Ginny was amused; Ron and Hermione various states of mortified. Recursively mortified on his behalf, because he apparently didn’t have even enough self-awareness to feel shame for his fetishes. He was still drunk enough to consider going to put a nappy under his robes, or casually popping his thumb in his mouth, because both of those things sounded brilliant right then. But he was not, actually, an exhibitionist.

After a time, the need for kaval began pulling at him. He pulled out the jar of it, enough to pass around. “Here.” He took a long draught, passing it to Ron.

He sniffed, hesitantly. “Gin?” he guessed.

“Kaval. A potion. It makes you feel a bit… floaty. It’s not illegal,” he added particularly in Hermione’s direction, even though she hadn’t objected.

“No, it’s not,” she said instead after a moment. “The Slytherins would make it on weekends, when we were prefects. In the girls’ toilets,” she added at Ron’s confused look, “so _you_ never got to confront them about it. They’d go drink it at the far end of the lake.” A look. “You didn’t get it from Malfoy or anyone, did you?”

“Oh. No, I brew it.” Explaining any more would ruin the chill atmosphere. “It helps with… things.”

Ron took a swallow. “Are you _sure_ , Hermione?” he asked. “The Slytherins never seemed especially… mellow.”

She grinned despite herself. “Yes. I’d never tried it then, though.” With that she took a swallow, and passed the jar to Ginny. “Cheers, Harry. Happy birthday.”

They kept passing, until the jar was empty and they were all kind of slumped on one another on the sofas. “Since when do you brew potions?” Ginny asked, her gaze unfocused on the ceiling.

“You know.”

She looked back at him with a frown. “ _Oh_ ,” she said finally because they were all a bit slow. “I don’t know that you should let him get you high, really. Someday you might wake up with a Dark Mark tattooed in an embarrassing spot.”

Harry snorted on his chips, painfully. “I get myself high,” he corrected. “Living in the Ministry home was just awfully boring. I can get _him_ high, though, since we share feelings, especially if I’m not keeping track of my Occlumency.”

Ginny and Ron were enthralled by this; Hermione was off on one of her ponderings. “What’s it like when he’s high?” Ginny asked, fascinated. “I hope it’s hilarious. I hope it’s just the _stupidest_ – like,” she drew herself up, hands in claws, “like, ‘Rrar, Muggles, how I hate Muggles, I should kill them all – ooh, _biscuits_.” And then she collapsed in laughter and Harry was grinning because it was so dumb.

“We’ve never chatted about Muggles while high,” he said, “unfortunately. He is more, mm, thoughtful on it I guess.” He had in mind the night he’d locked himself in a cupboard to relive his childhood, and Voldemort had held him until it was okay again. “But I think that might only extend to me.”

Hermione, always so clever, asked the question he hadn’t wanted to hear. “Is it only when you’re nearby that you can share feelings, or is it all the time? Fifth year…” she began, and hesitated because that was a shitty time, but he gestured her on. “We thought it was, well, exceptional circumstances only.”

“It was, then. It’s a lot stronger just in the past few months.” _Since I’ve fallen in love with him_ , Harry didn’t say. _Since we’ve fallen in love_ , he amended with a twist to his gut. “The Horcrux might have… grown in that time. I don’t know.”

Ron and Ginny flinched at the word _Horcrux_ ; Hermione raised her eyebrows. “So is he also high right now?”

They all found it a whimsical question. How funny, picturing Voldemort light and giggly in a cell in Azkaban, waiting to be abused as usual. He shoved his impatience and anger away, because really, he’d brought this upon himself. “I don’t take enough to make either of us really feel it. Just enough that Azkaban hurts a little less. And maybe he can, like, dissociate from it a little bit.”

Hermione pressed a fist to her mouth. “I’m an idiot,” she muttered around it. “I’m so sorry.” A pause. “Do you feel that too, then?”

“Not if I take dreamless sleep.” He looked around at the group. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to tell you that. It doesn’t help.”

Sighing, Ginny patted his shoulder in that way she did. They stared into the meager fire.

 

At some point Ginny brought down a game and a bottle of rum. “Pixie-made in Fiji,” she read off the label. “Dunno how long it’s been there, we’ll see if it’s any good.”

“Been where?” Hermione asked.

Ginny flashed her a grin. “Definitely not behind a loose tile in the girls’ showers.”

“Oh my god, is _that_ why Lav and Parvati would only use that stall?” Hermione sighed. “I was the worst prefect.”

“Not true,” Ron interjected.

She glared at him. “I bet you knew.” He only grinned at her.

Ginny’s game was a bit like jenga, but with blocks that would occasionally vanish and re-materialize elsewhere in the tower, making it a precarious game and much too talented for how inebriated they all were. Just as Harry was about to lose his third consecutive game, the house elves saved him, as usual. Half a dozen of them Apparated into the common room directly, startling the fuck out of them all. A frosted cake was hoisted among them, his face drawn in the icing. It was a pretty passable likeness.

And after much negotiation, the house elves still wouldn’t agree to staying for a celebration but would at least take back slices of cake to the kitchens for themselves. “It was a good go,” Ron said, carving ruthless slices across his face in the cake. Harry ate the piece with his own scar on it.

 

_Saturday, August 1._ They all fell asleep at some point, cake and drinks and chicken bones scattered across the tables as evidence of the night. And he awoke with a bloody nauseating shaking by strong hands on his shoulders. He thought he was still drunk. “Ugh – oh god – “ he muttered through his fingers. “What – sorry – “ Finally he looked up to find Bragg above him. “Oh,” he said blearily. “D’you want some cake?”

“No. You need to get up.”

He was still so stupid. “Sorry. You’re right. I never checked in with you – it must be so late.” His mouth tasted horrible, and he was wiping crusted saliva and icing from the corners of his mouth. He wished Bragg weren’t seeing him like this.

“It is noon,” he said. “And you’re needed at the Ministry.” He was cleaning up with Scourgify, vanishing crumbs and the rings from sticky glasses. He’d set a hangover potion within reach of Harry, Merlin bless him.

“Oh.” He was up, pulling his robes into place, before he thought to ask, “Wait, why?”

Bragg was horrifically reluctant to tell him. “It’s Voldemort,” he said. “I’ll tell you more in a secure location.” He cast a look at Ron and Hermione, still asleep.

Shit. He hadn’t felt anything; Voldemort hadn’t written him anything. “I’ll get ready,” he said, his heart sinking. He left without waking his friends.

A sprint to his suite, cleaning charms instead of a shower, more sobering and hydrating charms instead of being a responsible adult. Bragg and Tonks were both waiting at the dungeon’s entrance when he emerged. “Can you tell me now?” he asked as they headed toward Dumbledore’s office at a clip.

“Does this seem secure?” Bragg asked, and while the castle was quiet, the paintings were all quite interested. A few of the subjects on horseback followed them across the frames, in fact. Obnoxious.

“ _Leth_ ,” Tonks scolded. She was on and tense, showing no signs of having gotten pissed with him the night before. “We can tell you what we know, but it’s not much. The Healers hadn’t arrived yet at the time Auror Rye had sent her Patronus.”

He was dead, he had to be dead. Harry poked at their connection and found nothing. “The torture finally killed him, then.” His voice had a titanium edge.

Both of the Aurors looked surprised and then impatient. “This has got nothing to do with Azkaban,” Tonks said. She talked quicker before Harry could accuse them of anything else: “Voldemort was at the Ministry this morning. In a meeting with Scrimgeour and the Muggles. And it was all _fine_ until – well, Anya said he got up abruptly, but only made it out the door before he passed out. He was _covered_ in lacerations, that weren’t there a moment ago. Cursed ones, that they couldn’t heal. And there was nobody else there,” she added to head off Harry’s question. “It’s Saturday. We brought Voldemort in on an off day for security purposes to begin with.”

“God,” Harry breathed. “I don’t know. He didn’t say anything?”

“Not that we were told.”

Into the Floo, landing in the Ministry’s atrium. The barest of security wizards, and only a few scattered employees in office robes. It was the stillest he’d ever seen the place.

They took a lift diagonal, fascinatingly, and found themselves in a purple-tinged corridor. “What—?” Harry asked, squinting up at the lamps.

“Security spells. This is where most diplomatic sessions are held.” Even Tonks’s hair was washed out in this light. “He should be – ah.” They reached a bend in the hall and found Healers beyond it, along with Scrimgeour, Bowersock, Amelia Bones, a few of their Aurors and a few wixes in Wizengamot robes. The Muggles apparently had been excused, or hustled off. “Where is he?” Tonks asked as she strode up. “And _how_ is he? Oh, this is Harry Potter,” she introduced him off-handedly to the Healers and unfamiliar Wizengamot members. “He’s the Horcrux.”

It made him feel weird to be called such so blithely. “Hi. Yes. Voldemort lives off my magic mostly – “ And a Healer was pulling him into a room nearby, alone.

Voldemort was an abject heap of black robes, laid on a conference table over which they’d spread medical sheets. Two Healers in green were on either side of him, trying to cast on the deep lacerations along his face and throat. The shiny, sodden look of his robes indicated that it was worse beneath them. A third Healer had a rolling table with potions ingredients. “I can barely keep up with blood-replenishing potions,” she was saying apologetically to her colleagues as they entered. “Oh! Harry Potter,” and she got to her feet to greet him.

“Please just keep working,” he said, trying not to sound rude. “What happened?”

“Spontaneous laceration,” one of the casters said. “He collapsed immediately. He’s being held unconscious right now, so we could slow blood loss and magic exhaustion.”

Voldemort’s flesh was in ribbons. It was awful. Harry pushed all his feelings out violently as he stepped closer. “The Wizengamot,” he said as he pulled the diadem from Voldemort’s cold finger. “They’ve tortured him before, I’ve seen them do it. Thought it would be a fucking laugh to do it _here_ , I guess, instead of Azkaban.” The buttons of Voldemort’s robes were tacky with blood as he undid them, to get to his heart. One of the casters winced, performing a cleaning spell to clean up Voldemort’s thin torso from the blood it was caked in as it was exposed. Harry pressed a surge of magic over his heart.

“The meeting was held without wands.” A quiet voice behind him. Scrimgeour had let himself in. “I can see how you might draw such a conclusion, but the Wizengamot would never jeopardize our relations with the Muggles. Certainly not for sport.”

Harry wanted to kill him in that instant. “So what if it’s wandless? I can do wandless magic. So can Voldemort. So can anyone powerful enough, I imagine.”

“Not to do _this_.” He nodded to Voldemort’s body. Blood was beginning to pool beneath him. “We will ask them under Veritaserum in a later investigation. But it doesn’t seem of primary importance at the moment.”

Harry pressed another bit of magic in, too hard. He felt a flutter of pain that wasn’t his own, but Voldemort remained unresponsive. “Did he say anything first?”

“Nothing anyone heard or recognized. Something that sounded like _nag_ – ?” He frowned, trying to put the unfamiliar sounds back together.

Harry realized instantly. “Nagini,” he supplied. “ _Fuck_.” The diadem seemed to warm in his grasp as though acknowledging another Horcrux. Scrimgeour was questioning; the Healers were all startled, either at his anger or at how profoundly disrespectful he acted to the Minister. “Nagini is his snake. _Was_ his snake, I guess,” he added bitterly. “I guess it doesn’t matter if you know now, that she was a Horcrux too. She must have been captured.” And hopefully merely killed and not tortured first, but, given the amount of blood, he wouldn’t bet on it. “We must have mentioned her at some point. In my memories,” he clarified, “since that’s how the _entire world_ knows about the Horcruxes now.”

He expected Scrimgeour to offer an apology for the leak, which he’d then brush off. Scrimgeour didn’t. “Do you recognize the spell, by any chance?” he asked instead. “As you know, wixes seeking retribution against Voldemort will often find some satisfaction in using his own spells against him. Or against his snake, if he is suffering secondhand effects.”

“No.” His hands were covered in blood, sticky as they dried. “I don’t even know how to destroy a Horcrux. Well, maybe they don’t either,” he said, looking down at Voldemort’s mutilated body, imagining the effects came from a volley of arcane spells as the snake refused to die. He moved to let the potions master administer another blood-replenishing potion. “Can I have a syringe?” he asked. “And tourniquets. Voldemort might need my blood specifically.”

The nearest Healer’s eyebrows went up. “Yours?” she asked even as she reached into a case. “The potion will perfectly replicate his blood type.”

“He took my blood to resurrect himself,” Harry said, rolling up his sleeve. “And I gave him more when the void of the sanatorium was killing him. You _didn’t_ put another magical void on the room, did you?”

“No.” And then Scrimgeour, as the nearest, was tying the tourniquet on Harry himself, the most unlikely gesture. He supposed Aurors would be trained for battlefield medicine, but he’d never find out. Then Scrimgeour was moving to tie Voldemort’s tourniquet, and the Healer cast a sterilizing spell on Harry before drawing blood.

The room was quiet as his blood bubbled into the syringe. Voldemort’s chest hardly moved with his breath. Awful, awful, awful. And then the Healer withdrew the needle, passing it over Voldemort’s body to her colleague to inject into Voldemort’s elbow. Diagnostics: nothing different. Again.

It took three syringes before his breathing became full and non-labored. They eased off the unconsciousness spell, to see what would happen. He squirmed – no, _thrashed_ – the slightest bit, and they all caught their breath as the movement ripped open tentative scabs, pouring fresh blood down his sides. The casters moved into action.

And so did Harry, without thinking about it. He leaned in close, holding his hand and the warm diadem over his heart. “Vol? Just stay where you are, love, you’ll be alright.” It was weirdly reminiscent of babytalking him in Azkaban a few weeks ago. A smile wavered on his lips as he wondered whether Voldemort hated this too. “We’ve got Healers. You’re getting my blood, and magic. You’ll be alright.”

He didn’t open his eyes, but his lips curled. “The savior has arrived,” he muttered around the coagulated blood in his mouth. And bile, and fluid. His organs must have been shredded as well. Harry pushed his head to the side gently so he didn’t aspirate.

“That’s right,” he said, and then he was taking a cloth to dab the blood out. It made no difference, seemingly. “Don’t talk if you can’t, but if you can – do you know what this spell is?”

“Oh, it must be – Sectumsempra.” It took him a few tries to pronounce it fully, blood bubbling through each sibilant noise.

The rest of the room looked as blank on it as Harry felt. “How do we fix it?”

A short laugh that obviously hurt Voldemort – and a moment later, hurt Harry too, as their connection bloomed to life. Harry gritted his teeth. “Vulnera Sanentur, to stabilize, at least,” Voldemort pronounced carefully.

The Healers exchanged glances. One began cautiously, “I’ve heard of it, but….”

“If you cast it wrong, it goes _very_ wrong,” Voldemort said, irritation clear. He had just enough range of motion to turn his head and regard the Healers with distaste. “Learn it if you are ever to minister to me again. For now, keep out of the way.” He stopped to spit blood. “Be ready to cast Confervo afterward. Or Mollesco.”

“After… what?” one Healer asked.

Voldemort’s gaze sought Harry out. Terrified, he was terrified, in spite of his calm at giving directions for his own medical care as he was dying. Harry had never thought of Voldemort as brave before, but in that moment, he was so brave. “Come here, Harry.”

“Yeah?” He slipped the diadem back onto Voldemort’s hand, and carefully lifted his arm to his chest for him. A hiss of pain, and then a conscious stilling of his features.

“Do you trust me?” Voldemort asked. So steady, so pragmatic, so scared. Blood and bile trickled over his lips; Harry kept wiping it away.

They shouldn’t do this with an audience. What they were even doing, he couldn’t say. “Yes.”

“Let me possess you.”

A strangled noise behind Harry. Scrimgeour, of course. He stepped up to look Voldemort in the face. “Even if it’s a beneficial act – I can’t let it happen,” he said, and he sounded more apologetic than authoritative or upset. “There must…. We’ll fetch more Healers.”

Voldemort’s gaze was bloody and awful to behold. “I am dying,” he said to Scrimgeour, unflinching. Every sound was rounded and gurgling from speaking around a mouthful of blood. “Rapidly. Step out of the room and disavow all knowledge of it, if you must. You are quite practiced in doing so already.”

A silence. Harry didn’t look over. Then a soft click as Scrimgeour laid Voldemort’s wand on the table beside Harry. “I can’t condone this,” he said, and went.

The Healers remained, ready with spells or potions to fix anything after this point. Harry removed the body bind and stepped in. “What do I need to do?”

“Take my hands, and hold them to the hollow of your throat.” Harry did, leaning over him. The scent of blood filled his nose. “Clear your mind. I only need your acceptance. It will feel a bit like being opened by Legilimency.” His eyes studied Harry’s face. “Are you prepared?”

“Yes.”

A dizziness, a darkness, a sensation like falling asleep. Voldemort might as well have told him it would feel like being opened by sex – a first tense push, and then overwhelming fullness. He let his consciousness fade. As though it were happening in another world, he felt his hand take up Voldemort’s wand. His voice – though it sounded nothing like his voice – was singing a spell that sounded very ancient, and very fragile. Voldemort’s body looked like nothing alive, nothing that could have ever sustained life. Harry receded into the deep empty places inside of himself.

It could have been minutes, it could have been days. The next time he was properly conscious, he was seated, and a casting Healer was leaning over him. “It worked,” she said with a tiny smile, before casting some sort of fortification on him. “Possession weakens the soul. If you’re letting him do that to you often….”

“No. Of course not.” He stood such that she had to step back, and he was wobbly but otherwise fine. Voldemort was still stretched on the table. Red-silvery scars covered his entire body, as though he’d been shattered once and put back together. He had been, really. He was asleep once more.

“He needed some rather painful growth potions,” the Healer said, interpreting the concern on Harry’s face correctly. “And we thought it best to give you both a bit of a rest. He finished casting an hour ago,” she added. “We had to clear everyone out of the corridor anyway.”

“Thanks,” Harry said, not sure if any of that was something for which he ought to be grateful. He was gathering magic and pressing it into Voldemort’s skin as though it were a habit. “What does he need now?”

“A month in St. Mungo’s,” one of them said grimly. “But the Minister thought that would be an unwelcome option. For everyone involved.”

“He’s not going back to Azkaban.”

“Well. No.” She hesitated. “Should we bring the Minister in to discuss these matters? He’s waiting in just the next room.”

“Oh. Uh, sure. I’ll get him.” Out of all the weirdness and unexpected moments of these past few months, Scrimgeour’s support might be the weirdest. His friendship with Voldemort might be the weirdest. He went.

Scrimgeour, Bragg, and Tonks were in the next conference room, very quiet and very tense. Harry caught Scrimgeour’s eye. “Sir?” He got to his feet rapidly.

But before they returned to Voldemort, Scrimgeour stopped him outside the door. “You know there is also the matter of your safety. You’ll discuss it with the Aurors later.”

“What? I mean, more than usual?”

Scrimgeour gave him a sidelong look. “If somebody has set out to destroy Voldemort’s Horcruxes….”

“I’m next. Right.”

“Even if you intended to keep it for the time being, you would be incredibly safer returning it.”

He hated the idea. He didn’t know what sort of relationship he and Voldemort would have if their magic weren’t so tightly intertwined. He didn’t want to hold the Horcrux hostage, but…. “We don’t know how to return them yet, anyway,” he said. “But even if he did – it’d be rather a waste to give him back his soul now, when it’d just get destroyed in Azkaban _anyway_.”

He meant it as a rebuke, as usual. Scrimgeour, infuriatingly, only looked thoughtful. “Yes,” he said, finally. “I agree.” And Harry recalled that he did, that he and Voldemort had fought about it in Cornwall once. “It does pose a conundrum. Let’s hear what Voldemort thinks of it himself.” He let them both back in.

The Healers had scrubbed the room down, so it now smelled like lavender instead of death. They hadn’t revived Voldemort yet. “Excellent work,” Scrimgeour said, surveying his body. “Well done.”

“He saved himself, mostly,” one of the Healers objected. “Shall we wake him?”

“Please.”

The revival was a three person job, apparently: a restorative potion and a spell both, with the second caster poised with analgesic spells for the immediate aftermath. At the resuscitation, Voldemort jerked, his face contorting in pain. And of course neither of them were thinking about Occlumency at the moment, so his pain alighted upon Harry a moment later, as if he’d been doused with liquid flame. He caught himself on the edge of the table.

The Healers moved fast: one for Voldemort, one for Harry, until cool blessed relief washed over him like sinking into the bath. He was frozen for a moment, in fear that moving would aggravate the pain again. Safe. He wiped his face on his sleeve and moved to give Voldemort magic.

Voldemort had scarcely moved, only holding one hand close to his face to study the scarring. “I could have done better,” he rasped. “Your magic resisted my wandwork. I should have anticipated it, really.”

“Prat,” Harry said affectionately. “You’re _alive_. You did fine.”

Scrimgeour turned to the Healers. “Would you be so kind as to wait with my Aurors in the next room? We’ll summon you if we need you.”

As he spoke, Voldemort said to Harry, in Parseltongue and in a dull undertone, “Hold me.”

He couldn’t stand looking helpless, not before the Minister or anybody. There was no weaker position than his prone sprawl currently. Dismissing any sort of decorum, he climbed into the table behind Voldemort, propping him against one shoulder. They would be able to share more magic if their skin touched, but, well.

Scrimgeour was unsurprised upon looking back, only pulling a chair nearby and dropping into it. “The Healers say you should stay in St. Mungo’s for at least a few weeks. We could secure a room there, add Auror detail….”

“Absolutely not.”

Scrimgeour had trailed off as though he’d anticipated this refusal. “What would you prefer?”

“The safehouse, obviously.” He turned to spit old blood from his throat. “Or elsewhere, if you must, but you’ll need to let me collect my remaining Horcruces,” he said the phrase with intense bitterness, “at the very least.”

“We’ll have to send Healers around.”

“Fine.”

“And Aurors.”

“Fine,” he said again, less pliant this time.

“And Harry will no longer be able to travel freely.”

“Was he ever?” Voldemort muttered. Harry stayed quiet, pressing magic into his wrists. It seemed to dribble back out of him as all his blood had.

Rufus leaned forward, intense and upset. “Who did this?” he asked. “You must know.”

“An enemy,” Voldemort said thickly, and choked on a bitter laugh at the uselessness of his own answer.

“Should we pursue them?”

“Oh.” Voldemort turned curious at this. “You truly don’t know. The instigator will remain quite safe at Hogwarts. He is under Harry’s protection as well, I am told.” Harry went cold at this. Scrimgeour still looked questioning so Voldemort said patiently, “You _do_ recognize this curse, from your Auror service, if not by name. It looked much different on corpses, though, with their blood drained. Sectumsempra is rather famously a curse invented and beloved by Severus Snape.”

Silence. Scrimgeour was good at silence. Harry spoke to fill the void instead. “He _can’t_ – I’m sorry,” he muttered.

“Oh, I very much doubt he did it himself. He delegates whenever possible. Certainly now that the Ministry put him in such a visible position, for his protection and everyone else’s. Send a message to Hogwarts if you’d like, but he’s almost certainly there. Nagini was somewhere on the continent.” He spoke slowly, with pain. It made Harry and Scrimgeour both hang on to every word.

“Are you certain the snake is dead, then? We might retrieve it and restore it as well.”

Harry felt surprise and deep suspicion coiled within Voldemort. “I have ceased bleeding,” he said curtly. “She is dead.”

“I’m sorry.”

Deeper surprise, deeper suspicion. “ _Why_?” No, Harry realized, he was _amused_ by this, at least for an instant. “By all means, rejoice. Fuck your moral high ground.” Voldemort tipped his head back onto Harry’s shoulder, to let him in on the joke: “Nagini attacked Scrimgeour in Albania. The Aurors had come looking for me years ago, while I was dispossessed. She tore out the entire thigh muscle, as I understand. Perhaps whatever curse that lingers will evaporate now as well.”

They both were marked by Voldemort. And both… _here_ for him, in that instant. It was an illustration of Voldemort’s magnetism, more striking even than the attention he held at Azkaban. “Snape knew you were reclaiming your Horcruxes,” Harry said, trying to keep the grief from his voice. “He knew that you weren’t a threat to him. _Why_ – “ And he had to stop when the chafe of his anger was hurting Voldemort.

“He might have only passed along information,” Voldemort said quite reasonably. “Sectumsempra is vicious magic, the right sort to destroy a Horcrux.” A pause. “Perhaps it was a trial run for destroying yours. To ensure it would be sufficient.”

“No.” His voice cracked with horror.

Propped as Voldemort was against him, the motion of his shrug moved them both. “Did the Healers leave Verve?” he asked hopefully. “Or Pepper-Up, if they must.” Scrimgeour passed him a smoking jar silently. “Thank you.” Harry kept a discreet, steadying hand on Voldemort’s elbow as he lifted the glass. He was doped to hell, Harry realized for the first time, his pupils dark and blown out. A necessity, for the moment. No wonder Harry didn’t feel much of his pain: Voldemort didn’t feel it himself. He thought as he swallowed with difficulty. “It could have only been a Death Eater. They would know Sectumsempra, they would know Nagini. I don’t believe it was Snape directly. Snape has never had a brave moment in his life.” (Harry was too distraught to protest this, as he knew he ought to.) “I had assumed his allegiances would be simpler with Albus dead. Whose protection could he otherwise seek? It must be another. Pursue it if you’d like another Death Eater in Azkaban,” he said to Scrimgeour. “But be careful who you might find at the other end of the trail.”

Scrimgeour was quiet, considering. He had nothing to say about the perpetrators, so pivoted the conversation: “And what to do with Harry?”

“He’ll stay with me, of course.”

Scrimgeour’s eyebrows went up. “Not forever.”

“No.” He turned to cough, and it sounded wet, like his insides were still in ribbons. Harry winced and held him tighter. “No,” he said against when he could speak. “Harry has both Light and Dark protection. Keep him between the safehouse and Hogwarts. The castle will only be safer next month with the start of the term. Put an Auror on him if you must. Have you got any malevolence detectors?” he asked Harry. “They are imperfect, but will give you enough time to prepare or summon backup.”

“Like the things Moody had?” _Crouch_ , his brain corrected too late.

Voldemort snorted. “He would.”

“The Aurors have a set,” Scrimgeour told Harry. “They’ll bring you one. Though as Voldemort says, it does nothing to protect you directly.”

“Thanks, sir.”

“What do you need to expedite work on the Horcruxes?” Scrimgeour asked Voldemort. “We could provide you with a research team of Unspeakables. We don’t have any currently that work on dark magic, but we do have a team on soulwork.”

Voldemort spat blood again, so when he smiled at Scrimgeour, his teeth still gleamed red. “Rufus,” he said fondly. “Promise me that someday you’ll divulge why you support this pet project of mine so fiercely.” He said it as though he’d said it before.

“I don’t, personally. But I have made a professional vow to protect my constituents.”

Voldemort was fading, Harry could feel it; they needed to conclude before the full force of his agony re-emerged. “I don’t need a research team,” Voldemort said, to return to the question. “I only need Harry, and time, and a secure location.” He looked to the ceiling for a long moment. “I suppose at this point they can’t kill me anymore than they already have.”

“Should I send Aurors to the continent?”

“You should send Aurors to fortify the houses of everyone who has sheltered Harry before,” Voldemort said. “As that is where they’ll turn next. Capture them a bit nearer to home.”

Harry’s hands closed into fists without realizing; as both of Voldemort’s hands were crushed, he made only a tiny exhalation of protest. Harry relaxed them. “Nobody else can die for me,” he said.

“We won’t allow anyone else to.” A promise made not by Scrimgeour, but Voldemort. He was high; he was speaking gentle, painless nonsense. He must have felt Harry’s surprise and mild incredulity because he went on: “For all that others have sacrificed on your behalf, you might be the best-protected wizard in all of Britain,” he said. “On the other hand… I must wonder whether having so much blood spilled on your behalf would have deleterious effects. There is no reason to exacerbate it, if that is the case.” A labored breath, and he said wryly, “The Unspeakables may be intrigued by such a question.”

Neither of them knew how to answer that. “They might be, yeah,” Harry said finally. He’d never told Voldemort he’d traded research for magic; it’d only been one instance before the Unspeakables ripped out all his memories. He had left it ambiguous whether this was an allusion, whether he did know of the deal made without him. “But it won’t matter anyway. I’ll avoid being such a target.”

“As though you can,” Voldemort snorted. “Apologies, that you hadn’t known your birthday bacchanalia would also be your last supper. To mix mythologies.”

“Yes, happy birthday,” Scrimgeour said in a perfunctory way. He was pushing another vial of Verve into Voldemort’s grip before he’d even properly reached for it, and frowned at him. “You believe Harry’s care will be sufficient?”

“My own care will be sufficient,” Voldemort corrected (even if Harry noted that he winced on all his sibilants, as though his respiratory system was still too punctured to do it properly). “Harry is a set of hands and a bit of a soul. Anyway,” he rubbed circles into the back of Harry’s hands with his thumbs, affectionate for a moment, “he has taken to everything I have endeavored to teach him so far. I will only tolerate my Horcruces remaining in quite impressive vessels.” And then they were back at the crisis and tragedy that was Nagini.

Scrimgeour shook his head in wonderment, moving to get up. “Would you remain here while the Aurors secured the safehouse?”

“No.” At Scrimgeour’s taken-aback glance, he said with the barest of desperation, “I _can’t_.”

Scrimgeour’s face contorted into something like pity for only an instant. It occurred to Harry that Voldemort’s infirmity and abject status was hard on the entire wixen world, that when their standard for inhumanity suddenly looked so very human, everything else came apart at the seams. He saw the gambit in Voldemort allowing himself to be tortured now. It would sow chaos, in a way.

“Fine,” Scrimgeour said. “We’ll work around your magic, then.” He moved slowly and looked away carefully as Harry half-hoisted Voldemort standing. Between Mobilicorpus and his own shoulder for support, Voldemort moved reasonably well, for the moment.

Scrimgeour summoned more Aurors, dividing them up between securing the safehouse and Hogwarts. One fetched Harry a malevolence detector, an orb that fit over the handle of his wand. The Healers moved to gather supplies, and to give Harry instruction. Camilla Brightbone brought Portkeys.

“This will allow you to go freely between the safehouse and the Ministry’s atrium,” she told Harry, handing him a brass medal. “From which you can reach Hogwarts. You’re not permitted in any other location without prior notice and an Auror escort. And if Voldemort attempts to use it,” here she raised her voice because Voldemort was sort of propped up against Harry, though facing away and speaking with a Healer; he looked over, “he’ll find himself transported to a cell in Azkaban instead. And our sympathies will be extremely limited.”

“Of course,” he agreed. His gaze was dull and emptied though; Brightbone usually appreciated being furious with Voldemort and she wouldn’t find it in him today. She excused herself.

They didn’t have to depart from the atrium but did have to move to a corridor with less stringent security spells, without the strange purple glow suppressing antagonistic magic. It couldn't have helped, Harry thought as they left it behind, but Voldemort looked no better in the unsecured corridor. Portkeys all around, for the Aurors and Healers and the Minister. Harry took theirs and put the ribbon around Voldemort’s neck, pressing it to his chest to ensure he’d get there safely. They were off.

The safehouse, as usual. Harry and Voldemort had to be the first in, to allow everyone else. Voldemort’s arm was around Harry’s shoulders for support. “Carry me across the threshold, would you?” he asked. “It’s meant to guard against demons. Ensure domestic tranquility.”

“We could bloody do with some domestic tranquility,” Harry muttered; and what the hell, he did actually scoop Voldemort up against his chest. His long legs dangled, but he was light. The entanglement of their magic was nearly so tangible as to serve as a harness. It felt unexpectedly secure. One of the Healers squawked disapproval behind them, as she well should, and Harry glanced back. “Would you come in?”

Voldemort took a chair in the sitting room, from which he could supervise, but Harry ended up as the one to give instructions. “Potions are in the basement, with a cauldron,” he told the Healers. “Start on wards in the bedroom and work your way out,” to the Aurors. “Put away your wand or I’ll take it from you,” to Voldemort himself, who gave him a very hurt look but tucked his wand away.

“I was only going to get the blood out of my robes,” he sulked. “They’re becoming stiff.”

“Oh god. I’m sorry.” And Harry did it for him; he’d become indifferent to blood early on in the day and hadn’t noticed. Voldemort hummed in gratitude as Harry perched on the arm of his chair, bathing him in gentle magic.

The Aurors worked quickly to secure the bedroom, so Voldemort wouldn’t have to struggle to remain conscious for much longer, and for that Harry was grateful. But before he could put Voldemort to bed, Kingsley approached. “Harry – it might be best that you return to Hogwarts now, if you want to at all. Gather your things. We’ll tell your friends, if you’d like.”

He hesitated, still. He was doing less work of mediation these days, but still – Voldemort alone in a house full of Aurors, infirm physically and magically, and also a bit fucked out of his mind. (One of the analgesics had had wormwood in it. It made them both a bit light and floaty.)

Voldemort squeezed his fingers. “Go,” he said. “I give you my word I won’t die in your absence.”

“Well, you can’t die in my presence either.” Harry got up, moving rapidly. “Thanks, Kingsley. I’ll be quick,” he said, more to Voldemort. He pressed a kiss to the back of Voldemort’s cold hand without thinking about it, and moved to the garden to activate his Portkey.

He nearly ran through the halls of Hogwarts. It was a summery Saturday, late in the afternoon, and everyone was elsewhere. None of it mattered. He nearly pushed past Abzu to get to the dungeon corridor of his suite, where he found Moody and Tonks along with Ron, Hermione, and Ginny. He only recognized in that moment that he was covered in blood. He didn’t have time. He liked the testimony of Voldemort’s humanity on his robes and on his skin, anyway. Maybe they’d come to recognize it too. “Hi. Shit day, sorry,” he said to his friends. “Want to come in?” He left the door open so even the Aurors, who hovered in the hall, could be involved. “Whatever you’ve heard from the Aurors is probably right.” Hermione passed him his overnight bag as he opened his wardrobe. “But it _can’t_ get out. Anymore than it all already has.” He had bought new faculty robes at Diagon Alley, but still packed his student ones. Let Voldemort bleed on those.

“Last night – when you wrote to him about the leak – you were right to worry,” Hermione said.

“Don’t pity Voldemort,” he told them firmly. “This is how his life is. He’s paranoid about death, and sometimes he’s right.” He had seen how unnerved Scrimgeour was in finding Voldemort pitiable; he only recognized now that he himself was unnerved at seeing that pity. He needed Voldemort to be the villain in his own world as well, and he couldn’t say why. Maybe it was their shared connection that was pulling him to this discomfort – Voldemort could stand nothing of tenderness, and perhaps Harry had absorbed some of it.

“We don’t.” Ginny, closest to the doorway and closest to Tonks so they could exchange a look, silently negotiating that she should recreate a conversation of theirs. “He deserves to suffer, at least part of the suffering he’s caused.”

“That’s not for us to decide,” Hermione cut in.

Ginny’s look was unexpectedly vicious. “Fred and George are named for our Uncle Fabian and Uncle Gideon. They were tortured to death by Death Eaters in the war,” she said flatly. Before Hermione could apologize or even simply react, Ginny turned back to Harry. “But we’re worried about you,” she said. “If something were to happen to him – you know he’ll only ever die a violent death – we think you’ll… fall apart,” she finished, struggling for the words uncharacteristically.

Harry was packing his potions now. Moody’s sight would be good enough to read the labels; his recent dependence on kaval suddenly felt like the most obvious and embarrassing thing in the world. He crushed those worries to focus on Ginny. “I’m sorry about your uncles,” he said, looking between her and Ron (whose summertime freckles stood out against his chalky complexion). “He won’t apologize for the war or anything else. He says he’d rather be tortured to bring their families satisfaction. So, you know, I’ll owl you when he’s back in Azkaban, if that’s something that appeals to you – “

He didn’t even see Ginny draw her wand before she’d whipped a vine curse at him, entangling him with tiny perfect thorns piercing his robes. Tonks moved to protest; Moody stopped her. Ron and Ginny were both upon him; he’d never seen them move in graceful tandem before. “Piss off, just piss off,” Ginny was snarling. Ron held the vines in fistfuls as though he’d rather his hands be on Harry’s throat. “We’re not like that, we’re not like him.”

“Everyone is like him,” Harry said, cold. He shoved away enough of the vines to look to Tonks and Moody now. “Do you know how many wixen families I’ve seen dying to take a crack at him? If you don’t, that makes _you_ the exceptional ones, not him. The head of the Wizengamot wears steel-toed boots just so he can kick Voldemort’s teeth out _every fucking night_. The Aurors all know, the Minister knows, and somehow Moody has the gall to tell me that violence _just happens there_.” It was a foolhardy move, infuriating Moody along with his friends. He came no closer, however. “Everyone’s warned me not to become cynical, in the same breath that they tell me the abuse is inevitable. Voldemort is the best respite I’ve got right now,” he said, and his tone had gone pleading. “His magic and his soul and his…” _love_. Love was the word poised in his mouth, but it felt unethically like outing him if he said so. “And his patience have kept me hopeful.”

“Hopeful for what?” Ron’s tone was small and raw.

“Our world, our future. Love. It’s what Dumbledore would tell me, that love creates the strongest magic. I want to build a government out of it.” Ginny’s vines had gone a bit slack but he didn’t try to extricate himself. “Voldemort says forgiveness is only ever a performance. I don’t think it is. Really. Whatever will bring you peace from him, the Death Eaters, the wars….” He took a breath. “Obviously for a lot of wixes it’s the chance to break him again and again. I know you’re not like that. I shouldn’t have said it, I’m sorry.” He held Ginny’s gaze for a long moment. “Just… whatever is missing from your life because of him, because of them. I want to fix it.”

He couldn’t even say what they might be missing, what would help. It was the recent realization that Voldemort served as a sometimes-mentor to him, his guidance and patience and amused observation of Harry’s stumbling path into the world, that had brought him to this realization. Voldemort had taken his parents, his home, his sense of belonging; but at some points he’d substituted for the former and given back both of the latter. Perhaps neither of them even realized it in the moment.

The silence swallowed him. And then Hermione moved to go, dropping a package in brown parchment on his trunk as she left. Ginny’s vines receded with her footsteps, and he didn’t even reach to staunch the pinpoints of blood from its thorns. Only Ron was left. “Harry – “

“I know it’s fucked up. I know,” he promised. “Tell them that, would you?”

Ron’s mouth went tight but he said, “Yeah.”

“I’ll protect you all from him. I’ll protect the world from him. And right now that looks like… loving him.”

Ron had his fingertips pressed to the bed’s baseboard, just enough to steady himself. “How can you love something without a soul?”

It was the same question the Unspeakable had infuriated him with. But he wasn’t furious with Ron. “He has got a soul,” he said. “Some of it is in me. I can temper him because I _have_ been, I’ve done it all my life.”

“The savior,” Ron said tiredly, and Harry saw that Ron no longer envied him. He found that he no longer envied Ron’s life either. It would simplify their relationship, in a way. “The entire world thought you’d brought peace by killing him. I grew up hearing stories of you. I’ve never told you. There were _songs_.”

It had crushed him a few weeks ago when, in the same day, Voldemort and Dumbledore had both professed cowardice. He wondered if Ron felt similar disorientation now. “Someday I want you to teach me them,” he said, and they were both smiling for an instant. “I don’t… _have_ to be the savior. Dumbledore said the prophecy only matters if we believe in it. But I want to save everyone – from him, from all of it – and I’m the only one close enough to him to do it.”

“Then you _do_ have to be the savior, actually.”

It was a more accepting tone than he’d expected; his insides warmed infinitesimally. “I do want to fix everything. Not just him. So whatever he’s taken…. He hasn’t got money, really, but he’s got time and he’s got power. And he’s got me, to mediate.”

Ron gave him a look. “You can be so thick sometimes,” he said in wonderment. “We want you back. I want to do things with you that are just… stupid.”

That too was becoming a motif of his life, that he and Voldemort had both imposed inanity upon trauma to enervate it. Inanity might save them all. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I do too. I’ll be back by the start of term. We’re all rather owed a seventh year.” It was one of the more immediate things Voldemort had taken from them. It was one of the things _Dumbledore_ had taken from them as well, honestly – if he could both love Dumbledore and convict the man of raising his generation to be child soldiers. “I never thought I’d live to graduation,” he said, the same confession as he’d made to Voldemort some time ago. “Did you?”

Ron winced. “Not really, no,” he muttered.

His heart broke. Sighing, he pulled Ron into a hug, the sort they never exchanged and Harry didn’t even really like. “Thank you,” he said into Ron’s solid chest, because he was so much taller and more built than Harry himself was. “I was only ready to die for the sake of the entire world,” he went on, lifting his mouth to be sure Ron would hear this properly. “You were ready to die for… only me. Don’t you see how much braver that makes you?” And his voice cracked at this. “Thank you.”

Ron held him silently for a moment, and Harry wondered if he’d used all these good hugs on Hermione when she was upset. And then he pulled back suddenly, a curious look on his face. “What is that?”

It took Harry a moment to inventory everything happening around them. The warm, slack feeling in his wrists only came when he was handing magic off to Voldemort. And since Voldemort was the only person he touched these days, he’d let his magic go into Ron’s flesh at a trickle too. “Sorry,” he said with a laugh, pulling away. “It’s, ah, raw magic. It’s not a real spell.”

“Is it what you do for him?” Harry’s wince was confirmation enough, because Ron went on carefully, “I can see why you like it. But you’d better preserve it, if you’re going to be putting yourself to work fixing everything he’s ever destroyed.” It was a sincere statement, with sincere concern.

“Thanks, mate,” Harry sighed. “ _Oh_ , but I can do this for you all,” he said with a stroke of inspiration. Taking out the journal he kept with Voldemort, he prodded at the strands of magic, embossed with runes, until they became visible. “It’s how we keep in touch, you saw.”

Ron’s eyebrows went up. “I really don’t want to write him, thanks.”

“Git,” Harry said fondly. “I want to write _you_.” He didn’t have any spare diaries so took up two parchment scrolls instead. He’d only seen Voldemort do this once, but he’d at least been exposed to the diary’s magic every day. He hung delicate webs of magic over both copies, duplicating the runes. “ _Geminio_.” A surge of magic moved from the glowing runes into the parchment. He handed Ron’s copy to him. “I don’t want to lose you,” he said, and the vulnerability hurt them both.

“You won’t.”

Ron left after that. Somehow, at the end of it, he was left alone with Moody of all people. “I need to get you back safely,” Moody said at his look. “I took no pleasure in seeing that.”

“Right. Give me a minute.” He swung the door closed and slumped onto his bed, until the boiling complexity of his feelings settled a bit. And when he was able, he ripped open the package Hermione had left. _The Symposium_.

He packed his Pensieve and memories, too. He wasn’t sure how often he’d be returning to Hogwarts between now and the start of term. He wasn’t sure how welcome he would be.

Moody said nothing until they approached Dumbledore’s office. “Albus ‘d be proud of you, you know,” he said. “He was always drawn to the ones the world had already written off.” His gruff tone didn’t match the gentleness of the subject, but anything more personal would kill them both. “He would fight for the Squibs and for the quasi-humans. Gave up a lot professionally to bring Remus to Hogwarts, and to keep Hagrid on.” A careful pause, weighing his statement. “Grindelwald was before I knew him. We only met to prepare for their duel. But whenever he’d talk of him… it was _why_ he’d loved the man so fiercely, at least partly. Because nobody else ever had. He would call himself St. Jude, a Muggle myth. The patron saint of lost causes.”

Dumbledore’s frame was empty right now and that was probably for the best; he glanced at it with fondness nevertheless. “I’m not interested in being a saint.”

“No. You’re the savior,” Moody said, raising his bushy eyebrows. “You may scoff, but it’s a belief that holds a great many coalitions together these days. Including the Order.”

“You all deserve better,” Harry muttered, taking a handful of Floo powder.

“We do not.”

 

Moody declined to join his Portkey from the Ministry to the safehouse. “Back to Hogwarts,” he said, scarcely moving from the Floo since he’d only be returning through it. “You’ll be quite safe.”

“Right. Thanks, sir.” And he was gone.

The fake weather over their fake home was pointedly sunnier than the actual day; the Aurors were mostly working in the garden now and it created a sort of ease. Voldemort was where Harry had left him. “The Healers wouldn’t allow me to sleep until you had returned,” he sulked as Harry entered.

“I’m back now, though.” He took both of Voldemort’s hands in his to pull him standing. He was still high on painkillers; Harry expected that’d be the normal state of things for awhile. It would be a mercy. He’d gotten one arm around Voldemort’s waist and his other on his elbow, supporting him and sharing magic easily. The front door had remained open, and Herzog held a plane of magic taut as Scrimgeour swirled glowing lines of runes across it. Harry slowed them both before ascending the stairs.

Voldemort stepped closer, fingering the project. “For the love of God, Montresor,” he muttered.

Scrimgeour gave him a wry look. “American literature? Where is your sense of patriotism?” It was a bloodless deflection.

“American and Muggle,” Voldemort said helpfully.

He stepped back. “This ward isn’t even for security. It is only that you may summon Aurors more quickly, if necessary.” He found Harry’s gaze. “ _Auxilio_ , as usual.”

“Are we buried under Hogwarts, then?”

“You are not.”

Harry shrugged. He’d rather avoid the reality that they were buried at all, when possible. “Then, do you need us for anything? Otherwise I’m putting Voldemort to bed.” He felt Voldemort stiffen in his grasp at the indignity of being talked about in this manner. He wouldn’t remember in the morning, anyway.

“No. Take him. And then there are Healers waiting to speak with you, in the basement.”

He hadn’t even realized. “Thanks, sir.” Up the stairs, cautiously, and into the bedroom.

The Healers, probably, had already arranged some potions on the sideboard. Harry slowed to look at them, but Voldemort squirmed in his grasp. Looking back to ensure the bedroom door was closed, he said, “I’ve got to urinate, quite badly. I was waiting for you.”

Harry’s stomach twisted on itself and he moved them toward the en suite toilet. “I’m sorry. Here. You should’ve asked someone to bring you.”

“Should I have?” Voldemort wasn’t moving, annoyingly, though his thighs were tight with desperation. “Whom should I have asked? Should I request that the Minister of Magic hold my cock?”

“He likes you enough that he probably would. But I’m trying to take you _now_ , so….” A heft at Voldemort’s hip. How could he be so light and so immovable at once?

“Harry. Darling. I am indicating that I’ll piss wherever you’d like me to. That I’ll rather be obligated to, imminently.” He looked delighted at the blush that spread across Harry’s face. “ _Please_ get off on whatever abjection and humiliation these next few weeks bring. I won’t be able to fuck you but I might assist you in wanking. If you are polite and charming about it.”

“Wormwood does bloody weird things to you,” Harry muttered. “Also, I don’t know how your Occlumency is so firmly in place.”

“I don’t know that it is, actually,” Voldemort said. “I have only been drugged to oblivion. It’s really quite nice.” He squirmed again, obviously this time. Harry didn’t think he could get aroused by any of this. “I assume it was at least as much to spare you as to spare me.”

“That’s good of them,” Harry agreed, and he was pulling Voldemort into the toilet, letting Voldemort slump against him as Harry held his cock.

“That’s it?” Voldemort asked, surprised even as he let go. He pissed old, rust-colored blood and winced. “Apologies,” he said, absurdly. Harry averted his gaze; Voldemort went on. “I am told that birthday sex is a tradition these days. I only thought, in case nobody fucked you last night, you were still owed an orgasm.”

Harry shook him off carefully and moved them to the sink; only then did he make eye contact with Voldemort’s scarred, wild face in the mirror. “You’re in shock,” he said. “Or high. Or both. So I’m going to let you sleep for awhile while I go check in with the Healers.” He toweled their hands dry and returned them to the bedroom. “If you need anything… god, just leave your Occlumency open, I’ll figure it out.” But as he lowered Voldemort into bed, he found himself exhausted as well, and fell onto the sheets beside him, squeezing his eyes for a long moment.

Voldemort looked at him with faint alarm. “Harry?”

“Ask me about Hogwarts sometime later. Actually, I brought a Pensieve, I’ll just give you the sodding memory.” He hadn’t had time to fall apart. Certainly not now. “And now I’ve got to go defend you to everyone downstairs, again. Excuse me.” He moved to roll out of bed.

Voldemort caught him by the upper arm. “I don’t need a Pensieve to go through your memories,” he said. “I prefer Legilimency, really. Pensieves are rather emotionally detached and I wouldn’t understand what you were feeling.” He slid closer, with some difficulty. He hadn’t addressed the actual accusation. He wouldn’t. “Let me see what happened.”

“Do you have enough magic for Legilimency?” Harry asked, in doubt.

“I don’t intend to duel anyone today. And it is my body that has been broken, not my mind.”

Harry fitted his head beneath Voldemort’s chin, inhaling his familiar soothing scent, something like old library books. He still smelled like blood, though, too. He tried to put it out of his mind. “Do it, then,” he murmured into Voldemort’s robes.

It took them both a little longer than usual, but Voldemort’s mind was gentle upon Harry’s. He could only tell by the repetition of his emotions from earlier, Voldemort examining them as if they were artifacts. He withdrew.

“Restorative justice,” he said, “is what you are proposing. Muggles deploy it sparingly, wixes not at all. As evidenced by the Wizengamot’s obsession with the most violent and obvious retribution.”

“I didn’t know what I was saying.”

“Then I am giving you a label for your intuition.” A sudden wince; he turned to cough. “Go read out the labels on those potions.”

Right. Voldemort was still quite adjacent to death, if no longer in its path. He got up; the sideboard was crammed with bottles. “Verve. Dreamless sleep. Essence of murtlap,” he read out. “Blood-replenishing potion. Somatesque. Healing potion from mudroot. Healing potion from hippogriff blood. Healing potion from daffodil roots. Capsules of baobab.”

At the last, Voldemort gave an unexpected laugh, that turned into a hacking cough. Harry cast an alarmed Anapneo. “Baobab,” he said when his airways were clear, “is a mood stabilizer. I wondered what they had given me earlier, that I should feel so….” He trailed off, uncertain.

“Happy?” Harry suggested. “Normal?”

Voldemort bared his teeth. “Non-threatening. When you see the Healers, inform them I’m aware I’ve been drugged to docility.”

“I don’t blame them.”

“Nor do I. Bring the blood-replenishing potion and the mudroot. And the dreamless sleep, though not yet.” Harry handed him the first two bottles and put the third on the bedside table, before crawling beneath the sheets. Voldemort was considering. “If you tire of mediating,” he said, “then you are, of course, excused from the task.”

“I’m not,” he said, honestly. “This is what I want. It’s just….” He broke off with a sigh. They’d drawn together once more; they never even thought about it. “I guess this could never hold. They’ve all been just stupidly patient, because they thought they needed me. But I can’t ask them to keep pretending this is normal.”

“I’ve given you no ultimatum.”

“They haven’t either. It’s just… implied.”

“It’s not.” When Harry glanced up in surprise, Voldemort said, “I can’t account for your friends.” (He was incapable of saying the word without a sneer.) “But the Aurors’ caution around you, and their permissiveness, seems borne of a desire not to lose you.”

“They won’t lose me.”

“No?” He shifted, though the movement made him wince, to look at Harry squarely. “You can see how it isn’t such an incredible narrative.” He drew a rattling breath before going on: “Frustrated and disillusioned by your heroes treating you like a child, you abdicate the position of savior and seek out my mentorship instead. And then together we shall…” he made a vague wave of his hand, “usher in a new great era of darkness. Or however the story should end.”

“I really, really don’t want that.”

Voldemort’s sharp teeth glinted. “I treat my protégés very well,” he intended to purr, but actually rasped, but somehow the effect was even more erotic. “I would offer references, but they’re all imprisoned at the moment.”

“ _Ugh_ ,” Harry objected, though he was laughing. “As far as I can tell, being your protégé just means reading a lot bloody more.”

“And my Horcrux,” he said brightly. “I only tolerate my soul being contained in impressive vessels.”

It was an obtuse compliment, and an obtuse promise. Harry liked it, honestly. “I bought you books, by the way,” he said. “But they’re all about death so you’re not allowed to read them right now.”

“In case I should be inspired to die?” Voldemort said. “You begin down a dangerous path if you become my patron, darling. The law punishes financial support, the truest support, the most stringently.”

“You wanker. Just say thank you.”

“Thank you.”

He was slipping from consciousness once more and this time, Harry thought it best that he should go. “D’you need anything before I go see the Healers?”

“Mm.” He squinted at the ceiling. “No. Have you got my wand?”

“Oh, yeah.” Harry reached for his back pocket. (Their wands, in close proximity, had their own sort of magnetism. It was predictable, as Voldemort would object.)

Voldemort waved him off. “Keep it. I doubt I should be so lucid upon waking as I am now.”

That was troubling. Still, as always, he was a hundred times happier having talking to Voldemort than he’d been at Hogwarts. “Sure.” He pressed a kiss to Voldemort’s angular jaw and passed him the dreamless sleep.

 

He learned approximately the same things from the Healers. It would get worse before it got better. Flayed skin was one thing; but the connection of the Horcrux had exacerbated the damage of Sectumsempra such that Voldemort needed to grow new organs (and yes, that was the worst sentence Harry had ever heard in his life). One lung, part of his stomach and intestine, part of his liver. “Which is a dangerous prospect,” the head Healer sighed, “as so many of the healing potions include plants that can be toxic if the blood’s not filtered properly. There’s foxglove, and sago, and daffodil….”

“ _Oh_.” He hadn’t intended to pass this on, but since they were on the subject: “And he knows the baobab was to dope him into _docility_ , he said.”

She raised her eyebrows. “We never intended for him to think otherwise. It makes the working environment safer for everyone. Tell him he can keep taking it, if he likes the effects.” She tilted her head. “ _Was_ he any more… pliable?”

Pleasant, kind. Normal. “Yeah. I don’t know if he liked it. He wasn’t angry about it, at least.”

She shrugged. “It will be even more useful, we assume, in his resorption of the Horcruxes. If he is successful.”

Harry had known Voldemort to succeed at everything he had ever intended to do. It had never even occurred to him he might fail at this. “Right.” And they moved to the cauldron to go over some potions Harry could brew on his own.

 

It was nearly evening when everyone finished: the Healers left him with a stockpile of potions and ingredients, warned him that the first night was the hardest, and promised to return tomorrow. (“If you _can’t_ ,” the junior Healer had said in an undertone, “give him a sleeping potion and we can bring him to St. Mungo’s. It’s not too late. You’re taking on quite a lot.” Harry had waved her off.) The Aurors had set up emergency lines to reach themselves and the Healers. They’d ensured Harry’s Portkey to the Ministry was tamper-proof. They’d ensured nobody could trace Voldemort’s magic to this place, now that his Horcruxes were common knowledge and clearly someone antagonistic to Voldemort at least possessed the Nagini’s corpse. “Is it safe to keep the rest of them together like that?” Rye had asked, frowning at the cup and locket and diadem all lined up on the mantel like treasures. (The Healers had insisted Voldemort take the diadem off his finger before they worked, before they knew precisely what it was, because the disruption of its curse was obvious. Harry had promised they’d never be out of his sight.)

“Probably? It probably helps a little, really.” He shrugged. “We don’t know much about their magic yet, so… we’ll find out later.” Rye’s look was alarmed. Harry wasn’t worried about freak causes of death these days; only something spectacular would take out either of them.

And then they were alone. Voldemort still slept. Harry wasn’t hungry so he flipped open the Symposium instead.

Love. Dumbledore was as obsessive as Voldemort was, in his own way. Seated on the sofa before the glittering Horcruxes, he flipped to the section he had recommended, Aristophanes’s speech.

_Mankind, he said, judging by their neglect of him, have never, as I think, at all understood the power of Love. For if they had understood him they would surely have built noble temples and altars, and offered solemn sacrifices in his honour; but this is not done, and most certainly ought to be done: since of all the gods he is the best friend of men, the helper and the healer of the ills which are the great impediment to the happiness of the race. I will try to describe his power to you, and you shall teach the rest of the world what I am teaching you._

At that, he heard a crash upstairs. He took the stairs three at a time.

Voldemort had attempted to get up, but he was dizzy or disoriented or the newly-regrown muscles in his torso were too weak to support his weight yet. When he looked up, at the eye contact, Harry felt the stab of their connection. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed it, the extent to which it oriented him, until it was restored, and then he was agonized and desperate and humiliated too. He said nothing; Voldemort would hate him if he did, so he didn’t. Hands into his armpits, arm around his waist. “I am going to vomit,” Voldemort said. His voice was rough but stark.

“Sure.” Into the loo. He pulled them both kneeling, a hand on Voldemort’s back.

Voldemort’s gaze was wet and desperate. “You can’t stay.”

“I’m not leaving.”

“Harry – “ And he was interrupted, leaning forward to throw up bile and rusty blood and pink tissue.

“You can Obliviate me tomorrow.”

The look in Voldemort’s eyes was humiliated and resigned, and made Harry’s pity a weapon in itself. He was about to apologize, about to rescind the offer. It felt awful; they both felt awful and they clung together in their awfulness. “Fine,” Voldemort said bitterly, and spat another chunk of ruined tissue out of his bloodied mouth.

At some point he sent Harry to practice hydration charms since he couldn’t properly drink water. “And bring back emetics.”

“Anti-emetics?” It was a phrase he only vaguely knew. Voldemort had brought him an anti-emetic once, when he was incapacitated by magical poisoning last autumn.

Voldemort gave him a frustrated look. “Only if you’d wish sepsis on me. There should be wild licorice root downstairs.” Lunging forward, he threw up again. Harry got out.

His own Occlumency was protecting him from the worst of it. The residual nausea he felt was perversely comforting. Voldemort was alive, they were alive.

When he returned to the bedroom, he found that Voldemort had locked the door to the bath. Manually, not magically; it looked like the most feeble and desperate gesture. Harry took a seat at the edge of the bed. “Vol?” he called. It was so quiet, unnaturally so – he must have cast a silencing charm on himself or on the space. As Harry waited, he was casting analgesic charms on himself – half as practice, half in a hope that Voldemort would feel it by chance.

Voldemort was vomiting old blood, shitting old blood, and Harry could tell through their connection, in a way he couldn’t put words to; he only knew it bodily. In a moment of respite, he knocked. Voldemort unlocked the door.

He was clammy; he was not paler than he usually was but Harry thought he was starting to look jaundiced. He didn’t know any anti-jaundice spells. He did hand over the licorice roots; Voldemort stuck them between his lower lip and his gums as though it were tobacco. He slumped backwards against the bathtub, for just a moment quiet. Harry took a seat beside him on the tile, pressing his magic into his cold, clammy flesh. Voldemort let his head fall onto Harry’s shoulder, miserable.

“Read me something,” he requested as some point.

“What do you want?” A weak shrug.

So Harry summoned the Symposium from where he’d left it. Back to Aristophanes, beginning over. He’d only read a few lines farther when Voldemort took it from his hands. “Albus gave this to you.” A statement, not a question.

“Well, recommended it.” He didn’t volunteer anything else, curious what Voldemort would make of it.

Nothing, apparently. He pushed it back into Harry’s hands as he moved to vomit again. Harry cast his new hydration charm again and again, until Voldemort’s body slackened in relief.

“Continue,” he said when he’d fit his body back against Harry’s.

A grin. “Yes, sir.” He found his place in the text again:

“ _Now the sexes were three, and such as I have described them; because the sun, moon, and earth are three; and the man was originally the child of the sun, the woman of the earth, and the man-woman of the moon, which is made up of sun and earth, and they were all round and moved round and round because they resembled their parents. Terrible was their might and strength, and the thoughts of their hearts were great, and they made an attack upon the gods._ ”

Voldemort interrupted: “He intended it for me?”

“Yes.”

“For the Horcruces.”

They weren’t even to the text’s moment of the split soul. “You know it, then?”

“Not in relation to magical theory. I’ll hear it differently this time.”

Harry was pulling apart the top of their robes, pressing Voldemort to his chest, to more effectively share their magic. Voldemort’s body was cold but his face was hot, feverish. Harry summoned a cloth, casting a cooling charm on it before pressing it to his forehead.

“If you are so lucky, the primary effect of the regrowth spells tonight will be melancholy. If you are unlucky, it will be mania. Hallucinations are a foregone conclusion.” He moved to vomit soft tissue, choking on them until his eyes watered.

“Anapneo.” He cast it with his hand on Voldemort’s bare back, until he gave a shuddering breath. “I got good at that, with your vow,” he said dryly.

“I pulled it as soon as your memories were leaked.” He took Harry’s wand, casting a purifying charm on his own mouth and throat. “I should have pulled it as soon as the Unspeakables took your memories at all. It would be counter-productive that your Horcrux should kill you.”

“Right. Thanks.” Voldemort only snorted, finding it an underwhelming favor.

A long silence. His breathing was deliberate if not quite labored. Harry took up Plato again:

“ _Doubt reigned in the celestial councils. Should they kill them and annihilate the race with thunderbolts, as they had done the giants, then there would be an end of the sacrifices and worship which men offered to them; but, on the other hand, the gods could not suffer their insolence to be unrestrained. At last, after a good deal of reflection, Zeus discovered a way._

“ _He said: 'Methinks I have a plan which will enfeeble their strength and so extinguish their turbulence; men shall continue to exist, but I will cut them in two and then they will be diminished in strength and increased in numbers; this will have the advantage of making them more profitable to us. They shall walk upright on two legs, and if they continue insolent and will not be quiet, I will split them again and they shall hop about on a single leg.'_ ”

“Hubris,” Voldemort sighed. “The greatest sin in every philosophical tradition. Oedipus, Babylon, Icarus, Faustus, Lucifer. Why is that?” He stopped to spit blood and bile; Harry wondered whether it was a sincere question.

“I really don’t know.”

Voldemort didn’t expand on this, but let his gaze slipped up toward the ceiling. “What was I meant to gain from this?” he asked. “Humility is as unlikely as remorse, really. The humans are meant to learn humility by being divided, not united. And the gods haven’t struck me down anyway. You have.”

Harry pulled back, frowning. “I have not.”

“You undo me,” he purred. At Harry’s increasingly alarmed look, he sighed. “Disregard that. I am also overly candid tonight.”

Fine. They’d revisit it in the morning, if Voldemort did not actually Obliviate him. He rubbed Voldemort’s back as he gagged on bloody tissue.

Harry turned back to reading when Voldemort’s head was once more pillowed on his chest. “ _After the division the two parts of man, each desiring his other half, came together, and throwing their arms about one another, entwined in mutual embraces, longing to grow into one, they began to die from hunger and self-neglect, because they did not like to do anything apart; and when one of the halves died and the other survived, the survivor sought another mate, man or woman as we call them,--being the sections of entire men or women,--and clung to that._

“ _Thus they were being destroyed, when Zeus in pity invented a new plan: he turned the parts of generation round to the front, for this had not been always their position, and they sowed the seed no longer as hitherto like grasshoppers in the ground, but in one another; and after the transposition the male generated in the female in order that by the mutual embraces of man and woman they might breed, and the race might continue; or if man came to man they might be satisfied, and rest, and go their ways to the business of life. So ancient is the desire of one another which is implanted in us, reuniting our original nature, seeking to make one of two, and to heal the state of man._ ” A pause. “Sex?” he asked. “I mean, nobody will talk about sex magic.”

Voldemort hummed. “It is illegal in part and taboo as a whole. But then again, bloodwork itself is taboo as well. Normative practices of magic are quite, mm, disembodied. Certainly most wixes would like them to be.”

“Why?”

A shrug. “If I found it a viable practice, I would occupy a much more tolerated place in our world. That immortality – all the magic in search of it, rather – pursues _somatic_ mechanisms like blood and sex magic, in spite of its appearance of clothing this corruptible body with incorruptibility, is its greatest paradox. _Vol de mort_ ,” he sighed as an afterthought. “I shall have to rename myself. Again.”

This was funny but he didn’t know whether he was allowed to laugh. Voldemort was in a queer mood, resigned and self-deprecating and humiliated and defensive and depressed. And beneath all of that was a pinpoint of trust. It’d get him through this. Both of them. “This has nothing to do with death,” Harry said, nodding to the book in his lap. “Especially not immortality. Dumbledore – his portrait – didn’t tell me what he wanted you to see in it.”

“No. I hope I should be allowed to read your existential philosophy soon,” he said charmingly. Harry had had his hand along Voldemort’s jawline, and reached up to pat his face in the most patronizing way. He was feverish; when his fingers slipped back toward his throat he found his lymph nodes so swollen. He was burning.

Voldemort saw his frown. “Daffodil. But for now, stay.”

Harry shook his head in wonder. “You were so brave today. When you were giving directions to the Healers.” His mouth was mostly against Voldemort’s scalp. Surprisingly soft. The fragility of his constructed body, now but also in general, was arresting.

An amused noise in the back of his throat. “Does self-preservation count for bravery these days? The Gryffindor should know.”

“It must. Just failing to die is enough to make someone a hero. So I’ve heard.”

Voldemort looked up, mildly surprised that Harry could be clever too.

“Sorry,” Harry added with a grin.

“Why. Here.” He flipped the book back open. “We must finish Aristophanes’s speech, while I am lucid enough to listen yet feverish enough to speculate about the mad reasoning of Albus Dumbledore.”

Harry held back all of his thoughts on madness, pots, and kettles. Voldemort’s face was clammy, pressed against his clavicle, but he was quiet. Their connection was quiet, too. Harry read out:

“ _Suppose Hephaestus, with his instruments, to come to the pair who are lying side by side and to say to them, 'What do you mortals want of one another?' They would be unable to explain. And suppose further, that when he saw their perplexity he said: 'Do you desire to be wholly one; always day and night in one another's company? for if this is what you desire, I am ready to melt and fuse you together, so that being two you shall become one, and while you live, live a common life as if you were a single man, and after your death in the world below still be one departed soul, instead of two--I ask whether this is what you lovingly desire and whether you are satisfied to attain this?'-- There is not a man of them who when he heard the proposal would deny or would not acknowledge that this meeting and melting into one another, this becoming one instead of two, was the very expression of his ancient need._ ”

Voldemort remained quiet. His eyes were closed. If Harry couldn’t feel otherwise, he’d assume he was asleep. It would be a mercy if he were.

“It would be a particular cruelty if he thought love was the answer to Horcruces, as often as he’s insisted that I’m unable to.” His voice was wet; his lungs were filled with fluid, they could both hear it. “It would be far from his first act of cruelty, of course.”

That hurt. He couldn’t even tell in whom the feelings resided, whether it was Harry’s defensiveness or some aged pain of Voldemort. “He wouldn’t….”

“I might reclaim your Horcrux with love. Or it might entangle our souls further. But without reciprocity for the others – reciprocity with the self?” he mused. “There’s no mechanism for reclaiming Horcruces from objects. Their proper storage,” he glared.

“So… there are people who never die? Who are hundreds of years old?” It sounded unlikely. Flamel was spoken of as being rather exceptional, at least.

“No. They get destroyed, is the distinction to be made here. Because like hubris, immortality has also been de facto villainized by the humans. Excuse me,” and he peeled himself off Harry’s chest to vomit.

Hydration spell. He’d get good at it if this went on much longer. When Voldemort sat back, he was prodding between his ribs, a vaguely unhappy expression on his face. Harry put a hand on top of his; the flesh of his chest was hot and swollen.

“Would you get daffodil, murtlap essence, kaval, and a healing potion?”

“Should I get a Healer?” Harry asked doubtfully. It did seem bad. Voldemort was lucid but feverish, and it seemed like the worst option that he should be cognizant of his own slow decline.

Voldemort glared at the question. “And leave my wand.”

“Fine.” He went.

 

Coming back with an armful of bottles, he found the toilet door locked once more. The ache in his chest had become more of a searing heat. He pounded on the wood. “Let me in.”

Silence. Magical silence. Magical lock this time as well, such that Alohomora was ineffective. “For fuck’s sake,” he said on the other side of the door, hoping the silence was one-sided so Voldemort could still hear him. He peeled away an Impedimenta and a sticking spell and a diversion spell one at a time.

He opened the door to find Voldemort sprawled fully on the tile. “Oh my god,” Harry breathed.

Voldemort looked without moving. “I grew tired of waiting for my lung to deteriorate at an excruciating pace.” His voice was thinner than it’d been a minute ago. “I am not generally so helpless as this. Nor obligated to _time_.” He said it like a filthy word. “So I vanished it.”

“Vanished… what?” He lined the vials on the counter.

Voldemort’s smile was wide. “My lung.”

Harry sat down hard beside him. “You’re mental.” He grinned more broadly. “Jesus. _Why_?” He didn’t mean it as an actual question. He passed Voldemort the bottles, in that case, in handfuls.

He drank them one after another without getting up. His chest did look significantly more sunken. “The kaval is for you,” he said, passing it back. “Though you’ll need more than that.”

“No kidding,” he muttered. He threw it back in a swallow.

Voldemort was delighted by his own cleverness. “Anything for focus may help with your Occlumency. Mine, of course, will be rather obliterated tonight. You might snort billywig stings, or muddle holly berries in ethanol.”

“I’m fine.”

“In addition to serving as a repository for blood and soul, tonight you must also serve as my liver.” He turned to cough wetly, as he goddamn grew a new lung _what the fuck_. “You are well overdue to resent me.”

“I should,” Harry agreed. “But I don’t.”

“You will self-sacrifice until there is nothing left of you. Doesn’t that scare you?” His tone, manic up to this point, had gone sincere. “There is a biblical story of a concubine dismembered and sent to the twelve tribes. Somewhere in Judges, I believe. A punishment and a warning, in that instance. I don’t see your own dismemberment much differently. But you punish yourself.”

“You’re mental,” Harry reiterated. “I _like_ other people. Other people like me. And if anyone has dismembered themselves, it’s _you_. Obviously.”

“There are no myths about re-unifying dismembered bodies. Are there?” he frowned at the ceiling. “Plato might be the best Albus could think of. But to what end? Shall I give rise to my younger selves and fall in love with them?” A pause. “Actually, that is precisely what I should do.” He braced himself to get up.

“No, no, no.” Alarmed, he grabbed Voldemort’s shoulders, holding him flat on the tile. “You can. But not tonight.”

“No, it must be tonight. Amortentia takes weeks to brew.” He was attempting magical bandages, magical cages around his midsection, shining structures like girdles or corsets to support his empty ribcage and fragile liver and stomach. They all failed, fading in irregular wisps, and he made a noise of frustration. “Nagini is dead, and my magic suffers for it.” A rattling breath. “Though not as significantly as the moments of the destruction of my diary, and ring. Peculiar, as I had assumed her Horcrux, like yours, would grow relationally.” Another labored breath. “I only recognized the enervation the diary’s destruction caused well after the fact. The ring…. If Albus knew, I can’t imagine he found it worthwhile, to kill himself for such a small impediment to my power. If he was willing to die anyway, we should have simply dueled.” A cough. Blood staining his mouth, bright fresh blood this time. “Is there any murtlap, still?” he asked when he’d licked his lips clean.

“Yes. You need to stop talking.” Harry moved to get up.

“ _You_ need to repeat back what I’ve told you in the morning. I won’t recall this.”

“Horcruxes, love, Amortentia.” (He wouldn’t acknowledge the bits about Dumbledore. It wouldn’t help.) “I’m not leaving you alone with your wand again,” he glared. “In case you vanish any other bloody body parts.”

This delighted Voldemort. “You’re quite lovely when you’re so _butch_ ,” he mocked. “I feel so safe.”

“Eff off.” He reached for Voldemort’s wand but he pulled it away. It was an ineffectual gesture, as of course Harry could overpower him at the moment, but he stopped anyway.

“Good boy. I need your magic. It will be stabilizing,” he assured Harry at his look. “To an even greater extent than your blood.”

“Oh. Fine.” Taking Voldemort’s hands, he pressed magic into them. And although he’d just ordered him to stop talking, he asked with curiosity, “What is Amortentia?”

A look of surprise. “I learned of Amortentia in sixth year Potions,” he said. “Though I suppose it hadn’t been made illegal yet, then.” He turned to cough; Harry felt magic slosh inside of him to compensate for his delicate organs. “Muggles speak of love potions. This is the nearest thing to actually exist. It creates obsession, technically. Desire, a magnetic force, an abnegation of or disinterest in the self. I have been told it only perversely mimics love. I cannot tell the difference.”

“Oh.” Harry thought. “That _should_ be illegal. It’s got to be dangerous.”

“Incredibly. It is more insidious than Imperio.” He had taken up his wand, now that he was imbued with new magic, to cast a glowing brace around his midsection, firm around his organs and shaped to support his drooping ribcage. A flutter of his eyelids at the pain of pressing everything into place. Before Harry could cast any sort of palliative, he’d straightened his shoulders and pushed the sensation away.

“Albus would agree with you,” Voldemort said when he was able. “He was heavily involved in its scheduling. I can’t account for the entirety of his obsessive protection of _true love_ ,” his voice prickled at the phrase. “I can say that he divulged his antipathy of it, at least in part, when he told me if my mother hadn’t seduced my father with Amortentia, I would be significantly less fucked up than I am. When he had told me I was unable to love, it was in this context.”

Harry’s insides twisted. “Wait, what – “

“So with that!– “ Voldemort’s grin was manic; he pulled magic from Harry only to use it against him, petrifying him on the floor. He jumped to his feet, too eager to feel the damage he was doing to his wounds, but they echoed in Harry nonetheless. “Perhaps it will come full circle, and save me as well. I’ll be in the basement,” he said cheerfully. He nearly skipped out and Harry could feel his insides ripping. Fucking cheeky bastard.

The body bind wasn’t strong; it was meant to slow him down rather than fully incapacitate him. He even had his wand at hand, so it took just a few minutes of willing _Finite_ upon himself that he felt the tingly cessation of the spell. He ran downstairs.

Voldemort was inordinately proud of having made it to the basement himself. “You might as well let me stay,” he pointed out when Harry descended the staircase. “Moving any more than necessary may be detrimental to my health.” He cleverly ignored Harry’s glare at this, lining up jars of potions ingredients before himself one-handed. The other was braced on the table, holding him up. Harry saw the quiver in his forearm.

“Oh, you’re staying. I don’t believe you.” But he approached gently, pushing a sofa forward so Voldemort could at least work seated. “Here.” Hands under his elbows, he lowered Voldemort to sit. He said nothing but complied.

Harry took a seat at the other end of the sofa, relieved and tired and in secondhand pain, though it was once more an ache than a throb. “You asked if there was murtlap,” he recalled. “There is, but only powdered. Should I dissolve it in…?”

“No. That’s perfect. Is there parchment as well?”

He raised his eyebrows but summoned both. The murtlap was dark and ashy in its vial. “I’ve only used it on cuts,” he said curiously. His fingers were worrying his scar along the back of his hand more often these days, he’d found. “But you don’t – ?” He had no visible contusions. Harry could fix them if he did.

“Not at all.” He was still so chipper. “I imagine this will upset you – _for some reason_ – so you’ll need to look away.” He tore a strip of parchment.

He narrowed his eyes. “If you vanish anything else…” he began. “If you do anything else stupid, I’m getting a Healer.”

“It is really quite sensible.” He tipped a line of murtlap onto the cutting board, chopping it and pressing it straight with a metal scraper.

Harry recognized this gesture then, if only out of films. “Oh my god,” he gasped as Voldemort bent low with the rolled parchment. And it was only due to morbid curiosity that he didn’t actually stop him as he held one nostril shut and snorted the line in a go. “Oh my god,” he repeated weakly.

Voldemort straightened, looking at him with a wild grin. “You are correct, that is usually topical.” He wiped the ash from under his non-nose. “But we shall call it a _contact_ drug instead. I swallowed its infusion earlier, but of course that is useless for repairing the respiratory system.” He tipped his head back, his eyes closed. “Some stimulant effects. Unexpected,” he noted as he dabbed away more of the dark smudges. “I don’t believe it’s ever used recreationally, but perhaps it should be. Would you like some?” he asked, taking up the glass vial once more.

“ _No_.”

A disapproving noise. “Will you summon a Healer then? Narc.”

He didn’t know why that should hurt, but it did. “No,” he relented.

“Excellent.” He rewarded Harry with a smile, and slid a bowl of purple pods toward him. “Would you shell these, then? We need the pods, though the seeds will have later uses.”

Harry sighed, and Voldemort’s smile grew wider. “It could be worse,” he assured him. “I have not even begun to hallucinate.”

“Won’t that be fun,” he said flatly, as he popped open the first pod.

 

After the second potion that Voldemort had to vanish because he kept getting distracted (“Have I added the lithium yet?” he asked Harry at one point. – “I don’t even know what that _is_.” – A long suffering sigh. Evanesco.), Harry made him write it all out and check off each step as he did it. “And you’ll need to be my timekeeper as well,” Voldemort said to him at one point. “As my sense of time is rather… abrupt right now.”

Harry set an alarm spell instead. “You’re doing a good job with Occlumency,” he said. “I feel… well, not what you’re feeling, at least.”

“That would be _your_ Occlumency. I can focus on a single task right now, and it’s not Occlumency. Clearly,” he sighed as he prepped shredded daffodils for the third time. Harry only kept popping open pods.

Voldemort did need to focus, but the silence and the _meaning_ of the task, now that Harry knew, was smothering. Upon reaching a few quiet minutes of steeping, he broke the silence: “I’m sorry about your parents.”

An incredulous look. “You would be the first.”

“For your sake, I mean.” His chest hurt not with residual pain but with empathy, this time. “And I’m sorry that Dumbledore….” He couldn't finish the thought.

“He could be vicious,” Voldemort sighed. Harry had poured another glass of kaval and he took it, swallowing delicate and experimental sips. At Harry’s look he said with cheer, “If it ruins my stomach or liver then I shall vanish them and create new ones.”

“Please don’t.”

Voldemort circled back: “He could be vicious. Apparently not to you. You were saved by his guilt at sending you like a lamb to the slaughter. But I was a cipher for Grindelwald, and his feelings toward his own inattention and neglect of _those_ circumstances until far too late.” A shrug, ill-advised, and he winced minutely at the motion after all.

“He said that, about Grindelwald. His portrait did,” Harry corrected himself. “When I yelled at him. He was the only one who recognized how fucked up you were.” It was the phrase Voldemort himself had used, it was the phrase Harry had spat at the portrait those weeks ago. Voldemort didn’t protest it now. “And he did nothing. It could have all been so different. You could have done amazing work together. You could have been….” He didn’t know how to finish.

“I could have been human?” Voldemort supplied dryly.

“No. Maybe.”

Voldemort ran an affectionate hand through his hair, steadying him emotionally. “Much like I was never inclined to possess my father’s name or his face,” he began slowly, “I was never inclined to possess a _human_ name or face. I had always known that I was something other, something greater. Don’t mourn the boy who died, because he could never have existed.”

A breath. He _did_ have to remind himself not to mourn Voldemort too much these days, because Voldemort would only mock how maudlin he found Harry’s empathy. “Dumbledore didn’t say anything about your parents.”

A hum. “I thought he might have. Since he finds my past so very significant. Perhaps he has become ashamed of his own determinism, in that instance.” The alarm for the end of the steeping process went off; Harry reached to add the lavender.

And when he had, he kept the empty vial, drawing his wand. “Here. _Memini._ ” He drew the shimmery memory from his temple, bottling it. “The day I yelled at him. He apologized but we thought it wouldn’t mean anything to you.”

Voldemort swirled it, peering in. “How chivalrous of you.”

“I’m still… _his_. If I’m anyone’s.”

“You are,” Voldemort agreed. “Incredibly so. I should find this less palatable than I do.”

He knew that regretting their pasts, either of them, was a fool’s errand. He would drink kaval and dreamless sleep until he nodded off, instead. Voldemort was high on stimulants and it only bled through a little, but enough that Harry wouldn’t be able to sleep otherwise. “I’m getting ready for bed,” he said, “and I’m coming back downstairs. D’you want anything?” A shake of his head. He was counting out orange pips as Harry went.

Upstairs, alone, he gave himself a long moment braced against the bath counter. Voldemort would feel how upset he was if he allowed himself to fully sink into the emotions present. And if he wasn’t the savior any longer, he was still the protector. He got ready for bed instead.

Returning in a loose shirt and shorts, he cracked open a vial of dreamless sleep but didn’t drink it yet. “ _Can_ I sleep?” he asked with doubt, watching Voldemort quiver with over-stimulation. His eyes didn’t quite focus. It made Harry a bit dizzy himself.

“I won’t.”

“Obviously.” There wasn’t a discreet way to check the time, but it must be nearly three a.m. He was exhausted; and Voldemort only wasn’t by virtue of taking stimulants all day. “Will anything in the potion, like, explode if you do it wrong?” Voldemort looked affronted. “ _Sorry_.” Harry was exasperated. “But I’d like to die standing if anything goes wrong.”

“No. It will all be ruined _again_.” A slight pout at this. “But not catastrophically.”

“Brilliant. Just shake me awake if you need anything.” He threw back the potion, pulling a blanket over himself. His legs rested in Voldemort’s lap, to maintain physical contact for the magic. He dropped off to the soft crackle of the burners and bubbling of the cauldron.

 

He awoke sometime later – the lights were dimmed but not off, the cauldron now simmering – to a weight on his chest. He couldn't breathe, and as he scrambled backwards, long cold fingers gripped the front of his shirt. Voldemort brought his pale, narrow face close. He’d never looked so serpentine as he did now. “Why are you alive?” he breathed in horror. “I’ve already killed you.”

He was clammy and quivering. They both were, as neither of them had anything like Occlumency in place. Voldemort had his wand at Harry’s throat; Harry scrambled for his own, left somewhere on a side table. “You didn’t have your wand on you last time, either,” Voldemort said, pushing it just out of his reach. “Why was that?”

Harry stared at him, struggling to find his voice. “What are you doing?” he asked. He sounded scared. He _was_ scared.

“I’ll kill you again, if I must. As quickly and painlessly as the first time.” Voldemort’s eyes were wide, his pupils dilated to voids. “The child, too. Have I been brought back to correct this night?” he wondered. “Certainly I don’t deserve any such respite, or reward. Why, then?” His hands were shaky fists.

“Voldemort.” He hoped the force of his voice would make him come to. It didn’t. “I don’t understand what you want.”

A snort. “Lies,” he said. “I always know when humans are lying. To say nothing of the months you’ve spent fleeing me.”

“I haven’t – “ Blood was rushing in his ears. He couldn’t think. “Get off me,” he muttered instead. His hands were on Voldemort’s hips but he didn’t want to shove him off, even though the brace still glowed around his midsection. “Get off and we can… talk about this, I guess.” What the fuck. He hadn’t felt scared of Voldemort in months. It was an alien, upsetting feeling.

Voldemort did climb off him (Harry supported his movement subtly) and even pressed his wand into his hand. “I didn’t duel you last time,” he said, lighting the room’s lanterns with a swish of his wand. “Is that what fate intends that I correct?”

Harry had gotten up, his wand still loose in his grip. “What do you mean by last time?” They had dueled once, in the graveyard, technically. Not at the Ministry; and Voldemort had merely abducted him from the battlegrounds of Hogwarts last autumn, before they’d properly fought. Harry had never died. Voldemort was quietly determined and furious, his eyes darting around the room to gauge its use as an arena. “Voldemort,” he tried again. “You are scaring me.”

A cruel laugh. “And soon I will kill you again and you’ll be liberated of all such feelings. But for the moment – where is your son?”

Harry froze. His insides had gone icy. “No,” he said, horrified. He should have recognized this earlier, that Voldemort had mistaken him for his father. It was late, it was disorienting, it was awful. “No, I’m not James. I’m Harry.”

“Yes, where is Harry?” Voldemort asked, with a glittery expression. “Upstairs with his mother? I’d intended to kill you first and him second, but I might be persuaded to let you watch.”

Harry didn’t have the emotional stamina to put his Occlumency in place, so he was affected by Voldemort’s manic hallucinatory state as well as the complete horror of the situation. “I am Harry,” he insisted. Voldemort wasn’t listening. They were speaking in English; he tried Parseltongue. It didn’t work; he was panicking too much to slip into the language. “I – I – “ All his aborted attempts, each coming in English. “Say something in Parseltongue,” he said desperately.

He narrowed his eyes. “I won’t profane the tongue of my ancestors for a blood traitor. Come, you may watch your child die, then, since you are so keen to delay your own death.” He took to the stairs lightly, turning to give Harry a look of disgust. “A pity. I had been told you’d be brave.”

Who had he heard that from? Pettigrew? _Snape_? He had never wondered whether his parents were brave; it had been an unquestioned fact to him. “Let’s go upstairs,” he agreed, his heart in his throat.

“Where is the boy?”

“I don’t know.”

Voldemort went first, his wand high, skeletal body striking an imposing figure. Harry, at a loss for anything else, followed.

Past the ground floor, to the bedrooms. Voldemort peered into each of them and of course he found nothing, nobody. No nursery. He seized Harry’s soother from atop their bedroom dresser, an instance that under less heartbreaking circumstances would be funny, and pitched it at Harry. An echo of pain in Harry’s chest indicated that something inside Voldemort had just _torn_. Fuck. “Where is he?” he snarled.

It wouldn’t even be worth explaining. He couldn’t, logistically or emotionally. “We’re alone,” he said, stepping in close. Voldemort’s expression was wild and… fearful. He hadn’t expected fear. Had he been scared the first time?

He stepped closer; Voldemort had his wand aimed at his chest. “You haven’t got to do this,” Harry said softly.

Voldemort’s nostrils flared. “You know nothing of fate,” he said, “and you know nothing of power. _Where is your son_?”

He would shoot soon, it was a relief and miracle that he hadn’t yet, and Harry assumed it would backfire once again if he did. Voldemort had protected him. Voldemort had _always_ protected him, as unwilling as he’d been. It was a strange feeling. “I am Harry,” he reiterated. The proximity of Voldemort’s soul, knowing they’d always been so entangled, welcomed Parseltongue into his mouth this time.

But it only infuriated Voldemort. “What is _this_ ,” he snarled, punctuating the word with a spell of enervation that Harry didn’t quite recognize. He was protected by Voldemort’s blood, crafted by the Aurors last month, and it rebounded. Voldemort was too far gone to feel it; Harry saw the quiver of his exhausted frame, already incapable of holding him, but he didn’t react. Shaking it off like buckshot to a grizzly bear, he fired more spells. Harry caught the first with a refraction, but he didn’t get the second in time and it too rebounded. Fucking awful: it was some spell affecting his breathing, the last thing he needed, and he doubled over wheezing.

Harry moved to take his wand – not Expelliarmus, he was _so_ fragile, but just taking it – and Voldemort moved like a wounded animal, vicious and desperate. “The girl would have lived,” he said. Blood bubbled over his lips once more. “But now she must die as well. Your games are tedious.” He still spoke in Parseltongue, utterly disoriented. “Who shall die first, then? I was told she’d be brave, too.”

He couldn't handle this. Couldn’t be thrust into the scene of his parents’ death, couldn’t consider which of them had been braver, which of them should have died first. That he was somehow being blamed for his mother’s death _again_. “She was,” he said. He hung a Protego before himself, a squishy sort that he hoped would absorb rather than bounce the spells. “They both were. But they’ve been dead for a very long time.” He was doubting himself, nearly as dizzy and disoriented as Voldemort because they were the same. They always had been.

The bedroom was a bad place to end up; one of them would feel cornered in any case. He’d make it himself. “Here.” He stepped out of the way, giving Voldemort access to the door. “You don’t need to do this. You should go.”

Voldemort gave him a twisted smile. “You’d rather hit me in the back, then?” He was trapped on the far side of the room, their bed between them.

“ _No_.” He took a breath. “You’ll duel your opponents before they die,” he said. He had said it in the graveyard; he’d said it once in Azkaban. He hoped Voldemort wasn’t too fucked up to recall such commitments. “Take my wand.” He threw it on the bedspread, so it landed near Voldemort’s hand. “Take it, and go. Please. You’ll hurt yourself if you try to… kill me.” He choked on the word.

Voldemort took his wand, holding them together. The magnetism took him by surprise and Harry momentarily wished it would make him recognize the circumstances, recognize his own magic protecting Harry. “Tedious, tedious,” he sighed instead, twirling the wands together so sparks flew. “I’ll find the boy, and I’ll find your wife. Their deaths could have been so quick, but you have been so difficult.”

He needed to get out. His parents’ deaths had been for his sake last time, too. He’d never know why his parents had been unarmed that night; he’d never ask Voldemort why they had to die at all, and not just himself. “Fine. Everyone will die, then,” he said, stepping toward the door once again since Voldemort wasn’t moving. “But you’ve got my wand, and I’m leaving unarmed. If you try to kill me, I think it will backfire as badly as it did last time.”

A look of surprise. “Why would you know that?” Voldemort asked lowly. “You were already dead then.”

“You’re not listening.” Harry only sounded tired. “I am the boy who lived,” (a title that had actually grown on him with time, for its indication of how little he’d accomplished that night) “and you’ve been my past, present, and future. I’ve marked my life by your time. And you’ve marked yours by mine.”

“No.” His grip on their wands got tighter; a cascade of sparks singed the bedspread. “Jacob Marley. I thought you would come in chains.”

If Harry were not so devastated, he would use this moment to wring some interesting insights from Voldemort. If he were cleverer, he’d talk Voldemort away from this moment without fighting the hallucination, only adapting it. As he was neither, he took a shuddering breath instead. “I am going. You’re safe, and I’m unarmed. This will make sense in the morning.” Though the first gray bits of dawn were already touching their fake sky. “Please…. I just want you to be safe. You should probably sleep.” On that anticlimactic note, he turned to go. He tensed as he turned his back to Voldemort.

“Marley.”

Harry shouldn’t have looked back. He did. Voldemort held their wands high, his posture tense and unnatural. “Am I dead, then?” There was a deliberate steadiness in his tone that Harry associated with bravery. It was the second time today that he’d been faced with the unlikely challenge of finding Voldemort brave, and it was much worse this time.

“No. You’re not dead.”

Voldemort disregarded him. “Because the first time, I had to consume my body after my death. It couldn’t be found or captured by my enemies.” The look in his eyes was wild, and Harry was frozen with fear of what he may do. “I had just enough magic and presence of mind, when I was dispossessed that night, to set my corpse on fire. So – “

“ _No_!” He realized too late, lunging across the bed, and found himself caught in a glittering conflagration of magical fire. It was burning bright, creating a swirling vortex of fire around them. And as it did, it was enervating, drawing out their magic to feed on instead of oxygen. They were both collapsing, onto the carpet. It felt like they were melting together.

He faintly heard the windows pop and shatter, felt the magic of the entire room get sucked into this vortex, felt the wards woven around this house disintegrating. His head was on Voldemort’s heaving chest and his hand landed on Voldemort’s, their wands between them. “ _Finite, finite_ ,” he was gasping, his breath pushing smoke from his mouth with each syllable. And then there were sounds like a dying animal beneath him, and then his own screams, and then nothing but the roar of the fire as it consumed them.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Allusions for Chapter 7: 
> 
> “your birthday bacchanalia would be your last supper. To mix metaphors” – A bacchanalia is a celebration of Bacchus, the Roman god of wine and feasts. The Last Supper is the meal Jesus has with his followers the night before he is crucified. Happily, Harry will not be crucified, merely locked away again as a security measure.
> 
> Carry me across the threshold – One of the origins of the tradition of the groom carrying the bride over the threshold of their home is the superstition that demons can’t follow her in.
> 
> St. Jude – a Catholic saint, known as the saint for the most difficult or unlikely miracles.
> 
> “For the love of God, Montresor” – a line from Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado,” in which the protagonist bricks up his enemy alive in a wine cellar.
> 
> Restorative justice – a new-ish trend in criminal justice, where the consequences are meant to restore to the victims what they have lost. This is contrasted with retributive justice, the more typical way justice systems work now, where the consequences are meant as punishment.
> 
> Plato’s Symposium – Greek philosophy on the nature of love. Specifically they are reading Aristophanes’s speech, which suggests love is a consequence of original two-faced creatures being split in half by the gods. Also, if this sounds like Hedwig and the Angry Inch, it’s because it is. Everyone should go watch The Origin of Love and have a good cry [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3oSc8gMrGoc).
> 
> “clothing this corruptible body with incorruptibility” – a paraphrase of 1 Corinthians 15:53 (which is arguing that only salvation through Christ will give people eternal life, so it’s really very perverse Voldemort would quote it in relation to Horcruxes instead).
> 
> “Vol de mort. I shall have to rename myself. Again.” – Since Vol de mort means ‘flight from death,’ he is saying his name would be inappropriate if he were no longer immortal.
> 
> The biblical story of the dismembered concubine – This is the story of Judges 19, in which a concubine is raped to death while traveling, and her master dismembers her body and sends parts to the twelve tribes. It is a brutal story, don’t read it.
> 
> Amortentia is illegal in this story, like it damn well should be.
> 
> Jacob Marley – From Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, Scrooge’s dead business partner who comes back to warn him of his downfall.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry and Voldemort sleep alone, together. Then: some of the past can be accepted, and some of it can be redeemed, but some of it can only be discarded.
> 
> (Warnings: much of this chapter is a portrait of depression. There are mentions of child abuse toward the end.)

_Tuesday, August 4._ Somehow, Voldemort woke first. Harry stirred, but the dreamless sleep he had been given held him below, in the inky depths of unconsciousness. Just as well. He fidgeted as something was painted on his forearm, and his wrist was held down gently.

He brought his other hand to his face, then. He found it sticky with tears, but cleaned of the blood and soot he had expected. Wiping sleep from his eyes, he looked up at last. He was sprawled in bed, in the other bedroom where he’d sleep sometimes. He had scarring following the veins from where his wand had touched. His glasses were off; he was undressed but for thin pants; blotchy blisters were scattered down his skin; and Voldemort, looking very pale and tired and scarred, was sitting beside him and covering him with a gritty white paste. Not painting it on in swatches, as he’d thought, but painting runes in it, along every blister and contusion. He made eye contact as Harry took in all of this, said nothing, and returned to his task. His breathing was very shallow, and Harry could feel the void of magic within him.

“I thought we’d die.” His voice was grimy with disuse; he frowned. “What day is it?” he asked, because he must’ve lost more time than he’d thought.

“Tuesday. The fourth.” It’d been Saturday, or technically the early hours of Sunday, the last time he recalled anything. “The Healers have been by. I hope it wasn’t overly invasive that they worked on you without waking you. They said sleep was a respite. You were quite burnt.” He spoke quietly, deliberately, and Harry wondered whether he still couldn’t breathe properly. The silver brace glowed through his robes, still, and while only his forearms were uncovered, they too were marked by blisters and the gritty paste. “Moody tried to come by as well, yesterday, but I didn’t let him in.”

Moody probably loved that. “Why not?”

They weren’t magically aligned or connected at the moment. Voldemort’s Occlumency was firm and he didn’t draw necessary magic out of Harry’s skin. “I had nothing to tell him. May I have your memories?” he asked, very carefully. “If you do recall anything. I cast a variant of Fiendfyre, that much is apparent, but I don’t recall why. Also, the potion in the basement…?”

“A love potion. It wasn’t related, except that you were working on it while you were, uh, manic. And then…. Just take my memories,” he sighed. “I don’t want to talk about it.” He should be very, very accustomed to waking up from Voldemort having nearly killed him, really; but this time it was devastating.

Voldemort took up his wand and passed Harry his own. “This shouldn’t hurt,” he said, “but you should ask that it stop if you want it to stop.”

“Yes.” Already he was bracing himself, already he was miserable. Voldemort cast Legilimency, going through his memories with more method and caution than he ever had before. He worked to shield Harry from them at first, but at moments of shock at uncovering something, his focus slipped, and Harry was plunged into disoriented fear and grief once more. When Voldemort released him, Harry rolled over to look away, knowing he couldn’t properly keep his face indifferent.

“Oh, Harry.” Voldemort instinctively reached for him and then shrank away. “I cannot imagine a crueler scene you could endure. I am so very sorry.” And he was, and grief was the only emotion that passed between them. But Harry hadn’t dealt with any of this, the entire crisis of Sectumsempra onward, and it would all come crashing down on him now.

“Please leave.” His voice cracked, and it was humiliating. “Just for now.”

The bed moved as Voldemort rose. “I love you,” he said, and the words were unnatural but urgent. “And I am so sorry.”

Voldemort’s gentle sincerity was unnerving in its own way. Tears were running across the bridge of Harry’s nose. “I love you too,” he said, his voice thick. “Please go.”

He left in silence, so Harry could be properly devastated, alone. He picked up his wand to cast some spells for privacy – a silencing spell, an Impervious on the door – and found it curiously heavier than it had once been. But it looked no different, and cast the same. Maybe its affinity with Voldemort’s was newly weighing it down, as the same weighed on Harry.

The fire hadn’t been typical fire: he realized that he’d been blistered at his major pulse points, magically significant. Slipping his glasses back on, he studied the runes Voldemort had painted over them – nothing he recognized, particularly, but all some sort of healing spells. He was drugged too; he could feel the dulled pain in his flesh that would re-emerge soon. He scrubbed at his face, wiping away tears this time, while he thought.

He and Voldemort had, in many ways, never _dealt_ with their past. It would be a betrayal of his parents to forgive their murderer. Voldemort didn’t believe in forgiveness anyway, and Harry wasn’t sure he did either. There was only a forward motion to his decisions, he thought; but how could there be when the past kept emerging like a bobbing corpse? He winced at the imagery but it wasn’t far off. Especially since the danger that Voldemort still posed was quite lethal, that disposable people were still very much at risk in his presence. Harry wasn’t, but he very well could be if Voldemort reclaimed his Horcrux and no longer cared for its vessel.

The idea of death didn’t scare him. In the fire, the nearness of death had felt like a peculiar comfort. It made him feel close to his parents, to Dumbledore, to Sirius, to Cedric, to the students and faculty and Aurors and elves who had died in the scattered violence of the past year. It made him feel closer to Voldemort himself, who had also died at one point, and was only too stubborn to go. He had remained in control of his magic and faculties just long enough to burn his own body. Harry didn’t know why he’d never wondered what had happened to his first body. Avada Kedavra only left immaculate corpses, after all.

Harry knew he was safe under exceptional circumstances, and he also knew that was ethically inadequate. He would fix what he could of Voldemort’s destruction, in lieu of fixing the man himself. But he knew it would never be enough.

He wanted to shower, but knew the healing potion with its runes had to stay on his skin. He wanted to confide this in someone, but knew that would only garner as much sympathy as he deserved, as he’d defied everyone’s sensibilities for months now. He wanted Voldemort to hold him, to be in control, but knew that Voldemort was more fucked up than Harry right now. Out of options, he swallowed a vial of dreamless sleep instead.

 

He next awoke to frantic pounding on the front door. It was dark outside once more, probably Tuesday evening. Listening, he didn’t hear Voldemort moving to get it. He didn’t hear Voldemort at all. He felt like shit, physically and emotionally, but he didn’t want to face the consequences of disappearing from the civilized world. He threw on a robe and went downstairs.

Moody, alone. “Hi,” Harry muttered in the doorway. He didn’t invite him in.

He did look surprised. He must have expected Voldemort. “You’re awake.” His magical eye was looking past him, examining the still, dark house.

“For a bit,” Harry agreed. “I haven’t seen Voldemort recently, if you want him. He might be asleep. But he painted healing runes on me earlier. See?” Shaking back his sleeves, he held out his forearms. His blisters were smaller, if just as red and shiny.

Moody didn’t look because Moody was exasperated with him. “Potter, let me in,” he grumbled. “This won’t take long. We’re only obligated to check on you both.”

He decided he felt nothing about this, and everything else, anyway. “Come in, then.” He held the door.

Moody entered, pulling two bottles from a bag without decorum. They were large, shaped like wine bottles, full of potions. “Dreamless sleep,” he said, passing him the first. “And kaval.” The second.

Shit. He pressed both to his chest. “It’s only been as long as Voldemort’s been in Azkaban,” he said weakly. “He says it helps. I’ll, um, quit when he’s out.”

Moody was obviously expecting a more… defiant reaction? Something. He made an effort to soften his gnarled features. “It’s a problem for the Department of Chemical Contraband, not the Aurors. And we’re not interested in reporting it. Though the DCC will have to know about the Amortentia in the basement,” he added with a severe look.

“Oh. That. I don’t know… I mean, I know what it _is_. I don’t know what it’s for.” He didn’t know why they were talking about this when it was so irrelevant to the actual shit they had to work through. He didn’t stop himself: “Dumbledore’s portrait suggested that he should work with love for the Horcruxes, and he put it on. He was kind of, uh, manic at the time though….” The recollection brought them close to that night. His breathing had already gone funny in anticipation.

“That’s not at the discretion of the Aurors’ department.”

Fine. He didn’t know enough to even explain or defend it anyway. “Yes, sir.”

“The kaval, though….” He nodded to the bottle. He was just as obviously avoiding the real conversation as Harry was. Moody was the least avoidant person in his life. It was upsetting. He continued as though this mattered: “Withdrawal’s severe for as mild a substance as it is. You probably already feel like shit,” he said, a bit wry. “There are potions for it, but they’re all scheduled. So… you need to come see us then, when you want off. We’ll get you quicker access.”

It was the kindest thing Moody had ever said to him. “Thank you.” He was touched, really. He moved into the sitting room, lighting the hearth with his wand. The crackle of fire plunged him into recent memories but he suppressed them. “Uh, sorry I wasn’t going to let you in.” A snort. He took Moody’s elbow as he lowered himself into an armchair; such gestures were second nature to him by now. He dropped into the chair opposite.

Moody’s gaze was shrewd. “What happened?” he asked lowly, as though just testing the question. “Voldemort wouldn’t account for most of it. And his memories were useless.”

Harry looked down. He didn’t want to deal with any of it; he wanted to bury that night and everything he’d felt for the rest of his life. “Were you friends with my parents?” he asked instead.

No change in his expression. “Yes.”

“Then you won’t want to hear about it.”

“I know the cruelty Voldemort’s capable of,” Moody said dryly. “And I’ve watched him cause more trauma and violence than he’ll ever expose you to.”

How could he explain, that it was to protect Moody certainly but only as much as it was to protect Voldemort, and it was to protect Harry himself most of all. “Voldemort Legilimencied it from my head,” he said, desperate.

A twitch of Moody’s lips indicated that _Legilimencied_ was not actually a word. Whatever. “Albus warned me away from the discipline,” Moody said. “Or are you suggesting that Voldemort should recount what he saw?”

“No.” Moody was generally very good to him, to both of them, even if Voldemort drove him mad. Even if this would actually be useful, the pressure still felt voyeuristic. Cracking the kaval indifferently and drinking a mouthful, he offered it to Moody, who surprisingly took a swallow from the bottle as well. “If I tell you now, that’s it,” he said, sucking the cool herbal potion from the back of his tongue. There came with it a rush of relief, a rush of something other than _nothingness_. He tried not to react too dramatically, to draw more attention to this pathetic dependence. “Tell the Aurors or the Minister, I don’t care, but I can’t go through this again. Letting Voldemort have my memories was already awful, and he was trying to keep them away from me.”

Moody didn’t relent. “Fine.” Harry took another swallow of kaval as he tried to decide where to begin with that night.

And then Moody listened impassively, so impassively that Harry wondered whether the sheer amount of scar tissue on his face kept him from emoting. He explained all of it, that Voldemort had mistaken him for his father, had mistaken the night for Halloween of 1981, had nearly killed them both in a fiery blaze. “I remember casting _Finite_ ,” he concluded. “It didn’t work. We should have died.”

“He said he sacrificed a Horcrux instead.” Moody looked to the mantel, frowning. The diadem and locket glittered there.

“Hufflepuff’s cup.” He should have noticed that earlier. The mantel looked empty without it.

“It was destroyed but you both lived. Voldemort summoned us and the Healers Sunday, but he had nothing to tell us. We thought we’d ask you before starting on forensics proper.”

“I never want to think about it again,” Harry swore. “Would you Obliviate me?”

A pause. “No. And don’t ask Voldemort, as he would but he shouldn’t.”

“But….” He was twisting his hands in his lap. He wanted to go back to bed. “This feels awful,” he said, overly honest.

He fully expected Moody to lack sympathy. There were only so many possible responses to taking up with one’s parents’ murderer. “It is awful,” he agreed instead. “You endured it well.”

“Thanks,” he muttered.

A severe look. “There’s no honor in just _enduring_ ,” he added. “And you should’ve gotten the Aurors involved immediately.”

He’d wondered that. If Aurors would have subdued Voldemort or if Healers had any sort of magical haldol to bring him back around to lucidity. “I know. I was as delusional as he was, I think. I’d assumed he’d end up dead.”

Moody had quite a lot of retorts to this, he saw in his face; most probably some variant of _You both nearly did_. “Hardly matters now,” he decided on instead. “But you’ve both had Ministry protection from the start. You know that.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you.” He wanted another swallow of kaval, to dope him into feeling nothing; but he didn’t want to obligate Moody to tell him to slow his roll atop everything else tonight. “Next time – god, I don’t want a next time – “

Moody was shaking his head at this. “The worst of it is over for him,” he said. “Those healing spells are worst for the first forty-eight hours, and taper after that. I never studied medicine, beyond battlefield healing, but…” he gestured to his own battered body. “I’ve been on the receiving end of just about all of it.” Harry found his gesture vaguely embarrassing (Moody being another one he needed infallible, he was finding) and he didn’t let his gaze follow the motion. “And the Healers say he overdosed on murtlap.”

“He vanished his punctured lung and snorted murtlap powder,” Harry confirmed.

Moody’s reaction to _that_ was exquisite: a deep sigh and eyeroll, his magical and non-magical eyes in tandem. Harry could nearly smile at it. “He knows better,” he growled. “But he’s unpredictable when he’s trapped.”

_Is_ trapped, not _feels_ trapped, Harry noted. “I guess.”

A critical look. “Do you want out?” His tone was very steady and serious. “Do you _need_ out.”

He was miserable, but he wouldn’t be happier anywhere else. And that wasn’t what Moody was asking, anyway. “No,” he said. “He might be… terrible to everyone else. But he won’t hurt me. He is good to me.” _And even if he weren’t_ , he began in his head, but Moody already looked wary. “I am St. Jude,” he insisted.

A flicker of amusement. “You’re a martyr who won’t die. I don’t know that the Muggles ‘ve got any such saints.” A sobering pause. “I _am_ sorry you had to go through that.”

“That’s what he said, too.” An oblique defense. Moody’s look didn’t change.

“Do you need anything?” he asked after a silence. “Healers will be back tomorrow.”

His sense of time was pretty shaky right now anyway. “No, sir. Thanks for….” His fingers wrapped around the bottle necks of the kaval and dreamless sleep. “Tell everybody I’m – we’re – okay. Tell everybody everything.”

“Should I?” Moody was more shrewd than careful. “The last thing you divulged, about his Horcruxes, consumed everything.”

“I won’t repeat this,” Harry said. “So it’s yours to do what you think best with.”

Moody’s eyebrows went up. “Alright.”

Moody understood it as a gesture of trust. It might be more helpful than taking each of the Aurors for drinks, as he’d planned. Honestly, Harry was just so tired. He’d be all things to all people, if he could, but he was so tired.

Moody was getting up; Harry matched him. “Thank you, sir,” he reiterated.

Moody hesitated with one parting statement. “Melancholy will set in, if it hasn’t already,” he said, candid. His magical eye was focused above them, presumably on Voldemort’s sleeping form, but his other one was looking away from Harry. “For both of you. It starts with shock, crisis. The Healers say – speculate – that destroying the Horcruxes will stabilize his magic but destabilize his temperament, at least at first. Get out if you need to,” he said severely. “He can’t follow your Portkey. Or you’ll summon us. Nobody will think you’re a hero for entombing yourself here.” Before Harry could protest on behalf of his own well-being, Moody’s voice went gentle for a few final words: “Baobab will help.”

He hurt. He didn’t know how to deal with the sort of deliberate performance of trust they were doing here. He hadn’t considered really, the way Moody would minister to his operatives, but of course he would. He regretted, momentarily, that he wouldn’t work for him. That he’d put himself in an antagonistic relationship with a lot of people who did good for him. He should have only reiterated his thanks, to let him leave. They were already this far in, though. “Voldemort said what I offered to Ron and Ginny and Hermione,” for Moody had been there as well, obligated to him then too, “is called restorative justice.”

His magical eye swept from the ceiling back toward Harry. “It is.”

“But the Ministry doesn’t do it?”

A snort. “Never. We especially wouldn’t for Voldemort. As you know by the Wizengamot’s violence.” It might’ve been the first time he’d acknowledged the abuse without Harry shouting it at him. “There’re a great many wixes who want closure, and deserve it.”

He swallowed the question of where exactly _closure_ resided in that. He himself had tried to Crucio Bellatrix once, after all. He wondered if he would be successful at it this time, if he tried again. “Dumbledore said once that just killing Voldemort wouldn’t satisfy him.”

A surprised look. “Did he?”

“At the Ministry break-in, in my fifth year.”

He saw that it hurt Moody, too. Moody was very pragmatic, and acquainted with violence, and even he needed to believe in one just person above reproach, apparently. “He’d say,” Moody said, picking up Harry’s train of thought easily, “that there’s no moral conflict about a situation where exceptional violence and exceptional love aren’t both options.” It sounded like the adult version of everything Dumbledore had had to say about choice to Harry. “We aren’t legislating morality,” Moody reminded him at Harry’s thoughtful look. “’Mercy is the suspension of justice.’”

It sounded like a slogan. “Is that what you tell your Aurors?”

“Yes.”

“Then… what has he taken from you?” It might be an ill-advised line of questioning. He anticipated the answer would be bloody.

A careful moment. “Tonight isn’t the time for your diplomacy.”

“Then there will never be.”

He saw Moody shutting down; they’d done so well as colleagues and not antagonists up to this point but he had gone too far. “We’ve spent too much time and too many resources fighting Voldemort. Decades worth,” he said. “His captivity’s a relief, so we can put those efforts elsewhere, finally. There’re decades of fear and dozens of casualties. He’s slaughtered multiple teams out from under me.” His grip on his staff was tight. “It’s my job to decide whose lives are worth preserving.”

“I’m sorry.” He did regret this conversation. “And I know Scrimgeour disagrees. He said he’s made the entire Aurors department angry at him for it.”

If the conversation weren’t so dire, Moody might have been amused by this. “The question of a worthy life is his responsibility as well. I trained Rufus,” he said with a sigh, “and I’m loyal to him. But that won’t extend to his reasons for supporting and sustaining Voldemort.”

This surprised Harry. “How could you be loyal to Scrimgeour and Dumbledore both?”

A wry look from Moody, who obviously recognized it as a slant version of the question Harry had been asking himself. “The same as you reconcile that your two best mentors have been Dumbledore and Voldemort.”

It was… stark. He hadn’t spoken Voldemort’s mentorship out loud yet; he kind of flinched away from even thinking it quietly to himself. “I guess – but – “

“Don’t tarnish Albus’s name with an inane comparison,” Moody said, too sharply. Harry looked at him, shocked. Dumbledore’s death really had broken everyone. “Voldemort will never get my loyalty or respect,” he growled. “Dumbledore was flawed but he was _good_.”

“I know,” Harry said softly.

Some moments of silence, as they saw they were not actually in disagreement. “If Voldemort becomes Minister – which is getting bloody likely,” Moody went on with a frown, “then I’ll resign. Might go to Minterpol; might expand the Order. I expect _resistance_ will be more dangerous than even now,” he said darkly. “It’d blaspheme my colleagues to stay in his Ministry. Though he wouldn’t keep me on, anyway,” he added. “Too much risk. Too much history.”

He had nothing to offer Moody. He could try to intercede so that he could keep the Aurors department under Voldemort, but that didn’t get to the heart of it. He could promise to send Moody all the great duelists he would teach, to build him new teams, but that wasn’t it either. He shrugged minutely, indicating his hopelessness. “I’ve never figured out how to carry the bodies of my past without dragging them.” He meant less that he was emotionally burdened by their deaths, than that he was burdened by people expecting him to be burdened. He had never known his parents, after all, but he was surrounded by people who had. He had an ethical obligation to them, more than he had to a family he didn’t remember.

But Moody was considering this. Moody also treated his protégés well, Harry thought. “Neither have I,” he said finally. “Neither has Voldemort. You should suggest it to him.” His magical eye spun upward. “As he’s awake.”

“ _Oh_.” They stood by the staircase anyway; Harry reached to take it. “Uh, do you want to see him?”

“He won’t want to see me.” Harry made an indifferent gesture; Moody went on: “There’ll be time enough later, with a team and proper daylight. I’ll see myself out.”

Of course Harry walked him out instead; and they were barely held together by Dumbledore and the Order and Harry’s non-future with the Aurors, but for a moment it worked. Moody was out of words, instead clapping Harry on the shoulder as he activated the Portkey. A little strengthened and a little sad, Harry returned inside.

He had expected Voldemort to come downstairs, to be able-bodied and active and normal. But without Moody’s knowledge, he’d never have known Voldemort was awake. There was only silence. So he went to the basement to pick out potions instead.

Baobab. The Healers had recommended it, hadn’t they? They’d pacified Voldemort with it, specifically. And indeed, they’d left a great quantity of it, in infusions and capsules. Harry swallowed a few capsules, even though depression seemed like a very reasonable reaction to all of this. Not knowing what Voldemort might need – he’d been up earlier, after all, painting runes on Harry’s body, but Harry suspected that was accomplished with a bloody lot of Verve or something like it. So he weighed down his pockets with analgesics and lucidity potions and healing potions and more baobab. Back upstairs, he picked up the wine bottles of kaval and dreamless sleep (it was really _very_ generous of Moody to not just overlook but thoroughly enable his addictions). Finally, on a whim, he stepped outside and cast a massive thunderstorm, with sheets of rain and thunder that shook the house. _Maudlin_ , he anticipated Voldemort’s pithy exasperation. Pith might be behind them now, he realized with a flush of anxiety. They were both far worse at sincerity.

Upstairs, then. He found the bedroom door locked, and knocked. No answer. “I’ve got potions,” he said into the wood, not particularly sure if Voldemort could hear him or was even still awake. “Can I leave them outside the door?”

Silence. Perhaps Moody had been mistaken and Voldemort had never awoken. He began pulling the vials from his pockets, and the tinkle of glass nearly obscured the whispered voice from the bedroom: “I can’t get up.”

He squeezed his eyes shut. Voldemort being helpless was hell on them both. It occurred to him that some of the panic and self-loathing he currently felt, that he’d put down to the onset of depression and withdrawal, weren’t his own. Alohomora and Finite were enough to open the door. He braced himself before going in.

He had expected fire damage, but there was none. Not even the smell of smoke. The windows had been repaired. The lamps hadn’t been lit. Only Voldemort’s unnatural complexion glowed in the dark, distinguishing him from the heap of blankets. He was silent.

Harry left the lamps dark but read the potions out by the light filtering in from the hallway. “Healing potions, lucidity, baobab….” He was lining them on the bedside table.

Voldemort reached out, gripping his wrist to stop him. “Would you stay?” he asked.

It was self-evident why he would: his magic was utterly exhausted, such that the touch began drawing magic from Harry’s flesh without either of them meaning to. Voldemort pulled back abruptly, as if burned again.

Harry hadn’t wanted to, honestly. He wanted both of them to convalesce separately, to come together able-bodied and able-minded to work this out rationally. But to do it while they were both still so wounded…. But he could feel Voldemort’s trepidation and guilt and self-hatred, and they were awful. “Yes,” he said. “But I don’t want to talk about any of it.”

“Nor do I.”

Harry couldn’t quite tell him to stop grieving; he certainly couldn’t tell him he wasn’t allowed to be more broken than Harry himself was. “Let me get ready for bed,” he said, “and I’ll come back. I only want to sleep,” and the statement came out more like a warning than he intended. A wince. “Sorry. Do you need anything? Are you hungry?”

“There was too much scar tissue on my organs,” Voldemort said, “as I continually agitated them when they should have been healing. The Healers had to start over.”

He really, really did not want to ask what ‘starting over’ meant. “So, no?” he guessed.

“No.” He very gingerly pushed himself nearer to sitting. “But would you take me to the toilet?”

There was so much sincerity in the request, as if refusal might be an option, that Harry wanted to die. “Of course.” He pulled Voldemort from bed, taking one arm behind his neck with a firm grip on his other elbow. Touch felt good; it felt like slaking an excruciating thirst to Harry, and he wasn’t even the one particularly affected by the void. It hurt as well, just the touch of burnt skin and blisters and all of Voldemort’s internal damage. It was only a few steps, but it exhausted Voldemort, and drowned Harry in pity. Tugging off his pants, he lowered him to the toilet, so he wasn’t obligated to stand. “Give me a few minutes.” Voldemort nodded, miserable.

He brought up chocolate, and a tea pot charmed to refill itself and stay hot. He skipped pajamas, opting for a nappy and soother because they felt like relics of a simpler time. He collected Voldemort and poured them both into bed. And they didn’t speak, as promised; but they slept with their bare backs pressed together, cold and clammy from the magic deficit. Harry had swallowed dreamless sleep directly from the bottle, and could cry with relief as he was dropping off immediately.

 

_Thursday, August 6._ They lost track of time completely. It would only be varying degrees of dark outside for as long as Harry’s thunderstorm persisted, and he was not especially inclined to let it up. There was a knock on the door sometime that next day. “Healers?” Harry offered sleepily.

“No.”

They ignored it. The Healers went away. They passed the bottle of dreamless sleep between them.

For all the good that did. Harry would wake up periodically to tiny desperate breaths and whimpers and shivers by Voldemort. He would share nothing with Harry, and Harry didn’t really want him to, but in those moments he’d just reach back and push warm magic into Voldemort’s cold skin. An appreciative murmur.

In the moments he was awake and not just mired in grief, Harry read. Voldemort had left Milton’s _Paradise Lost_ on the bedside table at some point, and Harry would drop it on his pillow, near at hand for those brief and painful interludes of wakefulness. Just something to put in front of his face while his mind drifted; and it helped, full of good and evil and grief and power and belonging. He and Voldemort were rarely awake at the same time, and certainly tried to keep from waking each other. Still, their magics stitched one another back together.

It was an inky night, between Thursday and Friday probably, when Harry was nudged awake. He’d more often awoken to find himself entangled front-to-front with Voldemort in the past day, his head on Voldemort’s chest or vice versa, hands everywhere. When his ear was on his chest, he could still hear the fragility of his breathing. But now, mostly asleep, he was peering up into Voldemort’s anguished face. “Are you alright?” His mouth felt strange from disuse. Hearing his own voice in this silent space was a shock.

“Can you take me to the toilet?” he whispered. His voice was rusty too. “I’m unable to wait until morning.” His hand was pressed between his legs; Harry hadn’t noticed before. He felt a pang of guilt, that of course Voldemort was still mostly physically dependent on him, and he hadn’t been offering these things pre-emptively. Then a deeper pang of guilt as he felt himself getting aroused by Voldemort’s desperation. What an utter arsehole.

He swallowed. “What if I don’t?”

A look between panic and exasperation. “Then I will wet the bed.” It was very matter-of-fact. His sense of privacy had been obliterated by infirmity, what hadn’t been eroded by sex already. “And I assume you’ll get off on it.”

“I was going to ask if you’d piss on me, actually,” Harry said. He was pulling Voldemort’s hand from between his legs, to see him throw together his spindly thighs to compensate. Need was etched into his sunken face. Harry hesitated a moment with his fingers on the waistband of Voldemort’s pants, before he pushed his hips forward in consent. “And yeah, I would get off on it,” Harry agreed, going warm. “If that is okay?” He had a moment of doubt. Because he and Voldemort were not okay with each other generally, even as they were dependent on each other in the moment.

A glimmer of amusement. “Yes. If you understand it won’t be salvific.”

“I have felt dead for days.” It was not creating an especially erotic atmosphere but it was the only explanation he had at hand.

“Moody warned you of lingering melancholy,” Voldemort said.

“You heard that conversation?”

“Yes.” He was utterly unabashed by eavesdropping. “You might feel… tristesse, emotional instability, grief, recursively from our connection. I cannot put much magic toward Occlumency,” he said by way of apology.

“It’s fine. I’m fine.”

A skeptical look. “The Muggles would tell you of serotonin and dopamine and endorphins. They would recommend sport as the best source of them. But only because few of them will directly recommend orgasm. Or as the Victorians called it, paroxysm.” He had perked up a bit at that; he always did at teaching moments, even as he struggled to breathe evenly through his lecture. “It was meant to treat what was called hysteria in women. These patients, at the time, were probably more depressed by being trapped in the strictures of Victorian society than anything.” At Harry’s face, he said, “It is an endorsement of your plan to get off. But would you _please_ hurry.”

_Oh_. A painful smile. “Yes,” he agreed. “Just lie back. I’ll tell you when.”

Voldemort did slump, watching him almost lazily (if Voldemort, poised and perfect, could ever be said to be doing anything lazily). Harry slid their hips parallel, perched over Voldemort without putting any weight on his body, his knees on either side. One hand steadied himself, the other held Voldemort’s cock in the front of his nappy. “Ready?”

“Please.”

“Go ahead, love.” He lowered his hips and bit his lip as the first hot stream ran over his stomach. Voldemort’s gaze was determinedly on the ceiling, never fully at ease with this, but there was relief in his features too. He pissed hard, until the splatter on Harry’s skin and into the soaked fabric directly were audible.

It pooled between his legs, humid at his stomach. The wet cotton pressed his thighs outward. “I’m sorry,” he muttered. “I should have realized….” And Voldemort pressed a cheeky hand to his mouth, so he could go in silence.

Harry was hard and it was… ambivalent, physical pleasure seeming like a mere distraction from emotional turmoil. He didn’t have a free hand so Voldemort stroked him through the soaking fabric instead. “Good boy, beautiful boy,” he was murmuring. “Here, you’ll like this,” and he was reaching to the bedside table. He found… something, Harry was too busy aiming them both and keeping the sheets dry to really watch, but they definitely had not used a vibrator before now. Voldemort charmed it on with a flick.

“Oh my god,” Harry breathed. And then Voldemort pressed it between his legs, behind his balls and over his arsehole, the weight of the wet nappy spreading the buzzing sensation so he jerked hard. Voldemort’s piss – because he was still pissing, he must have been _swollen_ before this – spurted up his stomach, falling back into Voldemort’s lap. Harry scrabbled to shove his cock back into the nappy; and while the waistband was pulled away from his hips, Voldemort dropped the vibrator inside casually.

“Squirm for me,” he murmured. “Don’t use your hands.” He pressed out the last of his wetting, that would only pool between Harry’s legs and tickle his taint and his swollen balls. Harry groaned as the vibrator slipped freely down the nappy. It was a new sensation, overwhelming, and made him shiver uncontrollably. He climbed off Voldemort before he got hurt by how desperately Harry wanted to hump his midsection.

“You are so predictable,” Voldemort said with affection. Harry sobbed, throwing himself to the bed so he could hump the mass of blankets instead. His hands were in fists on the covers so he didn’t touch himself, didn’t plunge his hand into the front of his nappy to get himself off, immediately and violently. The vibrator pressed into his thick cock, until he was rubbing against it, the friction making his head swim. Voldemort held him steady when he arched, spurting thickly as he pounded every awful feeling out of himself.

Voldemort had the presence of mind to push him to the blankets, carefully. “There you go.” His voice was soft and his hand was heavy on Harry’s back. The vibrator hurt now, against his too-sensitive head, and he squirmed until he could reach it. Voldemort was taking it from him, dispelling the charm, leaving them once more with only the thunderstorm. “There you go.”

“You haven’t got to wake me up, unless you want to,” Harry did manage to mumble. “Just piss down the back of the nappy when you’ve got to go, ‘s fine.” He did mean to offer some sort of sexual reciprocation. He did mean to maybe shower for the first time in days. But it was so easy to slip back into sleep again.

 

_Friday, August 7._ Pounding on the door, the kind that was going to get them in trouble to keep ignoring. They still hadn’t _talked_ when Voldemort shook Harry awake mid-day Friday. “Probably Healers. Was Moody alone last time?”

“Yeah. And not concerned.” He hoped it was Healers. Neither of them were okay; and the temporary respite of sex and drugs and sleep – mostly sleep – were obviously not a solution to anything. No time for a shower, so he cast cleaning spells instead, running to find a robe. Voldemort was waiting patiently at the edge of the bed, his brace still glowing through his dark clothing. “Is there a spell for that?” Harry asked.

“No. Just some cleverly crafted space and pressure and time. Clearly I’ve spent too much time around you, to rely on magic intuitive and not at all scientific.” Harry rolled his eyes and, in lieu of performing any spell for him, just passed him more magic.

Voldemort moved slowly but not without grace, and Harry watched openly, happily. The Healers must have put the fear of God-or-whomever in him last time, for him to have slowed down. Maybe regrowing organs was painful enough to teach him a lesson. “Just the staircase,” was his minimal request when they had gotten themselves well enough together to go downstairs. Harry looped his arm in Voldemort’s, feeling cleverly like Prince Charming.

A look from Voldemort. “And if this gathering isn’t utterly draining, then afterward we should find the time to discuss everything.”

Harry groaned, though he knew the gesture trivialized it all. “I’d like to never think of it again. But Moody said he wouldn’t Obliviate me.”

“I do know your preference,” Voldemort agreed. “However, I also know of your discomfort at being treated with over-fragility. For that reason, I must insist.” A pause. “Also, because the Aurors are very concerned with maintaining your mental and emotional health. I know nothing of such matters but am told discussion is integral.”

“Did they really, like, warn you?”

“Oh, yes.”

They had reached the door. They gave a once-over to one another, robes and Occlumency and Harry’s hair pushed into place, before opening it.

The senior Healer, a fearsome witch named Healer Onofre, stood before them, holding an Impervious spell above herself in place of an umbrella with moderate success. Three more Healers stood behind her, blinking rain out of their eyes. “Come in,” Harry said quickly, throwing open the door.

Once inside, the Healers could get a better look at them. “You look awful,” Onofre pronounced.

Big talk for someone wringing her hair out onto their carpet. It amused Voldemort, though. “That is your professional opinion, I assume. Are Ministry-employed Healers _allowed_ to make such pronouncements?”

“Uniquely so,” she assured him. Wand up: “ _Auxilio_. We were asked to summon the Aurors if we actually gained access this time,” she explained with a glare.

“I assume it is intended as a punishment, that I should be debased before as large an audience as possible,” Voldemort said. She hummed in a non-committal way.

Cracks of Apparition outside; Harry went to let them in. Herzog, Brightbone, Kingsley, Scrimgeour. He kept his surprise to himself, bringing them out of the rain.

The Healers had pressed Voldemort onto a sofa, reclined, and he was unbuttoning the upper part of his robe. His gaze was pointedly on the ceiling, the same expression of carefully-controlled indifference that he’d effect while pissing for Harry, and it made him momentarily delighted to see it now, in this setting.

As Harry was obligated to receive potions from the Healers, Voldemort drawled, “Minister,” because Scrimgeour had entered the sitting room first. “It seems you find me sprawled on my back at every occasion.”

Scrimgeour fastidiously ignored the innuendo. “Yes. Stay there until the Healers say otherwise.” He looked to the windows, sheeted in rain. “Though, the Ministry’s facilities team asks when the storm will let up. They are concerned that the entire building may disappear down a sinkhole.”

A twitch of Voldemort’s thin lips. “ _Well_ ,” he said. “The storm is Harry’s, though. Harry?”

Harry had been setting these armfuls of potions on a sideboard. Turning back: “Yeah?”

“When is your embarrassing wobbly of a storm going to cease?” Voldemort asked.

“Oh. Uh.” He pulled his wand from his back pocket. “ _Finite_.” With a last clap of thunder, the storm cleared. “Sorry, sir,” he said to Scrimgeour. (And there was confirmation they were buried beneath the Ministry. It’d be fully appropriate that he and Voldemort would make the structure collapse, with themselves underneath, like the Wicked Witch of the East. It was essentially what they were already doing, anyway.)

Voldemort was incredulous. “You _chose_ that storm?”

“Yes?” Sunshine this past week would have been an affront, he didn’t say.

Voldemort shrugged, distressing Onofre, who was pressing a sort of funnel to his chest to listen to his organs. “I would conjure thunderstorms unconsciously as a manifestation of my feelings, too. I was eight years old then.”

“You are such a prick,” Harry said fondly. It felt good, it felt normal. It _stung_ , how badly he wanted that ease back, and he was fighting back inappropriate grief. He let himself be pulled to an adjacent sofa, his robe undone to the waist. “I miss you,” he said in an undertone, in Parseltongue, as medical equipment and diagnostic spells were shuffled around the sitting room. To the humans it would sound like barely a sigh. Voldemort’s gaze flicked up at him for only an instant. Understanding.

“Is it a slow day, then?” Voldemort asked Scrimgeour. “Or just a very bad one?”

A glimmer of amusement. It did look incredibly excessive, four Healers and four Aurors in their house, including the Minister of Magic. Harry felt that they’d never posed less of a threat than they did currently. “I owed Alastor a favor,” he said easily. “He is rather upset with you.”

He saw Voldemort’s expression change – and to an even greater extent, he _felt_ it. They were both still grieving. “For nearly killing Harry?” Voldemort asked, and his voice was steadier than Harry’s own would be.

Scrimgeour regretted this immediately. “No,” he said, his expression going blank. “I am told I should have nothing to say on the matter, unless Mr. Potter should like.”

_Thank you, Moody_. He shook his head.

Rufus went on to reclaim the simple air of a moment ago: “Moody’s upset at the Amortentia brewing downstairs. It needs to go. You know that, don’t you?” He actually waited for a response.

“I do.” He spoke briefly so as not to disrupt Onofre, now writing runes on his chest that would heal his lungs.

“We have not been overly concerned with the illicit potions you’ve brewed up to this point.” His gaze slid to Harry momentarily; Harry was currently getting more healing paste applied to his carotid artery and had an excellent reason not to return the look. “Particularly if it seems otherwise beneficial,” he said softly. Harry was taking kaval for Voldemort’s _survival_. And now for his own. He had a very hard time hearing Ministry employees allude to the abuse at Azkaban as though it were okay. He kept his eyes on the ceiling.

Scrimgeour had summoned a chair; they were alone with just their respective Healers. And Voldemort was quiet, to have his lungs examined, so Scrimgeour had the expanse of silence as his own. “But Amortentia is unethical,” he said. “And it scares a great many wixes. Questions about Harry,” he said reluctantly, “and about your work together will plague our politics. It is an issue of credibility, you see. Your intentions will always be under scrutiny, even for innocuous issues and certainly for ambiguous ones.”

“You haven’t even asked its intended use.” Voldemort had been pulled sitting for Onofre to listen at his back, so he glanced over an angular shoulder. Under the bright lights and examination, he had obviously grown even thinner this past week. Harry knew he had too.

“Alastor could only say it was related to Horcruxes. Which rather compounds the problems of credibility and legality both.” Hesitation. “We had assumed it was to reclaim the Horcrux within Harry. And even if he fully consents to the inebriation beforehand….”

A short laugh, that made both Voldemort and Onofre wince. Harry tasted an echo of blood in his mouth. “It is not for Harry. He will unfortunately have to be on hand for his magic when I do take the Amortentia, otherwise I would be barricading him in his room. If you can offer a way to supplement my magic without him, you may shelter him somewhere else entirely.”

There was relief on Scrimgeour’s face. “Then it is for the others?” He cast a glance at the mantel, frowning to only find two there and the chalice missing.

“I sacrificed Hufflepuff’s cup for our lives amidst the Fiendfyre,” Voldemort said at his expression. “Horcruces generally stave off death in more oblique ways, but that night its magic was helpfully literal.”

“I’m sorry,” Scrimgeour said. “Two in a week. It’s no wonder you’re so wretched.”

“ _Thank_ you, Minister.” But he wasn’t annoyed. Returning to the question: “My younger selves may be summoned from within the Horcruces. They will be an echo of the past, but present enough to manipulate and ideally reclaim.” He had pulled away from Onofre’s touch, but she was setting up a new piece of tech now anyway, something that looked like an outsized makeup compact. “The Amortentia shall be for affinity. The Horcruces may be… distant, noncooperative, even hostile.”

Scrimgeour was thoughtful, or curious, or something. “I know nothing of the theory,” he murmured.

“Few do.”

“Would the Unspeakables corroborate this idea? Furthermore, would they endorse it?”

An exasperated noise. “I cannot be held accountable for what they might endorse or corroborate. Pass your diary along to one of them tonight and I would present my thesis.”

“Mm.” Still thoughtful.

Voldemort was impatient. Onofre now had the makeup compact held before his torso, providing an amazing and portable view of his organs beneath, so he should have been still. Instead he said, “If I make the work accessible for research purposes, would that change anything of its legality? Or my presumed _intentions_.” By his tone, Voldemort made clear he did not think much of intentions.

“That is a question for the DCC,” Scrimgeour said. “Who are, as you might expect, reluctant to get involved with your work. Moody suggested that if we confiscated the potion today, they would be saved the effort of a raid and we the effort of prosecution.”

Voldemort drew himself up, affronted. “I suppose you’ll only offer an exchange of research for magic to Harry, then?” he asked. “As I recall, that time was for my preservation as well. Or have you taken everything you need from me by now?”

It was a more emotional appeal than Harry had ever thought he’d hear from Voldemort. “I never did tell you I offered myself for research, did I, in exchange for getting you magic in Azkaban,” he said. He and Voldemort weren’t facing each other, but he glanced back over his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

“Harry,” Voldemort sighed. “I only wondered when you’d ever feel free to confess it. Or why you didn’t to begin with.” Returning to Scrimgeour: “Or is it _Harry_ you’re discarding?” he asked. “True, our politics no longer hold if the world isn’t mutually committed to keeping him alive. But the nearer I come to mortality once more, the closer you might like to have to have the Chosen One at hand.”

Voldemort didn’t know that Scrimgeour had attempted to leverage that title over Harry in his sixth year. Or perhaps he did, but in any case, Harry hadn’t told him. “Of course the Ministry intends to keep Harry safe,” Scrimgeour said with scarcely a glance in his direction. “But I am not Dumbledore. I don’t ask or expect a teenager to fight my battles for me.”

Harry winced. “I was happy to do it,” he muttered. “He believed in the prophecy, even as he told me I didn’t have to.”

Both of them did study Harry in this instant. “Dumbledore’s man,” Scrimgeour said, with none of the viciousness as last time.

“That’s right.” A wavering smile.

They looked away; Harry receded into irrelevance once more. “If this is only a hypothesis,” Scrimgeour said, “then you should begin with a more socially acceptable option. Something I won’t be forced to lie about. Something you could publish.”

“The brokenness of the Horcrux begins with its anti-social practice,” Voldemort said. A wince from Scrimgeour served as a concession. “Really, Amortentia might be _distasteful_ , but it is also a very saccharine hypothesis. Falling in love with my younger selves. Albus’s idea, obliquely,” he added lightly. “He sent along Plato’s Symposium.”

A snort from Scrimgeour at this. “Nevertheless… the potion can’t stay. And I’m unable to plead ignorance.”

“Let the DCC plan their raid, then.”

A frown. “Is there any expedient for the potion?” he asked. “I’m not aware of one.”

“There is not,” Onofre cut in, rather severely, being better at potions than either of them. “You’ll find books advising that doubling the lavender will speed its brew time. But, particularly with such a scarred liver as yours, that will kill you.” She thrust the compact over Voldemort’s liver as though it were proof. It all just looked like gleaming red insides to Harry, but the intimacy of looking inside Voldemort was strangely making him blush. His own Healer, a quiet witch named Finch, distracted him with a healing potion.

Actually, no – it was some anti-depressant or mood elevator, something like that. No label on it. He swallowed the rest in a go and hoped Voldemort would feel secondhand effects. His expression didn’t change.

“There is not an expedient,” he was agreeing with his Healer. “But I trust it will take the DCC longer than a week to get clearance to raid this home. Even longer to case it and learn its protection charms. And a week is as much as I require.” He stretched across the sofa like a cat, luxuriating in the attention, even as Onofre only needed to palpate his stomach. Harry pushed ideas of licking a long stripe down each of his sides, from his earlobes to armpits to the soft part of his knees to his toes, out of his mind.

Scrimgeour was less impressed. “To tell the wixen world – even just the Wizengamot – that I’m unable to control you, isn’t viable.”

“Precisely.” Voldemort’s smile gleamed. “You’d be far better off endorsing it.”

Even less impressed. “Even if you pitched the reclamation as a move from chaos to order – even if it were cast as a subversion of death magic, to go through love instead – even if you told the story as a _redemption narrative_ – “ Obvious distaste at the last.

“What do you propose?” Voldemort asked, because Scrimgeour was clearly deciding upon something.

He closed his eyes for a long moment. “The Unspeakables will suggest this highly experimental option. I will insist on it. Yours is a rather disposable body anyway. Perhaps it will even _hurt_.”

Harry hadn’t really believed Scrimgeour as a Slytherin before. But he saw it now.

“How grim,” Voldemort remarked.

“Yes.”

“You don’t need your constituents to think any better of you than that? At least the Wizengamot.”

“You know that I don’t.”

“Thank you.” He said it as an exhalation.

A tired nod. “Granted, we will all need to be present, in that case. Unspeakables, Aurors. Healers. I’ll join you or not, as you wish.”

The corners of Voldemort’s lips curled. “As you’d like. I won’t mind the audience, but I’ll be fucking my younger selves.”

Harry choked; Voldemort shot him an entertained glance. Scrimgeour took the news marginally better. “Really?”

“Yes.” Finding he was still curious, Voldemort continued: “A Horcrux is created by sucking a victim’s soul from their mouth at the moment of death – exactly the most vulnerable moment when it’s becoming detached anyway. It mimics the work of a Dementor. If there is anything good or generative or redemptive to sex, it will undo the Horcrux’s destructive properties. The soul is similarly vulnerable at the moment of jouissance _._ It must have been a wix who coined the phrase _la petite mort._ ”

“Fascinating.” Scrimgeour did seem sincerely interested. And not amused and exasperated at Voldemort’s endless pretension, as Harry was. “In which case… no, it still stands. The Unspeakables will be happy to encounter something new.”

The Unspeakables must all be Ravenclaws, Harry thought. And then a deep bowl was being pushed into his hands. He almost tossed it back without looking, assuming it was another potion, but Finch’s hands stilled his. He looked down: almonds, cashews, dried fruit. He wasn’t hungry but he was less nauseatingly dead inside than he had been for days. He gave her a tentative smile and moved to sit beside Voldemort, to share. They’d always do better if they could share. His magic throbbed with familiarity.

Voldemort picked apricots out of the bowl as if he were born to it. He did always have a grace to him that Harry lacked. “And the Muggles?” he asked.

Eyebrows up. “The world’s gone on without you,” he assured Voldemort. “Though it probably won’t without your input on a shared commerce bill that’s going to their Parliament next week.” A hum. “Also, they’ve asked about the airspace shield.” This was news he was clearly more reluctant to share. “They’re already… anxious, that you might abdicate the position. We’ve said nothing,” he said sharply when Voldemort looked irritated and defensive. “But your absence has been conspicuous.”

“We’ll go,” Voldemort said, after a moment. “But it won’t go well.”

“I fully expect you to fail,” Scrimgeour said, steadily. It hurt anyway. “They won’t know the difference. Choose the Aurors you want with you, and I can arrange that. But I can’t arrange for you to skip it entirely.”

“I said we’ll go,” Voldemort reiterated. He was upset but not with Scrimgeour.

“I am sorry.”

 

Scrimgeour went to join the Aurors on household wards. “And, ah, forensics.” Here he looked to Harry more than Voldemort. “We’ll be finished with the bedroom soon.”

“Yes, sir.” He hated it anyway. The Aurors would be dissecting their magic in that space. That they slept and fucked there, these was not overly his concern. The curses they’d find from Saturday night were nothing he hadn’t told Moody already. But that the Aurors would find it to be their sickroom recently, the room where they’d both spent days falling apart, made him nervous. It was only thing that felt too personal.

It became irrelevant very quickly, though, when Onofre squared off with them both. “You haven’t eaten in _days_ ,” she accused them, stark and disappointed. “Why?”

Harry was more bashful than Voldemort. “Just haven’t felt like it,” he muttered. He had gagged on an almond earlier, unused to the act of eating and kind of overwhelmed by it.

A frustrated look. “Clearly,” she said. “What is wrong with you? There are calming draughts for panic, thestral’s blood for mania, baobab for melancholy.” Just very matter-of-fact. She reminded him of Madam Pomfrey in that moment and he liked her for it. “We’ll bring you in for observation and proper prescriptions, but Voldemort swore initially he’d work with diagnosis and dosage himself.” A glare indicated how little she thought of promises made by Voldemort. Smart woman.

“I have taken baobab,” Harry said. “Moody told me to. Otherwise it’s just been, well, sleep.”

A moment to take this in. And then she turned to Voldemort with accusation. “You knew that wouldn’t help.”

“Harry’s trauma is psychological. Mine is physical. Sleep was a compromise, as I needed his magic to remain stable anyway.”

“Sleep won’t help,” she repeated emphatically. “Take Verve or Pepper-Up if you’ve got to.”

“I took Verve the first time,” Voldemort replied. “It catalyzed… well, recklessness. The murtlap caused the mania. Healer Amash had to vanish all of my affected organs. Or did you not read her notes?” Voldemort was frustrated and short. Physical infirmity was already the most humiliating confession for him; he’d never be able to explain just how psychologically devastated they had been.

“You shouldn’t be _so_ immobilized now as you have been,” Onofre said as a half-concession. “And of course imprisonment doesn’t help. I’ve asked the Aurors, but they say there is nothing to be done.”

Voldemort was embarrassed, and suspicious, and silent. Everyone was rather stepping over the question of why they’d be interested to have either of them in good mental health to begin with. Physically, certainly, for the Muggles’ shield. But mentally? Either they should be convinced that Voldemort _was_ mad or that he _deserved_ to be. In either case, the attention was making them both uncomfortable. Harry meant to lure her attention back to himself, away from Voldemort. “I have got a question.”

Her slate eyes were on him. “Yes?”

“I’ll take baobab, and Verve. But is there anyplace to just talk, without taking potions. Muggles call them therapists.” He’d asked Tonks and Hermione, but Onofre seemed to work more closely with psychological magic than any Healer he’d met before.

Her exasperation was unexpected. “It’s always the Muggleborns who ask that,” she said. “We’ve got _magic_. It’s a quaint idea, certainly, but nothing as effective as a potion.”

He shrunk, and felt stupid for asking. “You’re right,” he said with what he hoped was a smile, de-escalating as best as he could. This woman was not at all like Madam Pomfrey, he revised.

He missed the Weasleys desperately. He wished for a few weeks at the Burrow most of all right now. Voldemort would die without him, though. He wasn’t just here for the companionship or mentorship or sex; it was an obligation as well and sometimes it was awful.

Onofre had relented: “You can make tea of the baobab, if capsules aren’t enough. Or add it to pygmy sprouts in an infusion.”

“Thank you,” Voldemort said on his behalf, feeling Harry’s withdrawal and onset of grief, intercepting it even if he didn’t understand it.

“And….” She hesitated at this, but glanced at the way they were pressed together entirely down their sides to share magic. She addressed Voldemort: “His magic is helpful now. Certainly you’re lucky to have him as a resource.” And her tone prickled at this word. Voldemort remained impassive. “But you should adapt to being without it, as well. Otherwise you might come to overly rely on his supplemental magic.”

A tight smile. “Perhaps you haven’t consulted with the Aurors on this. But they would prefer me in a persistent state of injury. It is the only way anyone feels _safe_.” He said the word as though mocking it.

She shrugged. “Then they will be safe.” Voldemort looked no happier at the prospect.

 

Thank god they left soon after. The Aurors had collected magic from the night of the fire; and they had revised the house’s wards. The Healers had left potions and lectured them both on the importance of more food and less sleep. Voldemort listened quietly and did not curse a single person, though his expression made clear that he would have liked to; so that was nearly a success.

When the house was quiet, Harry was still on the sofa but wanted very much to crawl back into bed. Both because that was exhausting and because he’d have liked to skip the confrontation that Voldemort was insisting on. “That was awful.”

Voldemort was up, cracking open a bottle of Verve to split. “Yes.”

“Do you know why they care?”

A glimmer of a smile. “Harry. _I_ am suspicious that nobody acts without an ulterior motive. It doesn’t work if you begin to believe that, too. Here.” And he summoned the nappy bag, the first magic he’d done in awhile and it turned out well, as he pushed Harry back on the sofa. “Speaking of over-reliance.”

It meant nothing. The ritual of shedding real adult clothing for the physical reassurance of the nappy made him happy. He didn’t always prefer that Voldemort touch him _delicately_ , but these were the most delicate and thoughtful touches. Of course it was sex, but even when it wasn’t, it just made him stupidly happy. He murmured in contentment as Voldemort pinned the sides tightly.

“You were fidgeting,” he said in some amusement when Harry was drawing himself back up. “Before the Healers.”

“I didn’t notice,” Harry sighed. “Maybe they didn’t either.” And then careful silence that was Harry’s to break: “Do we have to talk about this?”

“I do want to.”

Voldemort didn’t really express many wants, Harry realized. Desire was a weakness, and a moment to be leveraged. It made him hurt, the sincerity of this request. “Can you drink now?” he asked; Voldemort raised his non-eyebrows at the non sequitur. “Because a couple weeks ago I promised that we’d get drunk and talk about death sometime.” Inanity. They’d all be saved by inanity.

“Charming,” Voldemort said. “I would be delighted to get drunk with you. But not without eating first.”

Right. That.

So Harry was pulling a pot of soup from the icebox while Voldemort made bread. Most of the pre-made meals in their house were from the Ministry canteen, Kingsley had said once; but this dish smelled like home. As he lifted the lid he found that Molly had charmed the noodles of her chicken noodle soup into loopy writing on the surface. _We Love You._

And that is how Harry was abruptly choking back a dry sob in the middle of their kitchen. Voldemort, looking alarmed and confused as to why chicken soup should be worth crying over, made himself scarce for awhile. Harry appreciated it.

Dinner was good. They had fallen out of the habit of cooking and eating together, so it felt like an earlier time. Voldemort summoned a bottle of wine and glasses halfway through (bold magic, even if he used his wand). Harry downed his first drink with slightly too much force. “I don’t want to do this,” he objected one final, futile time.

An indulgent smile. “Moody must have made them all swear on Morgana’s grave that they would keep you from it all.”

Harry shook his head. “I don’t understand why he cares, either. He really does hate you. He must think I’ve made such a mistake.”

“Have you?” When Harry looked up without a response, Voldemort only looked thoughtful. “Are you overly principled, or…?”

“I’m not principled at all,” Harry objected. “If I were, I’d be able to defend why I’m here to my friends. If I were just committed to saving _everyone_. But I’m only here for you.”

“You do know that people haven’t queued up to be saved. There’s no great warehouse to find these people in need of saving,” Voldemort said, wry. Then, more solemnly: “And I am only here for you. If I cared for such things as forgiveness and redemption, it would consume the rest of my life.”

It was a startling way of putting it, that he’d gotten in too far to ever make amends. Harry hadn’t given the idea much thought, any of it. “My relatives never took me to church,” he shrugged. That was where he’d hear about forgiveness, wasn’t it?

“And wixes don’t have a coherent enough theology to have thoughts on the matter.”

He was chewing on his tongue, weighing the confession upon it. “I don’t miss my parents,” he said, to no reaction. “I mean, I _can’t_. I never knew them. I wish they hadn’t died, I wish I’d had a good childhood, but that’s not the same as missing them. Here.” They’d finished eating; he rose and took the wine. “The sitting room. Please.”

“Is the kitchen too mundane a setting?” They did all of their best talking in the dark, or faced away from one another, or carefully looking elsewhere.

“I want you to hold me.”

Sofa; lanterns dimmed; a fire in the hearth. His breathing slowed as soon as Voldemort pulled him back against his chest. But Harry went on: “That night was _awful_ ,” and his voice wavered here, “but it was awful because it made them real people for the first time. It made it feel less inevitable, that maybe they wouldn’t have….” He hated this train of thought. “Nevermind,” he muttered. “Obviously I’ve got a thing about saving people, and it felt for a moment that I could have saved them too. But it was so long ago… so I regret my parents’ death on, like, a hypothetical level. And I…. It’s made me find family elsewhere. Wherever I could. And probably appreciate it more.” A pause. “Did you?” he asked. “Ever find family.”

His response was careful: “You are the first person to ever love me.” Harry’s breath hitched, though he’d suspected the same for some time now. Lighter: “It seems like a thankless task.”

He smiled despite himself, tipping his head back to properly kiss him. But Voldemort was reluctant to return the gesture. “All of it – family, friendship, love – all looked unappealing, even when I was very young,” he said. “The orphanage matrons resented me for failing to present myself as a child who would ever belong to a family. They said I wasn’t _trying_. And I wasn’t. I wouldn’t.” A thoughtful pause. “It was – is – a pathological need to not belong. ‘Evil be thou my good’ and so on. _Are_ you enjoying Paradise Lost?” he asked with charming anxiety.

Harry blinked. “Yes. Though I don’t understand some of it.”

“Neither did Father Bennett, and that is how such a book was put on the St. Anne’s Cathedral’s bookshelves alongside their devotionals. Unless the man had a subversive streak not expressed in any other capacity.”

Harry found this funny. “I think you go to super-Hell for stealing from a church.”

“Ah, one might expect, but no. ‘The mind is its own place, and in its self can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven. Here at least we shall be free.’ But you distract me.”

He grinned. But then, backtracking: family, his parents, death. He had been measuring out these words all day. “My parents’ death wasn’t the worst, since I don’t remember it,” he reiterated. “Cedric’s death was the worst, because it was the first one. Because it was just so… stupid, that he died for being good and being irrelevant.” His eyes were closed. He wouldn’t cry. “Sirius was the worst, because he’d been the closest to having a real family. My own family,” he amended. “He asked me to live with him the same night we met,” he recalled with something of a smile. “So he was _reckless_ , but he was recklessly good most of all. Dobby was the worst, and Collin was the worst, because they both _trusted_ me so much. Seamus and Susan were the worst, because we saw it could have been any of us, any of our year who stayed to fight. And….” They rarely spoke of Dumbledore. He was bracing himself, for the painful and complex emotions that arose in their connection whenever his name was mentioned, even when Voldemort otherwise hid his disdain. “And Dumbledore was the worst because I’d learned more from him than anyone. I don’t know how to organize my world anymore, because up to his death I had faith in him as the most just, _good_ person in my life. The one who would always be leading the fight for good. And the most invincible person of all. Everything is just… _wrong_ without him here,” he sighed.

Voldemort was quiet. Then: “Should I apologize?” A sincere question. He was very bad at understanding human emotions sometimes.

“Not to me.” A snort, and Harry rushed on. “Really. So I’d asked my friends what you’d taken from them, that we could give back?” (The phrase _restorative justice_ was just far too weighty to fit into his mouth.) “And… I feel like I’ve gotten it all back. Everything I can. I feel like I’ve got a home with you.” He’d sat up, watching Voldemort’s face at this in case his confessions came to be too much.

Voldemort only raised an eyebrow. “ _This_?” he asked, lifting his chin to indicate the house at large. “Harry, this is a well-furnished prison, is all.”

“Don’t be thick,” Harry said, a bit annoyed to have his sincerity brushed off like this. They were both so bad at feelings and the rest of it. “Here, anywhere. I do feel safe here, even if it’s not a proper home. Don’t you?” he asked, curious.

“The Ministry has rather more vested interest in maintaining your safety than mine,” Voldemort pointed out. Harry winced. “And I’ve never felt attached to places, except insofar as they are useful. But… I’ve survived in worse settings. Certainly you have too.”

“I want to live together after this,” Harry said, a bit too abruptly, because he might otherwise lose his nerve. He shook his head. “Sorry, that’s not what I wanted to say to you tonight, but I do.”

A careful pause. “You know I will never be free,” Voldemort said. “If I am not thrown back in Azkaban – or merely killed,” he said the word coldly, “then I’ll be kept in Ministry-surveilled homes such as this one as long as they find me useful. It would be no place for a young man to begin his adult life. I’m not leaving you,” he added urgently, in a moment of emotional astuteness, at either seeing or feeling Harry’s panic and grief and abandonment issues. “We’ll revisit the question. But then, what _did_ you mean to say tonight?”

He tried putting it all together at once. “You’ve given it all back. I’ve got a home, and I belong, and I’m safe. You’ve taught me so much, and you’ve been so patient while you did.” (A noise of incredulity; this was doubtless the very first time the word had ever been applied to Voldemort.) “I know who I am, and what place I have in this world, because of you.” To defuse the significance of this moment, he offered a grin: “Even if you’ve got to share mentorship with Dumbledore.”

“Ugh,” Voldemort protested, but it was lackluster, and then he was pulling Harry in for a kiss. It was fierce, and it was protective, and it was perfect. They had been so delicate with one another lately, which really wasn’t their style, and the force of this felt much better. Voldemort gasped deeply when they broke apart, but when he had his voice once more he murmured, “I believed it would profane the memory of anyone who’s ever raised you, that I should be the one to say I’m proud of you. The man you’ve become is in spite of me, not because of me, of course – “

“That’s not true.” Harry seldom interrupted Voldemort but he did now. “You know it’s not. But that’s what I wanted to say.” A curious look. “That… I don’t want you to be guilty,” he nearly swallowed the word, “or whatever about my life. You can still feel shitty about everything else. But I am happy.” He would beg Voldemort to do away with these moments of gnawing guilt, if he had to. He didn’t know if he left their Occlumency permeable in those moments intentionally. But it was there.

Voldemort was quiet. “Alright,” he said.

“That’s it?”

Voldemort squeezed his fingers, playful. “It’s not too much to ask,” he said. “In fact, it might not be enough. You wouldn’t ask for something better?”

“Oh my god,” Harry groaned. “ _Slytherins_. This isn’t a negotiation.”

“Darling, everything is.” He seemed entertained or annoyed or something at how thick Harry was. “At this point, anyway, I probably owe you several life debts. I am not particularly inclined to discover that for certain. For example, if a killing curse would backfire.”

It was a joke. They were both so fucked up. “Yeah, that would be embarrassing,” he agreed.

A faint laugh in the back of his throat. Then Voldemort shifted, squaring off (which, from their current position, meant they ended with Harry sitting across Voldemort’s hips. They might as well be fucking.) “ _Do_ you want anything else? Apart from my guiltlessness. I do not typically ask these things twice,” he added dryly at Harry’s hesitation.

He was hesitating because it was stupid, because neither of them was equipped for long bouts of sincerity. “Guiltlessness, and a spanking?”

Surprise, delighted surprise. “You are incorrigible. Get off me,” Voldemort demanded, drawing up his legs, but he was pleased and Harry was laughing. He did crawl out of Voldemort’s lap, moving to open another bottle of wine. They’d fallen out of the habit of drinking recently as well, and Harry, at least, was tipsy.

Which helped when Voldemort slid in, their sides pressing together now. “But we are not finished.”

They had talked about his parents’ death and Harry had bloody absolved him of it, so he already felt quite a lot had been accomplished in one night. “Yeah?”

“ _Yeah_ ,” he echoed. A pause. “Harry, we need to discuss the prophecy.”

“We really don’t.” He wasn’t upset by this, just bewildered. “Dumbledore said – “

“He was wrong,” Voldemort interrupted. “And please recognize that I don’t tell you that often or lightly. Dumbledore was… talented, but he has his own hatred of Fate. And in this instance, he was wrong.”

“I don’t want it to be true,” Harry objected. “And since it’s part of the prophecy that we’ll choose for it to be true, then we can just… not. Neither of us wants to die. I don’t want to kill you.” A moment of silence, so he went on with desperation: “I saw all the prophecies in the Department of Mysteries. Dumbledore said some of them are never fulfilled. That most prophecies never are.”

Voldemort shook his head. “You are so reluctant to see yourself as touched by Fate. It is a privilege, you know. A promise that you were to be historically significant from birth.”

Harry looked over at this, surprised. “Are you, uh, jealous?”

“Don’t be vulgar,” Voldemort said. “And those prophecies _have_ been fulfilled. But none of the Unspeakables have discovered the unclaimed ones yet. There is an entire department for prophecy fulfillment, in fact. Matching prophecies to their circumstances. Since they are vague at the outset and obvious in hindsight, they can be… tricky, or counterintuitive, because that too is the nature of Fate. Whatever force or deity or pantheon looks after wixenkind, must be identified as a trickster god.”

“So it might not come true in the way… in the obvious way.”

“No. But it _will_ be fulfilled. To ask otherwise, or to simply assert that you choose not to acknowledge the prophecy, is… either madness or hubris. And you already know the punishment for hubris.”

Voldemort thought Fate itself conspired to kill him. Poor man; no wonder he was paranoid. “But I don’t see any way to get from here to… what the prophecy promises. Like, _this_ ,” and he leaned against Voldemort’s thin frame as illustration, “feels pretty far off from killing each other.”

An incredulous look. “Harry, I nearly killed you that night. I nearly killed us both – which, I suppose, would be a fulfillment as much as anything. I changed my mind that night. I was _attracted_ to the idea of choosing against the prophecy, even if I didn’t fully believe the idea, but….” He sighed. “Have you read the tragedy of Oedipus Rex?”

He blushed slightly. “I know it,” he said. “But neither of us has even got a mother.”

At this, Voldemort made a noise somewhere between laughter and gagging, as he dropped his face into his hands. “Merlin, Morgana, and Circe,” he muttered from behind them. Harry grinned in spite of himself. “ _No_ , you wretched child.” Straightening: “The point of the play is that running from fate is folly. Even if you count yourself the Child of Chance the great goddess, any apparent deviation has already been accounted for by the prophecy. It will come together in hindsight. If you would disrupt the very concept of fate merely to arrogantly insist on the significance of your _choices_ … then either the cosmos comes apart at the seams or you do. You know which is more likely.”

“Yeah,” Harry sighed. “So… what? There’s nothing we can do about it, then. That is the point of it.”

“Mm. Yes. I hope you _are_ convinced,” Voldemort added with a wary look, “and you won’t cling to any ridiculous loophole that Dumbledore erroneously offered. Because… that night felt like a _warning_.” His tone was low and deliberate. “That as distanced as we are from the prophecy, it will still always be at hand. ‘Even if you do not take an interest in politics, doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you,’” he quoted with a slight curl of his lips. “But Fate should be an even more appropriate force. Earlier that day, I’d considered living as you do, without faith in the prophecy. So…. It was a punishment,” he said bluntly. “You _can’t_ believe such things anymore. It upsets the natural order.”

Harry was quiet. Voldemort sounded distinctly paranoid, drawing awful conclusions out of unfortunate coincidences. He had thought they’d gotten away with it, that there was nothing _real_ to the prophecy but the things they allocated to it. He knew it was probably childish and naïve, but he didn’t want to give this up. “You told me once,” he said instead, “that magic _was_ the suspension of the natural order. We defy natural laws. Isn’t fate just another one?”

“Clever boy. Clever, clever boy who will find himself tortured eternally by the wrath of the gods. It’s not – “ He broke off with a sigh, staring hard into the fire. “I suppose I am so moved because I have similarly devoted so much of my time and magic avoiding the apparent inevitability of death. Like Oedipus, in hindsight every choice I made that appeared to lead away from death in fact pulled me closer to it. Physically, socially. Emotionally.”

It was true; if Voldemort had just left his soul well enough alone he’d probably be in much less precarious circumstances. “I don’t think I ever said sorry about Nagini. I’m sorry. And about Hufflepuff’s cup, too. Thank you for sacrificing it for me.” He said it hesitantly, wondering if Voldemort would object that he had done no such thing.

He didn’t object. “I scarcely recall doing it,” he said. “Nor the logic of why sacrifice that one and not either of the others. Perhaps I thought the Hufflepuffs would endure losing a founder’s relic with the most grace.”

“Poor Hufflepuffs,” Harry agreed with a small smile. Voldemort was quiet; Harry went on: “You’re allowed to read your awful death philosophy books now, if you want.”

An amused hum. “ _Thank_ you, Healer Potter. I imagine they’ll help greatly.”

“Will they, though?”

“Yes.” Picking up his wine glass, he drained it. “But not tonight. Tonight, if you’d like sex, we should move to such matters before becoming too drunk to achieve or appreciate it.”

He considered. He did want sex, very much. What was the matter with him, that he could get off after such a weighty and depressing conversation. “Please.”

They didn’t move to the bedroom. They’d spent the past week in the bedroom; it was a place of depression and convalescence. “You need to undress,” Voldemort said, pushing Harry off the sofa. “While you tell me what you want.”

His robe had been open and draped across his shoulders; he shrugged it off. “I want you to hold me down and spank me,” he began. Somehow asking for it was no longer embarrassing. “I want you to grab me by my hair, and pull it if I try getting up.” He pulled his shirt over his head, and grinned at Voldemort’s grimace when he dropped it to the carpet sloppily. “And when I’m nearly there, you’ll pull me into your lap and hopefully you’ll let me fuck myself on your cock.” Rubber pants and dry nappy slid down his legs, hitting the floor. The room wasn’t quite warm, but he stood there patiently, so Voldemort may look at him. “What do you want?” he added, curious.

“Leave your mind open,” Voldemort requested. “And I’d rather choke you. I appreciate the precarity of it.”

Voldemort had a kink for feeling close to death. Well. He supposed the man had a right to not have his sex life psychoanalyzed, much like he had generally refrained from any narrative of why Harry was so bloody obsessed with piss and ageplay. “Yes, sir,” he said, and he drew close.

Voldemort pulled him over his legs diagonally, so his chest was pressed to the sofa and the balls of his feet were touching the floor. He wasn’t tall, so he had to stretch a bit to keep his legs down securely. Voldemort cupped the curve of one arse cheek, running his thumb across it. “Say how much you’ve missed this.”

“I’ve missed you,” he said instead, unintentionally. It went unremarked on. “I’ve missed your touch, and your magic. And – “ He shuddered as Voldemort’s thumb scrubbed at his hole, not entering but only teasing. “And what a bastard you can be,” he said with a breathless laugh. “Please, _please_ spank me.”

_Smack_! Sharp along the curve of his arse, making the cheek bounce. He pressed his face into a pillow to hide his grin, but he nearly sagged with relief anyway. He had missed this.

“Have you forgotten how to count?” Voldemort asked, irritated.

“One. Sir.” God, he was so happy. _Smack, smack_. “Two. Three.” _Smack, smack_ , landing in the same dimple of his cheek. “Four, five.” Voldemort slid his other hand along Harry’s throat delicately, his fingers pressing at his adam’s apple to already make him feel the slightest shortness of breath. Harry pushed open his mind deliberately, sharing everything he could. An appreciative murmur, and the spanking got harder.

At fifteen, when his arse had begun to glow warmly, the spanking stopped. “Summon the hairbrush,” Voldemort said, dipping a finger in and out of his arsehole, just a bit, just enough to make him crazy.

He looked up, surprised. “Yes, sir.” It was the only acceptable answer. Warming his arse with bare-handed spanking, before switching, meant he was already warm and pliant and sore. And hard. He was getting hard, his cock heavy against Voldemort’s legs. He squirmed away from Voldemort’s fingers to concentrate long enough to cast. “Accio hairbrush.” It’d been upstairs, and landed in his palm with a satisfying _thwack_. Heavy, gleaming wood. Voldemort had transfigured it from something else, a spoon or a spatula, Harry didn’t recall, because between them a hairbrush was about their least likely possession. He passed it backward, groaning as just a tip of the solid wood sent a spike of the best pain down his legs, curling his toes.

The spanking got harder, faster. The heat of it enveloped his lower half, and he glowed all over, the sweat shining on his skin making each impact sting more. His eyes were squeezed shut and Voldemort’s hand clenched gently, methodically around his throat. He was dizzy, they both were, and they were both slightly elsewhere. _Smack, smack, smack_. Harry had stopped counting when he couldn’t gasp the numbers aloud any longer.

_Smack_ , along the underside of his arse. _Smack_ , again, perfectly – Harry flinched away instinctively and Voldemort’s hand went tight around his throat. He squeezed as he landed a quick, punishing volley of swats along the soft parts of his thighs. Harry was floating, he was warm all over, stinging all over –

_Smack_! And the next one startled him, pushing him harder into the choking grasp, and then he felt – god, not glowing warmth, but wet heat, as his bladder spilled into Voldemort’s lap. He hadn’t realized his own need, hadn’t realized his control slipping, and now he felt so fucking young. “Sorry, I’m sorry,” he was rasping absurdly, scrabbling to get up. Voldemort, alarmed, let go before he strangled himself.

But he threw his leg over both of Harry’s, pinning him against his lap. “Don’t move.”

“But – “ _I’m pissing on you_ was about the most redundant statement ever. Long dribbles and spurts, his entire lower half taxed from strain such that he couldn’t distinguish the sensations anymore. He was pinned but he was also frozen, terrified at being punished, terrified at –

Voldemort recognized it before he did, echoes of the memory of wetting himself as Vernon belted him. He felt _so_ young and so helpless unexpectedly, such that when Voldemort paused to pull out his wand, he flinched. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, it will never happen again,” he was babbling, and Voldemort shoved his head down so he wouldn’t have to meet his wet, wild gaze, so Harry was gasping ineffectually into a pillow when – something was lifted from him, and it was okay again, and he was safe again. A pause as Voldemort cautiously turned over Harry’s feelings, and finding them acceptable, he left a flitting series of blows down one thigh and then the other. “Alright?”

“You’re not letting me up?” He was dazed, propped on his elbows, but his legs were still pinned and Voldemort’s arm was heavy across his back to keep him from turning. This all kept him tightly pressed into Voldemort’s legs, and he couldn’t stop dribbling, so the fabric underneath him was damp if not sodden yet.

“You should finish,” Voldemort said calmly, flipping the brush to slap the handle into the center of his arse. “You’d been desperate for awhile. It was distracting.”

He loved Voldemort so much right then, he couldn’t even say why. “Yes, sir,” he murmured. He must have been tense with desperation, because as he relaxed, the spanking became a deep, better sort of pain. He was only dribbling around his half-hard cock, but it was a relief, _such_ a relief. He watched as wetness rolled down Voldemort’s legs, drops landing on the carpet, and the only feelings he could offer up to share were warmth and happiness and safety.

Voldemort dropped the brush when they were both hard and distracted and warm with stinging pain. Harry hadn’t pissed himself empty but he couldn’t go anymore, in any case. Slow spanking, with a bare hand again; such that every blow ended in something like a squeeze or caress. And when Harry was pressing backwards into his touch insistently, Voldemort slipped a finger inside him, making him jerk. He conjured a palmful of lube, working it in, stopping to explore and tease and luxuriate in every shiver. Their sensations played off each other, open as they both were, so when he first rubbed circles into Harry’s already-swelling prostate, Voldemort jerked first.

“Please fuck me,” Harry groaned. He’d been allowed to reach back, stroking Voldemort’s erection beneath his robes. He was stiff before being touched, aroused by Harry already. It was, well, flattering, and he pushed affection alongside arousal through their connection.

Voldemort let him up, and Harry was scrambling to pull his robes back. No pants today, so as the soft black material fell back, his thick veiny cock was in his lap freely. Harry might’ve whimpered. And then Voldemort was lifting him into his lap, smearing the rest of the lube along his own shaft. And Harry put one of his knees along Voldemort’s thigh, but the other leg he threw over Voldemort’s shoulder, to the back of the sofa, spreading himself wide because he wanted to take him to the hilt. This pushed Voldemort arched backward, his cock straining over his lap. “Youth,” he sighed, pressing a hand to Harry’s knee to hold his leg in place.

“I want to feel you all the way inside me,” Harry said, slipping until he felt the tip at his slick entrance. He grabbed Voldemort’s shoulders for leverage as he bounced upon it, letting him in a bit farther each time. “I want you to come so deep inside me that I can taste it. And then I want you to put a plug in, so I’m filled with it until you say otherwise.” He’d been fantasizing of such things recently. He fucking adored how the suggestion made Voldemort’s eyes glitter.

“Of course,” he agreed. “But I’ll only ever take the plug out to deposit more come within you. I would never let it out. Until you are swollen, your entire belly sloshing with my fluids.”

Goddamn, Voldemort was always better at dirty talk than he was. This idea was too overwhelming, and he squeezed his eyes shut, dropping his face to Voldemort’s shoulder to take it in. A hand on his back drew him closer, and then Legilimency nudged his mind further open, offering him the sensation of his own arse tight and slick around his cock. He shuddered.

He fucked himself on the throbbing girth, and he meant to go slow and careful so he wouldn’t hurt Voldemort, but he wanted it so much, desperately. The heat in his arse from the spanking seemed to warm them both, the motion shooting amazing, deep aches to his core. They were close, his own erection pressed against Voldemort’s concave stomach –

_Oh_. He looked down in alarm. He’d vanished the magical brace, and his torso looked normal but for the silvery web of scars. “You won’t hurt me,” Voldemort said, correctly interpreting his panicked jerk. “Here.” He conjured another handful of lube, spreading it down his torso so Harry could, well, hump his stomach. “Unless you’d prefer a hand job.”

“Mm. No.” It took a few long moments to process the suggestion. He’d last longer this way. “No, this is perfect.” He plunged himself downward on Voldemort’s cock again, his erection scraping his taut stomach, and they both groaned.

It was perfect. The Legilimency gave them both an amazing precision, that Harry could tighten his hole around Voldemort’s cock at the right moments and Voldemort could thrust deep inside him when he most wanted to feel full. He’d never have any other sort of sex. His cock was dribbling pre-come onto Voldemort’s torso, mingling it with lube, making them rub up against each other’s bodies frantically. They panted hot breath, breathing the same air.

When he was close, he was pulling himself in with his legs, with his hands on Voldemort’s shoulder, clinging together as if they were one. Plato crossed his mind in that inappropriate moment, and Voldemort’s surprised laughter meant he had felt it too. With that, with a last thrust as Voldemort caressed his cock, pressing it to his own slick torso – Harry came hard. The line of white spattered up Voldemort’s stomach was amazing, gleaming drips that made him groan. And he pushed that sensation upon Harry too – hot splatters, thickly running down his torso, scent of sex filling the air between them. It was as erotic as being pissed on.

_Oh_. That was Voldemort’s thought, not Harry’s. He blushed even through the aftershocks of orgasm. He thought even after all this time, that he’d just been _humored_ ….

“We share blood, magic, soul, and fate,” Voldemort interrupted his thoughts. His voice was tense and breathless, close himself. “What is one fetish more?”

“I love you,” he sighed. But he couldn’t even slip into post-orgasmic bliss because Voldemort was still pounding his insides, and was still sharing his own arousal through their connection, to push Harry past his limits.

He did have one more recent fantasy. He hoped Voldemort would share it. He was getting soft by now, and the wine had made him desperate to piss once more. Actually, the pressure and tightness and all the _bouncing_ made him more desperate than anything. He wanted to feel his piss spill out of him. He relaxed – not going deliberately, just no longer holding on, and without an erection to hold it back.

The way Voldemort simultaneously thrust as he bounced Harry on his cock was growing erratic. At one long stroke, he felt it happen – a hot spurt of piss spilled out, wetting Voldemort’s stomach and his own inner thighs. Voldemort had his eyes closed and head thrown back, but his fingers searched between Harry’s legs. “Incorrigible,” he groaned when he realized it. And then Harry was pissing into his hand with every bounce, and then Voldemort was _aiming_ him, directing the stream to his torso, already shiny with lube and ejaculate. “A rinse,” he muttered. “You’ll lick off whatever remains.” His thrusting had grown even wilder.

Harry gaped. He had thought of himself as the more vulgar one. “Yes, sir. My Lord,” he amended, to see the curve of Voldemort’s lips. And then he was pissing, each jolt intensifying his stream. Piss and come and lube ran between their thighs. He felt Voldemort throbbing inside of him.

It felt good to let go, to surrender – and it was heightened by the tension Voldemort still passed along to him, pre-orgasmic tightness coiling his belly and drawing in his balls. And the contrast, as Harry slumped in relief, as the hot stream pounded his skin, as Harry just _trusted_ him fiercely – it overcame him, and orgasm crashed upon him like a wave. He shot his load deep inside Harry, each twitch and shudder echoing deliciously in the head of his too-sensitive cock. The residual thrusts worked his fluids deeper into the boy. _Filling_ him, _flooding_ him, as he’d wanted.

And Harry had choked, overcome by this ghost of an orgasm, since he was still captive to every sensation. He thrashed dryly, laughing and grasping at feeling so wrung out. Beautiful. He pressed a sucking kiss to Voldemort’s mouth – reckless since neither of them could properly breathe anyway – and his satisfied groan reverberated against Voldemort’s teeth.

When they had stilled, Voldemort lifted Harry’s leg from his shoulder – carefully, presumably so he wouldn’t get kicked in the head. Harry sat back, dazed and elated. “Thank you,” he said stupidly.

Voldemort gave him a wry look. “It was my pleasure. You need to clench your arse,” he added.

“What – oh!” And Harry fell to his stomach obediently as Voldemort found a buttplug from within the nappy bag. He was still warm and slick, so it entered him with ease. He blushed to think he’d carry Voldemort’s come around inside him, with nobody to know but them.

“Good boy.” A twist of the plug, an overwhelming sensation against his stretched, exhausted flesh. “You may only take it out to let me fuck you again.”

“Yes, sir.” Of course that wasn’t particularly true, but he loved the narrative of it anyway. “I, uh, think I need a shower.” They were sitting in a puddle of mingled effluvia, rapidly cooling. This was a criminal understatement.

Voldemort surveyed them as well. “Yes.”

Neither of them could stand without going a bit wobbly, so they made it to the shower propped on each other. And Harry lapped at the residual slickness on Voldemort’s torso in the shower, and Voldemort shoved Harry’s bruised arse under a too-hot stream because (he said) the _last_ thing he deserved was for the swelling to recede. It’d been days since they’d had a real shower rather than relying on cleaning spells – that’s how they’d lived in battle too, casting Tergeo and Scourgify to suck blood and dust from their bodies in the dark of night, and Harry didn’t realize how the tense connotations of it had stuck with him. Sex and a shower felt a bit like rebirth. But that was just the post-orgasm endorphins or whatever. They toweled each other off.

Back downstairs. Voldemort approached the coffee table where they’d left their wine – and Harry finally noticed that one of the empty glasses had the shimmery, smoky fluid of a memory in it. He’d forgotten the magic Voldemort had done; it must have extracted the memory. He gave Voldemort a curious look.

“This needs to be bottled properly,” he said, picking up the glass in an elegant gesture. “I removed it from you, of course. You may have it back, but….” He uncharacteristically hesitated.

“Well, what is it?” He recalled being upset about an abrupt intrusion of a recollection, but what it actually was…. “Oh. I guess that’d spoil the point,” he said at Voldemort’s look.

“It was an unpleasant moment with those Muggle relatives. Moody’s warning that I may not Obliviate, ah, that night for you led me to curiosity. This is a gentler, more precise spell that allows for restoration later. But the Aurors would still be very unhappy with me.”

He pulled Harry onto the sofa, holding the wine glass deliberately away so he couldn’t peer in. “If you trust me, you’ll believe that there is nothing redeeming, constructive, or good about this memory. Let me take it from you.” A curve of his lips. “Since this world can only offer you magic in lieu of psychology. It is effective, though.”

“I trust you,” he said, now deliberately looking away from the wine glass. As much morbid curiosity as he had – what _had_ his younger self endured, that was worse than the rest of it? – he recalled how much better he felt as soon as the memory had been lifted. “Uh, what are you going to do with it?”

“Put it somewhere safe.” He paused. “There must be other memories. They seem like… cruel people.” He said it with surprising restraint. “Give me the memories of your relatives you don’t want. The ones you deserve not to live with. Leave anything that is necessary for, mm, context. But there must be others like this.”

It was a disorienting offer. “It’s not Obliviate,” Harry said. “And it’s not Memini. I’ve used that one, but it only copied memories.” He thought. “Oh, I have seen this once before. I think,” he recalled. “Snape gave me everything he knew of my sex life. Said it’d be useless even as blackmail.”

A twitch of Voldemort’s lips. “That is generous of him.” Back into his typical didactic mode: “This is more precise than Obliviate. And the memories may be stored for later use. If, for

example, someone only wants to look back upon a traumatic experience at deliberate moments. It won’t invade their thoughts or dreams this way. The Aurors use it.”

“I don’t even dream anymore.”

A quirk of his mouth. “I do,” he informed Harry lightly. “Only when I don’t take dreamless sleep, and only very recently. And it is always your childhood. My apologies,” he said, for the invasion of privacy. “But this isn’t for my benefit. It’s because some part of your soul is… unsettled.” _Broken_ , he might as well have said. “Of course if you’re not interested, you can reclaim the memory. And we’ll find other magic of… mind-healing? Soul-healing? The demarcation can be ambiguous in such incidents.”

As Harry thought, he summoned his Pensieve from the basement. His childhood now felt like something a very long time ago, that had happened to somebody else. “I want to,” he said. “How do I do it?”

“The same gesture as Memini. The incantation is _Weigaron_.” At Harry’s frown, that that sounded nothing like a spell, he shrugged minutely. “Old High German. Twentieth century German-speaking wixes were practicing something closer to psychological magic than anyone else I’ve found. Freud’s influence transcended worlds.”

“Oh. Cool.” Voldemort’s look indicated he thought he was being sarcastic. “Really.”

“Unless you’d like to be alone, I’d prefer to stay here, with some amount of Legilimency. If you try taking a memory that’s not fully untangled from others… your mind can unravel rather quickly.”

Harry stared. “But that’s terrifying.”

“Yes,” Voldemort said, as though indifferent. “The psyche is beautiful in its complexity, but delicate for the same.”

“And you’ve done this before?” Harry was handing his wand over, preferring Voldemort do it after that dire imagery.

“Yes.” He took the proffered wand easily. “Unpleasant bits of my childhood – hence my preference for beginning there; they are the simplest memories and the smallest. And I removed ten of the twelve years of dispossession.” He spoke of it in calmer tones than Harry would have managed.

“Why not the other two?”

An amused hum. “Not simply _why_? Some days had relevant moments – people I found, or the days when the Ministry attempted to track me. But more profoundly, I didn’t want to forget the torture of _tedium_. Unrelenting agony, unspecific pain, consumed me the entire time. One would think the opportunity for pain would desist without a body,” he said dryly. Harry had gone quiet. “I didn’t rely on Crucio so often before then. In those years I saw the cruelty in eternal, undifferentiated pain that I had overlooked before. Other methods of torture carry specific sensation – that choking or bleeding or the peeling of flesh have particularity in addition to pain. Crucio – and the agony of dispossession – don’t have anything like that to focus on, to ground the experience in particular, embodied sensation. I believe it drives them mad much quicker, without any context to the pain.” He took a breath, and then added with some satisfaction: “I threw those years of memories in an Albanian river, as soon as I was able.”

He wondered just how emotionally fucked Voldemort was from this experience. If the Longbottoms were broken by minutes, what would years of torturous pain do to someone’s mind? “I’m sorry.”

“Before you go to pieces about this,” Voldemort said with the driest wit, “let me inform you that the _other_ reason I am practiced with the magic of memory is because I would need to torture wixes for information, frequently. I couldn’t destroy the bit of their mind that contained the relevant knowledge in my enthusiasm, after all.” He studied Harry’s expression and found it acceptable. “I would prefer you believe I deserve the pain, you know. All of it.”

“We’re not doing this tonight,” Harry said, and his sudden bluntness entertained Voldemort. “Just take my memories.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “So it begins like Occlumency….”

 

Voldemort really was very good at taking memories with surgical precision, they found. They took out parts of Dudley’s cruelty, of Vernon’s wrath, of Petunia’s neglect and impatience. The prolonged sort of sifting through Harry’s memories felt strange – _physically_ strange, like his brain was a deck of cards being cut over and over.

Voldemort was not particularly stopping to watch any of it – Harry would push a memory forward, Voldemort would pluck it from his temple, and he’d add it to a shimmering bottle on the table. It grew full.

“Alright,” Harry said, finally sitting back. He felt exhausted. Looking at the bottle, the echoes he saw there felt like not-quite-remembered dreams. He already knew he wouldn’t miss them.

“Good.” Voldemort was putting the cork in. “It will take a few days for your psyche to settle. If you like the effect, we can take memories from later in your life. More selectively, of course.”

They were both delicate about this option because obviously Harry’s most traumatic experiences would be of Voldemort himself. They wouldn’t do that. Harry wanted to be thoroughly finished with these referenda on their relationship. It was fucked, but it was also perhaps the most functional relationship he’d ever had. “Thank you,” he said, sliding back. Voldemort went to go place the smoky bottle somewhere out of Harry’s way.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Allusions for Chapter 8:
> 
> Haldol – an emergency drug, used to stop a psychotic break.
> 
> Victorian paroxysm – Victorian doctors literally used masturbation (and then vibrators, when their hands got tired, lol forever) to cure ‘hysterical’ or depressed women. It’s all serotonin, right?
> 
> Wicked Witch of the East – From The Wizard of Oz. She gets crushed to death by a house.
> 
> La petite mort – slang for orgasm, literally means ‘the little death.’
> 
> “They prefer me in a persistent state of injury” – This is an idea from Achille Mbembe’s “Necropolitics,” which argues that it is the responsibility of the state to decide who lives and who dies; or who gets healed and who remains injured. Voldemort is accusing the Aurors of preferring he remain weak and injured, because it makes him less dangerous.
> 
> “Evil be thou my good” and “The mind is its own place, and in its self can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven” – Milton’s Paradise Lost.
> 
> Oedipus Rex – the Greek tragedy of a man prophesied to kill his father and marry his mother; he tries to escape the prophecy the entire play but ends up fulfilling it in running away. “Child of Chance the great goddess” is a quote from it.
> 
> “Even if you do not take an interest in politics, doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you” – Pericles
> 
> “Freud’s influence transcended worlds” – I just love the idea of different disciplines or different types of magic being influenced by the particular Muggle culture around them. Sigmund Freud was the 20th century psychoanalyst who theorized a lot about sex, family, and unconscious desires. 
> 
> And I updated the cheat sheet [here](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zQkSzP-Q-NyG1Qo9ZhTw_iSJBY-QKeygj8fJiviUTfw) with a list of other fics that have inspired this one, with plot or character or magic or other things.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry liaisons with Muggles. Voldemort recovers Nagini’s body, and learns something new about his Horcruxes. 
> 
> (Warning: a conversation about sexual abuse in prison)

_Sunday, August 9._ Sunday came, when they’d attempt Cornwall’s airspace shield, and they were both mildly dreading it. Voldemort’s magic and his physical strength were both still compromised, and Harry’s emotional fragility (including from the memory removal, which was a good decision, just a draining one) made it harder for him to direct magic as he passed it along. They decided Voldemort would take the first hour, _at most_ , and Harry would finish it off. Voldemort took both Horcruxes – the locket at his throat, the miniaturized diadem worn like a ring – to draw upon their reserves.

Only two Aurors came to fetch them this time, Rye and Herzog. They had a Healer with them, a sharp witch named Gramercy. It was the first time that their group would be small enough to depart with a single Portkey.

“The Minister is bringing a few Muggles along,” Rye said as Voldemort and Harry sorted out their arcana. “They’ll meet us in Cornwall.”

“Why?” Voldemort’s voice was sharp, and Rye nearly flinched. She didn’t appreciate confrontation with him like Moody or Brightbone did.

“Uh, they insisted,” she said hesitantly. A look from Voldemort pushed her onward. “They haven’t been told much about… you, these past few weeks. Not since Sectumsempra. It only looks like you’ve withdrawn from diplomatic talks abruptly. We’ve _assured_ them, of course,” she said, “but they’d like to see you for themselves.”

“Mm.” He handed Harry a jar of focusing crystals. “And you thought that inviting them _here_ , a task which the Minister admits I am expected to _fail_ , would strengthen their confidence in me.”

“They insisted,” Rye reiterated. “I am sorry.” She’d taken a few steps back, toward the door, and it was a pitiful sight. Harry generally felt less need to intercede these days, as most wixes working with Voldemort now found him annoying rather than threatening per se, but it was going to be a bad day.

“Thank you, Auror Rye,” he said, shooting a dark look at Voldemort. “Vol, don’t be an arse. We’ve got to pack potions.” He took his cool, dry hand, pulling him to the basement, and it was only because they tried not to fight in front of other people that Voldemort didn’t rebel at this infantilizing gesture.

Silencing spells as a barrier between the kitchen and the basement stairs, though they spoke in Parseltongue anyway. “You know it’s not her fault,” Harry said, cracking a calming draught into their cauldron to heat it. “If you requested the Aurors this week, why choose one you seem to want to eviscerate?”

A quirk of his mouth. “ _That_ is nothing like evisceration. I am quite good at evisceration.” Harry groaned in protest. “Herzog is here because he’s specialized in wards and arcana. Rye is here because she seemed the least likely to go to the papers, for an exclusive on how _broken_ I am.”

“You’re not,” Harry sighed.

An unimpressed look. “I am, and you do me no favors by denying it. I can barely do wandless magic anymore.”

Harry had noticed this; he ducked his head in acknowledgment. “I’ll do as much of the casting as you’ll let me. I want to do it all,” he reminded Voldemort, “but you said no.”

“To indicate to the Muggles that their security is in the hands of a student would be cause for about as much confidence as a frail inhuman tyrant.”

He gave Voldemort a sad smile. “Yeah.” Turning away, he threw a handful of baobab tablets in his mouth. “Here, love.” He approached, moving to kiss Voldemort deeply. As he softened marginally in Harry’s touch, he used his tongue to press the tablets past his teeth. A soft laugh against his lips, and Voldemort swallowed and so did Harry. In a long moment, things felt slightly okay again.

A flask for the calming draught. Healer Gramercy had said she’d already brought Verve, “but I’d like to bring my own,” Voldemort added with a frown.

“What, so you haven’t got to ask her?” Harry said with mild exasperation. “It’s her _job_.”

“And mine is the appearance of infallibility. Indulge me, Harry.”

He did. Bottles and pills were stashed alongside their arcane elements. Traveling was a logistics-intensive endeavor for them, these days.

They were late getting out the door, which only really bothered Voldemort. Scrimgeour was already at the cliffs of Cornwall with three Muggles: two men in shirtsleeves, a woman in a sundress. It was deeply summertime, Harry thought, and he would’ve offered them a swim in the sea below if it’d been his to offer.

Greetings, introductions. The Muggles were a regular part of whatever meetings Voldemort was in, clearly, because they were strangely comfortable with him. “Nobody would tell us anything,” one of the men said easily as he clasped Voldemort’s hand. “Said it was for _security_ , that you were alive but that was all they could confirm.” Turning his spidery hand over, he looked at the silvery scars. “My god.”

Voldemort pulled out of his grasp delicately. “You won’t make enemies as I’ve made,” he reassured the man. “You won’t see anything like this again.”

“But that looks _awful_ ,” the man protested. He was searching Voldemort’s face and throat for a similar web of scars. They glittered in the bright sun. “Really, why are you here.”

Pity was an emotion to which Voldemort was obviously unaccustomed – and amazingly, he might get it more from Muggles than from wixes. Relative history and trauma involved, apparently. “I’m fine,” he muttered, trying to extricate himself from this conversation. “Someday we too can offer you magic in place of medicine.”

Meanwhile, the woman had approached Harry with unexpected purpose. “Antonia Chambliss.” She offered her hand. “Toni. They said I needed to meet you.”

His brain creaked into gear. “Harry Potter. Hi. Um, good to meet you…?”

“I’m the liaison of the, uh, Muggle world to the magical population. They said I’d be working with you.”

“Oh!” It was true, he should probably be more connected to all this work now than he was. “Yeah. I mean, you will. I haven’t done my… A-levels yet.” He said it hesitantly. It’s been awhile since he’d thought of such things as A-levels. “I hope it’s been good work so far. Easy, that is.”

She glanced back at the men, now in conversation about the inter-world commerce bill Voldemort was behind on. “It has been. A lot of learning and a lot to adapt to. The ministry of communications has it the worst, though. I mean, how would _you_ explain to the whole of Britain that magic is real and wizards exist?”

She said it like a hypothetical question, but Harry grinned. “I grew up not knowing about magic,” he said. “You, uh, get used to it pretty quickly. Are you allowed in wixen spaces yet? That helped, going to the shops for the first time.” Secretly he thought that if everyone could be sent their own personal Hagrid, that’d help a lot.

“Not on our own. Your Minister and Voldemort say your transit wouldn’t work for us alone.”

“We need to start field trips.” And he said it lightly but her eyes lit up. “You haven’t been, then?” he asked, holding back disbelief. What sort of liaison did they want her to be.

“Only to your Ministry.”

“But – “ He was full of ideas of what to show the Muggles first. “I mean, you probably want someone you actually know to show you around. But just Diagon Alley – it’s the biggest downtown area, all our shops are there and our bank – or Hogsmeade, a village just outside Hogwarts – Hogwarts is the school. School starts next month on the first, I don’t know if it’d be easier to bring Muggles in before the term’s started or after – Sorry,” he concluded, when he realized he was rambling. “But really, what do they expect you to _do_ without even seeing any of it.”

Toni had pulled a notepad from her bag, and she was furiously taking notes, but a smile also played at her lips. “I’d like very much to see Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade and Hogwarts.” She said them as though she had practiced. “Can I send you an… owl?” Understandable hesitation.

“Yes – I mean, _no_ ,” he realized with a sigh. “Normally yes, but we’re kind of in a secure location right now. I don’t get letters there directly. You should pass them to the Aurors, they’ll get them to me.” He tried to allay the mild concern now on Toni’s face. “It’s a precaution. For me and Voldemort both. We aren’t in danger, really,” though he had no idea how true that was.

“Right.” Toni had glanced back to Rye and Herzog. “The Aurors, then.”

“Please. Sorry, it is a hassle.”

“We were, ah, warned that you’d be important.”

Harry snorted and then realized she was sincere. “Not the most important,” he assured her. One last thing, he chewed his tongue. “Also,” he said with hesitation, “you all should probably pick a name for yourselves that isn’t _Muggle_.” He felt more self-conscious every time he said it aloud. “It’s not a bad word or anything, it just….”

“Lacks gravitas?” Toni suggested. The smile was still on her lips.

“Exactly.”

 

When he and Voldemort drew back together, Voldemort ran an unexpectedly affectionate touch down the back of his neck. “Excellent work, Ambassador Potter.”

“Do you even know what I did? You were off talking about the Gringotts-standardized exchange rate or some muck.” He was pulling their arcane elements from Voldemort’s bag, shaking a jar to unclump their chalk.

“You did what we anticipated and needed of you.” At Harry’s glare, he made an indifferent gesture. “Charmed her, I’m sure. Did you offer to show her Diagon Alley?”

Harry intensified his glare. “Yes. And Hogsmeade. I don’t know that they could get into Hogwarts though.”

“A question for the governors.” He was pulling out the notebook with their runes in it, though Harry had them nearly memorized by now.

“I don’t know why I’m not in these meetings. I mean, I didn’t think about it before, but if it’s going to be my job….”

“It _will_ be,” Voldemort stressed. “It is not currently. More of what we do now is legislation and logistics. You would be bored. Your role shall be, mm, goodwill ambassador.” Harry gave him an unimpressed look; he sighed. “It was not _my_ decision. I advocated for you to join us now.”

“Oh.” His skepticism turned into a frown. “Then… who? And why?”

“Some of the Aurors, some of the Wizengamot, some other departments with the responsibility of security.” He was arranging the first of the focusing crystals, carefully, to match the way he chose his words. “Some of them believed we would be a threat together, before the Muggles. Especially since your newfound skill in wandless magic has become more widely known. Diplomatic agreements are typically held without wands,” he added helpfully, “as a security measure.”

He recalled Scrimgeour saying the last meeting was wandless. “For everyone? Or just with you?”

“No, it’s standard. But,” he waved off Harry’s question, which was obviously uninteresting to him, “the Ministry finds our relationship… ambiguous,” he enunciated, “and were concerned I would take your magic or manipulate you or _something_ to attack the Muggles. Nevermind that we’ve signed about two dozen non-aggression agreements already. They assume you are part of some far-reaching plan of mine.” He looked up, to see Harry bristled. “I know,” he said, performing it in a soothing sort of tone. “Obviously I can’t properly defend against the accusation.”

“I’m not your _tool_.” He was suddenly angry with the Minister and Aurors. Did they think no better of him?

“I know,” Voldemort repeated, less mollifying this time.

“Who do I talk to?” Scrimgeour was still here. Scrimgeour had become an unlikely advocate for them both. “ _I’ll_ sign all the non-aggression agreements too. I want to be there.” He wouldn’t feel half as strongly if there weren’t such a bloody _accusation_ attached to it.

Voldemort followed his gaze. “Harry.” Deeply unimpressed, now. “No.” He’d put the crystals down for a moment.

“But this is _bullshit_.”

Upon reflection: it was the repetition of every other moment in his life, when he’d been kept blind or ignorant of something significant for his own good. He wasn’t even a child anymore. (Had he ever been? All these unpleasant truths had matured him quickly.) He was being put in the place Scrimgeour had offered him sixth year, mascot rather than citizen. _Goodwill ambassador_ , this time, perfectly charming and perfectly apolitical. He’d spent too much time with Voldemort recently to be ethically apolitical anymore. So it was his affront, and it was his insecurity at being left out of everything _again_ , that made him push so hard. And maybe it was also because Voldemort did a better job treating him as an adult than anyone else in his life, that he didn’t deserve Harry’s ire but Harry felt he’d be the only person to _hear_ it. Which only reflected poorly on bloody everyone else in his life.

Voldemort struggled anyway, pulling apart his psyche carefully because the grief of loneliness was a foreign emotion to him. When he thought he understood the fear and insecurity welling up in Harry, he said once more, as though it helped, “I know.”

“Do you,” he demanded.

And then Voldemort was pulling him in, looking at him very seriously. He held Harry’s hands in his, as though they were lovers, but he spoke with political urgency. The sibilant sounds of Parseltongue were harsh when spoken so urgently. “It probably seems to you that anything may be solved with enough sincerity and desire and goodwill. That _you_ can solve anything with enough sincerity,” he clarified. “It is part of your salvific presence. It seems, maddeningly, to have worked so far, leading to some unwarranted reinforcement of said beliefs.”

“I haven’t survived off _sincerity_ ,” he said, though it was obvious misdirection.

A frustrated look. “You retrieved the Philosopher’s stone by specifically not wanting to use it,” he pointed out. “Sincerity, desire, goodwill.” His long nails tapped each along the back of Harry’s hands. “They _won’t_ get you any farther. Be amazed and grateful they’ve kept you alive as often as they have already. But in the rest of the world… honestly desiring something isn’t reason enough to ask for it. Everyone carries millions of wishes inside of themselves. If you ever learn Legilimency, it’s all you’ll ever find in their minds. Nobody simply asks because…. I don’t want you to look naïve,” he changed tactics. “And such assumptions are only ever naïve.”

“The assumption that I deserve to choose my own life?”

An indulgent smile. “Yes.” He paused. “People might also assume, with more urgency and nefarious intent, that you are no longer naïve at all. That as you say,” (although he hadn’t; he’d only thought this) “you’ve spent too much time in proximity to politics for anyone to believe that anymore. In _that_ case… they could put any number of narratives on your overly-candid requests. None of them would be flattering or useful.”

“So?”

Voldemort stepped back, returning to the focusing crystals, such that Harry thought he’d just chosen not to dignify this with a response. He trailed after him with the runes in chalk, upset and impotent as always. And because he couldn’t leave well enough alone: “You have a lot of ideas about how our politics should work differently. You don’t even _like_ most of the acting they have to do. But you seem to slip into it really easily, for an excuse.”

It was infuriating, that this accusation only mildly amused Voldemort. “Don’t leverage the rhetoric of purity and assimilation against _me_ ,” he snorted. “A good gambit, but wrong.”

Patronizing bastard. “Don’t,” he said. A breath. “You’re better about listening, and about explaining, and about… treating me like an adult” (hesitation on this one; he’d reached the age of majority over a year ago, after all, and nothing was so childish as an obsession with appearing mature) “than almost anyone else. Don’t just dismiss me, too. Please.”

“Your standards are very low,” Voldemort remarked. “Also,” a long finger pointed at him, “ _sincerity_.”

“What’s fucking wrong with sincerity,” he muttered. His runes were getting sloppy; he vanished one in frustration and started over.

Voldemort took this time to weigh words. “Fine,” he finally said. Harry looked up from straightening the lines of chalk. “You also may not demand to attend the diplomatic meetings because they might say yes. With the ultimatum that if you attend, I cannot. And since you are such a great believer in sincerity and desire as resolution,” he said it as a sigh, “I want this more than you do. More pointedly, I _need_ this more than you do. It is a fortuitous but precarious circumstance,” he said carefully. And he was right; everything had fallen together just right in the moment that he’d become integral to the Ministry instead of being summarily executed. It was still always a threat. “Don’t ruin this for some banal feeling of _belonging_.”

As always, Voldemort was both an arsehole and completely correct. “Right,” Harry said. The space between them eased. “Though,” he said with something like a smile, “if the Ministry, uh, did anything, it seems like the Muggles would worry about you.”

“Yes.” Voldemort glanced back at the politician who had worried over his scarring. “That is Derek Munro. Scottish secretary for aerospace security. He is like that with everyone, I assure you.”

“I expected them to be scared of you, I guess. Do they, uh, know who you are?” (He had recently become more awkward naming Voldemort as a murderer and racial supremacist. It seemed rude to mention. Voldemort had recognized this, and mocked Harry for his good manners.)

“Of course. But,” a smile was playing at the corner of his mouth, “they found my politics quite reasonable. Less the bits about killing Muggles,” he said sweetly, just to see Harry flinch, “but they believe in cultural preservation as a _good thing_. And I spoke of the strength and purity of blood as something more analogous to class than to race. Some people are more equipped to handle power, others are more equipped to serve. This stratification entails both natural and cultural elements, but to deny difference to _spare the lower classes’ feelings_ is absurd. The other wixies countered this swiftly, of course, but the idea was put in place. If anything, it is the ones who _don’t_ believe blood is important to power who look like radicals now.”

Harry groaned. “ _Why_.”                                               

It had been rhetorical but Voldemort answered anyway. “Because their government, like our own, is only particularly accessible to the upper class. The ones who have inherited wealth and prestige and connections. Yet it is _imperative_ to them that they are told they deserve these things, they’ve earned these things, they are the true rulers and creators, and the very stupid lower classes would be lost without them. The suggestion that there is less difference than they tell themselves is deeply threatening. They _need_ to believe in naturalized supremacy. I offered them nothing new.”

Harry had stopped tracing the runes in chalk. He loved Voldemort, and he’d forgiven him for the personal ways he’d ruined Harry’s life; but he was a lot less certain he could forgive Voldemort’s politics. “But – no. That is awful and it’s _wrong_.” The previous anger hadn’t really receded so he had something new to attach it to. “You talk about it like you don’t even believe it, but it’s such a _dangerous_ , _stupid_ belief if you’re just using it as… as leverage or whatever anyway. _Do_ you believe it?” he asked, tremulously. He didn’t know which answer he’d prefer.

Instead Voldemort took the chalk from him, to trace runes himself. “The Muggles will grow impatient,” he said. They were nearly done anyway, but they were both avoiding casting after this. “Actually, so will the wixes.”

“Answer me,” Harry demanded.

Eyebrows up. “Which bit of it?” he asked. “I do believe the upper class needs more coddling and reassurance than the lower classes do. I do believe both class and blood purity are determined jointly by natural and social markers. I believe that wixenkind has a responsibility to not dilute our blood lines too much; our population is already _so_ small and fragile, just a few percentage points higher of Squib births would bottleneck and extinct us.” He’d written the last of the runes; now they just stood, simply facing each other.

“The best witch I know is Muggleborn.”

“Yes. Tell Ms. Granger” (and Harry found it unexpectedly unpleasant to find Voldemort knew his friends’ names without prompting, though of course he did) “that she should marry a proper wix, if she doesn’t want to see all of that talent wasted on a Squib.” The barest of a smile. “If this at all mollifies you – ideas of non-pureblood equality have only even emerged within this century. But there are already enough laws against discrimination – things about marriage, children, housing, employment, education – that I’d be unable to dismantle them. I don’t intend to.”

“You’ve told Scrimgeour it’s the Minister’s job to break the law anyway.”

A look of faint surprise, presumably at Harry’s competence, goddamn him. “More that lawmakers are by definition above the law, but yes.”

“So why would that _mollify_ me?”

“We need to cast,” Voldemort said instead. “The Aurors are growing restless.”

“Then cast,” Harry said, less fussy over Voldemort now than he had been.

“So spiteful,” Voldemort marveled, teasing. He twirled his wand in his fingers, weighing it. Harry, not without some reluctance, pulled a section of the shield taut, for a better target. “Protego!”

His magic sputtered at first, unused to the expenditure as he currently was, and then it fell into a steady curve. Harry had watched anxiously, and barely relaxed now.

Voldemort was focused on the shield, and spoke without looking at him. “Professional vows are common. You might be asked to take one before the beginning of the school year. And the Minister’s, as you might expect, is stringent. A clause against blood discrimination was added to it only thirty years ago, by the first and only Muggleborn Minister,” he informed Harry.

“Just because _everyone_ is terrible….”

“Do you really care about my intentions?” Voldemort asked. “What is _written on my heart_? I am telling you that the Muggleborns will be safe.” A breath. “You are wringing interesting truths from me already today, Harry, so here is the last one: I’ll hold any belief I’ve got to in exchange for power. I don’t need to rely on blood purity as a political stance anymore. I did, fifty years ago, a bit to collect Grindelwald’s erstwhile followers and a bit to secure the support of purebloods who were anxious at social change. Muggleborns were newly taking office, newly taking high-paying jobs. Muggle holidays began to be favored over wixen ones. Several prominent pureblood marriages were legally rejected for high consanguinity, when the old wixen families had been left alone to interbreed as they would previously. I don’t _want_ you to believe in my politics,” he said because Harry had gone stiff with objection. “But I am… less attached to them now than when I was younger. I see political opportunity now in…” he cast his eyes upward, searching for the words, “in everyone’s weariness of the prospect of war. Including my own.” The last admission was quiet, barely carried on an exhalation.

Maybe it was just their connection, but Harry was tired too. They were out of practice at fighting, like everything else. “Why can’t I believe in your politics?” he asked instead. “You have a lot to say, if you don’t want to persuade me.”

“Because, darling,” (both a taunt and a peace offering here; he could press more withering mockery in that one word than any others combined, and Harry fucking _loved_ it) “nobody would believe you. Nobody would _recognize_ you, the soft-hearted hero and the savior.”

“I’m not, anymore.”

“You are. Like the prophecy, it has been fulfilled in unexpected ways.”

Harry looked curiously at him. He wasn’t looking back. The implication was clear enough, that Harry had saved the world from Voldemort or perhaps saved Voldemort from himself. Probably both.

The Muggles were approaching. They wouldn’t disagree even before other wixes if they could help it; they especially weren’t going to continue the conversation before Muggles. Harry offered a bottle of Verve to Voldemort in preparation.

The enthusiastic one, Secretary Munro, was chattering happily to the other two. Toni and the other male Muggle had their heads craned upward, looking for glimpses of the shield, though it would be invisible to them. The wixes were on the other side of the space, dozens of yards away, Harry noted with some resentment. They couldn’t be _too_ concerned that he and Voldemort had plans to murder the Muggles.

Voldemort had straightened, watching them approach. “You might be able to feel the magic,” he offered to the officials when they’d joined them. “Some Muggles can. Especially strong magic. Hold your hand over the focusing crystals.”

Only Toni did, frowning. “And what does it feel like?” she asked, doubtful.

“Static electricity, I’m told. Harry – “ Voldemort turned carefully, his wand held as though he meant to pass it. “Have you cast an infrared Lumos before?”

“No. You ought to.” It was an elegant way to switch off casting, to preserve Voldemort’s strength. Fishing his own wand from his pocket to pass to him, he took Voldemort’s carefully, pressing his own magic to the shield before Voldemort withdrew his.

“Most wixes can’t share magic so readily,” Voldemort said to the Muggles, curious at this choreography. “If magic is a natural resource that only wixes can metabolize, then… it’s as though we’ve got the same blood type. Harry _has_ given me blood, actually, quite a lot of it, and I’m sure it’s helped.” These didactic moments were centering for him, and seemed to put people around him relatively at ease as well. The Muggles were patient. “But you are here for the shield. _Lumos inhorresco_!” With Harry’s wand, he shot the spell straight up.

Of course Harry was able to see the shield; it was generally a transparent milky white against the sky. With sufficient ambient darkness it glittered. But he gasped too as Lumos hit the sky: the shield went red and violet, shifting and swirling wildly. He saw the stream where his magic entered the shield, an impossibly deep blue that diffused across the surface. He might have been gaping as much as the Muggles. The Aurors and Healer, now also curious, were moving to join this demonstration.

Voldemort even looked satisfied. “What you see now is a modified shield charm. The shield charm is a dueling spell. May I cast it on you?”

“Yes,” Munro said, instantly and eagerly. This sweet, trusting, silly bloke. He was the only one of the three who didn’t flinch when Voldemort pointed the wand in their direction.

“ _Protego_.” Another shield, a lighter shade than the one arching over them, popped into existence before the Muggles. “An intermediate spell, taught to students in their later years. The arcane elements – the markings in chalk, the crystals – modify it, to define it relative to a geographic space instead of a person. Also to modify how it defines threat and intention – obviously we had to find a way to let your own aircraft through, without allowing enemy craft, for example.” Toni was taking notes once again; the men just listened, slightly overwhelmed. The pink-violet hue of the shield was not a great look for any of them.

“Though this,” Voldemort went on, nodding at the smaller shield, “does have some sense of intent. A healing spell is more likely to penetrate than a spell of aggression. I would demonstrate,” and now his tone had gone mischievous, for the wixes had just approached, “but it’d get the Aurors a bit touchy to use dueling spells on our guests.”

“Yes, we would,” Scrimgeour agreed briefly as he stepped in. “What is this?” He nodded upwards.

“Lumos cast in infrared. Muggles use infrared – mm, a lens to make different types of light visible? – in their security. It reveals heat and expended energy, so of course it catches magic. It would also reveal, for example, someone beneath an invisibility cloak.”

“Fascinating.” He did mean it.

Toni looked to the Minister. “We’ll give you infrared tech,” she said, “if you give us this.” She indicated the Protego still hanging in the air between them. “For military and LEO use, certainly. But even just security of high-ranking officials. Can I touch it?” she asked Voldemort.

“Your hand will go through, without ill intent.” He stepped close; she frowned in thought. In a single motion, she moved as though to slap him. Her hand bounced off the shield with a sound like hitting glass. She gave a surprised laugh. “Good,” was all Voldemort said, as the Aurors squirmed nervously.

She was looking to Scrimgeour once more. “We need this,” she reiterated. “We need magic in our military. We need you in MI5.”

“We would do a very poor job handling your international relations,” he demurred.

“Our intelligence says both the Germans and the Americans have wizards in their military already.”

“Have they?” This obviously came as both unexpected and unpleasant news. Voldemort, though quiet, looked no happier. “This is a discussion for my minister of war,” Scrimgeour said. “There are people better versed than I am in the legality of such things. We may need to draft new non-aggression treaties on our side first.” He was thoughtful, and wasn’t going to commit anything more to the Muggles currently.

The other Muggle cleared his throat, to move them away from this topic. “So that,” he nodded upwards, “is _this_ , but bigger?”

“Yes.” Voldemort. “As I said, modified by runes, but yes. There are anchors like these all over the coast.”

“And it’s all in one piece?”

“Yes.” (They’d known this; they all had maps of the thing along with the proposal before it was actually put in place. Voldemort was unexpectedly patient. But he had to be.)

He thought. “Does it take a proportionate amount of power, to go from one to the other?”

“Approximately.” Voldemort was generally not hesitant to call himself the world’s most powerful wizard, but he was slightly more subdued here. Given the conversation, he might have been wary of being taken double-hostage by the Muggles. Voldemort was a resource in high demand. “The connection I share with Harry generates its own power. We are great than the sum of our parts,” he explained. “Idiosyncratic. Nothing to be understood, much less reproduced.”

(This was of more interest to the Aurors than the Muggles. Harry had thought Voldemort was saying nothing new, but maybe he was.)

The Muggles were quite taken with this, anyway; and the Aurors weren’t disputing the narrative. Munro gazed up at the glittering violet shield, the single largest piece of their domestic security, and then back at Voldemort. “Thank you,” he said, full of sincerity.

Voldemort was surprised and then amused by this. “I am not free,” he reminded Munro. The Muggles and wixes alike flinched (and Harry thought quietly that if the Ministry was so embarrassed to imprison Voldemort, then they were certainly welcome to do something about it). “ _Harry_ , on the other hand,” and suddenly all eyes were on him, “is here simply due to his insatiable need to be a hero.”

This was not quite true, Harry was in the custody of the state too, though obviously they insisted on it a lot less. It was a deflection and he wondered why. “Well,” he said with a performative smile.

Munro’s gaze slid to him. “Thank you,” he repeated. Harry smiled back and wondered if Fate too had decreed him the Golden Boy in one world or another. He wasn’t sure he could handle being in any media with a higher circulation than the Prophet.

The Muggles receded, and then the Healers and Aurors. Scrimgeour remained. “Good work,” he murmured to Voldemort. The shield above them was still lit by infrared, and he was gazing at it.

“They _can’t_ have anything that would make them more confident in warfare.”

Scrimgeour’s laugh was abrupt and unamused. “No,” he said. “I don’t know why they’d possibly feel threatened by the Germans or Americans. They are ostensibly allies. Look into it, would you?”

“Yes.”

“If the Muggles start a war with either of them – if the Muggles start a war _at all_ – then we’ll declare Hogwarts a bunker until it is over. And you would be welcome to rule over whatever remained, in the aftermath.”

“I would, though.”

“I know.”

Voldemort let a moment pass. Then: “What do you know of my Horcruces?”

A slight frown. “Little more than you’ve told me.”

“No.” He’d squared his shoulders. This was new. He performed and baited and mocked and sometimes even taught, but he didn’t _confront_ anyone from the Ministry. Both Harry and Scrimgeour were surprised by the sincerity etched on his inhuman features. “When I said the connection created magic greater than the sum of its parts. That meant something to you, and to the Aurors.”

Scrimgeour was good at holding onto a silence, but so was Voldemort. It was excruciating – actually painful to behold, unless that was just Harry’s magic beginning to flag.

Finally, Scrimgeour: “You already know it’s my professional opinion that you should reclaim the Horcruxes, and my personal opinion that you shouldn’t. That confirmation changes nothing.”

“Confirmation.” His tone was flat.

“Yes.” The side of his mouth curled. “Like you, I believe that knowledge should be free unless it is valuable. This is valuable.”

“I have nothing more to offer you.” Uncharacteristic frustration. “The Ministry already has access to my magic, mind, and body. Shall I blow you, _sir_ , like I blow Bowersock, so my abjection should be fully realized?”

_Crack_. A thunderstorm, involuntary this time, plunged them into darkness and dumped torrential rain on them. Harry held Voldemort’s wand very tightly. He was suddenly shaking.

“Oh, Harry,” Voldemort sighed, moving to deal with _this_ fucking crisis now. “You shouldn’t have heard that. Here.” He was pushing a calming draught from his pockets into Harry’s hand, casting shield charms over them all to keep the rain off. Scrimgeour, toughened by decades as an Auror, did not visibly react, but had gone still. Voldemort threw back a calming draught himself as he waited for a response.

“If you provide a memory, I’ll sack him.”

“No.” Somehow Voldemort was the most collected of the three of them. “Because Bright would be his successor and Bright is worse. Anyway, his guilt will be useful. Everyone’s will be, really.” He cast an Impervious like an umbrella over the three of them as Harry struggled to pull his magic under control.

“And mine?” Scrimgeour asked.

“And yours.”

He was quiet. Then: “There’s a meeting at noon Wednesday with Gringotts and the BoE. You’ll return with me to my office afterward.”

“Excellent.”

“Really, it isn’t.” He couldn’t entirely keep the edge from his voice.

“Since Harry is obviously implicated in the information, he’ll join me. You can keep him elsewhere during the Gringotts meeting,” Voldemort added. “That is, Harry, if you want to go?”

“I’ll go.” His voice stuck in his throat.

“Fine,” Scrimgeour sighed. For the first time, he looked old. “And as I said… knowing this information would not, I think, alter your plans.”

“I’ll relieve you of the burden of this secret, anyway.”

Scrimgeour shook his head, faintly defeated. “I am sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

“We might relocate you. Nurmengard is the nearest. Of course, it would take a few months to write an agreement with the Swiss ministry.”

The idea clearly intrigued Voldemort, but – “No,” he said. “Azkaban was my choice. I’ll come to you if I begin to regret it.”

“I hope you would.”

Voldemort was approaching Harry now, whose magic still ripped open the skies to pour rain on them. “Harry. _Harry_.” He was prying his own wand from Harry’s fingers. “Here.” With a swirl of magic, he took back control of the shield.

Scrimgeour was stuck, with nothing adequate to say, and no reason to stay but no reason to leave. Voldemort glanced at him: “You should tell the Muggles that the storm will clear momentarily.”

“Yes.” His chest rose and fell in a final breath. “And you don’t need – ?”

“No.”

And they were alone, and Harry looked up at him, wide-eyed. “When?” he asked. His voice was thick.

“More recently than you had been there.”

“I wish you’d told me.”

“It was insignificant. Advantageous, even.” He looked up at the sky dubiously. “If this won’t stop anytime soon, I’d take your memory instead. You could have it back at a more convenient time.”

“I wish you’d killed him.”

A careful moment. “We’ll discuss this later. We’re going to perform the same removal of memories as we practiced earlier this week.” Harry still held the vial, empty from the calming draught. (Which normally he didn’t mind, but it already felt strange to feel so disconnected from his feelings at this moment. It was how depression had made him feel all week anyway, and the compounding of his emptiness was just unpleasant.) Voldemort nodded to it. “Removal of a new memory is simplest, as it’s not intertwined with any other yet. _Weigaron_ ,” he reminded Harry.

“And later – ?”

“Later,” he agreed. “But you need to look, well, significantly more composed than you currently look.”

He should’ve fought. No matter. With the week of melancholy and feeling dead inside, the calming draught, and the shock of this news, all options seemed about equally terrible, so he might as well follow through with this one.

Raising the wand to his temple: “ _Weigaron_.” He pulled those few minutes from his skull. His heart seemed to beat differently when they were gone. Into the empty vial. The storm clouds receded.

“Very good.” The infrared had been washed away or forgotten in the storm, so the shield above them was white-ish against the now-bright sky.

Harry tucked away the vial, no longer recalling what was in it but knowing it’d been devastating. Voldemort was right, they could handle devastating things in private. It should probably be counted as part of their unspoken agreement not to undermine each other in front of others; Harry didn’t need to look infallible but Voldemort did – and since Harry was an extension of Voldemort, actually Harry kind of did too. This utility and objectification bothered him less now than it had earlier. Everything bothered him less now actually, though not in a good way.

“May I have your magic?” Voldemort asked.

“Yeah.” He had the sense that they were both fairly broken, but – like their magic generally – the healing came from being greater than the sum of their parts. He fit himself familiarly at Voldemort’s side.

 

It went better than expected. They traded off, with Healer Gramercy pressing Verve and focusing potions upon them both. Voldemort relaxed (if those two things could ever go together) when it was clear he wouldn’t out himself as being infirm or broken or emptied of magic. The Muggles – at least _these_ Muggles – were utterly charmed by him. It was still strange to Harry, not that Voldemort could be charming, because of course he could be, but that he’d want to be. The Muggles were as essential to his strategy for power as anyone, he supposed.

But the Muggles peeled off after a time, and the Minister with them. When the shield was uniform across the sky, their work was finished. Voldemort took his time in repacking, such that the Aurors and Healer were impatient by the time they approached. “Apologies,” Voldemort said.

“Not at all.” Herzog had the Portkeys: one for the three of them, the other to return to the safehouse. “We’ll be by on Wednesday, then.”

“Excellent.”

With a curt nod, Herzog unzipped the Ministry portkey; Harry passed theirs to Voldemort and he did the same. His hands were tight on the metal. The usual wait of a minute, the Ministry employees were swept up, and then –

Voldemort made a harsh gesture over their Portkey, unnaturally containing the magic back inside. Harry stared. “There are a few things to which to attend,” he said casually, letting the portkey fall because the manipulation was beginning to burn. “I’ll return for you. _Stupefy._ ”

Well. Harry was out before he hit the ground, so he couldn’t even say whether Voldemort cast a courtesy cushioning charm beneath him.

 

The stunning was half-sleep. At times he thought he was awake, at times he thought his eyes were open, but then a hallucination would pass across his vision and he’d realize. Nagini circling him, most of all. He hallucinated that her scales glinted light in his eyes, hurting him, blinding him…. He thought the light was washing out the faces of hooded figures standing far off, he couldn’t count them but it was a small group. Nagini made tighter and tighter circles. And then he realized it had never been their faces he was seeing, but masks. Of course. And then the Death Eaters began circling too, in tighter and tighter circles.

When they were upon him – the masks didn’t even have features as such, but still, their features kept shifting – there was a jolt and he was _sure_ he was awake this time, slammed back to earth. The sky over him, if it was real, had grown dark. He wondered if it would rain again.

No visions now, but voices this time: Voldemort’s even tone, and a man and a woman. His parents? They were panicked if not screaming. He wanted to hear his mum’s familiar screams, even that would deliver him from this disorientation.

There – faint – begging, different words than the ones he’d known but the same tone. And the man’s voice, deep, loud – familiar but unpleasantly so. He hadn’t known his father’s voice –

_Oh_. He had never noticed how similar Petunia sounded to her sister.

The voices were like a badly-tuned radio. It was giving him a headache, straining to listen. When had Voldemort even met Petunia and Vernon? He’d said he couldn’t get within a mile of their house. No matter; he’d just dreamed of Nagini who was definitely dead and the Death Eaters who were definitely imprisoned and equally condemned, so. So. The headache was threatening to become a migraine. He was already photo-sensitive from the harsh glint of Nagini’s scales earlier. If he sicked up in this position, he’d aspirate and die, he knew. He held himself down into proper sleep instead.

He had no sense of time, but it was dark by the time Voldemort was scooping him up again. “Rennervate.” He held Harry as he found his footing. “We need to go.” Scooping the portkey from its shameful place in the dirt, he released the appropriate magic once more. Harry fell alongside him.

“What did you do?” He was angry at the abrupt sort of treatment, but neither of them was in an emotional state to fight. Actually, looking up, Voldemort looked _awful_ , and smelled of blood.

“Not even justice,” he said grimly, and then the poor, put-upon portkey, with some difficulty, pulled them away.

Voldemort was very much not okay, he saw in the light of the safehouse. (And he’d nearly sagged with relief to not find it covered in Aurors upon their return, which of course had been a possibility. _Should_ have happened, if the Ministry hadn’t underestimated Voldemort as they did these days.) “You’ll join me in the bath,” Voldemort said shortly. “I’ll tell you there. If you want the burden of knowing.”

“I, uh, don’t know that I do. Did you kill somebody?” The worst question. He couldn’t decide on a tone, disapproving or deprecating or weary, so he offered it as neutrally as possible.

Voldemort heard the struggle in the question anyway, and it amused him. “Not a single person,” he said. “I thought of you.”

“Brilliant. Thanks.” He paused. “This memory I’ve got….” The vial pressed into his thigh, warm and heavy.

“Oh. Yes. It’s unrelated. Hold off on it for now.” Voldemort was poised a few steps up the staircase. “Would you bring murtlap, dittany, and rosewater? And whatever healing potions are at hand.”

He wondered what sort of wounds were under his robes. “Of course.” He left the memory (squinting at it, he could make out nothing but storm clouds) on the mantel for safe keeping before he went.

The bath was full when he came upstairs; Voldemort took the jars and poured them without decorum into the water. He was leaning against the counter, looking drawn. “You can’t use healing spells on this,” he said as he unbuttoned his robes at the throat. “It will poison my magic if you try.” He threw back the healing potions.

“I won’t.”

“Which, annoyingly, means the Healers can’t touch me until it’s gone. And that is assuming the best case scenario that it heals without scarring.” Halfway down his torso, Harry saw what he meant. Two slashes emerged, a vivid X as though someone had intended to rip out all his organs at the intersection.

“Oh my god.”

A glance down. “Yes. I’m _fine_ ,” he assured Harry, dropping the robe. He’d cleaned up sufficiently, but the top of his pants was rusty with blood, in a sort of tidal pattern as waves of it had soaked in. Then, a wince: “Please put your Occlumency in place.”

“Sorry,” he muttered, and he was backtracking into the bedroom. Calming draughts, baobab. The latter, in tablets, he threw into his mouth, and returned to the bath to press half into Voldemort’s mouth in a kiss, as usual.

They sank into the bath together. Voldemort turned so Harry couldn’t see his expression when the hot water washed over the wound, but he _felt_ it and bit back an exclamation when he did. He pushed magic into Voldemort’s clammy flesh instead.

“I didn’t _need_ to find out what happened to Nagini,” he said in a sigh. “It changes nothing. I only wanted to, but somehow they had anticipated I would. It is a very poor lure, a dead animal, but I took it anyway.”

Putting aside the question of ‘they’ because Voldemort would no doubt get to it: “I dreamt of Nagini. Well, like, hallucinated. I wasn’t asleep.”

“I didn’t have enough magic for proper Occlumency,” Voldemort said, nearly apologetic. “I would keep you at the back of my mind, at least.”

“I ended up in a memory of my aunt and uncle. I don’t even know how you managed that.”

“Mm.” They had dittany-infused soap, left by the Healers, and he ran it around the edges of the incision. “Curious. No, I’d established quite a few magic spaces as places to summon the Death Eaters. One was in the Black Forest, not far from where I’d last known Nagini to be. I summoned them, assuming whichever Death Eaters who were still free didn’t answer was the defector. Only a defector, I believed, had the knowledge and motive to kill Nagini.” Blood had begun to run out at a trickle from one part of the incision; Harry handed him magic instead of trying to heal it. An appreciative murmur.

“It became even simpler than that, however. The place was marked by two non-native trees, arched into each other. Few would recognize it as anything. But Nagini’s body had been nailed along the arch. It was in very poor condition, as you might imagine.”

Nausea welled up. “I’m sorry.”

“I could have gotten out unharmed – before they’d even arrived, since they hadn’t lifted the anti-Apparition wards I’d put on the place directly. But I wanted her body. I thought there might still be venom in the sacs. Which is as restorative, for this body, as your blood. I had just severed her head when they arrived. Magic,” he reminded Harry, who’d stopped passing it along in the horror of the moment.

“Right,” he muttered. “Who?”

“Wormtail,” he said with a rough laugh. “Some itinerant group – likely werewolves, though none of their alphas. I told you, the animals would be killed first if the Ministry had captured them; but they evade human structures too easily. A few insignificant Death Eaters, not marked so not captured, because they never rose to the Ministry’s attention. Some Durmstrang alumni, from Karkaroff’s time. A couple I couldn’t place at all. Perhaps a dozen. Wormtail wasn’t in _charge_ ,” he explained at Harry’s incredulous expression. “I had assumed that he, like Snape, would be simpler to account for with nobody to whom to sell me out. But it seems he found a buyer. So to speak.”

“I’m sorry.”

A snort. “Don’t be sorry. Be intrigued and probably wary. Whoever sent them probably wants you as much as they want me.”

“You don’t have any idea?”

“No,” he sighed. “Most wixes are more caught up in nascent Muggle relations than intra-world politics. If there are power voids right now, it is because our societies are so unstable that nobody really knows how the world they’d be seizing will look. If it would be worth it. Of course there are growing reactionary movements – whatever the erstwhile Death Eaters are now being one of them – but I don’t yet understand where their power or direction comes from.”

“Did you, uh, talk to them?”

A curl of the corner of his mouth. “We did not _talk_ particularly, no. They are angry with me. One said I wasted decades and ruined their lives for nothing, if I assimilate now.” This amused him. “I saw it was over then. They’d always had faith in my plans before. You hear, really, what an _absurd_ accusation this is. They either didn’t consider it could be infiltration, or weren’t interested in pursuing it as a possibility. An effect, I suppose, of the Ministry capturing the politicians and letting the animals go free.” He tipped his head back, sinking deeper into the bath so the cut was submerged.

“You dueled a dozen wizards.” He knew it was absurd to panic _now_. But still, he was sort of panicking now.

“Mm. You haven’t seen me duel properly, have you. Dumbledore, I suppose, but that scarcely counts. I learned from a coven of vampires when I was young, my first time in Albania,” he said as though to dismiss Harry’s concern and not rouse a thousand more interesting questions. “Dueling disorganized humans, of mediocre talent and stamina, under my own wards….” A shrug, and his hand passed over the cut. “ _This_ came at a moment – coincidental, not orchestrated, for the difference that makes – when Sectumsempra came at two different angles, with a blood curse between them. It was… well-done. I could manipulate the wards to deflect most of it. And then I broke them entirely to Apparate.” A faint smile. “Though not before I trapped Wormtail as a half-rat forever. His ability to pass either in the human or animal world was the entirety of his usefulness. Now he will pass in neither. If his new lord can find use for him in this form, then they are welcome to him.”

Harry sagged. “That’s it?”

Voldemort, hilariously, took this personally. “Yes, that’s _it_. I assume I’ll encounter the defectors and perhaps even their lord in time.” He saw Harry’s expression. “I told you, I didn’t kill them. There wasn’t time.”

To ask whether he wanted to would only create problems. “Did you bring back Nagini? Her body,” he added, regretful even though that snake had only ever been a threat to him.

“Her head, yes. It’s shrunken inside a jar. Don’t touch it.”

He shuddered because it wasn’t a particularly appealing option anyway. “And then what?”

“Then I Apparated to my father’s house to clean up and recover.”

“And then?” When Voldemort instead pressed a wet hand to the back of Harry’s neck, rubbing in a pacifying way, he sighed. “Everything else I saw was real. What happened to my relatives?”

“You wouldn’t understand. I didn’t do it for you.”

He gave a short laugh. “Fine, you didn’t do it for me,” he agreed. “But what did you _do_?”

“Nothing.”

He was suddenly hurt. What was more delicate or secret about this? What he’d heard, if it was accurate, was more pitchy panic than all-out terror. “Don’t,” he said. “You don’t lie to me.”

“Though I’m not opposed to it,” Voldemort said brightly. Glare. “Your relatives are also – on the whole – fine. I brought them copies of the memories removed from you. Their minds seemed like an excellent place to store them.”

“Wait, _why_?”

“The psychological disruption it will cause them will be inversely proportionate to the amount of remorse they feel. At least that was the intended curse. I don’t work much with remorse.”

“Obviously.” He’d moved from pushing magic into Voldemort’s shoulders and arms to his torso directly. The incision was barely held closed with new pink skin that looked like wet tissue paper. “But… I’ll never see them again. It doesn’t matter if they regret any of it.”

“As I said, I didn’t do it for you.” He sank deeper into the bath, content. “They didn’t die either. Though it seems nothing of value would be lost if, say, they had terribly coincidental heart attacks on the same day. I considered it.”

Vernon was one roast from a heart attack anyway, and Petunia one ruined carpet; he couldn’t imagine not getting away with it. “You said it could be harmful, having so much blood shed in my name,” he recalled.

“Yes. Good boy.”

“Is that why?”

“No.” He was drinking another healing potion, hand at the incision to judge if it worked right. “There are far more interesting punishments than death,” he said. “This persistent state of injury, with throttled magic and general legal and medical reliance on others, has given me time to reflect on such things.” A dry look. “I am confounded why you are so concerned with killing others as though death is the worst possible fate.”

“For you it is,” Harry said before he could stop himself.

“Mm. Yes. As I’ve said, I’ve had ample time to reconsider.”

“You think remorse is the worst thing?”

“The worst _legal_ thing,” he said wryly. “Though I suppose it’d all amount to the same death sentence if the Aurors had found me.”

Harry sighed deeply, until his lungs tasted of the rosewater that hung heavy in the air. “Thank you,” he said. “You really didn’t have to do that.”

“It is not for you,” Voldemort insisted. “It was… well, I longed to shove memories of _my_ childhood back into the minds of the ones who made it miserable for me. But as I said, I discarded most of my childhood memories some time ago. I wouldn’t find many of the children. Certainly all of the adults died long ago. Yours was the next nearest childhood at hand, is all.”

“Oh.” That hurt inside. “How did they…? I couldn’t make out what they said.”

“They were quite upset,” Voldemort assured him. “I did Apparate into their vehicle while they were driving.”

Harry nearly gagged in panic. “You Apparated into a _moving car_.”

“Yes,” he beamed.

“You are _mad_.”

He smiled wider. “I’d prefer amazement but I will accept incredulity,” he said. (The baobab always made him a bit more chipper than it made Harry. Relative emotional stability, he supposed.) “I explained Petrificus totalus – I _offered_ it, really, but they promised to be still. There are, of course, ways that a psyche can be torn apart with indelicate handling, so I was very careful. I wanted them to fully recognize and understand every thought I gave them.”

“And then…?”

“It will recede, with time and remorse. I gave them no direction. A pity your cousin wasn’t with them. They said he was at university.”

Oh. He had never wondered what Dudley had decided to do with his life. Harry realized that 1) he wouldn’t have been materially affected, in terms of life choices and resources, if the Dursleys had died suddenly, and 2) he wouldn’t be emotionally affected either. This was actually a more intricate punishment than he’d ever thought of. “Thank you,” he said again.

“You didn’t want this. You didn’t ask for it. As always, you are only a proxy for my own life.”

Marked as his equal. At some point this became a role of partner and confidant, not necessary antagonists. Perhaps that had never been what the prophecy had meant.

“I’m bringing food up,” he said, “because you’re going to bed.”

Before he got out of the bath, Voldemort caught his wrist. “I have been alone before,” he said, more solemn now. “The Death Eaters as good as vanished the night you defeated me. I’ve rebuilt support from nothing, when I needed to.”

If the defectors were ready to kill Voldemort, they almost certainly had a new master in place. “You’ve recovered from less,” Harry agreed. “I don’t even understand how you persuaded Quirrell, without a body. And then Wormtail, and then Crouch….” He stopped talking. He didn’t want to be successor of any of those men.

Voldemort looked faintly surprised at this recitation of his past. As though Harry didn’t mark his life by Voldemort’s time. “I Obliviated Wormtail that summer,” he said. “I took all the memories of how he had cared for me, before. I gave him a false memory that Aurors had shot his hand off. It is fortuitous, because otherwise he would have had the presence of mind to tear out Nagini’s venom sacs before I could take them.” He was tipping dittany into a washcloth, pressing it to his abdomen carefully. “I wasn’t going to compare you to any of them,” he said, anticipating Harry’s thoughts. “All I intended to say was, rebuilding from nothing is a tiring and dispiriting process. I don’t think I should like to do it again.”

“Oh.” It was, unexpectedly, a good feeling. Nearly a promise. “But when… that group, the defectors” (he hardly felt he needed to defend the integrity of the name of Death Eaters. But just for clarity’s sake) “come looking for you again….”

“I’ll be here. Or, more likely, in Azkaban.”

“Or at the Ministry. Or at Cornwall.”

An amused hum. “And it will be a fascinating question, whether the Aurors fight on my behalf,” he said. “But Harry, I’ve said that I’ll never be free. If I have institutional… well, you’ve seen it. Institutional punishment is also institutional protection. The prison makes certain that the outlaw should suffer only the _correct_ type of dehumanization. Solitary confinement, a functional death, is often enforced for the prisoner’s safety, did you know? I suppose death is a particular sort of safety, in its certainty. The precarities of injury, humans, and the wider world cannot be so legislated.”

“I don’t know what you’re saying.” He was extracting his hand from Voldemort’s. Baobab’s chipperness could sometimes be, well, off-putting.

A sigh. “No matter. This is the safest circumstance, somehow. Though I reserve judgment whether their new lord – if there even is one – would even be a threat. They’ve got poor taste in followers but so did I. The dregs, full of resentment for their disposability and so many other things.” His gaze lifted to the ceiling; he nearly smiled. “Far too many Slytherins. I should have recruited more Hufflepuffs. _There’s_ a house that knows loyalty. No Gryffindors, though.” He looked to Harry cleverly. “I don’t understand how you all manage, if _everyone_ wants to be the hero. Though maybe not your year, for obvious reasons. But it sounds exhausting.”

Harry grinned. “There’s a lot of ways to be a hero, you know.” He passed him thestral’s blood in case this was in fact the beginning of mania, and went to go make food.

On the way back he took the memory from the mantel, slipping it into the hollow of his throat. He nearly dropped the platter he held. Voldemort, Bowersock, sexual abuse at Azkaban. He had recalled wishing Bowersock dead – considering it, he still rather did.

“Harry, your Occlumency,” Voldemort, strained, called from the bath.

“Sorry,” he called back. He was so, so sorry. It wasn’t Voldemort’s responsibility either to take the abuse or to comfort Harry for having learned it. He pulled his Occlumency in place and took a few long minutes on the nearest sofa.

Voldemort was getting out of the bath when he did go up. The cut on his torso was pink-red and raised on his skin but closed. Good. “I was going to tell you to wait,” he said, wrapping his skeletal frame in a towel, “but it’d make no difference. I don’t ever want to talk about it.”

His insides twisted. “I’m sorry.”

“Please don’t be. You’ll never put the right narrative to it. I’ll remove it again, if you want, permanently.”

“Is that what you want?”

A thoughtful look. “No,” he said. “Keep it.”

He wanted to say sorry again. He wasn’t allowed to, and he struggled for a moment. “I love you,” he finally said instead; and, instead of obligating him to a response, Harry offered himself as physical support back into the bedroom. Voldemort fell into his touch easily.

 

_Wednesday, August 12._ Wednesday, the Ministry. Squire and Kingsley had collected them, and were walking them to Scrimgeour’s office now. Voldemort was uncharacteristically quiet.

The Minister stood when they entered. “Good day.” He too was tense. They had an entire meeting on finances to get through first, and Harry didn’t know how they would do it. “Harry, you’re staying in here. Madame Dawson can assist you if you need anything. Most everything here is under stringent security, but you’re welcome to my bookshelves.”

“Thanks, sir. But I’ve got homework.” He did. Malfoy had sent along a message with the Aurors that he was pathetically behind and probably couldn’t use runes to make so much as a cup of tea. Harry was going to succeed out of spite if nothing else.

A chuckle. They departed. Harry stared out the window more than he did any runes. Madame Dawson, the Minister’s secretary, brought him biscuits. There weren’t any papers on the desk to even glance at. Pity.

Scrimgeour and Voldemort returned alone a few hours later, animatedly discussing tax reform. Harry did not mind missing this meeting. They settled not at the desk, but around the low table where Harry already sat with his runes textbook. He shoved the book back into his bag.

“Saturday?” Scrimgeour asked Voldemort.

“Yes. Though Amortentia will keep.”

“No need to make you wait.” A small smile. Reaching down, he opened a drawer that hadn’t been there a moment ago. “This was mailed by Albus’s executor the day of his death.” A scroll in an ornate brass case.

“Who has seen it?”

“Nobody.”

A sharp look. “You don’t keep my secrets,” he said.

“You should read it.”

Voldemort took the scroll. Harry slipped their hands together, for magic, and leaned in.

_Dear Minister:_

_This letter concerns the power and identity of Lord Voldemort. I hope it provides information helpful in seeking his defeat, should that become a necessity during your time in office. There are some details which would be too imprudent to put in print (or indeed, in the Minster’s mind, given Voldemort’s great skill in Legilimency) but I believe these notes will suffice._

_Voldemort’s soul is incredibly fragile. Dark, experimental magic has compromised his health and stability in exchange for power. His power is both unstable and decentralized – he draws upon other sources as a sort of backup for his soul or his life force. Uniting his soul would be of enormous difficulty, but I believe the stabilization would temper his power considerably. The instability grants him power; it is partial and erratic but it is power nonetheless. I’m unwilling to speculate how his temperament or – to put it overly poetically – his humanity, would be affected by either destroying or uniting the destinations of his soul. But certainly that too is an outcome not to be overlooked._

_He is also currently unaware that the act of soul splitting is cumulative: that each of his sources took fully half of his soul. He intended to have seven sources; I am aware of several so we may assume he was successful. This renders his original body functionally soulless. You might compare him metaphysically to a recipient of a Dementor’s Kiss. Again, the implications of this cannot be anticipated. But the distinction between immortal and inhuman seem thin, in his instance. Destruction, then, may take an unexpected form._

_At the moment I do not believe it is possible to kill him. He may, at worst, be shunted back to some ghoulish spirit once more, but he’s doubtless taken precautions against this by now. Neutralizing him will come with learning the sources of his power, and either destroying them or reuniting him with them. He only fears the former; he doesn’t know the implications of the latter. He will be, regardless, exceptionally powerful and ambitious._

_His connection to Harry Potter is multi-faceted and precarious. He inadvertently imbued Harry with some of his own power the night he tried to kill him. He has since learned this. Harry’s curse scar gives him fleeting insights into Voldemort’s circumstances or feelings, though not enough to be useful as a surveillance mechanism. Harry’s blood was forcibly taken for the ritual to craft a new body for Voldemort; this exponentially increased the ways they are physiologically connected. And in terms of the prophecy, of which you’re aware – I believe they are linked in fate as well. Perhaps not in such stark terms as has been suggested, but Harry will play some part in whatever is to become of Voldemort. Harry is to be his equal. Voldemort has never identified or accepted anyone as his equal before; I doubt either of them would even recognize what precisely this relationship means._

_As with his other sources of life, Voldemort’s power is stabilized by Harry. But Harry will also make him mortal, re-establishing enough of his soul in close proximity that he may be killed. How badly Harry himself would fare in this moment, I couldn’t speculate. He does know the prophecy, and he has some fatalistic sense of his impending sacrifice. I haven’t directly addressed these conjectures of his, but it seems prudent to let them stand, regardless. Furthermore, Harry has instructions from me, ones he’s not at liberty to share with you or anybody. The tasks he intends to carry out will bring security to the wixen world; but their secrecy is paramount. The most I can ask of you is that you not hinder his decisions, because some of them have more weight and import than may be apparent._

_Finally, and relatedly, you must keep Severus Snape out of prison. His loyalty to me will extend beyond my death. His decisions likewise secure the safety of the wixen world, in complex ways. He also knows more of Voldemort’s fate and Harry’s than I’m at liberty to share here. He is one of the most talented Occlumens I have ever known, and his discretion has benefited us immeasurably. At the very least you should not impede him; you would do better to align yourself with him and act on his suggestions. They will be few and far between._

_Good luck with your remaining time in office, Minister. You’re under no obligation to attend my funeral, but I do request that you give Alastor Moody the day off. We had been friends for a very long time._

_In Merlin’s care,_

_Albus Dumbledore_

 

Voldemort’s grip on his hand had begun to hurt by the time he finished reading. “Right.” It was hardly an exhalation. “I did ask you why you pursued the restoration of my Horcruces so enthusiastically.”

“I have a responsibility to my constituents. Putting you in some weakened state was the only responsible option, apart from executing you.”

(Harry thought quietly that he never wanted to become so acquainted with death that he could speak of it in as indifferent tones as Scrimgeour did. It wasn’t even antagonistic, or apologetic. Just politics.)

“It’s been your primary strategy for months. The state of injury.”

“Yes.”

“It’s counter-intuitive magic, what Dumbledore proposes. Even taking for granted that stability and power are inverses…. What do you know of nuclear power? Nuclear weaponry, specifically.”

Scrimgeour raised his eyebrows at the abrupt change of topic. “Not much. The Muggles said it wasn’t a threat any longer.”

“It is the same – well, _analogous_ , mechanism that Albus suggests here. That power – often explosive power – is generated by destabilizing elements of creation. Perhaps both fission and fusion of the soul carry some sort of destructive moment. Not an explosion,” he added lightly. “I left quite immaculate bodies. But fusion is the more powerful force, really.”

“We’ll have Aurors and Healers on hand. They’ve handled worse.”

“I won’t reclaim my Horcruces,” Voldemort decided with a frown. “I can work with instability. I’ve compensated for it my entire life, already.”

Scrimgeour was unreadable. “There’s really no mechanism by which we could force you.”

“You know that there are. And I’d sooner contend with those than concede power for, what, respectability? Other people’s feelings of safety?”

“These are not irrelevant.”

“I still have enemies,” Voldemort said flatly. “Powerful ones. You don’t expect me to rely on their goodwill, when they’d never rely on mine.”

“It may not be such a difference – “

His laughter was a shout. “Then it should also make no difference if I keep the Horcruces intact.”

Scrimgeour looked down at his hands for a long moment. “I have made many promises and many sacrifices on your behalf.”

“You have.”

“I don’t especially need you to preserve my political career, but… I hope it wasn’t foolish to trust you.”

“Trust,” Voldemort echoed, dubious.

“Yes.”

“I’d sooner destroy the Horcruces than reclaim them. I know what destruction feels like.”

“But you’ve ruined your soul.”

“I’ve done without it this long,” he said. “The remaining Horcruces are… fragments, anyway. I assumed they’d carry a more significant amount of my soul, but if it was split repeatedly….” His eyes were on the ceiling, doing the math. “Then it hardly matters.” His voice was hard. Harry pressed warm, stabilizing magic into his grasp. “My two earliest Horcruces are already destroyed. Three quarters of my soul already. Tell the Unspeakables. It will intrigue them.”

Quiet horror dawned on Harry. “The diary,” he said softly. Was the first, the youngest, the accidental one. He’d destroyed half of Voldemort’s soul without even knowing it.

“Yes. The signet ring that killed Dumbledore was the second. Which suggests that his death had purpose, at least. It had lacked purpose before. He was dying already; certainly he would have found bringing me a quarter closer to… dead? Soulless?” He was hesitant on the wording. “His death was worth my eventual destruction.”

Scrimgeour was unhappy. They were all unhappy. “May I summon an Unspeakable?” he asked. “They’ll have more thoughts than I do.”

“No. But you should still bring them to the safehouse on Saturday.”

“You’re not performing the reclamation.”

A faint smile. “I think I shall ask my younger selves what they would prefer. The answer will only ever be life and self-preservation, but… I believe that will mean something different for them than it does currently.” He leaned back. “You were personally opposed to reclaiming the Horcruces. Is this why?”

“The country needs you for at least a year, until it’s a bit more in order. For legislation and for magic. Azkaban is already killing you.”

Voldemort winced at the word. “Your vow…?”

“Hasn’t impelled anything. Most of the Aurors believe the Horcruxes should be destroyed or reclaimed, when I told them of Albus’s suggestion that it would enervate you. Most of the Wizengamot prefers you keep them for the year, for the same purpose of the shield and legislative input.”

“Mm.” He was surprised by this, not unpleasantly. “And after the year?”

“They… support you staying on, in some capacity, generally.”

“Would that change depending on the choice made regarding the Horcruces?”  


“It’d change for me,” Scrimgeour said, suddenly rougher. “I’d find it perverse and unacceptable, to put a wizard _without a soul_ in the Ministry. Do you even have enough of a soul to take more vows?” he asked. “I have promised some of the Wizengamot that professional vows would temper you. Obviously I wouldn’t lie for you.”

He flashed his teeth in nothing like a smile. “Shall we try?”

“I don’t see the need.”  


“You haven’t requested antivenom yet,” Voldemort said lightly, “to take the Aurors department back with full mobility. Before now, I had none to offer you. But this week, I do, so you should probably offer something quickly.”

Scrimgeour’s look was dubious and tired (because as far as he knew, Voldemort had spent the last week convalescing but for the few hours in Cornwall). “What did you _do_ ,” he muttered.

“Nothing over which you’ve got jurisdiction,” Voldemort promised. “Am I correct?”

“Yes, but – “

“I’ll give you antivenom in exchange for my autonomy regarding the Horcruces,” Voldemort said. “I am aware how many resources and how much… generosity,” he said the word with uncertainty, “you’ve already expended.”

“That’s a rather open-ended request.”

“I’ll have reached a particular decision about the Horcruces’ fate by Saturday,” Voldemort said. “If you want a vow, we’ll perform it then.”

Tightening of Scrimgeour’s mouth. “Even if you can perform vows now doesn’t indicate you’ll be able to if the Horcruxes were destroyed.”

Voldemort hummed. “No,” he agreed. “But I am categorically disinclined to _trust_.”

It was generous, in his own way. He couldn’t be the sort of person to just give anything away. It might be a good impulse for a diplomat anyway, Harry thought. Not that anyone was teaching him diplomacy yet.

But Scrimgeour’s mouth, if anything, went tighter. “I can’t expend any more influence for you,” he said.

“I know.” He leaned in, suddenly radiating charm and sincerity. “I very much want to do this for you,” he said. “But it would be foolish to hand over such an advantage to an antagonist. It is the reason I haven’t taught Harry to duel. Even though his inability embarrasses us both,” he added lightly. (Harry frowned at this; it had never occurred to him that he should practice dueling. He’d expected to kill Voldemort with guerrilla tactics, really, or not at all. He didn’t know why he’d never asked.)

“You have an antagonistic relationship to _law_ ,” Scrimgeour corrected, unwilling to join his narrative for the moment.

“Every relationship to law is antagonistic,” he replied. “That is its purpose.”

“Even if that were true, it wouldn’t absolve you.”

“No,” Voldemort agreed. “But let me give you the antivenom. In exchange for only your indifference.”

“ _My_ indifference wouldn’t be the impediment,” Scrimgeour said. “You’ll have to convince the Wizengamot of your decision.”

“And I will.”

“You’ll have to present it to Bowersock.”

Harry _felt_ the reaction rather than saw it; Voldemort’s magic, and mood, faltered for a moment. Imperceptible on his face. “I will.”

“More significantly, you don’t have Auror support. They would strike as soon as you were appointed. Well, they might strike at hearing you’d rescind the reclamation.”

“To what end?”

His shoulder lifted in a tired shrug. “Likely trial. Certainly removal from any position you’re given.”

“Then I’d best make my decisions now, before I have anything worth taking.”

A weary smile. “Yes, I’d say so.”

Voldemort was thinking. He said nothing more on the Aurors. “Come Saturday,” he reiterated.

“I will.”

 

They left with a copy of the scroll, though Harry assumed Voldemort had committed it to memory the first time already. They were quiet until they got inside the safehouse.

“I’m sorry,” Harry offered. He didn’t know what for, it just felt right.

“They’ve kept you around for the same reason,” Voldemort said. “If Dumbledore’s letter wasn’t explicit about it. That you don’t merely temper me socially, but magically as well.”

“But I _give_ you magic.” They both ended up slumped at the kitchen counter. Voldemort was pouring an indecent amount of whiskey. It occurred to Harry that all of the times he’d seen Voldemort drink to get drunk, it’d been something Dumbledore had done. He must’ve smiled at this.

“What?”

“Nothing. Dumbledore drives you to drink.” He poured himself whiskey as well.

“Truly his greatest talent,” Voldemort sighed. “To Dumbledore.” His glass clinked against Harry’s. They drank.

Voldemort’s face was tense with thought. When his scotch was nearly gone, he asked, “Would you like to meet my Horcruces?” A pause. “Or simply _would you_. It will probably be… disorienting at best. Likely unpleasant. But I’d need your magic.”

“The Amortentia isn’t finished.” He’d been emotionally preparing to meet the Horcruxes a bit, but not _now_. “Onofre said rushing it would be toxic.”

“I don’t need to seduce them any longer. And more’s the pity because it’d make the entire Ministry miserable,” Voldemort added. “I only wish to verify….” He sighed and began again. “The only sources I had on Horcrux creation spoke of a single Horcrux, and a soul split in two. It’s unlikely anyone has ever created more than one, really. Certainly nobody’s published on it.”

“When you asked Slughorn about making seven….”

“I had already created the first two,” Voldemort said. He poured another drink. It was already bringing out the color in his unnatural complexion. “I knew I had already accomplished something exceptional. I only wondered if he knew of others with multiple Horcruces.” His hand was tight around his glass. “There wasn’t information on dictating how much of one’s soul was ripped away. I assumed… well, either that it would be a sliver each time. Objects don’t hold souls as effectively as bodies do, so I assumed only a wisp would detach. Or, under ideal circumstances, my intention and plans would count for enough to portion my soul into seven to begin with.”

“But it split in half each time.” He began counting back in his head: the diary had a half, the signet ring had a quarter, the cup had an eighth (or had the locket come next? He only knew of them together). “It didn’t feel different each time?”

“Of course it felt _different_.” Prickly. “But I had no assumptions about what it should feel like. It was really only… very recently, losing Nagini and the cup in such close proximity, that I could contrast them. I expected her death to feel more significant, but she was the most recent Horcrux. Her Horcrux, and the original that still resides in me, are… rounding errors.” He said it as a sigh.

“You’re not dead.” It wasn’t much in the way of comfort.

“A coincidence that will fascinate the Unspeakables, I’m sure.”

“Don’t you want to feel… human?”

A shudder, as likely to be sincere as performative. “I’ve never been human,” he said.

“I don’t believe that.” He was warm with alcohol. “If you’ve learned a lot from being exposed to my feelings… I’ve been exposed to yours too. So I don’t believe it at all.”

Impatience. “I don’t care to be human. Whatever that means to you.”

“You’d rather be, what, an emotionally astute snake?”

Surprise, and then amusement. “ _Yes_ ,” he hissed, because they’d been speaking in English out of habit before now. “No, actually,” he continued, still in Parseltongue. “I’d rather be a god.”

Voldemort had said before that people unfairly demonized immortality. He saw its threat now. “It sounds like a lot of waiting,” he said, more easily than he actually felt. “You’ve already done a lot of waiting.”

“I’m well-versed in it.”

He hesitated at the sincerity of what he’d say next. “You said you loved me.”

“The gods love more deeply than the humans,” he returned.

Harry went quiet. Voldemort rubbed a thumb over the back of his neck in a way that always settled him.

“What are you going to do?” Harry asked.

“At the moment, consult with the Horcruces. No need to move forward on false information. My informants are less than impartial.”

“The Minister really likes you, though.” He was pulling bread and cheese and persimmons out, because they hadn’t eaten yet and apparently today would be a day done drunk. “I don’t really understand it.”

A glint of his teeth. “You don’t find me likeable?”

“ _I_ do. Everyone else….” He smiled back, undeterred.

“ _Oderint dum metuant_. Let them hate, so long as they fear. Caligula,” he clarified helpfully.

“The one with the horse?” Voldemort gave him such a pitying look that he hurried on: “It’s not even _that_. Maybe they all hate you, but they all listen. They all want your attention. I saw it at Azkaban.”

“The Wizengamot has never posed a problem. The world….” He looked to the ceiling as he found words. “The world more often organizes itself by power than by morality. Politics are implied by class; few feel the need to structure their social lives around it further. The Wizengamot finds me powerful; therefore I am familiar enough to them.” Carefully: “There are more reflexive and more advantageous ways to identify people than by their personal politics. And if you think differently, it’s because Dumbledore thought differently.”

“That can’t….”

“Before the Statute, the Malfoy family mingled with Muggle royalty. Even now, I believe their wealth is – was – sustained by speculation in Muggle markets. Wixes have always been in demand by the Muggles who can afford their company, anyway. And privileged life is privileged life. Their circles are small.”

The Malfoys. The last family he’d ever accuse of assimilation. He swallowed, with an unpleasant thought: “You told me, my first year, that there’s no good or evil, just power and those too weak to seek it.”

He was rewarded with a smile. “I’m flattered that you’ve held onto my words for so long.”

“ _Well_.”

“And you took your concern to Dumbledore afterward, and he had something to say about choice?”

“I don’t see how that’s a bad thing,” Harry said. Before Voldemort answered he plunged in, surprising them both: “If he believed differently, then he lived differently to go along with it. You can name how the world _actually_ works or whatever, and you can exploit it, but I’d rather live as though the world were good. I know it’s not, I just… couldn’t live with myself otherwise.”

Voldemort was thoughtful, for a very long time. “You have no reason to trust anyone. You’ll only be taken advantage of. _Sincerity_ ,” he sighed. “Again.”

There may be a lot of people in his past who had misled or manipulated him. Most of them were Voldemort’s. “So I’ll get taken advantage of,” he said. “I know what sort of person I want to be.”

“You think the _world_ works differently than it does.” This had touched something off in them both. “There’s no provision, no karma, no indication that the world will let you do anything but _die_.” He spat the word. “It’s nothing like – what is that wretched verse – ‘consider the lilies of the field, they neither toil nor spin, yet God has clothed them in the finest garments,’” he quoted with an impatient gesture. “It is the cruelest thing to preach to people who were actually starving, that God should provide. Perhaps he wanted them dead.”

Harry gathered it was something biblical. Not the sort of thing that’d ever attract the Dursleys. “Nothing _has_ to turn out okay,” he agreed tentatively. “But sometimes things do.”

“Perhaps you’ve never felt precarity. People do specifically want you alive.” It wasn’t an accusation somehow, just something quietly deliberate. “I’d only assumed you had. What you’ve said….” He paused and began again. “It was years into adulthood before I was able to stop hoarding, storing caches of food whenever possible.”

“ _Oh_.” And it all fell into place then, and he saw himself in Voldemort then. Morality was one thing; starvation was another. Voldemort still thought in terms of starvation.

“I, uh, don’t. Anymore,” Harry stumbled onward. This conversation would hurt them both. The words burned like red-hot coins in his mouth. “But only since last year.” He didn’t know why. He kept food on him during the times of looting but gave away everything he had in Hogwarts’s battles, possibly because he’d already made peace with death then. He didn’t even recall last autumn, when Voldemort had first abducted him from the battlefield. Maybe. Probably, actually. “I thought it was just me. I’m sorry.”

In response, Voldemort sighed, scooping up his hand to press a cool kiss to his knuckles. They were getting drunk and candid. “Of course it wasn’t only you,” he said. “But then, your trust in humans, in the world – that people won’t just _let you die_ , despite any evidence to the contrary….”

“I’m sorry,” he said again.

“And yet, somehow, you live in hope and I live in fear. Could anyone ever account for why.”

“Even still?”

“Always.”

He may as well have been stabbed. His gaze was down, but their hands touched, so he pressed warm magic into their connection. They’d said before that Voldemort had never considered a world in which he could die and Harry a world in which he would live. But in other ways, Voldemort was being chased down by death as Harry never had been, just by virtue of disposability and social indifference. Harry hadn’t really examined the _why_ of his phobia before, but… was it still a phobia if it wasn’t irrational? “I don’t know what to offer you,” he said.

Voldemort was faintly incredulous. “None of this is your responsibility. It’s certainly not your _fault_.”

“So?” He tipped more whiskey into both glasses because they were doing this drunk or not at all. “When I asked everyone what they needed to make their lives whole again, I didn’t ask you. Is… _this_ it?” He couldn’t name what _this_ was. Precarity, fear, starvation, indifference. It all felt too personal.

“Yes. Of course.” He didn’t seem to feel the question was an imposition. “I never want to feel the fear of being disposable again. I don’t want anyone to feel that fear again.”

“Not even Muggleborns?” It was flippant. He couldn’t do sincerity right now.

Voldemort’s gaze pinned him to the spot. “Not even Squibs.”

He’d never defend the man’s politics. He’d never embrace them even privately. Voldemort didn’t want or need him to. But in this moment, his politics became a tragedy rather than a horror. He wasn’t entirely prepared for the feelings that’d go along with this. “I think they’re right to listen to you,” he said finally.

Voldemort said nothing. They both needed a minute. He looked… drawn, so Harry gave him more magic.

“Horcruxes?” he asked when the silence had slackened.

“Yes. We’ve lingered in sentimentality this long; what is one instance of nostalgia more?” Voldemort roused himself from his spot on the island. “I’ll need a few hours to establish the magic.”

A few hours sounded excessive until he considered that the diary had spent the better part of a year taking Ginny’s soul. “Right. I’ll be upstairs. D’you need anything?” Voldemort waved him off and Harry went.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter set up a lot of politics, sorry if that’s not your thing. Anyway, strap in, because we are meeting diadem!Tom next chapter and he is a fucking piece of work.
> 
> On Voldemort’s Horcruxes: got it? I don’t know how much the details actually matter, but: keeping the Horcruxes gives him power but also makes him magically and emotionally unstable. Re-absorbing them will make him more stable, but he’ll lose some power. Since he needs magical power (he is hemorrhaging it, especially living within magical voids) more than he needs stability, he chooses not to re-absorb the Horcruxes after all. Scrimgeour and the Aurors in favor of re-absorbing them for safety, while the Wizengamot was in favor of Voldemort keeping the Horcruxes as they are, because Voldemort needs to be powerful to continue casting the airspace shield. How to deal with Voldemort will fracture the Ministry in significant ways in the next few months, this is just the start of it.
> 
> \---  
> Allusions for Chapter 9:
> 
> “Written on my heart” – Jeremiah 31:33.
> 
> Voldemort learning to duel from vampires is from [Catullus 16, by eldritcher](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4472828/chapters/10166102).
> 
> Progressive Horcruxes (that each splits his soul in half again) is from [Again and Again, by Athy](https://archiveofourown.org/works/439865/chapters/749908) and from [Hit the Ground Running, by Tozette](http://fictionhunt.com/read/9408516/1). 
> 
> _Oderint dum metuant_ – Let them hate me, so long as they fear me. From the Roman emperor Caligula (who apocryphally made his horse a Senator, so that’s what Harry means).
> 
> “Consider the lilies of the field” – Matthew 6:28.
> 
> The conversation about starvation and food hoarding is inspired by (a really crushing scene in) [The Mind’s Guardian, by Lady_Khali.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/545550/chapters/971012)


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry meets with Tom, and then with Scrimgeour.
> 
> (Warning: Discussion of sexual abuse in prison. Also, if you’ve been skipping the sex – there is an important conversation halfway through this chapter’s sex scene. lol, sorry.)

He slept that afternoon, as he did in moments of grief, despite the Healer’s dire warnings about such things. And when he woke, it was with a jolt. His chest hurt as though his heart had stopped. No – his chest hurt as though his heart were being pulled from it, such that in his sleepy state he pressed a hand there to ensure his ribs hadn’t split open with the force. That’d be the Horcrux, then.

He descended the stairs with trepidation. His magic summoned him to the basement. The silence there was complete, the stairs blocked with a silencing charm. He took a moment to make tea.

It probably helped, this hospitality, because it meant his hands were full when he descended to the basement. Voldemort and… well, _Tom_ were at the far end of the room, near the hearth. Green flames flickered there; Harry saw the diadem among them. But the wizards were poised like two cobras, tense and aggravated. The effect was heightened, he thought, by the flared and ornate collar of Riddle’s robes. They looked very un-British, and Harry momentarily regretted that he knew little of Voldemort’s life when he was younger. Riddle himself was markedly different from the boy from the diary – still handsome, but his face was lined with exhaustion or premature age by now. His hair was longer, a style that wouldn’t have passed for Muggle in that era, and was pulled into a knot at the nape of his neck. He might be more sallow and drawn, but there was nothing overtly serpentine in his features yet.

The cause for conflict, he saw when he stepped closer, was that Riddle had taken Voldemort’s wand, holding it away from him. His eyes darted to Harry, mischievous. “Hadn’t you just explained to the boy that diplomatic meetings are held without wands?” Voldemort’s gaze followed Tom’s; his face was unreadable at Harry’s presence. “I haven’t got a wand to offer, you know. But you’ll have wandless magic and your… surrogate.” He obviously meant to say _catamite_ or something like it. “Don’t tell me you’ve become such a pacifist that you’d prefer being mutually disarmed to being mutually armed.”

“As you wish.” He gestured Harry closer. “Must I make introductions?”

They both made dry noises. Riddle, caressing a wand he hadn’t touched in… nearly fifty years, Harry guessed (when _had_ the diadem been made into a Horcrux? Why didn’t Dumbledore tell him these things), reminded him of his own encounter with the diary. Riddle had taken his wand then, fiddling with it as horror had dawned on him. The deep space of the basement was not so wet as the Chamber, but the uneven light and the weight of the atmosphere were suddenly reminiscent.

But then Riddle stepped in. “Put that down.” The tea was still in his hands. “Let me see your magic.”

“No. Why?” And then Riddle was pulling the tray from him. Harry hadn’t expected him to be as _corporeal_ as he was, and let go partly in surprise. Voldemort made a noise of mild protest behind them.

“Oh, I only want to look,” Riddle said. He’d stashed their wand inside his robes now. “You give _him_ magic all the time. You touch like lovesick teenagers,” he said, somehow pronouncing each word in the sentence in a different timbre of scorn. Harry didn’t feel obligated to defend their relationship; apparently neither did Voldemort.

“We are the nearest in magic,” Riddle told him, taking his hands in such a similar gesture as Voldemort always did, he relaxed against his better judgment. “I was the last Horcrux to be created before Voldemort got himself _killed_ ,” he said, looking over his shoulder with disgust. Voldemort had taken a careful seat, pouring tea and apparently only fascinated by this interaction. Harry wondered if this had been his intention to begin with. “You haven’t even apologized,” Riddle spat at Voldemort.

His non-eyebrows went up. “I haven’t, no.”

Riddle was torn between dealing with Voldemort (whatever _that_ all was. It’s only weird if you think it’s weird, Harry chanted in his head) and investigating Harry himself. After a toxic look at Voldemort, he chose the latter. “Apparently he’s only figured out that we’re increasingly fractional. And I am here to confirm it, then. You probably knew it before Voldemort did. Didn’t we feel different in your grasp? Familiar, but distinct.”

“I… don’t know.” Without particularly thinking about it, he avoided the question because he wasn’t pleased with the accusation implicit in it. His loyalty was to Voldemort, not to this smirking, clever boy. (He was older than Harry, of course, but next to Voldemort he could only see Riddle’s youth.) “You were the last? Before me,” he tried circling back. He needed more orientation. “You’re from Albania? That’s what Dumbledore said.”

“Yes, _from_ Albania,” Riddle said, amused. “So to speak.” He pressed Harry on a sofa across from Voldemort, taking a seat beside him – or something like it, as his edges flickered and seemed to phase through the sofa where he wasn’t conscious of it. Voldemort wasn’t looking at Harry, and their Occlumency was fairly closed, which was frustrating. This wasn’t how he thought this was going to go.

“ _We_ needed to be scarce for awhile after Madam Smith’s death.” He played the pronoun over his lips. “We had exhausted our opportunities in Britain by then, anyway. We had sought the mentorship of a vampire in the Albanian forests. I would take care of any werewolves who came too near to their territory – _they_ , the coven, were bound by a treaty, while my magic was less constrained. They taught me to duel. She shared their secrets of immortality with me. The diadem was on their land and they needed it removed. It was really quite humane,” he cooed, as though to placate him.

Unimpressed: “Who did you kill?”

“Ah, you do know what a Horcrux is. Good boy,” Riddle said. It intentionally mocked the way Voldemort would say the same, the way Harry loved, and it made him hate Riddle. Neither of them looked at Voldemort now. The room felt vast and empty, everything contained just between the two of them. “I killed a werewolf. And nothing of value was lost.”

“One of the kindest people I know is a werewolf,” he said coldly.

Of course Riddle wouldn’t rescind his comment. It was naïve that any part of Harry hoped or expected he would. “You are adorable,” he said, moving to cup his face. He had to focus on making himself solid, and his touch still felt… wispy.

He _hated_ this. Voldemort had said nothing. Under other circumstances they could confer privately in Parseltongue – rude, and it made the Aurors kind of twitchy, but viable – but of course that wouldn’t work now. He wouldn’t give Riddle any more of his irritation, since it obviously wasn’t working. He poured tea.

“You were the last Horcrux. Before me,” Harry said, looking at him. “Still, that was a long time ago.”

“We were accumulating enemies quickly. We were still _disposable_ for most of wixen society at this point, thus beneath notice anyway.”

Harry was still sore, emotionally, from the conversation on social disposability earlier. “Why wait,” he agreed. “But Voldemort could have told me that. I’m sorry I never asked,” he said, glancing at Voldemort. He lifted his chin minimally in acknowledgment; his dried-blood eyes glittered. “But what about… you? I don’t know what it should feel like to be a Horcrux. _Should_ it feel like anything?” He was fishing for what had happened in those intervening years. Why he felt Voldemort should apologize. ( _Apologize for dying_ , the most absurd demand.)

“You weren’t so empathetic when you destroyed our sixteen year old self,” Riddle said.

He stopped the reflexive defense on his lips. “No,” he said. “I wasn’t. I’m asking now.”

Riddle hummed. “I am not conscious in the way you are conscious,” he said. “It is… perverse, to store a Horcrux in a living thing. It will never be at rest.” (They had very different ideas of perversion, Harry thought.) “But we _do_ feel – if one can imagine a non-conscious entity with feelings. Especially such feelings as twelve and a half years of cold, undifferentiated agony of dispossession.” He looked at Voldemort with hatred now. There it was. “Dispossession, while trapped inside the confines of our artifacts. You understand what it is like, Harry, when you’ve lost yourself in darkness and the walls press up against you until they’ve filled your mouth and your lungs.” His gaze was shrewd. “Or don’t you, anymore?”

Of course he did. The words themselves were enough to conjure his cupboard around him. As Voldemort had pulled years of monotonous pain from his memories, so had Harry offered up days, weeks of time in the cupboard. But there were always more. Of course he hadn’t forgotten.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Voldemort was reaching for his wand, and made a noise of frustration when he realized Riddle had it. “I took most of those years from my memory.”

“That has a certain ease to it,” Riddle agreed. He didn’t mean it in a positive way. “I would rather recall every moment of how you’ve tortured us.”

Voldemort had gone tense. “I hardly had the means to offer you otherwise. My consciousness was all that held my self together.”

“And us,” Riddle objected.

“I would have functionally died from a well-cast Obliviate. _You_ offered no protection against such things.”

“Apologies,” Riddle sneered. “What did you expect, imprisoning us?”

Riddle was wild and vicious in a way Voldemort was not, at least not to Harry. And while he would’ve attributed the difference to youth before, he saw that the years of dispossession had themselves broken Voldemort. Broken and alienated him even from himself. It was awful to behold.

Voldemort leaned forward marginally, moving in to exploit Riddle’s impatience as Harry had seen him seize on the Aurors’ frustration like blood to a shark so many times. “I would offer you freedom,” he said. “The Aurors advocate a reclamation. The Wizengamot prefers your continued existence. Either would accept your destruction. I thought I should ask your preference even as I look to political expediency. Your cooperation is, of course, expedient itself.”

“ _Oh_.” Riddle was coolly amused at this. “Is that the Amortentia, then? I thought it might just be keeping Harry here. Taking after Mum.” His gaze darted to Harry, mischievous.

“Harry knows,” Voldemort told him dismissively. “The Amortentia was for you. When I thought we should be reunited.”

“Ugh,” Riddle protested.

Voldemort’s look was unexpectedly affectionate. (Affectionate for him, of course.) “You are still so young in some ways.”

“Don’t,” Riddle sighed. “ _Sentimentality_. _Nostalgia_. Would you cry while you fucked me, too?”

“Since I won’t reclaim you, I would offer you existence elsewhere, for your cooperation,” Voldemort said, disregarding the previous question entirely.

“Why would you want that?” Suspicion.

“It’s nuclear,” Voldemort said. “Distance creates instability; instability creates power.”

“And I would be kept…?”

“Harry is the Defense professor this year,” Voldemort said, as though it were incidental. “He would return you to Hogwarts. If your magic is as similar as you say, we might use the affinity to craft discretion spells.”

“ _Hogwarts_.” Riddle was not as pleased as Harry thought he’d be. “It’s a suggestion that would lure the locket. He is still full of longing, in some ways. You don’t see – I already spent _decades_ in Hogwarts,” and again the trauma of dispossession bled through. “In an oversized junk drawer. Chaotic and arcane magic in there, but nothing _living_.”

“I thought Harry might keep you among the living. I’d gift the diadem to the school as a relic, if I could,” Voldemort said. “Are there any curses on it of which you’re fond, or may I strip them to start over?”

“I’m not returning to Hogwarts.”

“The alternative is a Gringotts vault,” Voldemort told him. “The _other_ alternatives all culminate in your non-existence. Or did the years of dispossession torture the instinct of self-preservation from you?” (Harry heard the insult in this. Voldemort thought of self-preservation as the first mark of thinking humanity. Poor Voldemort.)

Riddle’s look was deep and still. “Either you don’t understand or you don’t care,” he said. “I assume the latter.”

Harry expected a flippant _Yes_ ; instead Voldemort inclined his head. “I took years of my memories.”

“I’m not alive in the way you’re alive. Memory is all that holds me together, in the absence of flesh and bone.”

“I wouldn’t take enough to erode your psyche. Why would I do that?”

“You’ve been nothing but reckless with us. Why wouldn’t you?” Still, he smirked: “The Hufflepuffs shall be devastated, though.”

“Yes.” And Voldemort seemed pleased by this, somehow. “The Ministry is aware I have these relics. We haven’t discussed what they might do to have them returned.”

Riddle’s eyebrows arched in a gesture that was so similar to Voldemort’s, but with the addition of actual brows. “And I?”

“Would stay,” Voldemort said. “They only know how to destroy Horcruces – _barely_ – but they’re relying on me to learn how to relocate them. The Unspeakables don’t even have a research team on dark arts.”

Riddle scoffed at this. “Nevertheless,” he said, “your collusion with the Ministry is troubling. You seem nearly fond of them. But then,” he lifted his angular jaw to indicate the setting, “you _have_ settled.” The corner of his mouth curled. “Are you happy?” It was not a wish but an accusation.

“I don’t care for happiness, I care for power,” Voldemort corrected. “If you’d mistake subtlety for complicity….” He made a dismissive gesture.

“You eat out of their hands.”

Voldemort seemed viscerally disgusted by the accusation. “I will be Minister,” he said. “Their fear alone could be my revenge. Their guilt alone could be. Their shame of _needing_ me so much could be.” His smile was very cold. “The Ministry had found a persistent state of injury to be more effective than simply killing me. Of course you’ve felt the strangulation of the void.”

“I can’t believe you agreed to that.”

“No?” Voldemort asked. “Apart from the trust it instills in them, it also creates a particular pathos. It makes them very uncomfortable, to pity me.”

“And you’ll weave this pity into power, Rumpelstiltskin?”

“I will. And when I am powerful, I’ll keep them in their own states of injury, paralyzed with fear and shame. Really, I have learned a great deal from the Ministry.”

Riddle considered this. “If Slughorn is still alive, he’ll crawl back to you us as soon as you ascend. You know it would be irresistible.”

“Oh, he is still very much alive,” Voldemort informed him with relish. “He is even still at Hogwarts.”

“No.” Riddle sat back.

“It was a favor to Dumbledore,” Harry muttered. “But he… I can’t even say your name in his classroom. He really wants to be done with you.”

“He has befriended the past six ministers,” Voldemort said. “He taught four of them. I will see him again. Or,” his eyes glittered as he looked to his younger self, “I thought you might.”

“No,” Harry said before Tom could respond. “I’d bring the Horcruxes to Hogwarts for safekeeping.” He’d prefer Gringotts, but he appreciated Riddle’s point on torture and claustrophobia. He’d felt the walls squeeze in on him too many times as well. “But you can’t manipulate people with them. It’s not fair.” He saw Ginny at eleven, lifeblood drained by the last Horcrux smuggled into Hogwarts.

Voldemort saw his line of thought even if Riddle didn’t. “I believe I can arrive at the position of Minister without killing anyone else. If it is important to you.”

“It is,” Harry said, over Riddle’s scoff.

“You are a defector to your own ideology,” Riddle said. “Your complicity is grotesque.”

Voldemort hummed. “I wish someone had asked me when I was younger what is so cunning about murder. Or perhaps I’ve grown – you will grow – more utilitarian with age. By any means necessary.”

“You may as well take ‘For the greater good.’ If Dumbledore can no longer lay claim to it.”

“It’s certainly in everyone’s minds if not their mouths yet.” Voldemort was _patient_ with his younger self, Harry was seeing. It was fascinating. Definitely unexpected.

“And what shall happen when your former Death Eaters assassinate you?”

“To you, nothing.” Riddle glared at this; Voldemort added easily, “I _would_ take your memories of dispossession, you know, and leave the others. I’ve become even more talented at the magic of memory even since your time.”

“No, thank you,” he said stiffly.

Voldemort returned to the question. “They’re not a threat, at least not en masse. Most have been imprisoned. Most will be sentenced either to being Kissed, or a long enough sentence in Azkaban that they might as well be. I added it – well,” he said, “I wrote a manifesto for rule a year after your creation. I recently added the clause that all Death Eaters should be killed. The current Wizengamot is… bloodthirsty. They love the idea. And they think those deaths will atone for me.”

Everyone else who heard this had found it horrifying; Riddle was only intrigued. “Don’t let them die as martyrs.”

“They can die however they’d like. Nobody will speak of their deaths as a triumph.”

“Do I know any of them?”

“Would you plead to spare them if you did?” Voldemort asked, wry. “And no. Most of your followers died in the war or in prison afterward. I do have – did have – quite a few of their children. Malfoy, Black, Avery, Macnair. Also I collected Eileen Prince’s son. She married a Muggle.” Riddle made a noise of disgust in the back of his throat. “A miserable man, but a good spy. He taught Potions for years. Now he is Headmaster.”

His look had turned curious. “Surely….”

“Dumbledore interceded on his behalf after the war. He thought Snape had been transformed by _love_.” Voldemort sighed the word. “He is still free. One of the few.”

“You don’t find Hogwarts too small a target to be worthwhile?”

A faint smile on Voldemort’s lips. “I have no plans for Hogwarts, except the expansion of education to all ages. It has always been somewhat impenetrable, so I haven’t made it my focus. But you might appreciate it as a sanctuary, with as much stray adolescent magic as you’ll find there.”

He was offering Hogwarts as, what, a playground? Harry couldn’t see what Tom either wanted or would be able to do without real magic, a wand, or a body really. But he did look interested. Harry swallowed. “You can’t.” He looked from one to the other. “Whatever you would _plot_ , I won’t let it happen. I’d sooner put the Horcruxes in Gringotts. I’d sooner turn them over to the Ministry.”

Riddle looked furious with him, but Voldemort… affectionate. Or something. “I love your ultimata,” he cooed, teasing.

“I’m bloody serious.” He was not in a flirtatious mood, understandably. “I deserve – and all my classmates do too – a single year of school that you don’t fuck up.”

The teasing humor melted from Voldemort’s face. “You do.”

Riddle, still furious, looked to Voldemort. “You let your houseboy speak to you in such tones?” His voice was tight with incredulity. His hand was on Voldemort’s wand, and Harry was reaching for his own.

“Harry and I are equals,” Voldemort said. “Surely you sense it?”

“I had hoped I was mistaken.”

“Fate marked us as equals. You probably shouldn’t defy it, either.”

Riddle turned to Harry. “ _Equals_ ,” he repeated. “Do you feel infected by the Horcrux, Harry? The rest of you is so very good, and then this evil, wretched force has burrowed into your soul like a hookworm.”

He didn’t know where this was going. “Why, do you want it back? Because I’ve already told Voldemort I’m keeping it.”

“Precious.”

Harry glared. “I haven’t got to take you to Hogwarts, you know. It’s probably better that I don’t.”

“Oh, but you’d want to.” Riddle was reaching for his hands, making himself solid enough to grasp him hard at the wrists, with thumbs pressed to the back of his hands as though holding snakes. He pressed warm magic into his skin, a glow that spread to Harry’s center and then radiated back out. He felt… alive, in a way he hadn’t in awhile. “I can make you feel very good,” Riddle said, smug. “I can make you _happy_ again. I know it’s a fleeting emotion for you these days. I can make you happy in a way not even Voldemort can, with his wrecked, inhuman soul. Our magic is the same. I would make you more whole than whole.”

Goddammit. The way he touched Voldemort, he assumed, felt good in part because… because. It felt like betrayal that Riddle should be able to elicit the same response in him, if momentarily. “Hogwarts will make me happy. My friends and their safety will make me happy.”

Riddle let the pool of magic slip lower, between his legs, and looked delighted when Harry squirmed. He spoke normally, as though he weren’t magically caressing him in this moment. “But I would be a memento.”

He frowned at Riddle. Everything in his life was a memento of Voldemort, in one way or another. “Why?”

Riddle shot a look at Voldemort. “You haven’t told him,” he said, in a tone that indicated he thoroughly wanted to start shit.

Voldemort was unmoved. “Harry, when the Ministry is here this weekend, I’ll return to Azkaban. I’ve been away for long enough.”

Two weeks, to recover from Sectumsempra, Fiendfyre, lacerations and a blood curse from the defectors, and a fucking lot of emotional trauma. It didn’t seem like nearly enough. “Fine, I guess.” He tried to make his tone indifferent. “Try not to let it corrupt the bit of your soul that’s still inside you.” And despite his effort, this came out sulky.

“I know.” His voice was soft. “Please protect the rest of it.”

Ugh, fuck. On principle he would; out of love he would; in practice he strongly disliked the young man before him already. “I….”

“Your magic will animate the Horcruces only if you’d like them to. I’ll show you the ritual.” He nodded to the diadem in the flames. “I have no interest in Hogwarts. The Horcruces will benefit from its magic, but without a willing soul – like yours, like Ginevra’s – they don’t have sufficient magic to birth themselves.”

“I want a vow.”

A thoughtful pause. “Alright.”

“Not with you,” he said. “With….” He turned to Riddle, unsure what to call him. Voldemort had been Voldemort since, what, sixteen? The room was tense enough without Harry evoking his birth name. “With your Horcruxes. Both of them.”

“Call me what you’d like,” Riddle said, coolly amused at Harry’s awkwardness. “It was a point of pride, how many names I collected in my early years. _Vol de mort_ was one of a dozen, an incantation that strengthened me each time a wix spoke it. French magic is beautiful that way.”

“The Aurors smashed the keystone that held that magic in the war,” Voldemort told Riddle. “Now my name is but a relic.”

“And at what age do we begin throwing fits when anyone dare call us Tom?”

Voldemort answered with elegant indifference, as though this were a sincere question rather than mockery. “Dumbledore had guessed by the time I returned for the Defense post. He attempted to curse my birth name with… atrophy, I believe. Devolution. Perhaps even _innocence_ or _youth_ , if he was being especially darling about it. That keystone was destroyed as well. His portrait still addresses me as such.” His lips curled with distaste.

Riddle absorbed this without reaction, and turned back to Harry. “The vampire coven called me the Kukudh. A myth of theirs, a spirit restless in the grave. The werewolves spoke of me as Arguros. Silver.” Another mischievous glance at Voldemort. “But I suppose the… _stability_ of a single name suits the complacency and inaction of the rest of your life, these days.”

“I don’t owe you justification.”

Honestly, one’s younger self might deserve more justification than nearly anyone, Harry thought. But then, looking to Voldemort: “Would your Horcruxes be bound by our vow for Snape?” He doubted there was legal precedent.

Voldemort made a sound of deep appreciation at the question. “The moments you think like a Slytherin are the times you make me the most proud.”

“Fucking thanks,” Harry said, but he was smiling.

“Possibly. Legally no, but magically… let’s not find out, shall we?” To Riddle: “Harry made a vow on his own life that I’d bring no harm to Snape.”

“He’s not… volatile?”

“He is incredibly volatile,” Voldemort said darkly. “But he wanted extrication for a very long time. Harry’s vow, the Dark Mark, and the protections on the headmaster’s office all keep him quite safe. Don’t challenge him. Don’t even seek him out.”

Riddle accepted this with a curt nod.

“If the Death Eaters are the most disposable lives, then Harry, yours is the least disposable,” Voldemort said.

“I know.”

“I’d prefer you not put yourself further in harm’s way with another vow.”

“I’m not putting the rest of Hogwarts _in harm’s way_ for your sake,” he said. “Your first Horcrux sicced the basilisk on the school. It petrified a ton of people, and you would’ve killed Ginny. You would’ve killed me. I’m not _paranoid_.”

“How could you kill Slytherin’s basilisk,” Riddle glared at him. “It was a relic itself. It survived centuries just to be killed by a schoolboy. It’s sacrilege.”

“I killed it with Gryffindor’s sword,” Harry informed him, unrepentant. Glare.

Voldemort was more thoughtful. “I would suggest you wear the Horcruces. Or store them somewhere safe. Somewhere more trafficked,” he said at the noise Riddle made, “than the Room of Requirement.”

“The Aurors will take them the first chance they get. They won’t let me anywhere near the castle with them.”

“The Aurors will never find them,” Voldemort said easily. “I will inform them the Horcruces are on your person, that they can search you inside and out and never find them. I apologize if they send you off to the Unspeakables to be probed again.”

He was more concerned about the Aurors stripping him down for a cavity search. The time he’d undressed in front of Kingsley for protective runes had been horrible enough. “How?”

“One part blood magic. One part Parseltongue.”

He blinked. “Casting in Parseltongue?” He didn’t know why the thought had never occurred to him.

“Yes. I’d remind you that while we’re probably the only Parselmouths in Britain, there are others abroad, and some of them would sell their talent to our Ministry for the right price. Simpler not to mention it.”

“Why has nobody told me before?” Harry said, quite taken with the idea. Locking charms that couldn’t be unlocked, concealing charms that couldn’t be revealed, glamours that couldn’t be lifted. “Is the magic different?”

Voldemort was surprised and then pleased by his curiosity. “A bit. Only spells of physical effect work in Parseltongue. Psychological work… well, they rely on the epistemology and metaphysics of snakes. I find them obscure, from the perspective of a human psyche. But the reason you weren’t told is because casting in Parseltongue is illegal.”

“What? Why?”

An indulgent smile. “Guess,” he said silkily. “You saw how much of what is termed dark magic is guilt by association. So, once more – it’s simpler that you don’t mention it.”

“I think the Aurors will find out anyway.”

“They will. But they’ll learn it from me, not from you.” When Harry raised his eyebrows at this, Voldemort waved him off. “You’ll learn on Saturday.”

“I… fine. Maybe. Would you show me how to remove it, too? And how to hide it.”

“Yes.”

“And I still don’t trust you,” he told Riddle. He got a smirk in return.

“You shouldn’t.”

“I want a vow.”

“You likely can’t make a vow with something that’s not alive,” Voldemort pointed out. “Not only because death isn’t a threat.”

Riddle pouted. “I wanted to see how long it would take him to think of it.” Voldemort shushed him.

“Then I’ll add it to my vow with Snape. If you or your Horcruxes do anything to harm anyone at Hogwarts, then I’ll die.”

“A _martyr_ ,” Riddle sighed. “A pity our soul ended up in someone so desperate to die.”

“You should rewrite the vow,” Voldemort agreed. “It’s more elegant than creating another. Less strain on your soul, too. I’ll assist you with the wording.”

“You will?”

An amused look. “Otherwise you might die from some hapless student tripping on the hem of my robes.”

“Oh. Yeah.”

“The Aurors, I hope, will be placated by this.”

“Merlin and Morgana, let’s keep the Aurors happy,” Riddle muttered.

Voldemort pinned him with a look. “Yes,” he said. “Let’s. And let’s keep Harry alive and well.”

Riddle wasn’t thrilled but he recognized this would be the best option he would get. “Fine,” he said. “If you wouldn’t wear me, leave me in the library. I know all the hollowed-out books.”

The library. Naturally. Harry would be charmed if he weren’t so repulsed. “Fine,” he echoed. A very cold smile.

 

The Horcruxes could be concealed with a pinprick of blood and a Parseltongue concealment charm. “ _Surripio_ ,” Voldemort hissed, pressing the locket against Harry’s chest, where he’d left a shallow cut.

The locket went cold and then hot, and then it dissolved into his skin. It was uncomfortable but not painful. “Wow.” He ran his fingers over his chest. The locket was, functionally, gone.

“To recover it, blood again,” and he pressed the penknife to Harry’s chest for another dot of blood, “and _Expiscor_.” The locket, grotesquely, seemed to burst from his flesh. Voldemort took the chain from over his head.

“They couldn’t possess me?”

A thoughtful frown. “I don’t believe your souls are different enough, really. One may not seize possession of what’s already theirs. I have difficulty, and the Horcrux is right, your magic is nearer to theirs than to mine.”

The diadem, having been pulled from the fire, was resting on the mantel. Riddle was gone, after having mostly consented to Hogwarts. Voldemort left the locket beside the diadem and took Harry upstairs.

They brought the whiskey to the sitting room, and Harry took a few burning swallows before he could speak. “That was awful,” he said with a laugh. “Sorry. It was awful. And I didn’t know what I was meant to do.”

“As always, you stumbled into your role admirably,” Voldemort assured him. “The Horcrux didn’t strictly need to agree to Hogwarts. But its magic would be far more… antagonistic, if not properly dangerous, if it didn’t.”

“I was the lure?”

“Yes.”

“Dumbledore did that once,” Harry said, filled with a moment of nostalgia, “to get Slughorn back to teach.”

“I’m sure Slughorn was quite taken with you,” Voldemort agreed, not taking the irritating bait.

“But the Horcrux” (he couldn’t decide on _he_ or _it_ or anything else, and Voldemort wasn’t going to give him direction on the weirdness of it all) “didn’t even _like_ me. Like, at all.”

“The Horcruces, it seems, were fairly traumatized by death. There is nobody more appropriate to blame than you.”

Harry shook his head in disbelief. “Sure. I guess. And I’m still trusting them with my mind and body?”

“Don’t forget to include yourself among the people the Horcruces aren’t allowed to harm. Actually.” He rattled his nails against his lowball. “Bring me your contract.”

“I’m giving a copy to Bloom and Hare.” The Minister’s barristers, who’d written their surrender and house arrest. “Don’t put in anything clever.”

“No,” he said. “But who is better equipped to anticipate what my younger selves would think of?” He saw Harry wasn’t convinced. “All I want is your continued existence and my own. Doubtless the Horcruces have got ulterior motives – or they are formulating them now – but I have the best chance of heading them off.”

“My life is absurd,” Harry lamented. He took his whiskey with him.

 

And that’s how they spent the evening, poring over a contract while fairly drunk. Not something he would’ve previously considered a good night. Absurd.

Before bed, Harry cleared his throat. “If you don’t need the Amortentia anymore, what will you do with it?”

“The Unspeakables will take it. The ones who work on love use it in their labs. Why?”

A blush. “I wondered how it’d be with sex.”

A look of surprise and then amusement. “Satisfying, I assume.”

“I want you to hurt me.” His interaction with Riddle had riled him to recklessness. He didn’t like it, but… he needed to disperse this hot, angry energy.

“I certainly can.”

“I want to go back with bruises. A fucking better _memento_.”

“You can.”

He’d crawled into Voldemort’s lap, pressing him back against the sofa. “I want you to hatefuck me.”

Voldemort’s breath caught. “What does that mean to you?” he asked carefully.

“Tell me you don’t give a fuck about what I want. That once you’re finished, you’ll leave me right where I am, tied up and dripping for anyone to find and to use.” He dipped his hips low, to grind into Voldemort’s lap.

“If you’d like to fuck a Horcrux, you’re welcome to it.” Of course he knew what had put Harry in this mood. “I’d only recommend the twenty five year old, though. The nineteen year old was created a few months before I’d had sex. And taking someone’s virginity is a great responsibility.”

“Really?” Harry’s seduction was abruptly replaced by fascination. “Why?”

“I was busy,” Voldemort said, a bit waspishly. “I had plans. Sex looked both unappealingly unhygienic and sentimental, anyway.”

Harry grinned at that. “I don’t want to fuck your Horcrux,” he promised. “Really, he’s not the sort of company I keep.”

“Oh, but clearly they will be.”

Harry waved this off; they’d deal with his obligations to the Horcruxes later. “Please choke me until I haven’t got enough air to even tell you to stop.” He dropped his weight more pointedly into Voldemort’s lap, grinding his pert arse against his cock. “Please paddle me black and blue. Please put me in knickers and make come in them.” He spent the time before he dropped off to sleep each night fantasizing of these things, of begging Voldemort for them even when his face burned like it did now.

To his chagrin, Voldemort did not return the sultriness, but made a noise of amusement. “That is the most wholesome fantasy you’ve ever had.” His fingers were tight on Harry’s hips, holding him in place. “What color knickers would you like, Harry?” he smirked.

He blushed harder. Goddamn him, it’d taken a lot to ask. “I don’t know,” he mumbled, ducking his face into Voldemort’s shoulder. He was prodded back upright.

“You need to know by the time I meet you in the basement.” He was moving to get up; Harry slid off his lap. “You’ll also need to be undressed and fingerfucking yourself by the time I find you. Amortentia should make an adequate lubricant; it becomes slicker when it’s warmed.”

He felt his blush consuming him. “Yes, sir.” He turned to go.

A hand on his back shoved him, making him stumble. He looked back with incredulity. “I should Crucio you for turning your back on me,” Voldemort growled, and it sent a shiver down Harry’s spine that he adored. He loved Voldemort, but he’d missed the ambivalence of their early relationship. He missed _fearing_ Voldemort. He knew it was fucked up.

Sinking to his knees before Voldemort: “I’m sorry, my Lord.” He’d only ever said it playfully, mockingly, and the words didn’t quite sound right from him when they were sincere. “I won’t do it again.”

Voldemort was faintly disgusted by this. “You don’t address me like that,” he instructed. “You call me _Daddy_.” His lips curled as he said it, and Harry’s stomach flipped on itself. It got a reaction out of them both, but not a positive one. He felt his insides knotting.

“Yes. Daddy.” He tried not to gag on the word.

Voldemort’s foot in his lap held him down. “And you will crawl.”

Christ. “Yes, Daddy,” he said again. Voldemort let him up, and Harry steadied himself with a breath. Pulling his robe out of the way so his arse was high in the air, he crawled on hands and knees across the carpet. The feeling of Voldemort’s gaze on his back made blood rush in his ears.

His knees were red and sore by the time he’d crossed the kitchen to the basement stairs. He already felt young and stupid and vulnerable. He loved it. He crawled down the wooden steps carefully.

The Amortentia could use a few more days of steeping but it was effective enough, and no longer harmful, at this stage. Harry got to his feet with a groan (he was much too young to feel so creaky) to investigate it. Its sheen was intoxicating. The damp earthiness of Hogwarts’s walls, the wood of a broomstick handle, the dry bookish smell from where he’d press his face into Voldemort’s chest or neck as they slept. Of course. He hardly needed a potion to induce obsession. He ladled the potion into a shallow bowl, dabbing his fingers in it.

When Voldemort descended the stairs, he found Harry on the sofa naked, a hand between his legs to curl his middle finger inside of himself. The Amortentia was diffusing slowly, he could feel, and he was already nearly panting as Voldemort approached. He brought his legs together, suddenly shy under Voldemort’s indifferent gaze. “Um.”

“You are disgusting,” Voldemort said, and his tone was light and detached but the words still landed as though he’d slapped Harry. Harry loved being slapped. “Your Occlumency needs to go. I need to know how much you adore every awful thing I’m going to do to you.” He dropped a bag at the other end of the sofa. “Also you can’t have nearly enough Amortentia inside of you if you aren’t pulling my clothing off.”

Harry reached for the bowl but Voldemort picked it up first. “Are you going to take it too?” Harry asked.

Pause. “Would you like me to?”

“Please.” The potion was going to make him wild, he could tell, and he wanted to share the sensation.

Without another word Voldemort tipped the bowl back, swallowing a mouthful. Then he gathered some in the palm of his hand. “On your knees. Since you can’t do this properly.”

Harry moved. His knees and hips were already sore from crawling, and he bit the inside of his lips to calm himself. Voldemort’s touch was rougher than usual as he fingered him, working in the potion. “I should just give you an enema of Amortentia and be done with it,” he muttered behind Harry’s ear.

He only sort of knew what an enema was, but it was enough to make him blush. “I don’t think I need one.” His cock was already rigid against his stomach, before he’d ever touched it, and he would swear he could feel his blood, hot and sticky, pounding through his veins. He was quivering around Voldemort’s fingers. He could probably get off on this touch alone.

As soon as he thought it, Voldemort snorted and withdrew. “Do you even deserve to orgasm tonight?”

“Oh god. Please.”

Voldemort coated a buttplug in Amortentia, twisting it in until he groaned. “Keep your slutty little moans quiet,” Voldemort muttered. And this was so great that Harry _bucked_ , wrenching against the buttplug’s girth. Behind him, he heard Voldemort’s breath catch as he felt the residual arousal through their Legilimency. And then he withdrew, letting the weight of the buttplug fall heavy inside Harry. He clenched.

“Sit up.” Voldemort was reaching for something else. Harry straightened carefully as the buttplug shifted within him, pressing Amortentia into new crevices and making him shiver.

He had Harry’s briefs between his fingers. “Now, what color knickers would you like?” His tone was so patronizing. It was so great.

“Red? And white. Please.”

Voldemort hummed, curling his fingers into the fabric in lieu of casting with a wand. The gray cotton went shiny and white first. (Silk? Satin? He knew nothing of these things.) The shape shifted subtly. A twisting pattern of leaves in red bloomed like blood. Lace curled around the edges.

“They’re perfect,” Harry said, and they seemed so obviously _his_ that for a moment he forgot that he meant them to be mortifying. Voldemort slid them up his legs, careful that no stray Amortentia would drip on them. Soft and sleek against the heat of his erection. He couldn’t stop touching himself through them.

Voldemort was reaching for stockings. (Harry assumed those had once been socks. He had a thrilling moment of wondering if he’d transfigure his entire underwear drawer so he’d have nothing but women’s things to wear under his robes. He held off, for now.) Then he paused, looking with distaste at Harry’s legs. “What’s the shaving spell?”

“Oh my god,” he said with a laugh. Somehow this made him harder. “Um, Rasito, but that’s for my face. I dunno what girls use.”

“ _What girls use_ ,” Voldemort mocked. “We’ll have to make do.” Pressing Harry backward onto the sofa, he took one of his legs behind the knee, and Harry was already so turned on that even this touch made his eyelashes flutter. “Get ahold of yourself,” Voldemort muttered, but he was amused. “Rasito!” With a flourish of his wand, he stripped most of the hair from his shin. “Good.”

He went quicker than Harry himself would have, so it kind of burned, but he ended up with silky smooth legs. He’d never really seen the muscle tone there before. “Huh.” He ran a hand down his thigh. It was like touching a girl, and he was blushing again.

“Don’t come yet,” Voldemort warned, because he was kind of about to. Taking his legs one at a time once more, he rolled silky white stockings on, cinching them on his thighs. “There. I’ve got no experience transfiguring shoes, Cinderella, so this will have to satisfy whatever fantasy you had.”

“They’re perfect,” he reiterated. His lower half prickled everywhere the delicate fabric whispered against his newly sensitive skin. “Thank you, Daddy.” It still didn’t work, but he kind of liked the counterbalance of disgust to his arousal.

“It’s not a gift,” Voldemort said. “I’ll fuck your mouth, in recompense. Put your head over the arm of the sofa.” He was undoing his robes. “So you might kick and writhe in that lovely outfit.”

He slung his legs up on the sofa; he couldn’t resist pointing his toes and moving a bit more delicately in stockings. When he put his head over the edge of the armrest, his throat protruded. He swallowed to loosen it. They hadn’t done this before.

Voldemort’s robes hung from his shoulders. His cock was heavy between his legs, and he grabbed Harry’s hair to pull his face into position. “You’ll probably gag,” he said, and it was nearly an apology. “I want you to come when I do. Can you do it without touching yourself?”

“Maybe.” The whiskey and Amortentia and now the blood rushing to his head all made him a bit floaty and dizzy. Not in a bad way. The Amortentia had a distinct body high to it, so he was warm and super-sensitive. The friction of the satin would probably be enough really. “I mean, probably, if you leave your Legilimency open. Go slow?” he requested.

“Get better at sucking cock,” Voldemort retorted, and Harry grinned. And then Voldemort was tipping a few teaspoons more of Amortentia into Harry’s mouth, carefully so it didn’t go into his sinuses since he was upside down. “Hold that, if you’re able.” Harry hummed in an acquiescing sort of tone.

And then Voldemort was sliding his cock into Harry’s mouth – along the roof of his mouth, really, so Harry was conscious about pressing his tongue and cheeks inward as he thrust shallowly. He was rewarded with the flush of Legilimency, as he felt the reciprocal pressure in his own cock. He couldn't properly suck with the Amortentia still in his mouth, so instead he swirled his tongue along the shaft. Voldemort steadied himself with a light touch on Harry’s shoulder as he thrust. The Amortentia tingled as it got absorbed into their sensitive flesh.

The Legilimency grew wild as the thrusting became more insistent – flashes that shot through Harry’s groin and disappeared as quickly. Maybe it was on purpose but he didn’t think so. It was… endearing, in any case. His hips bucked in tandem but since he wouldn’t use his hands, he put them instead over his head, behind Voldemort’s thighs, to pull him close. And then his mouth grew hot and the remaining Amortentia grew sticky with friction as Voldemort pumped. He was going a bit deeper each time, beginning to scrape along the soft part of Harry’s mouth, which made his throat contract against the head each time. Voldemort loved this, he could feel it, and he was barely restraining himself from pressing his entire length down Harry’s throat. “Very good, you’re being so good,” he was muttering as Harry pressed Voldemort deeper into his mouth. And then one thrust of his hips went too deep, and it felt as though his cock was filling Harry’s throat, and then he was retching, scrabbling for air as Amortentia dripped down the back of his throat. Voldemort pulled back. “Anapneo,” he cast, and his throat relaxed from its spasms. He swallowed the residual Amortentia.

And then he was laughing, because he hadn’t needed that spell since Voldemort had taken the non-disclosure vow of the Horcruxes from him. He wiped his eyes. “Don’t stop,” he asked, and Voldemort looked at him with bare lust as he stepped in again. Harry swallowed him.

He was rewarded with Legilimency of looking down at himself. His body looked especially stark and angular splayed like this, with the soft contrast of the satin knickers and the gauzy stockings. He twisted to see himself move, saw his erection twitch under the knickers. Voldemort made an amused noise over him.

And then he was swallowing him, again and again. He had never taken this much of Voldemort in his mouth but he relished the soreness, the slackness, the fullness. His soft, protruding throat bobbed, and the image was nearly enough on its own to make him come. He moaned, and the reverberation made Voldemort jerk deep into his mouth. He swallowed harder. And each time he gagged, Voldemort would slow but not pull out. It was… strangely erotic, in its own way, to watch himself gasp and gag around the girth that was nearly throatfucking him, deliberately composing himself each time. His erection throbbed, leaking a wet spot of pre-come into the satin.

Voldemort was deliberate about not closing his eyes or throwing his head back, so Harry could watch himself. “Very good, just a bit more,” he was muttering, pressing his cock a bit closer to his throat. Harry felt his mouth work on his own cock, felt his tongue and cheeks pressing in, felt his throat spasming against the tip. With a vigorous thrust, or maybe he pulled Voldemort onto him, or maybe it was the gulping swallows that echoed in the head of his own cock – he bucked hard at the air as Voldemort slammed against his mouth, wild. He felt the hot spurt hit the back of his throat and just kept swallowing, and the echo of orgasm and the sight of his own throat shuddering to swallow the load – that forced him over the edge. He thrust hard, filling the front of his knickers with hot, sticky come. And he was laughing, and he was humiliated, and he prickled all over. He held Voldemort – he held _onto_ Voldemort – as aftershocks rolled through them both.

When Voldemort sagged, because his core was still battered even with the magic and the brace supporting him, Harry managed to squirm from under him, dragging him by the hips to drop onto the sofa. They sat side by side, panting in tandem. They were, confusingly, both still pretty hard.

Voldemort was running his fingers through Harry’s hair, uselessly tidying it. He’d forgotten he was supposed to be hatefucking him, and for a minute Harry appreciated the intimacy instead. “Can I keep these?” He was peeling the knickers away from his cock. The texture was getting a bit disgusting, the stain now drying. Still, he quite liked everything about them. He’d wear them again, on days he felt lonely.

Voldemort glanced over. “They are yours.” He was still slightly breathless. “They’re only transfigured. Put a preservation charm on them if you don’t want them to revert eventually.”

“I thought they’d be a better memento than your Horcruxes.” It was tentative, but he felt open and anxious to discuss this. He was being abandoned, the darker parts of his brain whispered.

“I will leave you with stunning bruises,” Voldemort promised. “You can cast preservation charms on them, too.”

“I just might.” A pause. “What _are_ you doing?”

“What do you think I’m doing?”

“Don’t get bloody clever,” Harry said. “You were talking earlier as though we wouldn’t see each other after… whatever you tell the Ministry. Are you trading me for the Horcruxes?”

A steadying breath. “Yes.”

He knew it already, but it still hurt. “How?”

“That if I’m given autonomy over the other Horcruces, then they can have autonomy over… you. Whatever that might mean to them. The Minister was right, it’s the Aurors I must convince and not himself, and you’re the only thing I have that they want. Their feelings about the Horcruces are going to be a more significant barrier than the Wizengamot’s, anyway. Not an impediment to appointment, but an impediment to actual rule.”

It was stupid, and it felt trivializing, to have this discussion while their sweat was still cooling on each other’s skin. But they’d never have it otherwise. “You said you wouldn’t abandon me.” His tone was flat because anything else would reveal too much.

He expected a denial. Voldemort didn’t offer one. “It would be an agreement through the end of the Azkaban sentence. Ten months. I’ve had, well, near-exclusive access to you for ten months, so it’s elegant that they should reclaim you for the same.”

“What, you’re offering _joint custody_?”

His tone was acerbic but Voldemort only looked thoughtful. “That is exactly it,” he says. “It’s a more functional way to think of you than as a resource to be divided.”

“Bloody great.”

Voldemort was leaning into him, a hand kneading the back of his neck. “I am sorry,” he said, and he seemed to mean it.

“They’ll kill you,” Harry objected, and it scared him more than separation. “I know that I’m seeing the _nice_ parts of Azkaban.” He said the phrase ironically but it was true. “They’ll drain your magic and you’ll never recover it. What would you do for Cornwall?” the thought occurred. “The last time you cast alone….”

“My Horcruces were nearby, and enervating,” Voldemort said. “Your distance will strengthen me. _Their_ distance will strengthen me.”

Distance traded stability for power. Voldemort would never choose stability over power. Even if his Horcrux had accused him of recent settling and domestication. “Azkaban will wreck what’s left of your soul,” Harry said. He could feel the ruptures in it already, hardly two months in and Voldemort had been _here_ for a great deal of that. “You tell me not to get cynical, you hypocrite.”

“You are a better person than I could ever hope to be,” Voldemort cut in. “I hold you to standards of _empathy_.”

“Maybe.” He hooked a finger in the top of the stockings; they felt stupid now. It all felt stupid now. The stocking wouldn’t peel away from his skin. “What the fuck.”

“Sticking spell. It keeps them from rolling down. Please….” Voldemort pressed his hand over Harry’s. “I’d like to fuck you again tonight.”

“This is absurd,” Harry sighed but he left the stockings in place. A few times casting Scourgify and a blanket pulled over them both, and he felt more capable of this conversation now. “Azkaban will make you… hateful. More hateful. It makes _me_ more hateful, just knowing that they are….” There was no way he wanted to finish that statement.

“I know.” Soft. A reprieve. “I expect this part of my soul to be quite damaged by year’s end,” he said. “I’ll graft the Horcruces, and benefit from them when I am in less precarious circumstances. If I am,” he amended with a dark look. “It is beyond reasonable to assume I’d be sentenced back to Azkaban at trial, if there is a trial.”

“You wouldn’t go back,” Harry guessed.

“I have great practice in evading the Ministry,” Voldemort told him. “But it would… complicate what you want.” A shrug of his bony shoulder against Harry’s. “If that is the outcome – or if I am sentenced to death,” he said, and his voice was nearly steady, “then you need to keep the Horcruces. I will find you.”

Harry looked to the ceiling, swallowing hard. “Alright.”

“Thank you.”

“They’ve kept us together for this long,” Harry said. “I knew it wasn’t because the Minister was a romantic.”

Voldemort made an amused noise. “You are my weakness,” he said. “You always have been. And your own strength – the sheer amount of people around you who would sacrifice everything for you – I’d only seen as a liability before.”

His heart fluttered in pity. “Of course they’re not.”

“Then you see the advantage in handing you over to Moody – who wants you back _desperately_ , to an irrational extent. They all do.”

He’d only really felt the Aurors’ exasperation with him recently. Still: “I know.”

“Much like it would be irresponsible to not take advantage of how very much the Ministry needs me currently.”

That was something of a relief, honestly. “They can’t kill you,” he concluded. “They’d be lost. And the Muggles would ask after you.”

Voldemort sighed as though put-upon. “Indeed. My greatest protection these days has come from the Minister, the Muggles, and Harry Potter. Funny how these things go.”

“How did that happen,” Harry agreed. He dropped his head on Voldemort’s shoulder with a sigh. “If you need my blood, or magic, you’ve got to promise….”

“Make the Aurors promise,” Voldemort said. “I can’t make demands on you anymore. Do you see? And the Ministry cannot make demands on the Horcruces.”

“What if they know they’ll be with me?”

“They will,” Voldemort said. “Certainly the magic will prevent them from taking the Horcruces by force.”

“Really?”

“They will be, functionally, a part of your soul. Don’t kiss any Dementors.” Harry shuddered. Voldemort continued, “Know that keeping them in Gringotts is grounds for seizure of the entire vault. The goblins generally pride themselves on neutrality, but this time….” He shook his head, tired. “I did slaughter quite a few goblin battalions in the first war. It seems they resent that.”

Harry groaned against Voldemort’s clavicle. “You are so awful.”

“Mmhm. If they’re not on your person, you might keep them in Slytherin’s chamber.” He was completely disregarding Riddle’s request to be kept in the library, and Harry assumed that was deliberate and not by oversight.

“Oh. That is a good idea.” Pause. “Do you think the basilisk has stopped decomposing by now?”

“ _Harry_.”

“Sorry.” His teeth scraped Voldemort’s cooling skin as he grinned. “Sorry, this is just… awful. I don’t want to think about it.” He sat up with reluctance. “They’ve already taken everything from you.”

“They haven’t.”

“They _will_.”

“I have more power and passion and will than they could possibly exhaust. You won’t receive me back as a husk. I promise.”

It had been his fear. “I’ll love you even if you are.”

“That is very generous.” Harry made a face at him. “You should probably pursue some… average relationships this year. Go spend time with your girlfriend.”

This was so unexpected that he laughed. “Git. I only want you.”

“That is the Amortentia-induced obsession.”

“I _always_ only ever want you. Why are you making this so hard. Anyway, Ginny and I broke up on my birthday. Or, ah, made it official then. She said she doesn’t date men who shag dark lords.”

“Wise woman.”

“She’s dating Tonks now.”

“Really?” Voldemort was actually interested in this. “I hadn’t realized. Ask her what it’s like to have sex with a Metamorphmagus. I never have.”

Oh god. He’d blush the next time he saw Tonks. “I am not asking that.”

“Shame.” Voldemort was obviously avoidant too, which was fascinating and new for him. He typically delighted in making Harry uncomfortable. If nothing else, he was better at grim, pragmatic realism than Harry was. So he turned now. “I hope you’ll find happiness if not immediate gratification in this.”

“Yeah.” He paused. “I hope you do too.”

“Yes.”

A gnawing had settled deep in his stomach. And in spite of it all, he was still mostly hard. Amortentia was potent. He reached into Voldemort’s lap, teasing the similar erection he found there. “I don’t want to talk about anything tonight.”

“Nor do I.” Voldemort tossed the blanket over the back of the sofa and ran a playful hand down Harry’s stockinged legs. “What do you want?”

“Hit me until I cry,” Harry said promptly. It was the purest sort of catharsis he could imagine.

“Cliché,” Voldemort snorted. “This will be better in the bedroom.” They moved upstairs. The satin of the knickers rubbed enticingly as Harry walked, and he thought he’d bloody have to wank halfway up the staircase. Embarrassing.

In the bedroom Voldemort wasted no time shoving Harry onto the bed, twisting glowing ropes around his wrists, attaching them to the headboard. The knickers were pulled down his legs, but the stockings were left on. A hand slid over his ribs to tweak each nipple, and then place a cool metal clamp on each. Harry mewled at the attention, at the pinpricks of pain in his chest, barely dragging his attention from his cock. “Do you want weights on them?”

“Mm, no.” A smack to his arse, a false chastisement. “Sir.”

Voldemort fiddled with the buttplug, twisting and thrusting just enough to make Harry buck. The Amortentia still blazed inside of him, he could feel it. He thought Voldemort cast a warming charm on the buttplug, or something, because it pulsed hot and cool inside of him, making him quiver. His cock already was leaking against his stomach.

A blindfold of perfect black was dropped over his face. And then the bed shifted as Voldemort moved away. The carpet in the bedroom obscured his movement. Harry squirmed to feel the buttplug and dregs of Amortentia shift inside himself.

Before he’d realized Voldemort had returned: _Smack_! A slap, cupping the curve of his arse and creating more sound than pain. “I don’t want you to count,” Voldemort said; he was murmuring it in Harry’s ear without Harry realizing he’d gotten so close, and Harry sort of jumped and Voldemort sort of laughed. “I want you to _cry_.”

“Fine,” he breathed. He was already whimpering, each time the buttplug’s temperature changed or the nipple clamps shifted on his chest. A hand on his cock made him thrust involuntarily; Voldemort pulled back until he had stilled. It took two more tries before he was sufficiently composed, and then a cock ring was rolled to the base of his cock. When Voldemort cast the same throbbing temperature charm on it as the buttplug, Harry groaned. His entire body already thrummed with need, and they hadn’t even begun yet.

Indistinct noise behind him, and then – _Thwack!_ He made a noise of surprise rather than pain as a flogger of leather and suede wrapped along the curve of his arse. Its tendrils seemed to nearly _hiss_ through the air, as Voldemort landed two more hits in quick succession. The leather stung and the suede nearly _caressed_. He groaned.

 _Thwack, thwack, thwack_! His arse was nearly as warm as the charmed buttplug by now. He found himself clenching in anticipation of each rhythmic blow, and Voldemort made a noise of irritation, swinging an arrhythmic volley of swats into his thighs. “Stop,” he said, “or I’ll stuff you full of ginger.”

His blood was pounding in his ears, so he was sure he’d misheard. “What?”

But Voldemort was clearly taken with this idea. He very casually placed the flogger at the base of Harry’s spine with a sticking spell as he stepped away, so the tendrils fluttered against his swollen hole. The sounds of drawers and glass behind him. “Cinnamon,” Voldemort said laconically upon return.

“I don’t know what – “ And then Voldemort popped the buttplug out and Harry _moaned_. The emptiness was awful. He’d never felt that he’d needed to be filled up like this before. “Daddy,” he rasped, and it made lust surge through them both.

Voldemort worked quickly because Harry was already shaking, his hole clenching and quivering from overstimulation on its own. The smell of cinnamon oil filled the space, and as it burned at Harry’s sinuses he recognized what it was meant to do to his arse. “Oh my god,” he breathed.

“Yes.” Voldemort sounded amused.

He was _so_ overstimulated already. The blindfold was wet from his watering eyes, his torso tense from holding this position. His cock seemed bigger and stiffer than it had ever been. When Voldemort pressed the tingling, slick buttplug back into his entrance, he squirmed away. “I’m going to come.” It sounded as though he were begging.

“I don’t care.” He pressed the plug in firmly.

It was a slow heat, spreading deep inside him, mingling with the slick Amortentia until it felt like each individual nerve was a fire inside of him. He did sob, pressing back against the touch in desperation. “Please, Daddy, please,” and it was just as real as it was performative. And he was twisting the plug inside of him, spreading the oils until they burned, and Harry couldn’t bite back the gasps and whimpers this elicited. “Please,” he said again, because he could think of nothing else.

And then Voldemort’s hand was wrapped around his cock and he could have cried with relief. The cinnamon oil was on his fingers too, accidentally or by design, and Harry shuddered as the tingling spread along his cock. He was pumping without taking the cock ring off, so his arousal felt strained, deep inside of himself. And then Harry was arching back against Voldemort, pressing his erection into his grasp, bucking and panting. The orgasm came upon him like a tsunami, engulfing him, and with a deep groan he spurted over his stomach, into Voldemort’s hand, across the sheets. Voldemort pumped and pumped, since the cock ring and potions drew out his orgasm, until he’d wrung out the last warm dribble. Trembling, he sagged into Voldemort’s touch.

And when he somewhat had his senses back, he found he was still goddamn hard. A breathless laugh. “Don’t stop,” he begged. The cock ring and potions had made his orgasm feel incomplete, the first surge of many. He wanted to be touched. He wanted to be fucked.

“Shameless,” Voldemort breathed against the back of his neck, and then he was pulling away. His absence, and the cool air on Harry’s damp back, nearly _hurt_.

He picked up the flogger again. Harry was still slack, still exhausted really, such that he could no longer bring himself to clench at each blow. The cinnamon burned when he did, anyway, and he was instinctively pushing outward now. _Thwack thwack thwack_. The sound of leather and suede against his skin was intoxicating.

And when the analgesic of orgasm receded, his entire lower half throbbed. Voldemort was flogging his arse all the way down his thighs, and he could feel how swollen the entire expanse was. The Amortentia made all pain feel like good pain, a relief that consumed him, centered him. _Smack, smack_. He kicked involuntarily at blows on his hot thighs. Voldemort paused. “Sorry, sir,” he was barely able to say through uneven breaths.

He moved away and Harry groaned as though stopping were a punishment. And then he was beside Harry, long fingers on his inflamed nipples, flicking the clamps to make him gasp. And then… something, and then the dangling weights were dragging his nipples off his chest. He froze, because they hurt so much more when they swung. “I didn’t – “

Voldemort clapped a hand over his mouth – large enough, actually, to cover his mouth and nose both, fingers tight against his cheekbones. He struggled to breathe. “I don’t give a fuck what you want,” Voldemort growled against his ear. Harry sobbed, embarrassingly, as lust shot through him. “I don’t give a fuck about you. Stop _flinching_ like a bitch and goddamn take this. It will hurt much more each time you pitch the way you are.” To demonstrate, he dropped each of the weights in a circular motion. Fire erupted across Harry’s chest, balancing the stinging pain of his lower half. He moaned.

“Daddy, Daddy, I’ll be good,” he was muttering, even though he adored this. He wasn’t sure Voldemort could hear him through his fingers.

“You don’t need to be _good_ ,” Voldemort said, after a pause. “You need to be _strong_.” And that was actually true, in a different way than the rest of this, and the sob that stuck in Harry’s throat was deeper than the rest.

Back to the flogger. _Smack, smack, smack_! Pausing like that kept him from getting numb. It felt like he was being ripped open, that his blood was so close to the surface of his skin that it’d spill out at any moment. _Smack, smack_. Across his thighs. When he jerked, the weights swung, delayed from his motion, and he couldn’t help it, he jerked again at their second pull. “Fuck,” he breathed through his teeth. “Jesus – _fuck_.” He could feel Voldemort’s pleasure as he intentionally stilled himself.

“Cry for me, sweetheart.”

It wasn’t hard, his emotions boiled so hot and intense anyway. _Smack, smack_. His cries drowned out the flogger’s sound – shuddering, high-pitched cries. _Smack, smack_ , across his arse. “ _Ahh_.” A sharp intake of breath. He was panting wetly. _Smack_! Whimper. _Smack_! Whimper. _Smack_ , along the delicate underside of his arse, already so inflamed, and it got an honest-to-god sob from him. “Daddy, please, please,” he was begging through his cries, for what he didn’t know, as the flogger rained blows against his arse. _Smack, smack, smack_. Leather and cinnamon and sweat filled the air.

“What do you want?”

“I don’t know.” His saturated voice quivered.

“Do you want me to stop?” He still swung the flogger into his thighs, soft and nearly playful now.

“No.”

“Do you want me to fuck you?”

“Yes.” He needed something bigger than the buttplug inside him now. He quivered inside and wanted to be filled.

Voldemort hummed. “Well.” Three more quick blows, into the crease between his arse and thighs, and Harry sobbed hard at them. And then the flogger was dropped to the bed, far too casually.

Voldemort couldn’t fuck him on his knees. The motion of flogging was already straining his damaged torso. He pulled the ropes away from the headboard, releasing Harry, and he could do little but let his hands fall to his sides. He didn’t dare sit back.

Voldemort saw his hesitation and enjoyed it immensely. “What _do_ you want?” he asked again.

“I want you inside of me.” He was too emotionally exhausted to be hesitant. “I want you to feel like you own me.”

A thoughtful murmur. “On your side,” Voldemort said, grabbing Harry’s hips to ease him onto the bed, because Harry would’ve _flopped_ otherwise. The nipple weights dangled sideways. His cock scraped against his stomach and then against the sheets.

Even light touch against his arse was intense; he jerked as Voldemort ran a thumb down the cleft of his arse. “Please.” His insides throbbed against the buttplug.

Voldemort was lying behind him, pressing one leg up so Harry’s arse was splayed open. “Good boy.” A twist of the buttplug to ignite new fires. And then he was pulling the cock ring off, so Harry groaned in relief. His cock felt massive and heavy. Buttplug, eased out too slowly, perfectly so.

Their usual lube was smeared across his hole, even though he was so wet inside already. Before Voldemort entered him, he grabbed Harry’s throat for leverage – not squeezing yet, but a threat and a promise nonetheless. Harry melted in his touch.

When Voldemort pressed inside of him, it was slow, nearly torturous. He felt a gasp on the back of his neck as Voldemort’s cock pressed into the stinging, slick cinnamon oil. It felt good, his girth filling the empty spaces inside Harry. He pressed backwards in need.

They went slow: they were tired and overstimulated; the cinnamon burned in the best way; Harry was mewling and shivering with the various pains holding him hostage. Voldemort’s hand pulsed around his throat, just enough to feel precarious. “Very good, good boy,” he was murmuring against Harry’s neck. They smouldered against each other. And then Voldemort was thrusting into him, slow because he was tighter from this position. The deliberate fullness made him warm all over, made his head swim and heart pound.

He was reaching back to grab Voldemort’s thighs, to pull him tighter against himself. “I love you, I fucking love you,” he was gasping, senseless, stupid, beautiful. Voldemort squeezed his throat until his vision grayed to stop this babbling.

His penetration was as measured and perfect as the flogging had been. Harry’s hips pumped in time before he was even touched; his cock shifted against the blankets to provide some friction. Voldemort’s body nearly engulfed his, pressed against the expanse of his back, draped over his side. _Safe_. Even with a hand at his throat – maybe especially because of it – he felt incredibly safe. He slumped against the blankets, his hand wandering between his legs.

Voldemort slipped deep along his arse, until he could feel all the fluids including pre-come squelching inside of him. Each thrust was perfect, igniting something new in him. But Voldemort was much closer than Harry, they could feel; and he pressed his hand over Harry’s to keep him from touching himself. “Wait.”

“Yes, sir.” Even though dragging his fingers away from his cock right now felt like torture.

“I’m going to piss inside you afterward. I think you’ll like it better.”

 _Oh_. He would. “Please,” he murmured.

They slipped against one another, Voldemort’s arousal hot and thick within them both. And then he went tense, his thrusting becoming quick and erratic, and then his grip on Harry went tight, and then with a violent pump he was spurting, a deep moan against the back of Harry’s neck. He bit down as he came and it was fantastic, both of them jerking at the sensation. Harry’s hands were fists on the sheets, because he could’ve come at that alone. If he weren’t so good, so obedient, so strong. His arse pulsed around Voldemort’s erection to get him off. He loved the new slick heat inside him.

And then Voldemort stilled, without pulling out. There was some magic, he felt the tingle of it, and something was placed at his hip. “You need to roll over, just a bit,” Voldemort said, but he mostly moved Harry himself. There was a nappy beneath him, the familiar soft cotton pressing into him.

Voldemort shifted, and once his arousal had receded a bit, Harry could feel that he had to piss. “Please go inside of me,” he murmured. Letting him go down the back of the nappy was somewhat common these days, when they couldn’t or wouldn’t get out of bed late at night. Being pissed _in_ was new, and thrilling.

A deep breath. A few suggestion charms cast on himself in quick succession, until Harry whined at the residual desperation. “I can’t wait any longer,” Voldemort said, words he knew Harry adored. “Your tight arse better not allow any to spill on the bed.”

“Oh my god,” Harry groaned. He was rutting against the nappy beneath his hips, until Voldemort had to still him, had to be soft enough to go.

A pinprick of heat inside him, as the first drops spilled. Another. Voldemort’s breathing was deliberate. And finally he was able to let go, his stream filling Harry with a different heat. It already felt like it was spilling out, drops running over his balls, and he tried futilely to clench.

“Don’t,” Voldemort groaned, and it was amazing. The piss bubbled inside of him and out of him, drops running over his balls and down the backs of his inflamed thighs. And then he was pulling out, the head of his cock pressed still at Harry’s entrance, his stream gentle and steady even though Harry could feel how urgent it was. He held Harry down by his shoulders, holding Harry’s knees apart with his own. The stream pooled under him, rinsing some cinnamon and Amortentia out too so his balls grew warm and tingly. His arse quivered at the sensation.

Voldemort pissed forever, until the open nappy beneath Harry was swollen. Harry’s cock was enveloped in warm cotton. He’d come at any moment. “ _Please_.” He was rubbing against the nappy desperately.

“Wait.”

“I _can’t_.”

A single warning slap on his arse, but it fucking hurt. And then Harry shut up. Voldemort relaxed into his piss, handing off the relief through Legilimency. Which _wasn’t_ fair, since Harry was both desperate to come and now also to piss, but the gesture was nice.

A last dribble over his arsehole, slipping into the puddle between his legs. “Very good,” Voldemort murmured, and his weight behind Harry shifted. He nudged Harry’s hips upwards, and then there was the buzz of a vibrator. Voldemort slid it alongside his cock.

“Oh my god.”

“That’s right.” He pressed Harry down hard, pinning the nappy to trap the vibrator and his erection and the pools of piss inside. “You’ll stay in them tonight, of course. You’re such a disaster already.”

Harry’s eyes were squeezed shut. He was shivering. Voldemort slid a hand between his legs, pressing the wetness against him, pressing the _vibrator_ against him, until he bucked. Then he was being pulled over onto his back, the blindfold lifted from his face. His gaze found Voldemort’s. “Please.”

He never reached into the nappy, never touched Harry, really, but when he pressed the vibrator against him through the cotton, he wrung piss out, making everything hot and wet again. His own piss, marking Harry. His arse quivered and his backside throbbed. Feeling so marked, so owned, so safe – when the vibrator slipped along the sensitive underside of his cock, his hips thrust upward violently. “Fuck,” he gasped, and his come exploded, running across the head of his cock and down the wet interior of the nappy. “Oh _fuck_.” It was longer and deeper of an orgasm this time, with less come but more shivering pleasure. The vibrator buzzed through each wave, each time he’d thought he’d finished, and he would buck again.

It took him awhile, in his addled state, to realize Voldemort was doing it on purpose. The vibrator wouldn’t stop, and shudder after orgasmic shudder ran through him. He squirmed, laughing breathlessly. “What are you doing?” he managed to ask.

“You could go all night, you know.” Voldemort twisted the vibrator against him. A hard buck, a crash like an orgasm but he was dry by now, and the pulse of pain inside him was still pleasurable. He groaned. “That really was an indecent amount of Amortentia,” Voldemort added casually.

“I – _ahh_ – maybe.” He couldn’t tell the surges of arousal apart anymore. “But it kind of hurts.” His voice was as shaky as the rest of him. He loved it. “And I’ve got to piss.”

“Mm. Stay,” Voldemort added severely as he stepped back. Harry responded with an arch and a groan.

Voldemort had stepped into the toilet and Harry was absurdly trapped on the bed. His hips bucked and bucked, in a constant sore state of dry orgasms. “Jesus,” he gasped into the empty room. His hands were on the front of his nappy but he didn’t put them inside.

Long minutes later, Voldemort returned, fresh and ready for bed. He laughed softly at Harry, red-faced and still squirming on the bed. “The charm will end when you fall asleep,” he said sweetly.

“You are such an arsehole,” Harry said, shivering at another wave of arousal. When Voldemort got into bed beside him, Harry curled against him, pressing his cock and the vibrator into his thigh. “I want to piss. And I want to sleep. Please. Daddy.”

“I asked you to say that only because I’m aware you hate it.”

“You do, too.”

A faintly surprised look. “Yes,” he agreed blandly. He was reaching into the sodden nappy, pulling out the vibrator. “I want to do one last thing for you tonight. Well, two.” _Finite_ , and the charm was dispelled. He ran a cleaning spell over the vibrator and dropped it on a side table.

“What?”

“Let me pierce your nipples.”

He was so light and floaty from having his orgasms wrung from him that he could only laugh. “Really?”

Voldemort pressed his mouth just below the nearer clamp. His nipples were puffy and inflamed, but so was the rest of him. “Don’t you appreciate the idea?” he asked. “Piercings won’t show beneath your robes. Granted, nappies probably wouldn’t either. But every time you were in shirtsleeves, you’d know. Everyone would know. You really don’t wear marks of your kinks visibly enough on your body.”

“I wear _your_ marks visibly enough,” Harry countered.

Baring his teeth, Voldemort moved to run his tongue over his scar. It was strangely intimate. “Yes.”

He did like the idea, honestly. Not that he’d ever considered it before. “Alright.”

“It won’t hurt half as much as the things I did to you tonight,” Voldemort promised.

He was careful in his work, taking off one clamp and transfiguring it into a ring with an open end. A few charms on it. “Would you like any numbing charms?”

He couldn’t feel his inflamed nipples anyway. He liked the idea of deliberate, painful control. “No.”

Voldemort leaned in. “There’s a flesh piercing charm on the end of this,” he said as he put the post parallel to his chest.

“That sounds hideous.”

“This is the most wholesome thing I’ve ever used it for.”

He was not slow but deliberate. “Breathe.” He pressed the post through delicate flesh. A white heat, but tiny and localized. He exhaled.

The ring closed itself with magic when it was through. Voldemort pressed a kiss to it that also might have been a charm. And then the other. Voldemort’s hand on his solar plexus was steadying. The rings glinted in the lamplight.

He was slow to move away from Harry, tonguing the second piercing with more care and attention. “Beautiful.”

Harry needed a mirror. Groping for his wand, he cast a mirror charm above himself. He was a disaster, with his cheeks flushed and his hair everywhere. The piercings hadn’t bled, or maybe Voldemort had sucked away whatever blood there had been, but the dark flesh was a perfect contrast to the delicate silver rings. He rolled over to see what the flogger had done to him – of course the swollen nappy obscured his arse, but his thighs had puffy red stripes all the way to his knees. He grinned. “Thank you.”

“I hoped that, given enough orgasms, you would actually sleep tonight.”

It was blunt but it was true; Harry would likely agonize and think and gag on stomach acid all night if he were more awake. “Thank you,” he said again.

He didn’t even bother getting up. Like a real wizard, he cast a cleaning charm on his mouth instead of brushing his teeth. Then a Scourgify on the nappy, a couple of them, because the slickness and residual cinnamon was far more obnoxious than pleasant at this point. As soon as he was dry again, he crawled carefully over Voldemort’s legs. “Can I go in your lap?” he asked charmingly. He didn’t want to be presumptuous even if they’d done it a hundred times before.

“I wish you would.”

He settled sideways to let his head fall against Voldemort’s bony clavicle, with Voldemort’s arm around his back to support him. “Daddy, Daddy,” he murmured, pressing himself into feeling small. A moment later, he laughed. “Sorry, no, I still hate it.”

Voldemort hummed. “You should. We might be tempting fate with it. We were, after all, prophesied to be equals.”

They were so fated. It would sustain them both. _Save_ them both, perhaps. “I wouldn’t want to tempt fate.”

“Nor would I.”

Harry tipped his pelvis back to begin pissing, all the residual desperation from Voldemort’s own suggestion charms. Warmth spread beneath him, and he let his eyelids flutter closed for a long moment. It was good and it was quiet and it was safe. He’d miss the sense of safety most of all.

“I will, too.”

Harry looked up, confused, before realizing their consciousnesses were still utterly entangled. “Sorry,” he muttered, mustering the control for Occlumency.

“Leave it.” And Voldemort passed off his own sensations, the warm weight of the nappy spreading across his lap and the pleasure of Harry’s trustingness when he was sleepy and the pleasant soreness of sex. And they were both so past orgasm tonight, but it was an intoxicating feeling nonetheless.

“I love you,” he murmured easily. And he was offering in return all of the safety, all of the surprising softness that Voldemort’s bony body offered. It was a brief reprieve from real life, but that moment felt like sanctuary.

 

 _Thursday, August 13._ He woke up too early anyway, sick to his stomach with anxiety. He couldn’t do this. Slipping out of bed, he cast a great many analgesic charms on his broken body, and then he stood under a hot shower for a very long time before admitting he wasn’t going to feel any better. He swallowed a calming draught and went to pack.

It maybe wasn’t a necessity that he should pack – after all, he was only offering that the Aurors make all the decisions about his contact with Voldemort. But he’d be a fool to assume they’d say anything other than complete separation. He tried not to resent it.

It also maybe wasn’t a necessity that he should leave today, Thursday. Voldemort had told the Ministry to convene here on Saturday. But he’d only try to bargain his way out between now and then, or convince Voldemort they didn’t have to do it this way. He trusted Voldemort, to understand all of this better than Harry himself did. To keep them both alive better than Harry himself could.

The house was dark and quiet as he moved through it. Potions, Pensieve, books, school supplies, the laundry he’d left scattered everywhere. The entire nappy bag because Voldemort had no use for it without him. The wine bottles from Moody, still half-full of dreamless sleep and kaval. The sky was but only faintly lit when he finished, his trunk brimming. It looked wrong.

He slipped back into the bedroom at the end. Throwing twice his dosage of baobab tablets in his mouth, he leaned over Voldemort, kissing half of them in. It was the way he did it these days. Voldemort would humor him, casting Aguamenti directly into his mouth when he’d swallow. (“Mental health is important,” Harry reminded him sweetly sometimes, to a snort.) This time, he reached up sleepily to pull Harry back into bed, frowning when he found him fully dressed. Running a hand over his face: “Harry?”

“I’ve got to go.” His voice was low but it was steady. “I’ve got your Horcruxes. I’ve already packed. Do you need anything?” He was pressing last bits of magic into Voldemort’s skin.

They were still too raw with one another from last night, unable to keep their Occlumency separate. This hurt them both. He was surprised how much of the pain was Voldemort’s. He thought back to Healer Onofre’s warning, that Voldemort could become overly dependent on Harry’s magic after relying on it for too long. He wondered if that was relevant now.

“Why are you going now?” Voldemort asked. He was softer, gentler upon just waking. It was when they had their most revealing conversations.

Still, Harry sucked at his lower lip. “I can’t wait for you to leave me.”

Consideration and a nod. “And _where_ are you going now?”

“I don’t know. My godfather’s house, maybe. Not Hogwarts. The Ministry first, though.” Just as Voldemort had ingratiated himself with the Aurors (well, relatively) with self-surrender in the spring, he thought surrendering himself now might be an advantageous move. Anyway: “I can’t wait for you to give me up, either.”

A wince, not because it was a horrid accusation on its own but because Harry’s trust and abandonment issues were never far from the surface. “I know,” he said. “I am sorry. I am making decisions that will benefit us both in the end, I believe, but,” a crooked smile, “I am unused to such decisions. I am unused to sharing my fate with another.”

Harry had slid into bed, letting himself be held. He was completely unable to tell their magic apart anymore. “I do trust you,” he said. “This is just… awful.”

“Yes,” he agreed. He was pushing hair out of his eyes, pressing a kiss to his scar. It was almost enough to keep Harry from going.

“A copy of your amended vow with Severus is on the kitchen counter,” Voldemort said after a time. “As is a titanium vial. Would you deliver it to the Minister’s office?”

“Titanium?”

“The antivenom would melt anything else.”

 _Oh_. “When did you even have time to brew that?” They’d been together and… engaged since he’d offered an antivenom to Scrimgeour. “Also, I thought you were holding onto it to bargain with. Am I supposed to, like, make him offer something in return? I’m not sure I can do that.”

“Tell him it is a gesture of goodwill.” At Harry’s incredulous look: “It is. He’s done more for me than I’ve done for him, by now. We mustn’t look _ungrateful_.”

“Do you care about fairness these days?” Still incredulous.

He flashed his teeth. “Not a whit,” he said. “But there’s no ulterior motive attached. I want him to have it. And the venom wouldn’t keep if I waited until I needed something from him. I brewed it a few days ago,” he added, to answer Harry’s first question, “as it’s been apparent for a very long time that it’s what the Minister wanted most. Even if he would never ask.”

“Huh. Right, yeah, I’ll give it to him.”

“And then you will find the Aurors?”

“And offer to stop causing problems.”

“They will appreciate that.”

A silence. Awful silence, and Harry felt grief welling in his chest. Pushing his glasses out of the way, he ducked his face into Voldemort’s shoulder so he wouldn’t see him fall apart. “I love you, I love you,” he was muttering into Voldemort’s sleep-warm skin. “Don’t let them destroy you.”

“Of course not.” His fingers tangled themselves in Harry’s hair, pulling his face up. Harry’s eyes were wet and it was embarrassing until he pressed a kiss to each of his eyelids, running a tongue over where his eyelashes followed the curve of his cheeks. “I love you, too.” His tone was intentional, as though he were practicing. He might always sound like he was practicing. His lips brushed Harry’s face. “Should I see you out?”

“Please don’t.” He took a long time to pull himself seated. Their hands were touching and Harry pressed magic into their connection until he’d stepped far enough away that his fingers slipped from Voldemort’s. He left with a quick stride, his head down.

When he stepped into the garden of their fake home, he wiped his face on his sleeve before unzipping the Portkey. A jolt, and he was pulled away.

 

He ended up in the Ministry’s Atrium, as usual. His bag was heavy on his shoulder and he was dragging his trunk behind himself like a Muggle, but the weight of it all was centering. At least he’d cast a volley of analgesic charms on himself this morning so he was nearly not limping.

It was too early for the Ministry to really be busy; employees were arriving in the Floos at a trickle rather than a flood. Harry’s trunk scraped the stone floor, and while he got a few curious looks, they all kept their distance. He headed for the Minister’s office.

And then a heft at the back half of his trunk startled him, and he looked back to find Mr. Weasley holding it, a very concerned frown on his face. “Sorry,” Harry muttered. “I mean, morning. Thanks. I can get it, I’m probably ruining the floors….”

“You look wretched,” Mr. Weasley said, blunt and worried. “Where are you going?”

“The Minister’s office, for now. I know the way.”

“Of course you do,” Mr. Weasley said gently, and accompanied him anyway.

“Thanks, sir,” Harry said when they were alone in a lift. All the ways he could think to explain what had happened sounded oddly like a break-up. He tried anyway: “We wanted to offer the Aurors the opportunity to keep us apart, in exchange for his safety. Kind of. And to keep Hogwarts safe as well. It’s complicated.”

“It sounds complicated,” Arthur agreed. “Really, it sounds like something that shouldn’t be left to, forgive me, an eighteen year old.”

“Dumbledore entrusted me with worse.” It was a neutral statement, not a criticism, and he saw Arthur flinch anyway. “Sorry, sir.”

“No, that’s… fair,” Arthur said with a sigh.

“I am the one who’s going to save us from Voldemort. Just, maybe not in the way anyone expected. Not even Dumbledore.”

“You don’t know how relieved everyone is to have avoided a war.”

“I am, too. He is, too.” It felt like an ill-divulged secret.

The lift doors slid open, into a corridor of the Minister’s office. The same purple-ish lighting of security charms glowed above them. They hoisted Harry’s trunk out. “Will you be alright?” Arthur asked, when they’d reached the right corridor.

“Yeah. But….” An impulsive moment. “Could I stay at the Burrow for awhile after this? I know, Ron said it’s just you and Mrs. Weasley right now,” (because he and Ron and Hermione had written back and forth a bit every night) “but I’ll stay out of the way. I, uh, can’t go back to Hogwarts yet, and Grimmauld Place would be….” _A spectator sport_ , he didn’t finish.

But he didn’t need to. Arthur had taken him by the shoulders to pause his babbling. “You are always, always welcome,” he said with gravitas. “I’ll send Molly an owl.”

Something inside of him went slack, in a good way. “Thanks,” he said, a bit abashed by the sincerity. Arthur did not crush him in a hug when he departed, but he did look like he wanted to.

The door to the Minister’s department was heavy and gilded. And, Harry found upon trying it, locked. Well. Dropping his trunk in a nearby corner, he slumped upon it to wait.

He really hadn’t slept well, so it was only a short while later that Scrimgeour found him leaned against the wall, mostly asleep. “Harry?”

Coming to with a start, he scrubbed his face in his hands. “Sorry, sir. Good morning.”

Scrimgeour was unlocking his office himself. “Madame Dawson is out for the day, so I’m alone, I’m afraid. Please come in.”

“If you’re busy I can come back. It won’t take long.” Nevertheless he levitated his trunk inside, opting not to drag it this time because the Minister probably already thought he was a disaster.

“I have got time. Leave your trunk out here,” Scrimgeour said. “I authorize anyone entering the department.” A second key, to unlock his personal office. A wave of his wand and tea appeared. They sat across from one another at his imposing desk.

Harry was digging through his bookbag for the antivenom. “Voldemort sent this.” He handed it over, the metal cool in his grasp. “I mean,” he backtracked, “I left this morning. Voldemort is going to offer you – and the Aurors, really – that you can have full control over how much contact we have, if you give him control over his other two Horcruxes. I’m going to go find Moody next. But I couldn’t wait,” he said, and it sounded embarrassingly vulnerable. Scrimgeour’s look was perfectly neutral. “But we also rewrote a vow that I’ve got with Snape – the same one I had with the Aurors – so if Voldemort or the Horcruxes harm anyone at Hogwarts, it’ll kill me.”

Thoughtful quiet. He was turning the titanium vial between his fingers. Harry had never noticed how crooked they were, as if they’d been broken a great many times. “It would be so much simpler to decide what to do with him if he weren’t so infuriatingly good at everything.”

In spite of himself, Harry smiled. “I know.” Scrimgeour didn’t ask what the vial was, so Voldemort had been right, he had been waiting for it. “He said to tell you it’s a gesture of goodwill.”

“Mm.” He expected Scrimgeour to scoff at this, and somehow he didn’t. “Thank you for delivering it.”

“Sure.” His hand was on the revised vow. “And then, the only other thing – would your barristers look over the vow with Snape? I want to confirm it before I go back to Hogwarts.”

“You’ve got the Horcruxes, then.” A blunt tone.

“Well… no?” he guessed. “Kind of. They’re, uh, fused to my soul.”

For some reason Scrimgeour looked alarmed at this. And then he was reaching to an instrument on his desk that looked kind of like an old-fashioned cash register, with protruding brass keys. Punching in a few things, he said, “I’m bringing legal counsel here. And I’m bringing Moody. It should be simpler to do this all at once.”

“Thank you, sir.” He realized he could feel the Horcruxes inside himself, slightly itching with the anti-aggression spells of the office. He quietly willed them to stop.

Moody arrived first. “You look like shit,” he remarked as he conjured a chair beside Harry. “Here.” He tipped a flask of brandy into his tea cup as though it were an acceptable thing.

“Alastor,” Scrimgeour admonished mildly.

But Harry threw back the tea. “Thanks, sir.” He warmed marginally. “That’s what Mr. Weasley said, too. Well, sort of.”

Barristers Bloom and Hare let themselves in then; they were old and mild-mannered but good at their jobs. “Gentlemen,” Scrimgeour said, conjuring more chairs. He looked back to Harry. “Let’s take this one issue at a time, shall we?”

 

So he had to explain everything again, carefully. _Geminio_ on his revised vow with Snape so they could each look at a copy before them. Moody made a noise as though choking on his tongue when Harry told him where the Horcruxes were (or, well, weren’t). “Voldemort said you couldn’t remove them without a Dementor,” he said warily, in case they sent him back to the Unspeakables.

“Could _you_ remove them?” Moody asked.

“The artifacts. Not the connection itself.” There weren’t any clauses stating that Harry would keep them on his person, or where they’d be kept otherwise. “He said our souls are too close to properly possess me, anyway.”

They’d all gone a bit pale at this. “He stripped off all the curses first,” Harry said, an absurd reassurance. “It’s really only a bit of his soul. Honestly, you could display them both as relics, with the right display case, is all.”

“Like hell,” Moody said.

“You _could_ ,” Harry emphasized.

“The last Horcrux that entered Hogwarts nearly killed Arthur Weasley’s daughter,” Scrimgeour said, allied with Moody for the moment.

Harry blinked. He supposed there’d be no reason the Minister should know he and Ginny had dated. The Minister probably knew too much about his sex life as it was. “The last Horcrux that entered Hogwarts was _me_ ,” he reminded them, “and Voldemort was never able use it.”

Scrimgeour eased at this; Moody did not. Bloom leaned forward with the contract: “We could add a clause that you won’t remove the Horcruxes.” He stumbled on the word. “And that you’ll be responsible for controlling them. Funny contract,” he remarked – they hadn’t crafted this one, Voldemort and Camilla Brightbone had done the original themselves, the version that protected the Aurors. “Since the, er, consequences are taken out on you, Mr. Potter, but there’s not much in here governing your behavior.”

“Voldemort really, really wants me alive,” Harry said. “It’s about the most non-negotiable thing for him.” Naming Voldemort kind of hurt. He suppressed it.

“Funny,” Bloom repeated.

“I’d be fine if you wrote that in. Or, like, if I took them off, they couldn’t leave my suite,” he offered.

Bloom looked to Moody, who had the most reservations of them all. “It’s not feasible to put an Auror on you at all times,” Moody grumbled, “but I wish we could. Would you agree to having your magic restricted, so you couldn’t cast a range of dark spells?”

He hadn’t known this was possible. “But I’ll be teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts.”

(Real Moody had been informed of Fake Moody’s lesson plans in Harry’s fourth year, and did not appreciate the day of Unforgivables. Pity, because Harry kind of wanted to recreate it. Not with this restriction, though.)

“Bring an Auror in to do your demonstrations.”

Harry sighed. “Fine.” Pause. “Sir, just what _does_ count as dark arts?”

“Don’t get clever with me, Potter.”

 

So they agreed on this after all. Horcruxes would be on Harry’s person or in his suite at all times; he’d face both legal and magical repercussions if they (or he) caused trouble; and Harry’s magic would be restricted from a standard Aurors’ list of prosecutable dark magic. It wasn’t bad, really; not like he wanted to Crucio anyone anyway. And then… then the Horcruxes were cleared for Hogwarts, functionally.

“Assuming,” Barrister Hare said with a frown, “that the Headmaster agrees.”

“Oh god,” Harry sighed (getting weird looks from the room for swearing like a Muggle). “I don’t know. I hope he will. It doesn’t _have_ to be him, but Voldemort said it’d be easier on my soul than holding two vows at once.”

“I’ll talk to him,” Moody said, sounding very unpleasant.

“Sir?”

“The Order’s always kept our own in line.”

Huh. He thought of the Order as being antagonistic to the Ministry, but maybe not. Maybe without Dumbledore, it wasn’t. At the very least, it was a relief that Moody was thinking of Snape as a fellow Order member and not a free Death Eater. “Yes, sir.”

“I want to perform the vow myself.”

Yes, sir.” He’d be saying it a lot more to Moody these days.

The barristers scribbled a bit on the vow, Harry pressed a thumbprint to the provisional copy, and they said they’d have the real one to Harry and Moody in a few days. They left. Moody stayed.

Scrimgeour was reaching for the same device, to summon someone else. “An Unspeakable, for soulwork,” he explained at Harry’s look. “And Bowersock, if he’s available, to represent the Wizengamot.”

“No.” He said it reflexively.

Scrimgeour’s jaw was set. “Yes. Don’t get involved in things you don’t understand.” He keyed in the visitors. Moody passed Harry the brandy. ( _Did Moody know_? He’d taken news of Voldemort’s abuse in stride, why not sexual abuse. Still, Harry was not in a position to hate Moody. He swallowed his feelings with the brandy.)

“We will, of course, plan this formally with Voldemort,” Scrimgeour said when they were all gathered. (Bowersock and his stupid fucking face had beamed at Harry upon entering. He’d barely faltered when Harry could find no expression within himself but a cold glare.) “But Harry, it would be helpful to hear it from you first, how you understand this agreement and what you want from it.”

“Yes, sir.”  Explaining this agreement was harder. “Voldemort knows the Aurors would prefer that he reclaim the Horcruxes,” he said, turning to Moody. “He also knows that you want me, um, out of his sphere of influence.” It rang as blatantly Voldemort’s words and not his own. “So we wanted to offer that the Aurors would have full say over our contact, in exchange for not interfering with the Horcruxes.”

Moody looked at him shrewdly. “And if we said no contact, starting immediately?”

“Didn’t you see my trunk outside?” He tried not to snap. “I’ve already left. I couldn’t _wait_.”

“And how would you subvert this requirement?”

“I’d probably try,” he said, a bit too promptly. The bite of Veritaserum on the back of his tongue. “Oh _goddammit_ – “ He shoved his teacup at Moody.

“We are within our rights,” Moody said coolly. “You’ve run away before. You’ve melted Ministry-established wards before.” The glare from his magical eye was even worse than from his non-magical one.

“Right. But – I won’t put Voldemort in danger. I won’t put anyone in danger, if I can help it.” _That,_ at least, was true.

“Noble,” Moody said. On his other side, Bowersock snorted and Harry wished he could stab him.

Scrimgeour turned to the Unspeakable: Bhatt, one of the two to have interrogated Harry a couple months ago. “I shared Dumbledore’s hypothesis with Voldemort this week, that a Horcrux’s distance generates power, though also instability. Voldemort has been… supplemented by Harry’s magic for some time now.”

“Since early spring,” Harry supplied. “Though we found out we could from the void at Hogwarts, last autumn. It’s worst when he’s trapped somewhere within a void.”

Scrimgeour inclined his head at this and continued, “Is there a substitute to strengthen Voldemort’s magic? He’s still casting in Cornwall – I assume,” he said with a glance, and Harry nodded, “and he says nobody else’s magic is properly attuned.”

Bhatt chewed the end of a quill. “We do need a team on Horcruxes if this persists,” she said instead.

“Voldemort is his own research team,” Scrimgeour said with a faint smile.

“Patronii strengthen soul magic sometimes. You already have blood-replenishing potions?” she asked. “Our magic-replenishing potions are in clinicals, but only first phase….”

“Those would be very helpful,” Scrimgeour said. “He’ll be useless as a data point, but certainly, if you’d join us for casting….”

“What is the problem?” Bowersock cut in. “He won’t die. That’s rather the point, isn’t it?”

The Veritaserum urged Harry on a bit too abruptly, and he nearly spat a volley of hexes at Bowersock. Moody saw this and dropped a heavy hand on Harry’s arm. Scrimgeour ignored Harry, saying to Bowersock, “The shield suffers when Voldemort’s magic does. Muggle relations are at a delicate place right now; I’d rather not disrupt them for the sake of wixen politics. Mere _principles_ , at that.”

“But why not let him drain himself? He’s so much more pliant that way. Pleasant, even.”

It wasn’t clear whether Bowersock was referencing to cocksucking here. But at the very least, he was referencing the ritual way they’d bleed Voldemort every night in Azkaban. Something stabbed inside of Harry. ( _The Horcruxes, the fucking Horcruxes hated this too_.) His teacup exploded, leaving only a fine sheen of tea and ceramic dust in its place. “Keep your hands off him,” he said coldly before he could stop himself.

“Harry – “ Scrimgeour’s and Moody’s voices overlapped.

Bowersock’s strong jaw jutted as he squared off in his seat. “Mind your tone, Mr. Potter,” he said. “And do not meddle in things you don’t understand. Your boyfriend’s life depends on it.”

“That’s what you called me the night you tied him down and pissed on him.”

A flicker of surprise, then a smirk. “Yes,” he said. “Does he tell you these things? Or do you creep in through his mind against _explicit Ministry orders_ that you should be taking dreamless sleep? You probably shouldn’t divulge such things before we’ve brought you to trial. Granted, charges of contempt are nothing relative to charges of sedition, but it all adds up, in the end.”

The Veritaserum didn’t obligate him to answer any of these questions, and thank Merlin for that. Scrimgeour cut in here anyway: “Quintus. You should go.”

Bowersock sank back in his chair. “Fine,” he said with a look of faint contempt at the Minister. (Did they normally get on? Could Harry exploit this relationship?) “The Wizengamot is on record as supporting the plan to cease contact between Voldemort and Mr. Potter, and enforce it with some form of Ministry custody.”

“Noted. We’ll be in touch to schedule negotiations with Voldemort.”

Harry hated this; he hated knowing Voldemort had to cooperate with Bowersock in Azkaban and in the political realm both. He hated that this confrontation had come to fuck-all. He hated himself for possibly making Voldemort’s time in or out of Azkaban worse.

Bowersock let himself out, as did the now-overwhelmed Unspeakable, with promises about clinical trials. The door closed heavily.

And then Moody had a rough grip above his elbow, dragging him out of his chair. “That was stupid of you,” he growled.

Harry wrenched in his grasp. Nobody had touched him like this since… well, since Vernon, and he was immediately terrified and adrenaline-filled. “Don’t, please don’t, I’m sorry – “

His reaction surprised Moody so much that he let go. “Don’t _what_ ,” he said irritably. With a flourish of his wand – away from Harry, thank god – he conjured hundreds of glass bottles, lining an empty bookcase. “You’re not safe to be around when you’re like this,” he said. “ _Please_ break glassware well away from the rest of us next time. I couldn’t stand dying of a ceramic shard lodged in my heart.”

As though Moody didn’t wear magical kevlar underneath his robes at all times. Suddenly, he felt a bit silly and histrionic. “Sorry, I – “

“Nope.” Moody pressed him forward by lodging his staff between his shoulder blades. “You need to break all of these. We’ll wait.”

He stepped forward awkwardly, feeling very dramatic. But Moody was right, his emotions still boiled very hot, and before he’d said anything, a row of bottles went off in consecutive pops. He squeezed his eyes shut, surrendering to his anger for a moment. “You’ll let sexual abuse just happen, too?” he said recklessly over his shoulder. His voice shook. The entire collection of glass exploded in a shower, shards scattering on the floor. Moody restored it, looking bored. “If you’ll let them do anything but kill him, you’re not going to have a _human_ afterward.” The next set exploded on the word. It was what he feared. Moody restored it. “Maybe you’ll have some creature you can still _exploit_ , maybe you won’t.” The explosion of glass was larger this time, landing nearer to where he stood. He hung a Protego in the air before himself. “How can you _possibly_ take him seriously, to enforce law or justice? How can you take yourselves seriously?” he added in disgust. Explosion. Restoration.

Scrimgeour had stood, his hands pressed to the desktop. “Voldemort and I _have_ discussed this,” he said. “At length. He wishes that Bowersock should stay on. Say he’ll be a useful whip in elections.”

Elections, Scrimgeour expected Voldemort to make it to elections. Harry filed this knowledge away for later, because he was still furious. “And it makes it bloody worse that Voldemort is _okay_ with this,” Harry snapped. “I don’t want anything to bloody do with politics if it’s all just about pretending everything is fine when it’s _not_. You can change things,” he addressed them both coldly. “You’ve told me that things _just happen_ , but if you can’t change anything for the better, who can?” Explosion. Maybe a bit subtler this time. Restoration.

“Prison reform has never been a popular campaign promise,” Scrimgeour said. “It’s not that the Wizengamot is vicious. It’s that humans are vicious. Now, if you believe that, what would your politics look like?”

“ _Cynical_ ,” Harry hissed. “Just like everyone has warned me not to be.”

“Indeed.” He’d stepped from behind his desk, approaching Harry cautiously. “Voldemort really is exceptional,” he said gently, “in being a misanthropic idealist. You hear the contradiction. It will serve him well. You, as an idealist and not misanthropic in the least, will have a significantly worse time of things.”

“Serve him well as Minister?”

“Well, Alastor disagrees strongly,” he said, with a fond glance at him (Moody snorted through his nose at this) “but yes, I believe so. But he really does need Bowersock to get there. There wouldn’t be time to start over.”

“I _hate_ this,” Harry said viciously. This time he had to draw his wand to explode the case of glass. And then he was exhausted, physically and emotionally. Moody caught him at the elbows again, in a way that didn’t plunge him into a panic this time, and pulled him away. They settled into the ring of chairs where the Minister had received him and Voldemort before.

Pressing him into a chair: “Alright?” Moody was still wary, his wand still drawn.

He was and he wasn’t. His magic was drained, in any case. “Yes, sir. Thanks.” He would’ve said sorry if it wouldn’t have gotten dismissed. With a last spell of clean-up, Moody and Scrimgeour both joined him seated.

“Now, to get you through the year,” Moody said briskly. “Will anything else explode if we say you can’t have any contact with Voldemort?”

It’s what he expected, and it hurt anyway. “I….” Words died in his mouth. “Uh, apparently not,” he said, though he didn’t manage to smile as he said it. “I knew, Voldemort knew.”

“Where’s that book you write in?”

He held off on flinching. He really didn’t want to surrender it. “Let me keep it,” he said. “I mean, sorry. I’m not meant to be bargaining. But I’ll rip out the runes. Tell Voldemort that he should do the same.” He fished in his bag until his fingers grazed the familiar cover. He lifted it out. The wards’ strings pulsed, and he grabbed them in a handful. Enough magic to warm them, and then he yanked. The pain he felt as the connection broke was all in his head.

“Fine,” Moody pronounced. Harry dropped it back in his bag dully. “And Bowersock’s right, you need to take dreamless sleep every night. The nurse will watch you if we’ve got to.”

“No, sir. I will.”

“Your name ‘ll be taken off the list of registered visitors to Azkaban. Trespassing in Azkaban carries about as horrid charges with it as you’d expect.”

“Yes, sir.” He imagined a swarm of Dementors descending on him if he ever returned. Not worth it.

“You’ll have nothing to say to the papers about Voldemort’s plans, his politics, or the Ministry’s treatment of him. Same goes for any other Death Eater, if they hold _pathos_ for you.”

None of them did, and Harry should probably feel worse about this, but he didn’t share a soul with any Death Eaters, so. “Yes, sir.”

“You’ll be as apolitical as the upcoming liaison to the Muggle world can be. If you and Voldemort need to be in any of the same meetings with the Muggles, you come to me first.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Aurors will drop in on your classes periodically to make sure you’re not radicalizing your students.”

Here Harry broke with his rote response, and glared. “ _Radicalizing_?” he scoffed. “I am never, ever going dark.”

“Voldemort had a lot of time alone with you to put a lot of ideas in your head.” Moody said this as though he blamed Scrimgeour at least as much as Harry.

 _Voldemort doesn’t even want me to be evil_ might not make quite the impact he wanted. “Fine, come see my classes,” he said. “But I haven’t been _radicalized_ and my students won’t be, either.”

“The Aurors will be the judges of that.”

“Yes, sir,” he said, and it sounded a bit more resentful than the others.

“Finally… the Aurors department hasn’t got the infrastructure to enforce any of this. We can only make Aurors’ vows with wixes who are, after all, Aurors. Custody is applicable only for wixes imprisoned in the more traditional sense.”

Harry was unimpressed, and the Veritaserum made him overly blunt. “You might’ve led with that.”

Moody held a grizzled hand up for peace. “Someday your mouth will get you in real trouble,” he warned darkly. “As I was saying, the Aurors haven’t got the infrastructure to keep you in line this year. But the Order does.”

“Oh.” _The Order’s always kept our own in line._ Harry had been sworn in on his seventeenth birthday; they all had been newly grieving Dumbledore then and his presence helped.  “But that can’t be the same thing as making a deal with the Ministry.” He was not so worried about his own fate as about Voldemort’s legal protection.

Moody gave him a queer look. “It’s a paramilitary order, registered with the Ministry and given legal autonomy. How would we ever keep that waste of flesh Dung Fletcher from half his conspiracies without the threat of prosecution.”

“Fletcher?” Scrimgeour said with interest.

Moody’s magical eye spun in his direction. “Rufus, don’t borrow trouble.” Scrimgeour flashed his teeth and Harry suddenly saw two wizards who had been colleagues for a very long time. “Anyway.” Moody looked back to Harry. “The Order _does_ have ways to ensure all of this. Not on Voldemort’s end, but I’ll take a vow on behalf of the Order and he’ll swear on his own behalf. It’ll hold everything together.”

“Yes, sir. Thanks.”

“You asked why we can’t do what you want us to do,” Moody said now, low and deliberate. “Take this as a lesson. Things happen much faster outside of official avenues. The Ministry hamstrings itself by design. Paramilitary orders ‘ve got all the authority and none of the regulation.”

“I think, on the whole, I’d rather have my law enforcement confined by law.”

“We never were,” Moody said, though he seemed… satisfied by Harry fighting back on this. “I’m telling you now, and I’m only telling you once, that if you try to subvert any of this, the Order can bring you to swifter, harsher justice than going through the official Ministry channels. We can do it before the Ministry’s even found the right paperwork.”

Oh. “Yes, sir.” Honestly he’d thought this had been going in the direction of having Voldemort assassinated, so a threat against just himself seemed almost merciful. “I want to do this right,” he said. “And I wouldn’t put our relationship,” he almost didn’t choke on the word, “before everyone’s safety.” As just about everyone he cared about and some people he didn’t had accused him in the past few months.

Including Moody. “Good to hear you’ve finally come to your senses,” he said, slightly too wry.

Harry only smiled in a placating way because placating people was the only thing he’d be doing from now on. “Yes, sir.”

Scrimgeour cut in before Moody could get riled for real. “I suppose there’s no need to wait until the weekend to see Voldemort, then?”

“I’m sure he’s waiting for you.” A tired nod.

“Where are you going now?” Moody asked. “Not Hogwarts, until the vow with Snape’s in place.”

“Not Hogwarts,” Harry agreed. “And not Grimmauld Place either. I thought they’d both be… a lot, right now.” It made him sound stupidly vulnerable, but well, he was. “I asked Mr. Weasley if I could stay with them, and he said yes.”

Moody frowned in a thoughtful way. “Yes,” he said at last. “That’ll do.” (Scrimgeour, probably only faintly aware of the Weasleys, much less Harry’s love for them, had his eyebrows up.) “There’ll be wards still in place from your last time there. Tell them we’ll send an Auror to review them tonight.”

“Great. I will.” He wondered guiltily if they were still having their post searched on his behalf.

“You’re still not free to go elsewhere without our permission and an escort,” Moody added. “You’re going to be a more attractive target than ever, now. Don’t let it get out that you’ve got more of Voldemort’s soul in you than he does. Nobody will be happy about it.”

This was a funny way of putting it. The Horcruxes throbbed in acknowledgment or maybe he was going mad. “Yes, sir.”

Moody looked to Scrimgeour, who raised one stiff shoulder in a shrug. “You take Potter, I’ll take Voldemort,” he offered lightly. Harry might’ve flushed at hearing them both spoken of like unruly children.

“You can _have_ Voldemort,” Moody muttered.

“Harry, we’ll owl you a copy of the agreement, of course,” Scrimgeour said. “Alastor, would you collect everyone who should be present? We might as well meet this afternoon.”

“Aye.” Moody got up; Harry moved to do the same but Scrimgeour stopped him. With a curious look, Harry sank back into his seat. As Moody left, his magical eye remained on Harry until he’d reached the door.

Scrimgeour leaned in, in some approximation of intimacy. He had the titanium vial between his fingers now, letting the light reflect off it. “I will keep Voldemort out of trouble,” he said. “But where did he get the antivenom?”

This really wasn’t fair; the Veritaserum still pulled at him. “He brewed it,” he said, looking for the quickest way to end this conversation. “A few days ago.”

“The thing about antivenoms… they can only be made with the venom of the appropriate snake. You’ve done well enough in Potions to know that, don’t you?” Harry nodded in a tiny gesture. “The brewer needs the appropriate species, in more typical instances, but his snake’s magic was idiosyncratic enough that it would require _hers_ , specifically.” When Harry didn’t volunteer anything, he framed it as a question: “He found her body, then?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

The Veritaserum burned at the back of his tongue. “Germany. The Black Forest.”

His eyebrows went all the way up at this. “How?” When Harry bit back the answer, he said as though gentle, “Harry, anywhere Voldemort can get out, others can get in. You don’t want that for him.”

“Not the safehouse,” Harry said. The potion made it burn like finally drawing breath after being smothered. “From Cornwall, last time. He… closed? dispelled? the portkey and stunned me.” His hands had slipped to his face as though he could hold his mouth shut. He knew it wouldn’t help.

Scrimgeour lifted his eyes to the ceiling. “We are putting a lot of effort into protecting him.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Who had the snake?”

“You should ask him,” Harry said. When Scrimgeour gave a faint shake of his head ( _why not_ ), Harry went on, “I don’t really know. Some former Death Eaters, not important ones. Some werewolves, some other wizards. Nobody who was in charge.”

“Mm.” He still studied the ceiling. “Then he is alone.”

“Yes.”

“All the more reason to put an Auror on you.”

Punishment, protection – it wasn’t the same but very often felt like it. “If you want. I’ll stay put.”

“See that you do.” He said it in a sigh, and moved to walk Harry out. “You’re taking the Floo to the Weasleys’? Give Molly my best.”

“Yes, sir. I will.” Harry paused with his hand on the gilded door. The words seemed to slip from his lips, unbidden. “He trusted you, you know.” Until Scrimgeour had told him about the Horcruxes’ enervation. To keep him weak but to keep him human. Approximately.

“I know.”

“He might, still.”

A careful pause. “I hope so.” He held the door for Harry as he left.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Allusions for Chapter 10:
> 
> “French magic is beautiful that way” – There’s been a couple instances of non-Latin magic in this fic already. I love the idea of different types of magic coming from different languages. I found the idea in [Insurgere, by Silver Pard](https://m.fanfiction.net/s/5846518/1/).
> 
> Kukudh – An Albanian myth, of an undead creature who won’t settle in the grave. (Like a ghost but more solid, lol.) The Albanian vampires called Voldemort this because they knew of his Horcruxes and immortality.
> 
> Arguros – Greek for silver. (Albania has a lot of Greek loanwords, you’ll see more later.) What the Albanian werewolves called Voldemort, because he had been contracted by the vampires to kill the werewolves on their land.
> 
> The scene of Harry exploding glasses with Moody is inspired by [The Well Groomed Mind, by Lady_Khali](https://archiveofourown.org/works/427653/chapters/719529).
> 
> The Order of the Phoenix as a legitimate and registered paramilitary group is from [Disinherited, by emilywaters1976](https://archiveofourown.org/works/998343/chapters/1976252). Any registered Order has some limited allowance to handle legal matters internally before involving law enforcement. They are legally and magically binding.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An aborted attack, a revised vow, and two faceless prisoners.

The Burrow was quiet when he arrived, and he was suddenly exhausted. Maybe Molly was out. He navigated his trunk up the narrow stairs, letting himself into Ron’s bedroom. As he flopped into bed, he realized just how unused to sleeping alone he was.

It was late in the afternoon (he thought; the real sky was not as brilliant as the fake one above the safehouse) when he awoke to loud scuffles downstairs. He pushed his hair approximately into place and went.

Mrs. Weasley’s face crumpled when she saw him. She barely stopped to put her shopping down. “ _Harry_.” And he was crushed in a hug. “Are you alright? Half the things we hear, we don’t believe, but we made Kingsley and Tonks swear….”

“I’m fine. I’m good. Can I put these away?” He nodded to the shopping bags. Molly beamed at him.

He explained what he could while they arranged the pantry. He referred to Voldemort only elliptically – _he_ and _we_ – and it still made the room feel choked. He told her about the airspace shield that was keeping their relations with the Muggles good. He told her that, if Snape agreed, he’d have a vow that kept all of Hogwarts safe. He had to explain a few times – because it was certainly the most counter-intuitive part of it all – that Voldemort would do just about anything to keep Harry alive.

“Part of his magic is in me,” he said, unsure how widely the term or concept _Horcrux_ had circulated among civilians. “There might be a way to take it back, but for now, he’ll preserve it. Me.”

He recognized the split second look on Molly’s face as the looks he’d gotten when he was outed as a Parselmouth. Something evil lurked within this good, sweet boy. “Dumbledore said curse scars work in unexpected ways,” she said diplomatically. “I suppose you’ve never known life without it.”

“Yeah,” he said, relieved. “It doesn’t… feel like much, except maybe when we’re near one another. But it never hurts, and it hasn’t changed me.”

“Of course not, dear.” He saw how much it took for her to smile.

 

Mr. Weasley arrived home not much later (Harry _had_ slept through the entire day, and it made him feel gross). Moving to begin a salad, he looked to Harry curiously. “Everything go alright this morning?” His tone implied he’d already heard… something. If not about Bowersock, then about Harry’s accusations of the Minister’s indifference. Maybe just how many hundreds of bottles Harry had smashed.

“Pretty much,” Harry said instead. “Moody said they’d be sending an Auror to look at the wards here, I hope that’s not a problem.”

“Kingsley said he was just a few minutes behind me, he must’ve gotten held up on his way out….”

Harry was pulling out plates and cutlery. (The Weasleys’ dishes were all mismatched, something the Dursleys would never abide by, and it felt funnily like _home_. If he ever had his own place, he’d never have matching dishes, he swore then.) “Should I set the table for four, then?”

“Five. He’s bringing Tonks with him.”

Right, so this was an observation of him as much as anything. He didn’t think he minded.

And Kingsley and Tonks did arrive shortly thereafter, and they all went out to the field beyond the Burrow together to look at the external wards. “Brill,” Tonks said when she uncovered glowing blue and gold strings set like a fence. “Perfect condition.” A frown, and she picked at a red knot set amidst the wards. “What is this?” She’d gone still, assuming it to be… a bomb? A tracker? Harry didn’t quite know.

Molly only laughed. “That one keeps deer away.” With a grin, Tonks pocketed her wand.

Dinner was good. Harry found that after having kept peace with Voldemort and literally anyone else in social settings for so long, normal people and normal conversations were easy. Even when Kingsley and Tonks were making a production out of not making a production. They were closer to seeing how devastated he’d be if he allowed himself such indulgent feelings. Nobody spoke of Voldemort. Kingsley let a warm hand fall on Harry’s shoulder as they were departing, and that was all.

When they were doing the last of the washing up, Arthur cleared his throat. “The Magitech Department’s just begun a new project,” he said. “I was hoping you’d help with it.”

“Sure?” He set the last of the dishes in the drying rack.

“Have you ever heard of a Muggle game called Mario Kart?”

He couldn’t stop laughing as he followed Arthur into their sitting room. “The entire thing is written _inside_ of this bit,” he said with reverence, holding up the cartridge. “We just worked out this week….” And, loading the cartridge, he was casting lighting spells very particularly into a mirrored box, where the Nintendo sat – and the game was suspended in mid-air before them.

Harry grinned. “That is amazing. I’ve never… I mean, my cousin had it. I’ve never played. I’ll probably be worse than you.”

He heard the split second pause of disapproval at this. Everyone skipped over Harry’s time at the Dursleys as best as they could. “We do very boring adult research in the department too, of course,” Arthur said as he cast a spell to make their wands into controllers. “But to be honest, I prefer these sorts of things. Frivolity, not… well, warfare.”

Shit. Harry would much prefer they weren’t developing weaponry either. What did he expect though, really. “Me, too.” But when they settled in on the sofa, Arthur explaining how to cast – and really just explaining the game itself, as Harry didn’t know it – something eased within him. _He’d be okay, he’d be okay._

Bedtime was the only time he let himself fall apart. A couple deep swallows of kaval, until something like acceptance and/or the numbness settled in his chest. Voldemort would feel it. He wondered if he’d been returned to Azkaban today. _No point in waiting_ , Scrimgeour had said.

And because Harry had slept all day, he lay awake deep into the night now. He pulled out the diary – now _only_ a diary, it felt dead in his hands. Leafing through it, all the Parselscript they’d shared was visible, without the spell of fading on it any longer. He inked a quill and sat for a long time. The Horcruxes in his chest _hurt_ , maybe in sympathy or maybe as a malicious act, but whatever, it wouldn’t persuade him to do anything.

_Voldemort: I hope we made the right choice. I’m trying to make decisions that will be best for us both too. It hurts so much right now, whatever comes after this had better be worth it._

_Nobody says your name around me. Maybe they hope I’ll forget or stop caring, or remember how nice a normal life would be again. I might, I guess. I’m with the Weasleys now, they’re the nearest thing I’ve got to family. I told you I wanted to live together, but I need a place like this too. A place where I can have friends over. A place where the dishes don’t match. I know that ~~appearances~~ perfection is important to you._

_I yelled at Bowersock today. He threatened me not to threaten him. Moody and the Minister said you’re a misanthropic idealist (I think) and it seems like it would help if I were too._

_They told me I needed to take dreamless sleep every night. Nobody said anything about sleeping in the day, though._

_I miss you._

\\\\\\\ ////

In his prison cell in Azkaban, Voldemort was still faintly bleeding. He had to beg the Healers not to cast anything on the wound from Germany, that it was still laced with magic-poisoning hexes until it healed completely. Their glee at this prospect was breathtaking, but Bowersock _of all people_ had walked him to the medical wing tonight and had a few sharp words for the guards and Healers. So they let the pink wounds rip back open, and they let him bleed. He appreciated it.

Bowersock would rally for him when he asked him to. He was some foolish version of loyal to Voldemort already. And tonight he hadn’t even touched him. He’d mentioned that he’d been in a meeting with Harry this morning; Voldemort could only assume that Bowersock’s newfound concern had sprung, somehow, from Harry’s righteous indignation.

Harry, ever his advocate and overstretched string tethering him to humanity. For whatever that was worth.

The meeting this afternoon had gone as expected. Scrimgeour; Bowersock, Hart, and Bones for the Wizengamot; Moody, Robards, and a half dozen of their Aurors; and two Unspeakables. The Minister’s legal counsel drafted the agreement; Moody said he was taking it on behalf of the Order of the Phoenix rather than the Aurors if it was all the same to him. It was.

To ensure their lack of contact would be complete – as complete as two people who shared a soul might manage – they said Harry would take dreamless sleep every night. There would be _consequences_ , he was told, for not keeping his Occlumency firmly in place. Harry had already ripped out the runes that bound their diaries together, so Voldemort had as well.

He held the dead, gutted diary now. He typically wrote in the morning and read in the evening, and Merlin knew the papers would want something of his to publish soon, but he was restless. He wondered if it was Harry’s restlessness he felt. Who could say. He flipped the diary open.

Parselscript was a pleasure to write, he forgot why he didn’t do so more often. But his entry was brief: _Without you here, I don’t recognize myself._

**\\\\\\\ ////**

The Burrow required a lot of upkeep, Harry found within the next week. Molly kept him busy; she’d put a radio drama charmed to be heard anywhere in the house and garden on as they worked. Peas yesterday, blackberries today, broccoli tomorrow. It felt nothing like working in his aunt’s planters.

Ginny was visiting Charlie. Ron and Hermione had slept over Saturday and they’d made brunch on Sunday. Fred and George stopped by for dinner on Tuesday; Remus and Kingsley came last night. Everyone recognized that he didn’t want to talk about any of this. Certainly they didn’t want to, either.

But he had negotiated with Kingsley that he needed to go school shopping anyway, and he wanted to take the Muggles to Diagon Alley. Kingsley had said that was not at all what the Minister had meant by ‘stay put,’ but he’d see what he could do. And then Ron and Hermione had agreed to meet them, and Arthur and Molly said they’d take them out to lunch, and then Molly had said Remus was becoming an anchorite in that library, and then they had an outing planned for ten people on Saturday. He’d written to Moody to make sure he was allowed out, and Moody’s exasperation bled through the page but obviously Kingsley had already advocated for him.

They began in Muggle London, in part because the Muggles couldn’t get through the gateway on their own and in part because had to copy all his texts for class. He and Hermione led the rest of them into a copy shop, and he sorted out Voldemort’s books with sticky tabs as he did his best to explain. “You know how Muggle photos don’t move? These are sort of like photos too. Well, they are, I guess….” The clerk was eyeing the eight of them (they’d meet up with Toni later) quite warily, and Harry did his best to smile winningly. “Sorry. We’re wizards.”

They all kind of instinctively flinched at this; Remus was the first to laugh. “The statute is gone,” he marveled. “I may never get used to it. Really, we should _celebrate_ you, not… _this_.”

Harry was handing out books and Muggle coins to the braver ones among them, to make copying go faster. “I am protected,” he said lightly. “Anyway, I’m not the only one you should be celebrating.” He wouldn’t name Voldemort, but he wouldn’t minimize how much of their world right now was his work.

Most of the group froze; Remus dropped his gaze in acknowledgment. “You’re not.”

Toni found them here when they were nearly finished; she had with her a girl only maybe twenty herself, whom she introduced as her intern Esperanza. “I thought we’d cover more ground this way,” she said with a smile.

Harry saw the way they surveyed the chaos of the shop, and he tried to sound normal. “We don’t always travel in, uh, packs,” he promised. “There’s errands to run before the school year.”

“I expected you here with Voldemort,” Toni said quite casually. Arthur and Molly, both in earshot, choked.

Harry did too, really, imagining what Voldemort would do if impressed into office work at a Muggle copy shop. “We made a deal to stay apart, because….” He thought. He could never explain it to the Muggles. “Because it’s safer for both of us.”

Arthur slid into the conversation. To Toni: “You’ve met V…?” _And you’re not dead_ , was the subtext.

“Oh, yeah. Don’t know how half our legislation would work without him. Clever, that one.”

“Yeah,” Arthur said faintly.

The Muggles had been briefed (diplomatically) on why wizards would be fucking terrified of Voldemort, it wasn’t that Toni didn’t know. It just wasn’t visceral for them. “Sorry to hear that, Harry,” was all she added, and Harry thought perhaps she was a clever one herself.

 

The Aurors had brought a magical camera for the Muggles, saying they couldn’t adequately document it all with one of their own. Toni took notes as usual; Esperanza was their photographer, and just seeing her face light up in wonder the first time the back wall of the Leaky Cauldron rearranged itself into an arch made his day. He would introduce new people to the magical world forever, if he could.

(Voldemort had said something similar to Harry, one early unguarded morning, when Harry was telling him enthusiastically about runes he’d learned the day before. He’d snorted at first and told him he was only amazed _now_ because the Hogwarts curriculum was tragic. He rescinded this long moments later: “I’d forget the wonder of our world without you,” he’d murmured. Harry had thought of bringing Voldemort to Platform 9 ¾ once more, though of course he couldn’t after all.)

The bank first, with an explanation of goblins in a low tone given to Toni and Esperanza just outside. They had to split up after this; the shops were mostly too narrow to accommodate all ten of them. The adults went one direction; Harry, Ron, and Hermione took the Muggles in the other. Eeylops, newly restored, and the Magical Menagerie; Madam Malkin’s (Esperanza swore robes or apparel inspired by them would make it to Muggle fashion next season, and while she was probably right, they talked her out of buying a set anyway); the apothecary; finally Flourish and Blotts. The three of them had real shopping to do here, so Harry looked for somewhere to point the Muggles. “Uh, any books with teeth or claws will be kept in cages,” he said in reassurance as he let them loose. They laughed as though this were a joke.

But Ollivander’s was just across the way, and he did have a question. When he had his bags under his arm, he ducked out. He’d be quick.

It was dark and quiet as always, and now it felt soothing instead of foreboding. “Mr. Ollivander?” He peered into the back room.

“Mr. Potter. Finally.” Ollivander emerged.

 _Finally_? He raised his eyebrows in a question, a habit he’d learned from Voldemort. “Good afternoon, sir. I wanted to show you my wand. Something happened to it a couple weeks ago.” He passed it across the counter, not sure he could talk of the night of Fiendfyre.

Ollivander didn’t need him to. He picked up the wand and seemed to immediately notice the heft. “How very interesting.”

“Nothing about the magic has changed. Really, just, nothing has changed. There was just one night… we nearly died. Voldemort saved us. His wand is heavier now too, he says.”

“Much like tree rings tell a progressive story of a life, so too do wixes’ wands. Your life story is encoded in this wand.”

He was doubtful. The dents and dings all told significant stories, most of them from the battlefield of Hogwarts, but that was not what Ollivander meant. “I’ve nearly died a lot of times,” he said a bit stubbornly.

“So you have. I know you’re accompanying Muggles down Diagon Alley,” he said. “Would you leave your wand and return for it later? You have made me very curious.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I also wonder… are you able to use the wands against one another, these days? Both of your magics have shifted so drastically.”

“Oh.” It was a good question. “We haven’t tried. I guess we both assume we can’t. He says it would be foolish of him to teach me to duel, anyway.”

“He sought a spare, after learning of Priori Incantatem.”

 _Learning of_ was a mild way to phrase it. “He’s never mentioned a spare.”

“He never found another that suited him.”

Harry gave a tiny smile. “I probably wouldn’t either. Thanks, sir.” Seeing Ron and Hermione exiting into the street, he ran to meet them.

Toni and Esperanza each had an armful of books. “Harry.” Toni lit up. “That was _fascinating_. I got books on history, and government, and current events – you’re in some of those, by the way,” she said, to make him blush. “But we got books on fortune-telling and zoology and fashion, too. There are magical _cookbooks_. And magical novels, that change if you get bored of the story. Sorry,” she said with a self-conscious smile. “You know all this.”

“I really don’t. Why didn’t you tell me about magical novels?” he false-chided Hermione, who had clearly orchestrated all of this.

“We looked at books on Muggles,” Esperanza volunteered. “They were a riot.”

“Oh, god.”

“I’m sorry, they are so patronizing,” Hermione added, mortified though clearly Esperanza was delighted. “Ron and I are taking an entirely different approach, an anthropological approach based on participant observation…. Also, we need to find a new term that isn’t _Muggle_ , honestly.”

“I like it,” Esperanza said. “Muggle. Mug-gle. And then Ron showed us wizard chess,” she said to Harry. “I _did_ get a set. My flatmates are going to flip.”

Her enthusiasm was infectious and Harry was smiling. “Great.” He could be a Muggle tour guide all day. “We’re coming back to the wand shop this afternoon,” he indicated Ollivander’s, “but we’re going to meet everyone for lunch now. The food won’t be so different,” he said to stave off disappointment, “but the sweets are. And there’s pumpkin juice.”

“Voldemort brought me those jelly beans of yours once,” Toni volunteered.

“That was rude of him,” Harry said, but he was laughing, and also all three of them were variously stunned by this… frivolity? Something.

“He said it was a metaphor.”

“Voldemort…” Harry sighed, but he was still laughing. “We’ll go to the sweets shop, too. And then the jokes shop. Ron’s brothers own it.” Ron beamed at them.

Lunch was tapas, wixen style. Toni and Esperanza spent most of it recounting their day, pulling out the items they’d bought.

“Should I take you to the Muggle world?” Toni asked Harry at one point. “You grew up there.”

“I really don’t know what’s happened in the past, ah, seven years.”

“Harry never played Mario Kart,” Arthur volunteered, as though it were a crime.

He grinned. “I’ll catch up. Any chance you’d come speak with the Muggle Studies class, though? And you could see the castle then.”

“Oh, _yes_.” Hermione grew animated with the suggestion. “I want to do a school trip, nothing big, just take them on the tube and maybe to the cinema, unless I can get into a factory of some sort….” And they were off brainstorming, and Harry was satisfied.

At least until Kingsley leaned over, trying not to cause a panic. “Where’s your cloak?” he asked in an undertone. “You do have it?” Moody had insisted he bring the invisibility cloak everywhere with him.

“Yes. It’s – “ He was reaching for his bag.

“Not here. I’ll meet you in the toilets in a minute. Don’t look.”

Harry tried not to let anything show on his face. With a last ostensible laugh at the conversation, he rose from his chair easily. Tonks was subtly alert as well. “Loo,” he murmured to Ron and Hermione.

He didn’t make it that far. Three paces from the table, and a beam exploded over his head. “Traitor!” a man’s voice growled behind him. Harry had barely caught the worst of the debris with a levitation spell, but the wizard was firing Diffindo after Diffindo, aiming to crush or impale him. Harry whipped a Protego before himself before he’d even fully turned around.

Everyone was instantly in action – Arthur and Molly had cast a bubble-sort charm around the Muggles and were pulling them away. Hermione had sealed the front door. Ron had dragged the waitstaff behind a glowing barrier. Kingsley and Tonks traded bright spells with the wizard that made the air crackle. And Remus was dragging Harry backward. “ _Where’s your wand_?” he was shouting over the explosions, as misfired spells cracked plaster and beams above them.

Movement in the corner of his eye, and suddenly three more wizards melted out of the shadows beside him. “Look out!” And then he and Remus were divided from the rest of the room, three hulking figures before them. They wore the masks of Death Eaters.

“You are a blood traitor and so is your _Lord_ ,” one snarled in his face, and Harry was lunging forward before Remus could catch him. Slamming his hands into the wizard’s chest, he shoved a stunning spell at him. The man went down with a groan.

A blast, and another. The wizard on his left had just raised his wand – “Sectumsempra!” But a blast from behind him caught his wrist, jerking it away from Harry’s face. It hit a water pipe, bursting it.

Arthur had cast the same spell of vines Ginny preferred to ensnare one wizard; Tonks had caught the other with pulsating silver pins that seemed to puncture his body. Both wizards thrashed against the restraints. And then a flesh-eating spell hit Harry in the face, ripping open his scar, and he was mopping blood out of his eyes uselessly. The wizard before him grabbed at him; the splatter of blood on his robes indicated he’d been hit with a severing charm. Running his hand across his face, he shoved the nearer wizard with another stunning spell. He went down.

He felt the buzz of more Aurors Apparating in – and a moment later, the two unstunned wizards Apparating out, ripping through the holding spells. “ _Shit_!” Tonks. And then someone cast a healing charm on Harry’s face and a few cleaning spells. He took his glasses off to wipe the blood from them.

Dawlish and Moody, looking grim. When Moody looked to Harry, he found himself immediately making excuses. “They came out of nowhere, honestly, today’s been perfect otherwise – “

“Potter,” Moody stopped him. “Where’s your wand?”

He felt foolish admitting it, he’d gone out without it. “Ollivander’s, sir. I wanted him to look at… something.”

Moody kicked the nearer wizard over roughly with his false leg; behind him Dawlish was reaching to take the mask from the other. A hiss, and he pulled back as though touching a hot stove. “Aversion charm,” he said to Moody, moving to break it.

“Did Voldemort teach you wandless magic?” Moody demanded. “You shouldn’t be able to do _this_.” He kicked the wizard again for good measure. “Not at eighteen. Probably not ever.”

This didn’t feel like the most immediate conversation to be having. “I learned to move magic around, not so much proper spells.” Except the ones they preferred for sex but, well. “I just took them off-guard. And I probably cast it too close to their heart.”

Moody’s look indicated how very soft he thought Harry was being.

Ron had released the waitstaff and Remus was escorting them out a back way; Arthur and Tonks flanked the Muggles. Antonia’s gaze found Moody’s, and for the first time she was flinty and defiant. “You won’t take our memories away.”

“No,” Kingsley said first, to Moody’s unpleasant surprise. “In accordance with the non-aggression pacts. It also wouldn’t help.” He said the latter half pointedly, for Moody’s sake.

“No,” Moody agreed. “Sit.”

They all did, with unease, as the Aurors secured the area for lockdown. Dawlish still hadn’t peeled the mask off the wizard’s face (or should they just be known as Death Eaters still, Harry wondered). It wasn’t Harry’s turn to speak but he did anyway. “I’m sorry,” he said to both the wixes and the Muggles. “I’m dangerous to be around. Sorry.” There was a knot of grief behind his breastbone.

“The thing is….” Tonks looked around. “You’re not. We’re all fine. I didn’t expect to hear Sectumsempra today, though,” she said, sharing a dark glance with Moody. “The second curse, the flesh-eating one, is more often used for, um, hate crimes? It’s not a dueling spell.”

Harry looked around himself. The restaurant was a mess, covered in splintered wood and plaster. “Nobody…?”

“They really didn’t expect our numbers,” Kingsley said lightly. “Funny they didn’t call it off, or change tactics, when they saw they’d be so outnumbered.”

The wizards who had attacked Voldemort in Germany hadn’t been in charge either. Of course he didn’t say this. What he could share – “They killed Voldemort’s snake with Sectumsempra, too. And,” here he looked to Moody and Dawlish, “one of them called Voldemort a blood traitor. Well, both of us.”

“Bitter remnants of the Death Eaters,” Dawlish said. He’d strung magic webs along the mask and was now pulling it off at the edges. “They will be useful.” Unsticking the last of the mask, he lifted it and jumped back. “Or not.” He’d shoved the body facedown but not before Harry had seen what was beneath the mask: nothing. His facial features had melted or vanished, leaving only a smooth expanse of skin. Only he and Hermione had been at the right angle to glimpse this, and he heard her sharp intake of breath beside him.

“Dead?” Moody’s question was calm as he looked to Dawlish.

“No. But perhaps not alive either.”

For some reason Moody only nodded tiredly at this. “Shacklebolt, would you take this one,” _kick_ “to the Ministry as well? Bring back potions.”

“Yes.” Moody eased the wards long enough for Kingsley and Dawlish to depart with the… prisoners. Bodies. Whatever. Moody and Tonks moved to work on forensics, what could be made out of the magic. The rest of them set to putting the space back in order. Remus poured water for the Muggles, who looked a sight better than Harry would’ve.

Kingsley Apparated back in alone, carrying a roll of potions bottles, and then he was pressing a calming draught on each of them. “I’m fine,” Esperanza protested, looking at this unfamiliar bottle.

“You’re in shock,” Kingsley told her gently. “It’s standard procedure for the law enforcement department. Helps process things.”

“I’m fine,” she repeated, setting it aside. Moody looked ready to chide her until Tonks lay a hand at his elbow.

“We’ll take you home,” Kingsley went on. “As far as you’d like. Certainly see you to the tube. As Harry said,” he said with an unreadable glance at him, “he’s the only proper target. But….”

Toni looked imploringly at Harry before saying to Kingsley, “I’d rather stay. If we could.”

“Surely….”

Toni swept her hand over her own unharmed body. “Like you said, we’re fine. It sounds as though Harry needs to pick up his wand, anyway.”

“I do,” he said, jumping in to advocate for her because this was a thing they did for another now, apparently. “You might want to talk to Ollivander anyway?” he offered. “And we’re taking Fred and George back with us.”

“If there are more Death Eaters in Diagon Alley?” Kingsley asked, dubious.

“If there are, it was shit they didn’t come for backup,” Harry said, he thought quite reasonably. “Or maybe that’s the group that saw they were outnumbered.”

Kingsley looked to Moody. Moody looked displeased, but said, “Ollivander’s going to regret my presence.”

“That means yes,” Tonks muttered to the Muggles. Toni offered Moody an unreturned smile.

 

Back down the alley to Ollivander’s. He did not look the least surprised to have a group of eleven, including three Aurors, entering. “That was unfortunate business,” he said to Moody.

Moody growled. “What do you know?”

“The shops here all share wards. I know nothing you wouldn’t learn from our security staff.” He raised his eyebrows. “I didn’t recognize their wands. I hope you find that significant.” Moody nodded shortly. Ollivander stepped out from behind the counter to show the Muggles around, pulling out boxes to demonstrate his craft to them.

“And Mr. Potter,” he said finally, after he’d re-placed all the wands on display, “has a quite interesting wand, that shares its core with the Dark Lord’s. This has, in part, kept him alive.” He took Harry’s wand from under the counter. “Doubly so, recently.” He handed it back to him, and dropped his tone. “As the weight it carries is the weight of a death diverted.”

Oh. “Only one?” he said weakly, to distract everyone else.

“Well, two.”

Right. “And what,” he was leaning in now, not really wanting the audience behind him, “does that mean for, you know, my magic? Or my wand?”

“There may come a time when your wand feels you owe it a death. You may not be able to resist it, then.”

No. It hurt like being told the prophecy had hurt. “You can’t get rid of it? I don’t want….”

“No.”

He dropped his gaze. His wand still felt innocent, familiar. He might not feel any more fated to kill now than he knew he already was, but…. “Right. Thank you, sir.” Ollivander’s frosty smile indicated his thanks were not appropriate.

The rest of the group had stepped back. When Harry moved away, Moody approached, to pull Ollivander into a back room for questioning. “Go on,” he said to the Aurors. “Pick up the twins, and go home. Expect a firecall tonight.”

“Right,” Tonks said briskly, and shepherded them out.

It was probably his imagination, but it seemed like they gave him a bit of berth as they walked – though with Harry in the center, so he was surrounded and alone. Remus saw, and fell in step. “What Ollivander had to say…. I didn’t catch all of it. Alright?”

“Yeah. Maybe.” They were speaking in an undertone. “Voldemort, um, saved my life a couple weeks back. Well, after he nearly killed me, but he didn’t mean to.” Remus made a strangled noise at this that might’ve been disbelief. “We both should have died. And apparently my wand feels cheated.”

Remus took all this in. “That’s quite a burden to carry,” he said. “I’m very sorry.”

Remus was perfect at these things. Harry wondered if Remus would be his therapist. “Thanks, sir.”

“I’m aware you’ve held off on talking about Voldemort.” His voice only carried mild reluctance to speak his name. “I don’t understand… well, much of it all. But I would listen, if that’d help. You must be feeling very lonely.”

See? Perfect. He went all warm inside. “Thanks,” he reiterated. “I’ve been trying not to think about it either. I know that’s not an answer to anything,” he added. Remus only laughed gently.

Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes was a relief, honestly. Fred and George scooped the Muggles up easily; the rest of them scattered to look at the store. Honestly, Arthur and Molly looked something like _proud_ , in a way Harry hadn’t seen them look here before.

He was walking past the fireworks and crackers when Ron, out of nowhere, seized his arm. “Don’t go down that aisle,” he said. “It’s all rubbish.”

“Alright?” He gave Ron a confused look. “What’s rubbish about it?”

“Nothing. Everything. Really, Harry, you’ll hate it.”

He might’ve been persuaded had Ron played it cool. “Well, obviously I’ve got to see now.” He extracted his arm from Ron’s grip.

Fred and George had launched a new line, and it was all about _him_. It was called Scar-Struck, and it was exactly as awful as Ron had warned. There were coffee cups and throw blankets. There were novelty sets of his Gryffindor tie and his glasses, with a glamour on them that _includes reproduction scar_. Ron stood particularly solidly in front of a row of novellas. “I told you.”

It was absurd, it was surreal. Somehow it was the only way this day could end. “What _happened_?” he asked. He really thought his celebrity had worn off.

Behind him, Hermione found them. “Oh, Harry, _no_ ,” she moaned.

“What happened?” he repeated. “Don’t people ever get, y’know, bored of me? _I’m_ bored of me.”

“It’s not about you…” Hermione tried as she joined them. “But some of the tabloids – and really, the Prophet’s just as bad as Witch Weekly these days – um, declared you a sex symbol?” She squeaked the words.

He laughed loud enough to probably alert the entire shop. “Is this about the sex tape?” He delighted in the misuse of the term, it all felt so ridiculous anyway. “Because, really, everyone should be horrified.” He saw nothing on the shelves referencing piss or nappies or ageplay, and thank fuck for that, but still.

“Not so much what’s in it.” She’d gone very pink. “Just the allure that you’ve got one. The Prophet wrote – I’m so sorry – that you’re part of a new era of unabashed sexuality.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake.”

“I only saw the headline,” she said, somehow going even pinker. “I’ve subscribed to the Quibbler now instead, we all have. But, you know, you’re so….” She trailed off, looking at Ron desperately.

“Saving the world, as always,” Ron supplied. “It makes women like you. And blokes too, I guess. That you’re all… powerful, and important.”

“For fuck’s sake,” Harry repeated. He began taking one of everything off the shelf. “Fine. I want royalties.” He didn’t really, but what else could he say?

Ron and Hermione could think of nothing either. When Harry tried reaching behind Ron for the display of novels, Ron stepped back. “Ron,” Harry said in exasperation.

“You didn’t listen to me last time and you regretted it.”

“Immensely. Budge up.”

Ron moved with great reluctance and Harry scooped up an armful of books before he changed his mind.

Romance novels. Novels primarily about him _and Voldemort_ , what the christ. (Or, well, “the Dark Lord.” Harry had an absurd moment of wondering if Voldemort had copyrighted or trademarked or whatever his own name.) “ _Why_?”

“I told you!”

Hermione had exhausted her embarrassment and now she was just giggly. “Some people think it’s, ah, romantic? Or it makes you look ever better, that you’ll save the world and, you know, save him as well.”

“That’s really….”

“It’s sort of not about you at all,” Hermione said again. “It’s just that the narrative… well, it makes people happy. It makes them feel safe.”

“Philanthropy, then?’

“No.” She paused. “Maybe. If he wants to look, um, more socially acceptable these days, then he does. The Pensieve did help. I’ve read.”

The world seeing Voldemort cook and bathe and sleep and fuck. Harry had revealed much more than he even knew. “Is Voldemort a sex symbol, too, then?” he asked.

Ron’s retching noise almost completely drowned out Hermione’s muttered, “Kind of.” He raised his eyebrows in question. She attempted an explanation: “He’s doing everything you’re doing. People are, um, intrigued by him, I guess is the word? The tabloids write about what a mysterious and complex man he is. It’s why so many girls fancy Snape.”

“They _do_?” Harry asked as Ron’s retching sounds got louder.

Hermione gave him a look. “As though you weren’t always more obsessed with Malfoy than you ever were with Cho or Ginny.”

“That wasn’t…. Malfoy’s a git.” He felt himself going warm for some reason.

Hermione hummed in a doubtful way. “You asked. People want mystery and intrigue, in their tabloids if not their lives. Voldemort… well, you see.” She nodded at the novels he’d forgotten he was holding. “He’s probably going to get love letters in Azkaban. All the infamous ones do. Even Muggles do it.”

He did not like that idea at all. “They’re overestimating the quality of post in Azkaban if they do,” he said, quoting something Voldemort had snarked at him once, unconsciously because Voldemort’s acerbic wit was a part of himself now too.

Hermione shrugged. “Anyway, I told Ron not to let you see any of this. I thought it wouldn’t help, especially not now.”

“I tried,” Ron defended himself. “Harry’s bloody stubborn.”

“I am, yeah.” And, summoning a basket, he marched his merchandise to the front.

Most of the group had slipped across the way to take Toni and Esperanza to a sweets shop. They’d left only Tonks, which significantly lessened the blow of his humiliation. Still, Tonks doubled up laughing when she saw what he carried. “Oh, Harry – sorry, sorry.” She stifled her laughter with a hand at her mouth. “Fred? George?”

They were in a backroom, and when they emerged they did not look the least abashed. “Bestsellers, all of them,” Fred assured him. “You should be flattered.”

“Bestsellers before we’ve even put your face on anything,” George added. And he was right; the merchandise only had cartoonish glasses and scars on them, and the novel covers featured only abstracted body parts. (Which, like all wix photography, _moved_ , and all of it in a rhythmic, embarrassing way.) “If you sign a release form for your likeness, we’d bump your royalties from six percent of the profit to ten. Have you got an agent? You might want one.”

Harry set the basket down so he could bury his face in his hands. “What have you done.” And he’d wanted to be stern, but mostly mortification and hilarity had set in in equal measure. “Does your mother know about this?”

“Mum loves the Scar-Struck line of romances,” Fred said. “Don’t worry, we don’t write them ourselves.”

“That’d be weird,” George pitched in.

“But she thinks they’re romantic. She’s probably not even fantasizing about _you_ ,” he said, as the worst sort of reassurance. “Our hero, Hadrian Parker, is a bit older and a bit taller. And much suaver.”

“Bloody thanks.”

“D’you think you could get Voldemort to sign a likeness release form?” George added. “Our legal counsel says that we can’t pay him, because ‘funding the Dark Lord’s endeavors’” (finger quotes) “is worth more than our lives. But we’ll be happy to send him our remaining stock of U-No-Poo. We’re discontinuing it anyway, not much of a big seller these days.”

Sometimes Gryffindor bravery looked like saving the world; sometimes it looked like asking Lord Voldemort to sign off on his own line of romance novels in exchange for a case of U-No-Poo. There was something to be admired in this. “You are mad.”

They both grinned. Fred began bagging his merchandise. “We started a Gringotts account for your royalties,” he said. “The goblins wouldn’t let us deposit the gold in your vault directly. We’ve got the key….” He began searching under the counter.

“I don’t want it. People might think I, y’know, approve.”

“We’ll make it thirteen percent if we can print endorsements on everything,” George offered easily.

“ _No_.”

He shrugged. Fred, finding the key, slid it over. “You’ll never find a better deal than the one we’re offering.”

“I’ll manage.” He took the key anyway. “You two….” He shook his head, but a smile was curling his lips. “Are you coming with us?”

“We told Mum we’d be home in time for dinner. There’s a bit of an after-work rush soon.” Fred raised his eyebrows. “So if you don’t get out, you’ll be signing merchandise.”

“Merlin. I’m going.”

“You know where to find us if you change your mind.”

“I won’t,” he assured them. And, finding Ron, Hermione, and Tonks all various shades of red behind him, he left. He had to start laughing as soon as he was out the door.

 

The Muggles’ enthusiasm for their sweets rivaled the excitement for their books. Harry listened fondly as they recounted it all to him, because buying sweets from the trolley was one of his favorite initiations into the wixen world too. “Chocolate frogs are weird, though,” Esperanza was saying, wrinkling her nose. “I mean, do you eat other food that tries to climb out of your mouth? Because we, uh, don’t.”

Nobody noticed Harry’s WWW bag. It was opaque, and Fred had even put the novellas into an extra paper sleeve as though he were buying lad’s mags. Still, it felt like the most conspicuous thing. He accepted a treacle-filled cauldron cake from Toni as they headed back in the direction of the Leaky Cauldron.

After dropping Toni and Esperanza off at a tube station, they had Portkeys to take them back to the edge of the Weasleys’ property. Harry ended up on a Portkey across from Molly, and when she saw his WWW bag swinging from his wrist, he could’ve sworn she was blushing. Honestly.

He was committed to this. Back at the Burrow, he took out his Scar-Struck mug (the _ca_ were encircled by glasses, the words separated by a lightning bolt) and poured an indecently large gin and tonic. He went to go help with dinner.

This did not exactly help matters late in the evening, when they were all outside stargazing and throwing fruit for the bats overhead, when they heard the whoosh of the Floo inside. “That’ll be them,” Remus said, rising. “Harry, we’ll need you in a moment.”

“Oh. Um. Sure.” He wobbled a bit upon standing, because the gin hadn’t stopped, and Ron and Hermione pulled him up on either side. With false casualness, everyone else followed.

Moody stood before the hearth, with Snape. (That’s why Moody hadn’t joined them this evening. Busy man.) Remus was already pulling the furniture to the edges of the room to create space. Moody’s magical eye swept over Harry – and he might have imagined it lingered at his chest where the locket sort-of resided but maybe not. Everyone filed in.

“Thought it’d be easier here than taking you to Grimmauld Place,” Moody said to Harry, withdrawing the draft of his vow with Snape from his cloak.

“And the vow with Voldemort?” Harry asked. The room flinched.

Moody was unimpressed. “Voldemort is not your concern anymore. You’ve got no need to ask about him.”

Harry glared. Normally he’d be cowed by Moody but now, he was tipsy enough to just be combative. “That vow’s got more to do with me than this one does.”

“Since you’re so versed in it, you’ll know that you’re not even to ask about him,” Moody said. “Yes, we swore it. That’s enough.”

He couldn’t get angry right now, not at Moody or anyone. Moody and Tonks went to find ritual candles. Most people lingered on the porch or in the kitchen. For a moment, he and Snape were alone.

Snape could have commented on this conflict. On what a demanding, dangerous child he was. Instead, his eyes fell on the coffee mug. “Great Salazar, you’ve got your own product line these days.”

For some reason his blunt indifference… helped. Harry held up the cup in a lazy salute. “You’ll have to talk to Fred and George if you want one. They said Hogwarts faculty gets a twenty percent discount on everything.”

“Faculty would be summarily dismissed if found causing such a spectacle.”

“Can you put it all on the banned list?” He did not specify that _all of it_ included erotic novellas about himself. Snape deserved to not know some things.

“Yes.”

“Thanks, sir.” They were still alone. “D’you want gin too? In, uh, a normal glass.”

“I would rather leave as quickly and painlessly as possible.”

“I’d rather you leave too,” Harry assured him with a grin. Snape’s eyes blazed black. “But until then, do you want gin?”

Pause. “Yes,” he said stiffly.

He entered the kitchen to find it empty. Everyone else had deserted him, bloody traitors, hiding out upstairs. Maybe Moody had scared them off.

He brought Snape back a very large and cold gin and tonic. “Is Hogwarts ready for the start of term?”

Snape looked resigned to this conversation, and drank heavily first. “There’s still not a history professor,” he said. “If you want to sit the NEWT – an unreasonably optimistic gesture on your part, I might add – you’ll have to do it with self-study.”

“Oh,” he frowned. “Nobody wanted the job?”

“Its previous faculty surprisingly did not inspire many of the younger generations to pursue the field.”

Harry sighed. “Yeah. Um, Professor Lupin wrote me a reading list of all the History topics through OWLs. Can I see the old NEWT curriculum and past exams?”

His jet eyebrows arched. “Just because the Dark Lord aspires that you do this hardly means you’ll succeed.”

“I know.”

“It is offensive to all of your professors, including myself, that what _finally_ impresses some small intellectual curiosity on you is the promise of orgasm.”

Harry was already pretty worn down on discussing his sex life after today. He just gave Snape a peculiar look. “Well, not anymore. You heard Moody.”

“That you’re not entitled to Auror business?”

Snape didn’t know what was in the other vow. Harry supposed he wouldn’t, unless Moody made it official Order business at some point. “That Voldemort gave up all contact with me to Moody to keep his Horcruxes safe.” Seeing Snape process this was satisfying. “It lasts until next June, when his sentence in Azkaban is over and the Ministry’s ready to take him to trial. Then….” He shrugged. Most of the options ‘then’ were bad ones.

Snape was quiet. “Ah.” They drank.

Moody and Tonks returned; Tonks moved to set the candles on a side table between them. “We banished everyone upstairs,” she said to explain the house’s sudden quiet.

“I want Remus as a witness,” Snape said.

This startled Harry. Like Voldemort, Snape didn’t express many personal desires either.

The Aurors were unmoved. “I think he’s outside,” Tonks said. Snape turned on his heel. And when Harry watched him go, he felt… what? Jealousy, sadness, something like that. That Remus and Snape were a source of strength to one another, while he was suddenly alone.

The candles were lit and other lights dimmed by the time Snape and Remus had returned. Snape had left his glass in the kitchen; Harry, feeling foolish, had to look for a place to set his mug. When he and Snape joined hands over a fresh sheet of parchment, they were both cold.

Moody read the amended vow: that as Snape had previously been protected by Harry, now the students, staff, and faculty of Hogwarts would be protected by the same. “Based on the nature and severity of the harm, it might befall the protector or compromise his magic instead.” (Yes, he was named as ‘the protector’ throughout. It was overwrought and embarrassing.) “The protector will suffer effects in accordance with a traditional progressive vow, stopping short of fatality.” Copies of the words dripped from the ribbon binding his hand to Snape’s; the ink of _fatality_ glittered especially dark in the candlelight.

Snape didn’t have to offer much in return: an ostensibly safe living condition for Harry, non-interference with the Horcruxes. He was referred to in the contract as the Headmaster, which was still disorienting to Harry. Maybe it always would be.

They waited for a long minute after Moody concluded to let the ink dry. Snape didn’t bother to disguise the gesture of wiping his hand on his robes afterward. Git.

“This’ll exhaust your magic for a few days,” Moody said to Harry. “Don’t get into trouble.”

“Yes, sir.”

Taking a ritual knife, he cut the contract in half and slid either to them. “Voldemort already knows its contents,” he said to Snape.

“Well, he and I wrote it together,” Harry said.

Snape shot an incredulous look at Moody. “I learn this _now_ , and from the boy.”

“The Ministry’s legal team went over it. They said it was perfect.” Moody seemed to have his own reluctance, about what Harry couldn’t tell, but he had, after all, performed the vow.

Harry felt the new vow weighing on him. The effect would be proportional to the vow’s scope; since he was protecting a few hundred people – well, he’d sleep hard the next few days. His soul was unsettled but not painful.

Remus left with Snape. Tonks and Moody fetched Kingsley – Harry got the sense they had much more to discuss about today in a more secure location. Slowly Hermione and the Weasleys emerged from upstairs.

“Alright?” Arthur spoke in a low tone, as though he might dislodge something. “Mad Eye said too much magic would pollute the vow.”

“Yeah, alright.” He held up his half of the contract. “We might have one uninterrupted year at Hogwarts.”

Given the events of the day, they could only really give him skeptical looks. Harry didn’t believe it himself, though he’d certainly like to.

As the household got ready for bed, Hermione brushed past him. “Switch me rooms?” she murmured.

She had Ginny’s, Harry was still in Ron’s. “They don’t know…?” That Ron and Hermione slept together, that they shared a suite at Hogwarts. “I mean, yeah, of course. Midnight?”

“Ron said his parents wouldn’t approve.” She said the words with some bitterness. “Thanks, Harry.”

Harry wondered if he could take the ghoul to sleep beside him in Ginny’s room. He was very bad at being alone.

It turned out that he didn’t have to worry about loneliness after all. Settling quietly into Ginny’s room just after midnight, he’d barely doused the light when a burning sensation begin in his hand where he wore the diadem, shooting up his arm and lodging in his heart. “ _Ahh_ – _fuck_ ,” he said sotto voce. The burning intensified, making his eyes water. “No, there is _no_ reason _–_ “ His heart seemed to expand in his chest. He wondered through the agony if the Horcruxes could actually kill him. Voldemort had warned that they _shouldn’t_ , but, well, that was different, wasn’t it. “Fine.” He grabbed a particularly sharp quill, jabbing it into his hand. “ _Expiscor._ ” The diadem emerged with his blood.

It changed nothing, he burned as badly as before. It made sense, perversely – the Horcrux wasn’t contained in the object these days, but in his soul. The objects were only artifacts, relics of their union. There wasn’t a hearth in Ginny’s room but the Horcrux didn’t require a traditional fire anyway. Entering the en suite toilet, he placed the diadem, now full-sized, in the basin. “Hithgalach!” (Hebrew. He never would’ve known anything but Latin magic if not for Voldemort.) Green flames sprang up around the diadem, and a moment later Riddle was stepping carefully out of them. “ _What_?” Harry demanded.

He stalked back into the bedroom; Riddle followed. He cast silencing and distraction charms on the door as Riddle settled imperfectly onto the bed, the backs his thighs sinking in. “Who was that who took the vow?” he asked casually, appreciating how flustered Harry was.

Harry pulled on a shirt so he wasn’t having this fight in just his shorts. The nipple rings were still in, and Riddle had already given them a wry look, but still. Riddle’s mouth barely curled as Harry tugged the shirt on. “Doesn’t matter to you,” Harry said viciously. You can’t touch anyone at Hogwarts, I’ve sworn it. That’s as much as you need to know.”

“Was he the spy you saved the first time?”

“It really doesn’t matter.”

He saw it’d been a rhetorical question, to which Riddle already knew the answer. “That vow was quite an imposition on your soul.”

He held back a sigh. Riddle felt entitled to apologies, he’d seen it with Voldemort. “What did it feel like to you?”

“ _Crowding_ ,” he enunciated.

Harry didn’t know if he was meant or allowed to find that funny. “Oh. Well. Moody said my magic would settle in a few days.”

Tom sighed through his nose. “Don’t be reckless, Harry,” he warned. “I may not be able to kill you directly, but I can come very close.”

“And then what, you die too? Or you’re left dispossessed, which I know you bloody hated the first time.”

Sleek eyebrows up at his language. “You have reason to keep me around as well. I can just as easily make you feel whole again.”

That was so to-the-point that it hurt. “I really don’t think you can.”

“Come here.”

Harry stood in the center of the room, Riddle was on the bed. He flickered strangely in the dim light. Harry took a cautious step toward him, against his better judgment but he just felt so tired and so broken right now. Riddle’s magic felt familiar, not only because it was near to Voldemort’s magic but it was near to Harry’s own. “More whole than whole,” Riddle promised.

And then Harry was sitting beside him and the space between them was magnetized. “There,” Riddle said, very softly. He concentrated on making one hand solid enough to lay across the back of Harry’s neck. It was warm and filling, the last feelings he’d associate with Riddle otherwise. Maybe it was how much he missed Voldemort, maybe it was the force of the vow, maybe it was the attack in Diagon Alley earlier, maybe it was lingering depression, but he had just felt _hollow_.

When had he become so soft, he wondered. He had to contend with much worse feelings regularly in childhood (and that was only the ones he still remembered, the ones Voldemort hadn’t helped him remove). He fell apart at much less traumatic hardships these days.

Riddle saw or felt something of this train of thought. It was more insidious than Legilimency, sharing a soul. “You are entitled to happiness,” he said, a bit impatiently. “Why are you so insistent that you’re not.”

“I’m just broken, I guess.”

Riddle eyed him warily but didn’t take his hand away. “That’s not what makes you broken. What makes you broken is how content you are to die.”

It sounded hideous when he said it like that, but everyone in Harry’s life including Harry himself had called him a martyr who only hadn’t died yet. “It’s not that I _want_ to,” he said. “Just that I might. _You_ did that to me, you know, that I’ve lived with the threat of death my whole life.”

“I really can’t take credit,” Riddle demurred perversely. “Unless you particularly need to blame me.”

“No, I don’t.” He’d moved past all that long ago, really. “Do you, um, need anything?”

“No. Being trapped in your soul for so long was stifling. Besides, all of your angst was beginning to _hurt_.”

“I’m really very sorry,” Harry snarked. “I’ll try to do better next time.” He really was sympathetic to claustrophobia. Summoning the nineteen year old of the locket as well would impossibly crowd the room, though. Later.

“Let me sleep here tonight.”

“No. Of course not.”

“You were about to ask the attic ghoul to sleep with you,” Riddle said, and Harry realized that, obnoxiously, he’d have to watch his thoughts this year. “My magic is his magic. You’ll find it all soothingly familiar.”

“I’m not having sex with you.”

Pause, and cool amusement. “Well. No. That’s not what I suggested.”

“You want to just… lie here? I didn’t think Horcruxes needed sleep.”

“When I am nearest to human, I can partake in most things human. If I focus on corporeality, of course. I could sleep and eat and fuck, if I’d like.” Hearing _fuck_ come from Riddle’s mouth startled Harry; he’d thought of him as being more fastidious than Voldemort, who self-identified as generally shameless.

“How far can you go from the diadem?”

“I haven’t tried.”

“I don’t trust you.”

“You shouldn’t,” Riddle agreed pleasantly. “But don’t you recognize all the anti-Dark spells the Aurors have left here? They are… oppressive. It might be the same suite of spells they use in the diplomatic corridors of the Ministry.”

He didn’t recognize anything. “You’re resourceful.”  


“I don’t want to kill this brood of red-headed blood traitors of yours,” Riddle assured him.

“Well, when you say it like _that_.”

He bared his teeth in nothing like a smile. “Bar the door with whatever you’d like, anchor your wand to yourself. I do want to sleep.”

He’d spent so long fighting the idea that Riddle would slip into the house that he hadn’t challenged this premise of sleep itself. It was… not so objectionable, even as much as he disliked Riddle. With an enlargement charm on the bed they wouldn’t even touch. “And if I say yes?”

“Then your magic is mended while you sleep. Like you always did for him.”

It was doable. “Fine.” He put all the wards and locks and imprisonment spells he knew on the door, enlarged the bed, and doused the lights. Beside him, the bed barely moved as Riddle, mostly incorporeal, pulled off his shoes and robe. Harry turned to the wall.

Silence. He really doubted Riddle either could or would sleep. After a few long minutes: “Do you know how he is? I mean, can you tell?”

“I thought you had an agreement not to ask.” His tone was playful and obnoxious.

“Not with you I don’t.” He rolled over. Riddle’s dark eyes glittered. “You’d be much more useful to me if you knew.”

Smirk. “Slytherin guile doesn’t suit you,” he said.

“Fine. Goodnight.” He rolled back over.

It didn’t matter, in the end. He hadn’t taken either dreamless sleep or kaval that night – he hadn’t thought of them, he hadn’t brought them down from Ron’s room – so his sleep was restless.

It felt as though he’d only slipped into real sleep when a lantern was raised into his face – bright, painfully bright in the darkened cell. Not the cell Harry remembered, but a cube with walls of packed dirt and jagged stone. A mattress stuffed with straw on the floor where he now sat, a bucket of water at his side. Books lined up against the opposite wall, and for some reason it made Harry feel worse to see he’d been allowed to keep them, that they sat in rows on the cold floor.

The graying gloves that guards wore were pulling at his arms, shoving at his shoulders. “Rowle’s looking forward to seeing you, he said.”

“Of course.” Voldemort’s voice was steady; he followed the guards without being shackled. Harry couldn’t tell if his presence was noted or not.

Oh, yes – the Dementors swarmed at one end of the passage, feasting on pain and excitement from the spire where they’d bring Voldemort. They’d have to walk through the Dementors. Harry couldn’t fight back the panic that they’d have their soul sucked out. He couldn’t fight back any panic at all.

Voldemort’s surprise was momentary, and he steeled himself. The cold fear of the Dementors affected him these days as it never had before. The cost of being something nearer to human. He put his head down, allowing the guards to shove him through.

The tower was cold and full of Wizengamot members. Dawlish, in Auror robes, stood among them. Two Death Eaters, still in masks, were unmoving at his feet. “John,” Voldemort said. “Have you killed them already? That isn’t terribly useful.”

Dawlish looked up, impatient. “Sit down.” He conjured a chair with shackles along the front edge, that caught Voldemort and pulled him seated. He held back a wince not entirely successfully, and the Wizengamot snickered. He knew how he would kill each of them, each of them individually, when he was free. He kept his gaze on Dawlish.

“There was an attack on Diagon Alley today. Four Death Eaters attacked a group that included Harry Potter and two Muggle liaisons. We thought you might identify them.”

They both felt a jolt at hearing Harry’s name. Harry was already bracing himself for the faceless visages, and it stirred Voldemort’s curiosity. He leaned forward gracelessly to pick the mask from the face of the nearer Death Eater. “I might.”

“There’s nothing… that is, they’re in stasis under some anonymization curse. We can’t break it and we can’t wake them.”

“Mm.” He didn’t expect the resistance he found when lifting the mask. They had conformation charms and affinity spells on them, but not… _this_. He looked up. “I will need either a wand or a knife.”

Dawlish shoved the other Death Eater nearer. “There’re wards on them, it’s time-consuming to take them off. We expect the… results will be the same.”

Voldemort lifted the mask. _Ah_ , that was what Harry had been anticipating. A smooth expanse of flesh lay beneath the mask. He prodded: the bone underneath seemed to be a flat sheet too, without teeth in a hidden mouth or cartilage that had once defined a nose. Eye sockets gone. Ears and hair, gone. Curious. The cue ball of a skull was pinkish and very cold, but that might only be exposure.

“Affects on them?” He left the body face up, uncovered, because it made everyone else uncomfortable. But then, for Harry’s sake, he looked away as well.

A junior Auror at the edge of the crowd stepped forward. _RH Samuels_ , her name badge barely caught the dim light as she opened an evidence bag. “Only wands. Unregistered. The wood is French. We questioned Ollivander today; he didn’t recognize them. Do you?”

Voldemort reached for the wands; Samuels made a strangled noise and pulled them back. He gave her an incredulous look. “I am left with everyone here, occasionally with my wand but always with my freedom, several times a week. You prevent nothing.”

Looks exchanged between Dawlish and Bowersock. “Go ahead, Rusalka,” Dawlish said, though they all had their own wands out now.

He took both wands at once. They were warm, a confirmation that their owners still lived. The magic thrummed in a way Ollivander’s wands did not – adapting to his heartbeat, he realized. Curious. “Did the wizards have mouths when they were casting?” he asked, an absurd question but a necessary one.

Dawlish and Samuel paused. “Must have,” Dawlish said. “We weren’t there. Shacklebolt and Tonks summoned me and Moody afterward.”

Harry had mostly retreated to a quiet part of Voldemort’s mind, but he did his best to push affirmation through their connection. Mouths, eyes – eyes that had met his own in a split second before he’d stunned them both.

This interested Voldemort, for some reason. “How were they stunned?”

Dawlish squared his shoulders. “You already know, I’m sure,” he said, and both Voldemort and Harry had a moment of incredulity. But he knew nothing. “You _can’t_ teach Potter wandless magic. As though he’s not volatile enough already.”

Was he? “I didn’t, really. Though I never discouraged him.”

Dawlish’s expression was one of pure disbelief and that was really very fair. “It’s wild magic. Not just untamed, but untamable. You know it could backfire.”

“Shall I speak to him about it?” Voldemort said with perfect politeness.

Dawlish dropped his gaze. “’E’s fine,” he muttered. “He’s safe. They all were. _This_ ,” and he motioned to the Death Eaters, “wasn’t well done. Maybe they weren’t expecting eight wixes at once.”

“They certainly weren’t expecting wandless magic,” Voldemort said. “In spite of the terrible job you’ve done at keeping anything else of Harry’s life confidential, I ask that you not let this become common knowledge. It may save him if it remains to his advantage, and kill him if it’s known to the wrong wixes.”

One of the Wizengamot members from last time – _Bright,_ Voldemort supplied for Harry. _Vice Chancellor_ – snorted at this. “Who’s more dangerous to the boy than you?”

Voldemort fixed him with a stare until he looked uncomfortable. “I very much want Harry alive.”

“ _Bet_ you do.”

“Harry is the _only_ wizard I particularly want or need alive,” Voldemort said, in not quite a threat. “As should you. Every vow falls apart without him.”

“We’ll tell him,” Dawlish said before Bright could respond.

Harry felt the glimmer of amusement at this. “Do. And to answer who is more dangerous to him than I am – “ He took one of the wands, raising it in both hands, and snapped it between the handle and the shaft. Everyone flinched, including Harry, in his mind.

Voldemort cast Lumos with the spare, to examine the interior of the first. “Ah.”

“What?” Dawlish and Samuels had come forward; the Wizengamot had drawn back, unwilling to have a firefight with Voldemort if it came to it.

Voldemort tipped the handle very carefully, where something rattled. Samuels saw what he was holding first, and hissed. He held up two long, curved fangs. “Werewolf.”

“There are laws – “ one Wizengamot member began.

“ _Laws_ ,” Voldemort mocked, and he fell silent. Looking up at the dark sky, he said, “There is magic in the new moon. They haven’t got to be werewolves to use it.”

“ _You_ recruited the werewolves,” Dawlish said in accusation. “Why wouldn’t these two be yours?”

“I did recruit the werewolves,” Voldemort agreed. “The most effective recruiting tool,” he looked to the crowd of Wizengamot members here, “was my opposition to the quasi-human registry. What I mean to say is, mine are not the only reactionary politics. You politicized the werewolves first.”

“Fine.” Bowersock, cutting in before Dawlish. “Then we politicized the werewolves. How is that relevant _now_?”

Voldemort met Bowersock’s gaze appraisingly, because – as with Scrimgeour – he loved when powerful people listened to him, and he loved even more when they tolerated his antagonism. Something flared within Harry, things he couldn’t name but grief and anger were somewhere among them. “Greyback’s pack has left Britain. If they won territory elsewhere – if they integrated with another pack or he challenged another alpha – he is not subtle about such things. You would find the origin of _these_ two in his wake. French werewolves have no need of British boy heroes if they weren’t so compelled.” He gave them a near-pitying look. “It is the outlaw, not the citizen, who defines your politics. Never think otherwise.”

“ _Greyback_ wants Potter, then?” Dawlish sounded doubtful.

“These wizards are proof that he does.” Voldemort was re-placing the teeth carefully back inside the ruined wand. “I can’t say why. Perhaps only because of the power vacuum. Perhaps he means to use Harry to defeat me.”

“Wouldn’t he know…?” That Harry and Voldemort were allies by now, Bowersock didn’t say. His thought was clear.

Voldemort didn’t tell them what he’d told Harry, that Fate was not something to be overcome. Instead he made an indifferent gesture (still obnoxiously impeded by shackles): “There are a great many mythologies surrounding Harry. What is one more?”

Dawlish was gazing down at the bodies. “We’re holding them until the full moon.”

“I assume they are only wix allies. Keep them in silver-lined cells anyway.”

“Allies?”

Voldemort was delighted to share this with them, Harry felt it. “Some of the Death Eaters received Dark Marks for a job well done. Werewolves, I am told, do the same.”

Most of the wixes in attendance drew back in horror at this. “Why?” Dawlish asked.

“To deliver them from _you_.” He waved his hand in the direction of the Wizengamot. “To celebrate that they didn’t belong, that they _chose_ not to belong, to your insincere, anodyne existence.” He gave them a skeptical look. “Have none of the Death Eaters told you as much? You’re asking the wrong questions if you don’t even understand the attraction. Granted, you never even sent infiltrators – _Dumbledore_ did but even he was half-hearted about it – so perhaps it makes your jobs easier to simply believe we are monsters.”

“You _are_ monsters,” Bowersock snapped.

Voldemort gave him a wry look that said all it needed to. “I hope you’ve put more resources to infiltrating the werewolves than you ever did into infiltrating the Death Eaters. Apparently,” he pressed a boot into the stomach of the nearer wizard, “you will need to.”

Uncomfortable glances indicated they hadn’t. Voldemort waited. “The Ministry doesn’t hire werewolves,” Bowersock finally said. “Especially not with so many wixes struggling these days. It’d be a slap in the face to give those jobs to werewolves instead.”

Voldemort remained quiet. Harry could feel his simmering amusement at everyone’s discomfort. Dawlish broke first: “This has been very helpful,” he said to Voldemort quietly. “Thank you.”

“I told you nothing you shouldn’t already know.”

There might have been a moment of frustration on Dawlish’s face. “Nevertheless.”

Voldemort said, as though in kindness because he could really be very charming when he wanted to be, “Moody’s got a werewolf. Ask to borrow him.”

Pause. “Right. Yes.” He and Samuels were each scooping up a Death Eater with Mobilicorpus.

“You won’t be staying for Rowle’s interrogation?” His pronunciation was prickly.

“Sorry, no.” And Dawlish did sound sorry. Harry wondered why until Voldemort pushed a thought at him: nights without Auror oversight were much more brutal than nights with it. When the Aurors were here, there was _protocol_. Harry needed to go, and Voldemort didn’t have enough magic to push him out.

But he was stubborn, he was entangled, and he was lonely. Voldemort’s irritation flared. He still held the wands, and though the magic was cold and ill-fitting, he drew it into his skin anyway. “John,” he said to Dawlish’s back. The Auror turned. “You’ll want these.” He tossed the wands back at him.

It was dark, Dawlish had only one hand free, and Voldemort threw them poorly. He reached for them and everything fell to the ground, everyone jumping when the werewolf fangs skittered free. Dawlish, flustered, forgot about his levitated captive for a moment, and he hit the stones with a thud.

It was as much chaos as Voldemort could safely manufacture, without creating unpleasant repercussions for himself. While everyone around him moved to set things in order, he breathed in Parseltongue, “If you love me, you’ll save yourself tonight.” Then, with magic that should have been used elsewhere, he shoved Harry out of his mind before they brought Rowle to be beaten.

 

Harry woke with a start, breathing heavily. It had felt like the magical equivalent of being slammed into a wall. Riddle, still beside him, looked over with mild curiosity. “Well?”

He shook his head. “Nothing. Stay here.” He slipped out of bed and padded upstairs.

Listening at Ron’s room, he heard nothing. A hesitant knock. He let himself in, raising his eyebrows that they hadn’t warded the door.

His bags were flung in a far corner of the room, and he crept toward them. Hermione was held in Ron’s lanky arms, and it made him smile to see them happy, and it hurt so damn much because Voldemort’s magic still lingered inside of him and he, too, wanted to be held. He unzipped a side pocket of a bag where potions might be. Socks, underwear, shampoo. Another pocket, and he found nappies. He flushed hot and shoved them down.

“Harry?” Hermione’s voice was soft. She sounded mostly asleep.

“Sorry,” he hissed in the darkness. “I’ll go.”

“No, you left your… potions on the bedside table. Here.” She cast Lumos faintly, so it wouldn’t wake Ron. The bottles glinted beside them, stupidly obvious.

These dependencies were embarrassing. He took the dreamless sleep and kaval in each hand. “Thanks,” he said lowly.

She looked at him, very sad. “Lavender and I found a therapist for this year at Hogwarts,” she said. “A Squib, who’s been working in the Muggle world, but she’ll be a little more familiar with, you know, our world than most. I’m making you an appointment.”

He nearly protested that he didn’t need to be looked after like this, and stopped himself when it was clear that he did. “Thanks, Hermione.”

She smiled at him, waveringly. “Goodnight, Harry.”

Back in Ginny’s bedroom, Riddle sat cross-legged on the bed, leafing through a diary. “Bloody _don’t_ ,” Harry growled as soon as the door was shut behind him. He shifted a bottle beneath his arm so he could snatch the diary away. “You already ruined a year of her life.”

“Oh, she was affected much longer than that, I assume,” Riddle said easily. “This is the girl who fell in love with my sixteen year old self? Amazing she’d ever keep another diary.”

It kind of was, and it infuriated Harry anyway. “This isn’t going to work,” he said, moving to enter the loo where the diadem still glowed in its green fire.

Riddle followed him, with less leisure than Harry expected. “Harry. Harry.”

“You need to go.” He was taking out his wand. “This was a mistake.”

“And then I will experience his abuse as acutely as he does,” Riddle said. “I can tell even now, you know. They’ve just cracked his ribs.” He fixed Harry with a dark stare. “If you send me back, you’re as guilty as they are.”

“I am not,” he muttered, but his wand had flagged in his hand. “Is the, um, locket…? Does it feel it too?” He hadn’t yet interacted with the nineteen year old. Really, he didn’t care to.

“Probably,” Riddle said with indifference. “Though he’s got rather more of a soul than we do. Perhaps he’s resistant. Don’t,” he said sharply as Harry was reaching to his chest.

“You are _awful_.” He was frustrated and repelled. Nothing that he liked about Voldemort resided in Riddle and it made the entire thing so unpleasant. He was reaching into the fire.

“If you strand me there, I am passing along every single sensation.”

“You can’t do that.” When Riddle raised an eyebrow in a challenge, Harry sighed. “I fucking hate you. Just… don’t talk to me. And stay out of Ginny’s things.” He stalked out of the toilet.

He drank two-handed, washing the dreamless sleep down with kaval since the latter had a more pleasant aftertaste. Silently Riddle took the dreamless sleep, swallowing a mouthful himself with some concentration. Harry let him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will never love anything I have written so much as I love the Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes scene.
> 
> Allusions for Chapter 11:
> 
> Mario Kart – a racing video game. Came out in 1996 because 90s culture is desperately underutilized in hp fic.
> 
> Hadrian Parker – a play on the trope of Harry as the cool rich pureblood in a certain type of fic. You may also see it as Hadrian Peverell, and I swear to you if there had been any reason at all Fred and George might have named him that instead here, that’s what it would have been.
> 
> "Taking a ritual knife, he cut the contract in half and slid either to them." - Historically, indentured contracts were copied on the upper and lower parts of a sheet of paper, and then cut in half in a jagged line ('indentured' like teeth!). This was so both parties could fit the two pieces back together and be sure they were looking at the original contract. I love historical problem-solving so much.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry spies on Slytherins. Voldemort finesses the Wizengamot.
> 
> (Warning: Physical and sexual abuse in Azkaban.)

_Sunday, August 23._ The next morning Hermione knocked him up very early, so Ron’s parents wouldn’t know they’d switched bedrooms. Harry swore, shoving Riddle out of the way, and got an indignant grumble from under the covers in response. He leaned into the door without opening it. “Give me a minute.”

“Harry!” she whispered back fiercely. “ _Hurry up_.” Arthur and Molly slept just down the way.

Harry ran into the toilet, pulling the diadem from the enchanted fire. It was warm, but not too hot to touch, and after a shrinking spell he jammed it on his hand like a ring. He’d hide it with a blood charm later. Picking up his potions, he went to let Hermione in.

He knew he looked inappropriately frazzled. And he hadn’t shrunk the bed back down to a twin, and her look was incredulous. “Did you… have someone over?”

Given that the only other people in the house, to her knowledge, were Ron and his parents, this was a hilarious and weird question. “Of course not. I kick in my sleep.” He slipped past her. “See you at breakfast.”

Ron was sort of awake when he tiptoed back in. “Thanks, mate,” he muttered.

“Your parents must know you’re… you know.” Slipping the potions back into his bag, he settled on the camp bed they’d left out as a decoy.

“They said we shouldn’t move in together until we’ve both got real jobs. Dunno. _They_ got married right out of school, and I don’t even want to marry her.” Hearing himself, Ron went pink. “I mean, eventually, of course. When we might afford it ourselves. I think Mum and Dad just want a few years off from having kids around.”

Harry blinked. “Muggles have ways to stop from getting pregnant. Isn’t there a… potion? A spell? Hermione’s definitely not going to let you get her pregnant until she’s achieved universal elf suffrage or whatever.”

“Who ever said _Hermione_ was doing it?” Ron asked, with such disbelief that Harry didn’t even laugh, because it clearly wasn’t a gag. He took in Harry’s expression. “Hermione gave me the same look the first time we talked about it. Said something like, ‘Nevermind, it’s better this way.’ Why, how do Muggles do it?”

 

This past week at the Burrow had been life-giving. Harry said over breakfast, he hoped very casually, that he’d be going back to Hogwarts with Ron and Hermione that day. “If Moody signs off on it, of course.”

Everyone around the table beamed at him. He hadn’t meant it as a pronouncement of his mental health or whatever, but that’s clearly how they took it. “We’ll firecall him this morning,” Molly promised, and Harry marveled that Moody would do anything so careless as to have a Floo in his home.

He didn’t, as it turned out. Harry firecalled him at Grimmauld Place. And then, Harry was cleared to go. “Aurors will meet you in Dumbledore’s office. Noon. You’re not there by twelve ten, we send a search party.”

Harry didn’t grin too widely, so as not to get soot in his teeth. “Thanks, sir.” Moody harrumphed.

“And Potter?” he said before Harry pulled himself out of the fire.

“Yeah?”

“It’s probably best you don’t try wandless magic in front of other people. You might need it someday.”

Huh. He had passed Voldemort’s message along. “That makes sense,” he agreed. “Do you know who those wizards were yet?”

“We’re working on it.” Moody gave him a once-over. “Your spells certainly did a number on ‘em.”

He flushed. They were alive, weren’t they. “Sorry.”

Wrong response. “Why would you apologize for that,” he grumbled.

“I’d make a terrible Auror?” Harry offered.

Moody’s glare indicated he was right. “Don’t leave the castle alone,” he said. “Don’t find yourself anywhere remote. We don’t know how they found you last time. Your post will be searched. You’ve still got a curfew.”

As befits a hero. Still, he appreciated all of this. “Yes, sir.” He began to withdraw his upper body.

“And _always_ take dreamless sleep,” Moody said as his last words, in a sharp enough tone that Harry wondered if he’d known. Huh.

“Yes, sir.”

 

The castle was being scrubbed clean and redecorated, because term would start in just over a week. Most of the necessary repairs were finished; a few corridors had been roped off but there was no longer anything dangerous or crumbling or even particularly depressing. He felt full, seeing it back in this state.

Ron and Hermione dropped him off at his suite before going to the library to put Muggle movies on reserve for their class. “Any chance you’ll show them video games?” Harry asked because he had come to love nights of Mario Kart at the Burrow most of all.

Ron grinned. “Dad says he’ll miss you too, Harry.”

They were right, he had his own class to work on. He’d written Hagrid about getting a darkmantle for his zoology lessons; he hoped it’d come in by now.

Dinner was the first time most of the castle saw he was back. There were a few more students than he recalled – making up OWLs? Hopefully not more orphaned children of Death Eaters, but really, the little news to which he’d been exposed indicated the sentencings were happening with alacrity. Probably wanted them all taken care of before Voldemort’s release next summer.

Speaking of taking care of Death Eaters – Malfoy sat alone at the far end of the staff table, a quill in one hand and fork in the other. Harry raised his eyebrows; it looked unusual only because Malfoy generally projected an air of leisure. Malfoys did not multitask. He needed to speak with him anyway, though.

It was to Malfoy’s credit that when Harry sat down beside him and pulled out his wand, he didn’t flinch. He did cast an elegant obscurity charm on the parchment before properly looking at him. “Yes, Potter? If you’ve come to announce your return, we’ve already noticed.”

“Just look, you git.” With his wand, he etched a circular ward flat on the table, and a parabolic ward atop it, in the shape of a cup. He drew runes along the sides: it would be solid, warm, porcelain-like. Creating water with only runes had been the hardest part of all this; Voldemort had finally suggested that he repurpose a condensation spell strung across the top of the cup. Water condensed at a rather slow pace, leaving them in awkward silence. Malfoy had put both is quill and fork down by now. When the cup was full, Harry floated runes across the water’s surface: hot, slightly bitter, slightly floral. “How do you take it?” He was better at the rune for sweet than the one for creamy.

Malfoy seemed to have the same misgivings about dairy-based runes. “With lemon and honey.”

Doable. Sweet and sour runes floated on top. He added an ever-warm rune to the tea and an unspillable one to the lip of the cup before sliding it over. “You wrote that I couldn’t make a cup of tea with runes. So I did.”

“I see that.”

“You’re not drinking it.” He tried not to be visibly disappointed. He’d drink it himself, to make a point.

“No,” Malfoy agreed. “Because you neglected to make the wards non-damaging to anyone but yourself. Unless that was the point?”

“Oh. Here. What’s your name in runic?”

“You haven’t got to go that far.” But he etched two swirling, knotted symbols in mid-air. Harry copied them. Malfoy picked up the warded cup to non-painful, non-explosive results. Sip. Silence.

“So can I be in your NEWT class?”

“Your lemon tastes like lime,” he said. Harry waited; Malfoy sighed. “ _Yes_ , but only because it shall be so satisfying to fail you.”

He grinned at him, and Malfoy looked slightly alarmed at it. “Thanks. Really.”

“Please go now.”

Hermione was still in the library but Ron had come down for dinner. He’d seen most of the interaction. “You’re doing a bang-up job charming all the evil ones this year,” he said. “Snape by the end of term, you think?”

“Ugh.”

“Faculty meeting tomorrow, by the way. Last one before we get the kiddos.”

A smile curled his lips. “Some of the students will be as old as we are,” he said. “Some of them might be _older_.”

“Yeah,” Ron said thoughtfully. “I mean, Hermione gives off authority in waves, we won’t have a problem. You, though… you might grow a beard,” he offered.

“I assumed for wixes, they’d only let you have a good beard if you were, y’know, like Dumbledore. I haven’t earned a wizard beard yet.”

Ron was tickled at the times when Harry’s Muggle logic still shone through. Clapping him on the back: “Grow it first, mate. We can talk about whether you deserve it later.”

 

The Horcruxes were happier here; he could feel… well, a lack of tension and irritation in his core that had felt foreign but deeply burrowed in him nonetheless. This did not keep him from wishing he could go stash them in the Chamber and be rid of them, but the diversity of magic they now had to feed on here left him a little less empty.

He was in bed not much later than curfew, kaval drunk but dreamless sleep waiting on his bedside table. Picking up the diary: _I understand why you didn’t want to leave. I don’t see how anyone does. This is the only place I’ve belonged._

_Friday, August 28._ The next several days were a satisfying sort of busy. With their magic, the castle was knitting itself back together. Areas that had been damaged or closed off for nearly a year, since the attacks on Hogwarts last October and throughout its use as a bunker last spring, would be back in use. The ghosts and statues and portraits were excited. Peeves had briefly managed to make the Great Hall’s ceiling reflect some very pornographic scenes (though not of Harry _thank fuck_ ) as his own sort of celebration. The Horcruxes were quiet and apparently content in his soul. He took dreamless sleep dutifully.

But on Friday, when the school came together for dinner, the atmosphere had changed. It was… oppressive. Harry had been down at Hagrid’s that afternoon, feeding rock cakes to the Darkmantle, and felt as though he’d missed everything. The staff was subdued; Malfoy and Snape were absent entirely. He shot a questioning look at Ron and Hermione.

“There were owls this afternoon,” Ron said with great reluctance. “That the Ministry’s had the first Death Eaters kissed. Crabbe’s parents.”

Harry took this in, hissing air through his teeth. “I thought they’d wait,” he muttered. For what, he didn’t know. This year was meant to be year of reconciliation. And it was, for exceptional and useful figures like him and Voldemort. Less so for the disposable ones. “I….” He turned to go and he couldn’t think of an appropriate destination.

“You can’t help it,” Hermione said gently, taking his shoulder to push him into a chair. “Some things you can’t help.” She put a serving dish in front of him that had looked appetizing a minute ago and now seemed horrible.

He was the only one who’d kept his Prophet subscription – it was a tabloid now, but it was tabloid often about Voldemort, and about himself, and these things were useful to know, what people were saying about them. Anyway, the Prophet pushed out a brief evening edition that arrived with a flurry of owls over dinner. **_It Begins_** , the headline read irresponsibly. In smaller type: _Death Eaters convicted of sedition, given Dementor’s Kiss._

Surprisingly non-rubbish for the Prophet. Ron and Hermione leaned in on either side as he read. _Lysander and Vella Crabbe, married 22 years and having one son by whom they were pre-deceased._ As the article said: they’d worked in tandem in Death Eater missions, often subtle things like larceny or poisoning, in places a prominent married couple was welcomed. Lord Crabbe had first been suspect in the years of Voldemort’s dispossession, caught by Aurors when he was selling off Dark artifacts. They were most closely surveilled after that. Both had Dark Marks; both confessed to torturing Muggles. (Harry’s stomach leapt when he saw the word _torture_ , thinking the author would mention all of these confessions were themselves extracted under torture. The article said nothing of the sort, of course.) The Dementor’s Kiss, first for her and then him, had been administered in a private viewing chamber within the Ministry. As was customary for all those Kissed, they’d spend their days on a secure floor of St. Mungo’s.

_Story continued inside,_ the line at the bottom read. He wasn’t sure how much more he wanted to see, but felt as though he owed it to these people. “It’s my fault,” he muttered without meaning to.

Ron and Hermione both looked at him, alarmed. “Don’t be thick,” Ron said, and said nothing further because obviously they didn’t want to have this conversation.

It was, though. He’d put all his effort into saving Voldemort. And the Ministry had decreed that Voldemort’s life (if not his freedom entirely) should be paid for with those of his Death Eaters. It was… safe, and it was sick. He supposed these convictions were overdue, that it was imperative for this administration to assert they were still _tough on crime_ with Voldemort in their midst, but that didn’t keep it from feeling horrifying.

The front page had had their arrest photos with the headline: two shadowy figures being hustled from their home. But the inside story had photos from the execution. The trials had been closed, they all were, and Harry hadn’t expected journalists at the executions either (if he’d expected anything at all), but the photo inside was blown-up and a bit grainy. They had been shackled, he saw, and felt sick. They had thrashed, thrashed violently against the chains held by security wizards in scarlet and gray robes, and then a Dementor had descended upon them and they slumped.

_Oh_. Voldemort in their midst indeed. The audience – viewing party? witnesses? – were visible in the photos’ backgrounds, and he immediately saw Voldemort among them, sitting between Moody and Amelia Bones. His face was blank, an expanse of bone-colored indifference. At one moment Moody muttered something to him, and his lips barely moved with the briefest reply.

Either Ron and Hermione didn’t see him or didn’t want to speak of him. “It’s awful,” was all Hermione muttered. “More awful is what they did to the Muggles, of course, but….” Unexpectedly she looked to Harry. “Have the Muggle representatives told them we – they – don’t execute people anymore? That it’s _barbaric_?”

“Um. Maybe.” He didn’t know what the wixes and Muggles spoke of these days, really. “I don’t know if they even know of Azkaban, or of Dementors at all.”

Her nostrils flared. “Tell the Ministry that we’re supposed to be a more advanced society. We can do better.”

He would never tell her that Voldemort had said the same thing to him once. He didn’t need to, because Ron answered her, “They’re not dead, though. They’re getting a better life than those Muggles got. Definitely a better life than they’ve inflicted on other wixes.”

Ron didn’t really invoke his uncles much, even so obliquely. Far from being furious, it made him sound… strained. Reluctant. Still, he had had to say it.

Hermione leaned in, looking at the photos closer. “Oh.” Her voice was small. “Did you see…?”

Voldemort. “Yeah.” But for Moody’s comment, nobody else engaged him. Or, nobody else paid him any mind. One or the other.

Ron followed their gaze, squinting at the photo. “Oh,” he said in a similarly small voice. “He doesn’t even look human.”

“Well, he’s not.” This didn’t bother him; Voldemort had said the same to him often enough. This elicited a strangled noise from Ron.

“Do you think he’s there as… punishment?” Hermione said quietly, frowning. “He hasn’t testified in any of the trials, so he’s not there as a witness.”

Harry hadn’t known this, but then again, he preferred to avert his gaze from the articles on the Death Eater trials. “A punishment for who,” he muttered. “When they abuse the Death Eaters in Azkaban, they’d bring him along, to question them together and also just… to be shitty. That either they’d have to swear loyalty in front of everyone or they’d have to denounce him.”

They both looked at him in horror. “How do you _know_ that,” Ron said. “Does… he tell you things?”

Voldemort minimized everything remotely related; the idea was laughable. Looking around to ensure they were alone enough, and then pulling a silencing spell around them anyway: “Well, this summer I had permission to be there. And with the cloak….”

He didn’t realize they could look anymore horrified than they’d already looked. It felt good to tell them, even if none of it was _his_ secret really. It was catharsis. He told them of the Wizengamot, of Umbridge, of Bright and Bowersock. He told them of learning more recently of Bowersock’s sexual abuse. He told them that the Ministry, up to Scrimgeour himself, was some combination of powerless and indifferent. Hermione had pushed her plate away.

“We are supposed to be better,” she hissed in fury. “Even to him. Even to them.” She looked back at the paper. “Maybe Dementors are more humane. If they don’t _molest_ the bodies afterward.” Her tone was intensely bitter.

“Hermione….” Ron began.

“ _Please_ don’t do anything,” Harry said. “I’ve already tried. They don’t care. And they’ll just… take it out on them, anyway.” He gave her a wavering smile. “One of your advocacy programs can be prison reform.”

“It will be,” she said viciously. She dropped her gaze for a moment. “I’d only meant it’d punish Voldemort, that he’d have to watch everyone around him get sentenced. But if they’re already….” She halted her own train of thought. “I really hope you don’t feel any of it.”

“I wish I did,” Harry said. “The Aurors would rather I forget all about it. _Voldemort_ would rather I forget about it. It’s why I’ve got to take dreamless sleep every night. It’s in our vow.”

“Oh _Harry_ ,” she sighed.

He closed the paper definitively, leaving them looking at the arrest photo. “We’re not better than anyone,” he said. “And the ones in power might be the worst of all.” They both looked back at him sadly.

 

He was still full of grief after dinner. So, he realized, were the Horcruxes. That was obnoxious. Taking out a penknife, he released them both with blood charms. His suite was spacious enough to accommodate them both, though he might die of weirdness. Casting the restoration fire in the hearth, he dropped both Horcruxes in.

They materialized as though they’d just taken the Floo in, first the locket and then the diadem. He hadn’t even met the locket before, it was the one content to bathe in Hogwarts’s magic quietly. Harry suspected that some of the nostalgia he’d felt in the past week was due to the locket.

But tonight he was irritated with them. “ _What_.”

The diadem quirked his brow. “ _You_ summoned _us_ ,” he pointed out.

“You were making me feel….” He didn’t even have words for it. “Empty,” he said lamely. “Restless. How do you do that?”

The diadem, the more infuriating of the two, smiled enigmatically. “We will try not to be disruptive presences in your life too often,” he said. “But there is magic, new magic, that is… corrosive.”

“What?” The only new magic they’d put on the castle were repairs. And certainly Harry had done nothing to himself.

The diadem pursed his lips. “Nevermind. Those with founder’s blood must be more sensitive to fluctuations.”

This arsehole. “Yes, _well done_.” Riddle flashed his teeth in nothing like a smile.

The locket was pacing the suite. “Why would they give Slytherin housing to a Gryffindor?”

“Uh, I think all the faculty housing is down here?”

“No, it’s not.”

He shrugged. “Then maybe this was the only unruined housing. Sodding Death Eaters cursed or exploded a lot of the castle. We’ve nearly fixed it, though.”

“You’ll watch the _sodding Death Eaters_ die one at a time and feel vindicated, then.”

“Really, I won’t.” They knew already why he was so upset tonight.

The locket strode toward the door. “I want to see the castle.”

“No.” Harry was perhaps overly alarmed, moving to block the exit as if letting the Horcruxes out would kill him, because _it just might_. “You know you can’t leave.”

Riddle gave him an astute look. “That vow only applies to the term. It’s still summer.”

“You’ll cause problems. Slughorn will recognize you. So will Flitwick, and Hagrid, and Professor McGonagall.”

“Only if we’re seen. Where is that delightful cloak?”

“You _can’t_. There’s no reason for you to be out.”

Riddle looked at him with a soft, vulnerable, utterly manipulative expression. “I’m not so far past Hogwarts,” he said. “I was created at nineteen. Only a few months after the Headmaster denied me the Defense job for the first time. Well wishes on your class this term, by the way,” he added, sweetly.

“Do you know how to un-curse the position?”

Riddle shrugged, overly innocent and playful. “I thought I might have a look around. It’d almost certainly be magic left on the grounds, in a ward or a keystone.”

Harry groaned. “I hate you. Both of you,” he said, though the diadem had gone quiet, settling at the table with recent copies of the Prophet. “I’m not taking you,” he said to the diadem.

“I find sentimental nostalgia _childish_ ,” he returned, with an exasperated look at his younger self. “Really, they made clear you weren’t wanted then. Dippet, _of all people_ …. I don’t understand why these feelings linger.”

(He must understand, they had been his feelings too, hadn’t they? This relationship was confusing.)

The locket didn’t take the bait. “You wouldn’t,” was all he said. “Harry, when is your curfew?”

He sighed. “Ten.”

Eyebrows up. “ _That’s_ embarrassing. We’d best go, then.” He moved toward Harry’s trunk.

“Let me. I hate you,” he reiterated.

Riddle didn’t react but stepped aside gracefully. “And if I get punished for this,” Harry went on, “if the vow _strangles_ me, it’s over. If you draw any attention to yourself, it’s over.”

Riddle smiled un-reassuringly. “Darling – “

“Don’t call me that. Only he calls me that.”

“ _Harry_ ,” he said patronizingly, and Harry would’ve preferred that they weren’t on a first name basis but he’d sound petty saying so. “I killed a girl with a basilisk, and they gave me an award for it. I am very skilled at avoiding consequences.”

“ _Ugh_ ,” Harry protested. Riddle’s smile grew wide. Still, Harry draped the cloak over them both. Riddle had to concentrate on making himself solid enough in the right places, that the cloak would fall right. They left.

“Is anyone in the dorms right now?” Riddle murmured beside him. Parseltongue. It would create just as many questions if they were heard, but at least they wouldn’t be understood.

“Yes. I assume. Slytherins are staying over the summer. Specifically the ones with Death Eater parents.”

“Mm.” He moved in that direction anyway.

“I don’t know the password,” Harry objected.

Riddle gave him an incredulous look. “Parseltongue will always be the password. Slytherin provided for his descendants. And you, incidentally,” he glared. “Passwords in a human tongue were always a concession for the humans.”

“You all say _human_ like it’s a bad thing.”

“Funny, that.” They stood before the wall of the Slytherin dungeon. “ _Open_.”

It was idiotic, in hindsight – there was no reason to believe the students ( _or faculty_ ) wouldn’t be right inside. But… they weren’t. They entered quietly. The lamps burned low above them. They listened.

Around a corner, they found a study nook. Daphne Greengrass was here alone, scribbling a very long letter. She must have heard their footsteps because, tensing, she looked around. Of course she saw nothing. Tom could make himself more or less immaterial; Harry cast silent cushioning charms where his steps would land.

Up a half-flight of stairs, to the dorms. The marker on the door that would read First Years instead now read Eighth Years. They heard voices, and it was wrong to eavesdrop on such an awful night, but…. He crept forward, pulling Riddle with him.

Malfoy was sitting on a bed between Blaise Zabini and Millicent Bulstrode. The younger Slytherins – god, more than a dozen of them – sat on other beds but were obviously oriented toward the three of them. “Daph?” Millicent called, perhaps hearing Harry’s footsteps.

“Just a minute.”

That’s why the door was open. Harry made one of the most unethical decisions of his life and slipped inside to listen. Riddle snickered in his ear, obviously delighted at Harry’s unheroic conduct. There was room enough as they pressed themselves into a poorly-lit corner out of the way.

Daphne had come in a minute later, scrubbing at her face in exhaustion. “I was writing Durmstrang,” she said. “Just in case.”

“You’re an eighth year,” one of the younger boys said.

She fixed him with a glare. “Not for _me_ , for _you_ , Bernthal. For all of you.” She looked around the room, at their drawn, scared faces. “If we need to get out, we’ll get out. If some of your parents….” She looked to a few of them in particular, but all of them were a few years beneath Harry and not people he knew, “we’ll keep the rest of the school away. By force, if we’ve got to.”

“Greengrass – “ Malfoy began to object.

She looked at him viciously. “We’ll do what we need to, you said it yourself. Even if your parents are having a lovely time imprisoned in their _mansion_.”

Malfoy reacted faster than Harry could follow, and there were shrieks and scrambling to get out of the way of his hexes. Daphne caught each one, flinging it back at him, so Malfoy was consumed with dodging as well. After half a dozen spells dissipated in the air, he flagged. “They might be,” he snapped at her. “But how would I even know.” Both he and Greengrass sat again, as though such fights were commonplace, and the lower grades inched back toward them.

“Practice hexes and jinxes,” Malfoy told the group as though it were incidental. “Keep on this side of legal, of course. You’ve got a list. Can anyone perform Protego?” A couple nods. “A disillusionment charm?” Blank faces all around this time. He sighed. “Right, Bulstrode or I will show you.”

“But the Headmaster – “ one younger girl began. A chorus of complaints as though this were a frequent conversation. “What’s the point of having him there if he won’t _do_ anything?”

The eighth years shared dark looks. “The Ministry is still suspicious of Professor Snape. This position protects him,” Daphne conceded, “but he’s still suspicious. He might be the only supporter left. Well, him and Potter,” she snickered.

(Harry nearly made a noise of protest; Riddle slipped a hand over his mouth.)

“But there’s Professor Slughorn, and there’s _you_ , Malfoy,” the girl said.

“Slughorn will do everything he can,” Malfoy promised. “He’s well-liked on both sides. But you know he… doesn’t stick his neck out.” He said it as a sigh.

The entire room was strained, and quiet. A fourth or fifth year boy said into the tension, “I’ve heard it’s better on the continent. That our Ministry is….”

“Bloodthirsty,” Bulstrode supplied dryly.

“Right.” He looked to Zabini. “Like with your mother. I firecalled Nott a couple days ago, he said Rome is really safe and good with her.”

“You firecalled Nott?” Bulstrode repeated in a tight voice. “They watch our Floos!”

“I know,” the boy mumbled. “It was quick. He seemed happy. Like it used to be.”

They all sat in this reminder. Malfoy summoned two bottles of wine from a hiding spot, passing them in opposite directions. They drank.

Harry felt sick to his stomach. Whatever Riddle had meant to accomplish tonight, it wasn’t this. Greengrass had closed the door behind herself so they couldn’t leave inconspicuously. Beside him, Riddle’s face was a snarl of emotion.

The silence was broken, unnervingly, by a stifled sob. A blonde girl with an athletic build, maybe third or fourth year. “Rowle,” Riddle murmured in Harry’s ear. He did see the resemblance.

“They’ll kill him,” she said in a broken tone. “How are you all _alright_ with this?” She looked to two fifth years, a boy and a girl, and she looked to Malfoy. His gaze back was flinty. “I’ve got no other family. Just Papa.” And she flinched at hearing her own childishness. “I asked Slughorn what would happen to me if….” A breathy sob completed her sentence, but then she added, “But he wouldn’t tell me.”

Orphans. The world had enough orphans. Harry felt sick.

The eighth years looked at each other, deciding who would answer Rowle. Bulstrode went first. “This doesn’t help,” she said with an impatient wave at Rowle’s wet face. “Don’t ever let the other houses see you like this. Don’t let _anyone_ see you like this, really. I hope you didn’t cry for Slughorn.”

Rowle glared. “You’re such a bitch.”

Millicent quirked one side of her mouth, and said nothing more.

But Rowle was still upset. “It’s a massacre,” she said bitterly. “What if he’s confunded the Ministry? Or got them under Imperius? I don’t understand why they don’t just Kiss _him_ instead.”

The boy sitting beside her twitched as though he’d like to have slapped a hand over her mouth. A few of the Slytherins inhaled deeply. “Gotlinde,” Daphne breathed. “You can’t _say_ that.”

“Why not?” she demanded. “I didn’t swear loyalty to anyone. And when Papa did, it was only because….” She shook off the statement. “He said he doesn’t want me at the trial.”

“You should probably be out of the country by then,” Daphne said softly.

“I’ve got _no one_.”

“You’ve got us.” Imminently reasonable. “And there are families, friends, supporters who will get you out.” She offered something like a smile. “I didn’t think I’d be using my last year here to plan a smuggling route, but….” Zabini put a hand on her shoulder briefly.

Malfoy was looking to the ceiling. “Getting out of the castle will be more difficult than getting out of the country,” he said. “The Auror _protection_ ,” he said it in a prickly way, “will be the most dangerous part of the year.”

“Aren’t there secret passages?” one young boy asked.

Malfoy gave him a pitying look. “Which will be more heavily guarded than anywhere else.” He thought, and then in a low tone said, “I’ll take care of it. Greengrass, tell us when Durmstrang writes back – though I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s surveillance there too, after that oaf Karkaroff,” he sighed. “The rest of you….” He looked at the students, staring back at him wide-eyed. “Keep your heads down. Don’t get angry, don’t get disrespectful. With faculty or students, mind. The most clever, cunning thing you can do this year is get out alive.” The children’s faces were bleak but set. They all looked much older in this moment.

And as Malfoy rose, so did the rest of them. Harry and Riddle inched toward the door, to make an inconspicuous exit. Riddle’s face was perfectly blank, but Harry was devastated.

They needed to return – nothing good would come of an Auror opening Harry’s suite at curfew and finding diadem-Riddle in there instead. Harry and Tom crept out behind Rowle. And then, thank fuck, the eighth years were leaving the common room, so they could slip behind them too. Harry only kind of shoved Malfoy out of the way by accident, but he whipped around to glare at Zabini. “Don’t be a prick.” Blaise, despite having no idea what he was being accused of, looked back coolly.

Harry and Riddle walked fast enough that the noise would’ve been conspicuous if anyone were around. “There’s a ban on sorting new students into Slytherin,” Harry narrated lowly as they walked. “All of those students are here because their parents have been detained as Death Eaters. Or, affiliated with Death Eaters? Or on the run. I don’t know.” He wished now that he’d spent more time getting to know the younger classes. “How did you know Rowle?”

“I went to school with her grandparents,” Riddle said. His tone was low, and they spoke in Parseltongue, so Harry could feel his breath against his ear. “And the blond one in charge would be a Malfoy. They’re unmistakable.”

“Yeah, he – _shit_.” And Harry jumped, because they’d turned the corner and suddenly Malfoy was right in front of him, waiting beside Abzu’s statue, as though they’d summoned him with their words. He didn’t even know how Malfoy had gotten here first, and from a different direction, but then he didn’t know the dungeons well yet. Harry dragged Riddle back into a corner.

“I’ll need to see him. You’ll need to get through the doorways when they’re open. You can’t, like, walk through walls, can you?”

Riddle was (funnily) offended by this. “I can be incorporeal, but not with anything so solid and warded as the castle.”

“Oh, well… sorry?” Harry tried.

“My existence is rather precarious,” Riddle said. “Without a permanent body or permanent soul, you might as well suggest I kill myself.”

Harry did not say the snarky things he held in his mouth. “Sorry,” he said, exasperated. “I’ll try to hold the doors for you. Don’t get caught.”

“Can’t I meet him?” Riddle’s tone was mischievous. “If he’s a Death Eater, he’s rather obligated to me.”

“No,” Harry said firmly. And then he slipped from under the cloak, pushing his hair in place, and went to go see what Malfoy wanted.

“Finally,” Malfoy said when Harry approached. “Your dragon said you were just _gone_. He couldn’t say where.”

“Oh. Sorry, Abzu,” Harry addressed the dragon. “I was… in the kitchens. I’ll tell you next time.” Abzu blew an accommodating puff of smoke and held open the door. And Harry lingered in the doorway for slightly too long. He hoped he didn’t imagine someone brushing past him.

“What do you want?” Harry asked, in a neutral tone. He wanted to offer help to the Slytherins, and of course he couldn’t. “You know it’s pretty close to my curfew,” he added lightly.

“I do, and I find it pathetic,” Malfoy pronounced. “We need to schedule a meeting time for the disaster that will be your Runes class. McGonagall won’t put it on the schedule, she says there’s no point.”

“Oh. She might be right. Um.” Harry paused before his bedroom door. He needed to get the locket-Riddle inside, he needed to get them both hidden, and he needed to keep Malfoy unaware of it all.

Malfoy saw his hesitation even if he didn’t understand it. “Go,” he said, sneering. “I’ll wait while you put your nappies and footie pajamas away, or whatever hideous thing you need hidden.”

Harry choked. It was the first time anyone had been brave or vulgar enough to name his fetishes to his face. “I don’t….”

“ _Please_ don’t tell me,” Malfoy stressed.

Harry gave him a weak smile, pushing his hand to the door to unlock it. Again he hovered in the doorway, hoping Riddle could slip in. And Malfoy was staring at him, this awkward hesitation. And he could think of nothing to say but, “I don’t wear footie pajamas.”

Malfoy went scarlet. Harry probably did too. He slammed the door behind himself.

The diadem was sitting on his bed surrounded by books, and looked startled. “You need to go,” Harry said forcefully. “Uh… Tom?” It sounded stupid as he called for the locket, but whatever.

The locket-Tom slid out from under the cloak gracefully. “You could do great things with an artifact like this,” he said. “Impressive things.” His eyes glittered in the same way Harry had seen in the Pensieve with Hepzibah Smith’s possessions.

“You’re going now, too. Bye.” Snatching his cloak back, he moved to take both Horcruxes from the fire. The only bit of their disappearance he heard was a sharp inhalation from one of them. When he turned, they were gone. He set both artifacts on the mantel, shoved his cloak in his trunk, and _did_ take a glance around in case any nappies or soothers or the fucking WWW erotica was on display. Safe.

Malfoy was not incredibly happy to be kept waiting. “Who were you talking to?” he asked, glancing around as Harry let him in.

“Uhh….”

“I assume the hissing was your creepy snake language, and not a gas leak. I’d like to be informed, either way.”

He burst out laughing in relief. Thanks to months with Voldemort, Parseltongue came more easily than English sometimes. The Horcruxes hadn’t noted it, either. “Don’t tell anyone, but I’ve got a snake,” he said, in a faux-conspiratorial tone. “The Gryffindors would disown me.”

Malfoy snorted and, wonderfully, didn’t pursue this. Instead he pulled out parchment with a grid on it. “The class schedule. Runes are _here_ ,” and he cast a spell to highlight the appropriate boxes in green, “and Defense is _here_.” Orange. “I’m taking Herbology and Arithmancy.” Yellow.

“I’ve got Potions, Transfiguration, and Charms.”

Malfoy frowned at him. “What, the Aurors will still let you in?” He highlighted Harry’s classes in red.

“Oh. Uh, no, I’m going to be a… diplomat? Ambassador? We thought those would just be good classes for me.”

Malfoy was faintly disgusted by this. “Well, _we_ ,” he played with the pronoun, “need a meeting time.”

“I meant McGonagall,” Harry said weakly. “Not Voldemort.”

“Ah,” Malfoy said, and dropped his gaze to the parchment anyway.

But between them, there was exactly one forty-five minute block in the week in which they were both free. They stared at it. Malfoy sighed. “Are you taking Astronomy?”

“No. Are you playing Quidditch?”

An impatient look. “It’d be inappropriate to let faculty on the house teams, don’t you think?”

Oh. He hadn’t thought. That hurt, unexpectedly. “Another thing Voldemort’s stolen from us,” he sighed, and he meant it to be funny, but his sense of humor was overly inflected with Voldemort’s, these days. Malfoy visibly flinched. “Oh god,” Harry breathed. “Sorry. I didn’t mean – “

“Of course you didn’t,” Malfoy said, and Harry withered at his tone. “So if your evenings are free… Tuesday and Thursday, after dinner?”

“Yeah, sure.” He still felt small and scolded. “If there’s anything I can do, y’know, for the Slytherins….” He could say no more without incriminating himself.

Malfoy reacted as Snape had, once: “If you truly believed that, you wouldn’t be his _advocate_.”  


Harry couldn’t fight with this. He was still sick with grief. “I _am_ sorry,” he insisted.

Malfoy rose. “I’ll see you in class.” He let himself out. Auror Bragg was outside the door by this time, and nodded to Malfoy before sealing Harry in. Having seen Malfoy come and go twice now, he was going to get the wrong impression soon, Harry thought idly.

The Horcruxes were not ideal company, far from it, but he was very bad at being alone. Dully, he lit the fire and put the diadem in, until the older Riddle stepped out of the flames. “Lonely?” he smirked.

“Give me your magic and I’ll tell you what happened.” He was too dispirited to be coy. Riddle, something of a smile playing at his lips, pressed him onto the bed.

Riddle was not particularly happy at the treatment of Slytherins. Neither was Harry. Maybe they were paranoid, maybe the children of Death Eaters would be treated fairly and kept safe here. But nobody was that naïve.

Riddle gave him magic, and something like _euphoria_ , until he was light-headed with it. He nearly mistook it for beginning to like the git. In any case, their bodies ended up entangled, a bit because Riddle enjoyed making Harry uncomfortable, and a bit because keeping track of his extremities was difficult. One semi-corporeal hand draped over Harry’s shoulders, hips and thighs and bent knees touching, he asked, “Then what will you do for them?”

Harry sighed. “I don’t know. Not give them detention?” Riddle snorted and Harry flinched. “Really, I don’t know. I could get them out of the castle without being seen – I think – but they’d never trust my help.”

“Would they trust mine?” Riddle asked, sincerely curious. “Or the locket’s, of course.”

“Voldemort is really the reason all their parents will die, so probably not, no.”

Riddle lifted his gaze to the ceiling, thinking. “We could keep them in Slytherin’s chamber. Really, it was built anticipating such a thing. A fortress within a fortress.”

“If I wanted to imprison them, yeah. And also, it caved in in my second year. I haven’t been back.”

Riddle made himself corporeal enough for Harry to feel him shrug. “Your invisibility cloak wouldn’t be enough by itself, but it would _help_. Send it anonymously.”

Harry looked at him in horror. “It’s about the best thing I own. One of the only things I’ve got from my dad.”

“Well, if you’re _sentimental_ about it. Being the only orphan in the world.”

“Piss off,” he snapped. “As though human life is so very valuable to you these days.” Riddle flashed his teeth.

But the magic was as soporific as it was soothing. Harry was dropping off to sleep rapidly, because it looked like falling asleep with Riddle in his bed was going to be a common occurrence. “Can I have my wand?” he muttered, because it was on the other bedside table. Scourgify made his mouth feel scoured instead of clean, but it was close enough. Riddle doused the lamps for him, and they settled into the darkness.

He might be more prone to slipping into Voldemort’s mind on the nights that Riddle’s magic was already so proximate. “ _Harry, Harry_ ,” he heard someone murmuring in his ear in Parseltongue, and even though Riddle and Voldemort sounded really nothing alike, at this moment he couldn’t tell them apart. Squinting into the darkness: nothing. The cold, wet nothingness that characterized Azkaban.

Voldemort recognized his presence before Harry himself properly did. “You can’t stay,” he muttered. “You can’t – “

“I miss you,” Harry tried to say, and it was an utterly frustrating feeling, as though his mouth had disappeared. He pushed the raw feeling at Voldemort instead.

Breath. A single lamp lit. Why had Voldemort lain awake in the dark? The cell was tiny, the same as he’d seen last time but somehow there was a miasma about it that was new. Harry realized that it was a Dementor, there was a Dementor stationed either behind Voldemort in the cell or just outside the door.

“It’s beyond the cell,” Voldemort confirmed, in quiet Parseltongue. “They are still concerned with deterrents for you. For good reason, as you see. You do need to take dreamless sleep. Because – “ There were footsteps beyond the cell, getting louder. “Because of _this_ ,” he said blandly. “Harry, please go.”

His heart throbbed with pity. His choice was between seeing Voldemort beaten and not seeing him at all.

“Harry, in a moment the Dementors will be inside the cell – “ _Click._ The door. Voldemort fell silent.

The Dementors were far worse to experience secondhand – his feelings and Voldemort’s ricocheted off one another, and for the first time it was _claustrophobic_ being inside Voldemort’s mind, unable to move or affect anything. The Dementor was cold, dousing the light. He heard his mother screaming – he heard dozens of people screaming –

And with a shove, he heard himself screaming as he hit the floor beside his bed. He was hyperventilating. “What the _fuck_ ,” he demanded. Riddle’s dark eyes glinted above him.

“What the fuck yourself,” Riddle said in a clipped tone, unmoved as Harry sorted out his limbs. “Were you watching someone get murdered?”

“You’d like that. No, I – “ And the dark was oppressive, and he was going to panic if he was left in it. With a wave of his hand every candle in the room burst into flame. He took a deep breath. “Dementors. They keep Dementors with him now. As a _deterrent_ for me.”

Riddle was frowning. “They’re unpleasant, I suppose, but….”

Harry flushed. “I react, um, badly. I always hear my mum screaming when they’re around. From the night _you_ killed her,” he glared.

This only amused Riddle. “Did I, though? The night I killed her, the night I _will_ kill her, the night I _would have_ killed her…” he mused as Harry stalked into the loo. “You should put on a nappy,” Riddle called through the door. “I refuse to wake up in a wet bed.”

Harry cracked the door while brushing his teeth just so he could glare at Riddle. “I never asked you to stay,” he said through a mouthful of foam.

“No, but you will when I shove euphoria directly into your soul. Into all the bad places where the Dementors touched you. It’s better than chocolate.”

That’s what he needed, chocolate. He still felt cold. He wished there were a way to apologize to Voldemort, because presumably being stuck in Harry’s psyche was just as unpleasant. So he was depressed, and he was guilty, and he really wanted to crawl into Voldemort’s lap but this smarmy, charming, wanker Horcrux was all he had. He threw a handful of baobab tablets in his mouth before pulling out the nappy bag.

Loose pajama bottoms covered the bulk of it. Still, it was embarrassing in a breathtaking sort of way when, upon re-entering the bedroom, he got an obvious once-over from Riddle. “Come here, Harry.” He slid to the foot of the bed.

He did, with hesitation. “Just because… _this_ ,” he dipped his head the smallest fraction, “is a thing he and I do… you’re not involved in it. I don’t want you involved.”

“I am not,” Riddle agreed, before passing him a soother from the bedside table. Harry must’ve gone red, because he smirked. “I only thought it would help. It would be absurd to feign ignorance of all your precious little fetishes, in any case.” He pulled Harry to the bedspread beside him. “I only want to give you magic. Injury to your soul doesn’t only hurt you, you know.”

Harry looked at him with faint surprise. “Uh, I didn’t, actually. Really?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Riddle said waspishly. “You hurt him – and us – every time you fall into his thoughts. It really is a sacrifice on his part.”

This made Harry feel even shittier. “I don’t know anything about soul magic,” he defended himself weakly. “I didn’t spend a decade researching how to _mutilate_ my soul or anything.”

A cluck. “You do know how to share magic. It has – I believe – reparative effects. Certainly pleasant ones. Some Unspeakables would like to get you in their labs together, I assume. But, for the moment – how do you usually share magic?”

They would do this. Harry would be the recipient of magic for the first time. He somehow hadn’t considered much what the other end of the process felt like. “From my hands, at the beginning. I gathered up stray magic and, um, pushed it into his skin? I can’t really explain. Now it’s wherever we touch, really. I’m not spooning you,” he added with a wry look.

A flash of teeth. “You certainly are not. Are there any spells, mantras, runes, environmental effects…?”

“Voldemort says all my magic is a cobbled-together disaster.” Saying his name – murmuring it really, with all its soft sounds and the gentle press of his lips – already made him lonely, and guilty, and awful. He held his hands out as a peace offering; Riddle took them.

It took a few tries – Riddle had only begun to learn intuitive, embodied, non-Western magic at this age, the sort Voldemort said Harry emulated. First a wrenching of his soul that made them both flinch, then a few inadvertent physical spells of warmth and vibration. A cheering charm, which _helped_ but wasn’t what Riddle was going for. Finally a sort of stream of warmth, filling his chest and spreading outwards. Harry went still. “That,” he said. “It’s that.”

“Mm.” Tom pushed more magic inside of him. It was reminiscent of the burst of warmth that chocolate elicited after time with a Dementor, but… more. He momentarily forgot himself, sinking into the touch and the warmth of the bed and the soft press of the nappy.

“Is that what it felt like for him, every time?” he asked.

Riddle shrugged. “Probably.” His hands slipped farther up, to hold Harry’s forearms. The magic fell in a heavier stream. “You should ask him.”

Harry bit back a comment he nearly allowed to cross his lips, that he’d find it very hard to dislike anyone who made him feel like _this_ all the time. It nearly felt like love itself, this fullness.

Riddle let him onto the sheets gently, until they faced one another on their sides. “I can do this for you all the time,” he said. “Every night, if you’d like. The melancholy you’ve carried with you, the panic… it hurts us all. I was _created_ to protect souls.”

“His soul.”

A faint smile. “As though there is any difference by now.”

This was true. “What do you want in return?”

“Harry,” Riddle admonished, amused. “Where is your Gryffindor goodwill?”

“I am trusting, not naïve.” He squared off as well as he could with them both lying down. “I’m saying yes, you know. But I’m also saying, _what do you want_.”

“Out,” Tom said bluntly. “Just around the castle. I’ve already, as you know, spent decades imprisoned here. At least let _this_ imprisonment be a bit more dynamic.”

Harry thought. “And what would you do with your time out?”

Riddle made a non-committal gesture. “You haven’t taken me to the library yet,” he said.

“You want me to break a vow so you can go to the _library_?” Harry thought to himself that if he ever let Riddle anywhere near Hermione, they’d be unstoppable. A new, rigorously studious tyranny.

“At the moment, I want to save the Slytherins. Since you won’t.”

Harry bristled. “I’ll do what I can.”

An unimpressed look. With Harry’s wand: “Accio vow.”

Nothing. “Oh. There’s more than one. That is how much the Ministry doesn’t trust us. The Aurors, particularly. Accio the vow with Snape. I assume,” he said as he passed the parchment.

“Hm.” Riddle shook it out. “This is the one that keeps us confined?”

“They both do. This one keeps you from hurting anyone.” He let his fingers skim the page. “There.”

Riddle read aloud, switching to English to preserve the syntax. “ _The two Horcruces, Slytherin’s locket and Ravenclaw’s diadem, created by Lord Voldemort and currently possessed by Harry Potter, will remain in Mr. Potter’s suite at Hogwarts or on his person at all time. They will not be left elsewhere within the castle or on the grounds. They will not be transferred to another wix. They will, in fact, not come in contact with any other person at all. If circumstances must change, particularly for Mr. Potter’s health or well-being, alternative arrangements will be negotiated by a party that includes representation by the DMLE, the Order of the Phoenix, and the Unspeakables. Otherwise the placement and possession of the Horcruces will be revisited with the conclusion of the academic year._ ”

“So _I_ can take you out,” Harry said. “Like you saw, it could get a bit tricky, but….”

But Riddle was shaking his head, a faint smile on his deep red lips. “The passage doesn’t account for us at all,” he said. “If _Horcruces_ are the diadem and the locket – well, as you saw, those can and should stay here. I’m sure there’s a limit, how far I might stray from the artifact, but….”

Harry looked at him hopelessly. “Well done, you’re very clever,” he said. “Being clever doesn’t mean you deserve to be unleashed on the castle.”

“ _Unleashed_ ,” Riddle mocked. “No. If it mollifies you at all, the passage protecting Hogwarts is better-constructed. ‘ _Lord Voldemort, in any of his manifestations_ ’ – I hope they felt ludicrous writing that, by the way – ‘ _may not act in any way that intends harm to Hogwarts’s faculty, students, or residents.’_ I am harmless,” he promised Harry with a mocking smile.

“You are mad,” Harry said. But then Tom’s mouth went tight and he pulled away his magic with a bit too much force, such that it felt like something _ripped_ inside of him. Harry groaned as despair flooded the void left behind.

“I didn’t want to do it this way,” Riddle said coolly. “But as you see, my access to your soul gives me the ability to make you feel very good, or very bad. I don’t _think_ I could drive you to suicide,” he said thoughtfully, to watch Harry blanch, “but certainly… whatever you feel around Dementors, I could make you feel as well.”

Harry was scrabbling backwards; Riddle grabbed him, holding him close. “I fucking hate you,” Harry breathed. How could he have found him likeable a moment ago.

Riddle made his soul go cold and brittle. “Apologize.”

Harry was out of bed and so was he, and Riddle wasn’t _stronger_ exactly in this state but he could make Harry feel very weak. “I hate you,” he said again. “And I haven’t got to let you go, ever. It’s not part of the agreement.” He needed to get the diadem from the fire.

Riddle pushed something like _terror_ inside of him. No – something more personal – claustrophobia, panic, the madness of twelve years of chronic pain. Harry choked back a sob, forgetting himself for a moment. “You condemn me to _this_ ,” Riddle snarled. “What if someone still forced you into a cupboard every night?”

Harry looked up in wretched disbelief. “Don’t.”

Riddle pressed the finitude of the Horcrux’s space upon him, until the room grew tiny around him. “The man you love so much was indifferent, Harry. He still is.” He couldn’t breathe. “I thought you would understand freedom a bit better. If you don’t, let this remind you.” The room was closing in as though it would crush him. The pain was white-hot but (as Voldemort had said once) undifferentiated, pure, so unadulterated that it almost made him doubt himself. And the dire angst and anger and betrayal, of being left alone –

“Stop.” His voice cracked. “I’m sorry. Please stop.”

“You’re only saying that. They’ll say anything,” Riddle scoffed, but he eased some of the claustrophobia off him. “I don’t want to share these feelings with you. I’d rather not feel them at all. But the space of the Horcrux is… traumatic.” He said it as an exhalation.

Harry was breathing hard, hot all over and still terrified. He wanted to _fight,_ he always did when faced with such overwhelming feelings, but it wouldn’t be one he’d win. He wiped his nose, trying to compose himself. “Voldemort did offer to take those memories.”

Riddle glared. “I can’t tell him these things.”

Harry stared. “But….”

“Just let me out,” Riddle said, and begging was unbecoming on him, and it made them both uncomfortable. His mouth twisted. “Like a _dog_. Please, master, let me out before I wee on the rug and chew up the furniture.”

Harry squirmed. “I don’t _own_ you.”

“Oh, but you do, and a moment ago you quite enjoyed bragging as much.” He did enjoy seeing Harry uncomfortable. “This is all in your hands, you know. I can’t put the artifacts in the fire. I’m not even certain I can take them out, actually,” he said with a backwards glance at the green flames. “And the passage against harming Hogwarts residents _does_ seem to be binding. I don’t intend to, anyway.” His pale chest rose and fell. “Honestly, I was disappointed upon learning the extent to which Voldemort relied on violence to seize power. I find it… an embarrassment to Slytherin, both the house and our illustrious ancestor. _That_ ,” and he waved vaguely upwards, indicating the world outside, “is how a Gryffindor would seize power. Brash, loud, unyielding.”

“You do know I’m a Gryffindor?”

Riddle looked at him cleverly. “Tell me I’m wrong. Here.” And he was pulling Harry into bed again, pulling the covers over him as he settled on top of them. “I didn’t enjoy hurting you like that,” he said, soft enough that Harry nearly believed it. “But you are so very empathetic – also why you’d be so affected by Dementors, by the way – that it seemed more efficient to explain it in feelings instead of words.”

Harry exhaled deeply. “I expect you won’t tell me what you’re really doing,” he said. “Don’t hurt anyone, don’t cause trouble. I’ll give you my schedule, but since I’m taking classes and teaching, I won’t be around much. Take the cloak. And the Marauder’s Map. I’ll show you.” Riddle was very lucky, Harry reflected, to be in the custody of someone as adept at breaking rules as himself. “But really – there’s faculty here who would still recognize you. There are Aurors on the grounds at all times.”

Riddle frowned at the latter. “But there’s not a war.”

“Right,” Harry said tiredly. “But nobody thinks we’re safe yet. Mostly, nobody thinks _I’m_ safe yet.”

Riddle hummed, and said nothing, and pushed delicious magic into his core.

 

When he slept, he was back at Azkaban, back in Voldemort’s psyche. No Dementors nearby, he had a sort of preternatural way of knowing, but he couldn't tell much else either. Voldemort fought to stay conscious in spite of losing his blood and magic. Harry pressed himself in the back of his mind.

Voices of the Wizengamot – Voldemort knew them by sound so for the moment Harry did too. Umbridge, Avril, Bright. Madam Bones this time, with a secretary of hers taking notes. Rowle, again, and Harry’s heart jolted at the familiarity.

The reaction roused Voldemort. “ _Har_ –?” And then the tug of a noose around his neck. He was either blindfolded or magically blinded, Harry couldn’t tell which. The darkness was too perfect.

A voice behind him, indifferent and precise: “When we want the prisoner’s input on the proceedings, we’ll ask for it.” And Harry went sick because he could’ve sworn it was Percy.

They were fading in different ways, together. Voldemort fought to stay conscious and Harry gathered it was because he was bent over the tower’s outer wall. He probably wouldn’t pitch forward if he fell unconscious – honestly, there were probably safety measures along the external walls to keep prisoners from jumping – but he struggled against unconsciousness anyway. Harry tried not to make anything worse, to stay out of the way. He didn’t know how to withdraw, and Voldemort could hardly do it for him. _I love you_ , he pressed the thought to Voldemort’s mind. _I am so sorry. You only need to survive._

Yes. They were nearly finished for the night – Rowle had been important, Rowle had been one of his hitwizards and had a great many thrilling murders to recount. Voldemort was nearly irrelevant tonight. Rowle stupidly thought if he was forthcoming in his crimes, they would be merciful. So he spoke through tears and blood, with a similar noose around his neck that they’d tug on when they were bored.

Harry was pushing sorrow or regret or some other devastated feeling at him; their ways of thinking were rather different and it usually took some concentration for him to untangle the boy’s intent, even in Legilimency and certainly in this illegitimate possession. (But who possessed whom?) Then, a hand at the back of his neck, and he had no more time to think.

“Tell us about the Bones family.” Bowersock, then. Bowersock had recently taken to _protecting_ Voldemort. He’d join him with a guard on their way to the infirmary, and sometimes escort him to his cell afterward. Bowersock would be the one to spell and dispel restraints, unless a Death Eater was meant to do it. And of course, Bowersock still shoved his cock in Voldemort’s mouth or between his thighs every time they were alone together. (Not up his arse yet, but it was only a matter of time. He expected Bowersock to have _very_ tiresome ideas about power and penetration, anyway.) If he had to trade blowjobs for relative protection – if he had to trade blowjobs for a whip in the Wizengamot, as he thought Quintus was shaping up well to be – then it really was the least he could do.

But for now, he shot a wry look at Bowersock as the magicked hood was lifted from his face. “With Amelia here? Quintus, that is very cruel.”

“I want to know.” Madam Bones, sharp and professional. “Rowle told us already of murdering my brother and sister-in-law. What happened to my sister?”

Bowersock mostly dragged Voldemort to the semi-circle of the Wizengamot – there’d been a shattering spell to one of his knees tonight, a means of keeping him in place. Bowersock conjured a chair for him – did he know how much it resembled a Muggle electric chair? Did wixes know of such things? Perhaps this group wouldn’t hold Muggles in such high esteem if they knew. He fell into it like a rag doll.

“Thorfinn killed your brother and his wife for their association with Dumbledore. It was a war. What charge would you bring against him?”

Madam Bones gave him a dark look. “We aren’t doing this again.” He’d already prodded at the Wizengamot, a great many of them, as to why dead Death Eaters should be casualties of war and dead light wixes should be victims of murder. Didn’t it seem unfair?

“Thorfinn can’t properly explain what happened to… what was your sister’s name, Madam?”

She didn’t want to play along with this. “Evelyn,” she said reluctantly. “Evie. Her husband’s name was Charles.”

“They may still be alive.”

Her mouth went tight; someone behind her gasped in horror. “Don’t tell me these things.” The noose was still around his throat, and someone’s hand – not Bowersock, perhaps Bright or Hummel – was tangled in it.

“I had associates with friends who needed to be removed from a Muggle Egyptian prison. We needed bodies to replace them. Granted, I did the memory alteration and the appearance charms myself, so _how_ alive they still might be said to be is a philosophical question.” This was true, a thought he pushed at Harry, if Harry was still even present in any way. He didn’t have enough magic or, honestly, consciousness to tell. Speaking hurt his lungs. They’d cursed him with some restriction to his lungs, his airways. Perhaps the amount of oxygen he could draw tonight was finite. But in any case – Harry had told him once that he didn’t lie to him like everyone else in his life; and he didn’t lie now.

“Rowle needed to capture them, and to bring them to a meeting point in Jordan,” he said, to redirect their attention.

Madam Bones stepped in instead, her dark eyes on his battered face. “They had a daughter. I raised her, until last autumn. She was in Harry’s year. She died at Hogwarts.”

Ah, Harry _was_ watching, because his psyche stirred at this. It annoyed Voldemort, the moments these people would appeal to Harry in his presence, as though the mere mention of the boy would turn him to throes of remorse and repentance. He raised his non-eyebrows. “Susan.” A name offered by Harry’s consciousness in this moment.

She didn’t react. “Yes.”

“Well, if procreation should be grounds for mercy – Thorfinn has a daughter as well. A bit younger than your niece.”

Rowle glared, not at him but at Madam Bones. “I am alone,” he said through broken teeth.

“Then you’ve made very poor decisions on your daughter’s behalf,” she said, taking her place beside the redheaded young man again. “How did you find them?”

Bowersock lifted Voldemort from the chair; he didn’t struggle but didn’t assist him either. “You’re a piece of work,” Bowersock muttered, pulling him out of the way once more. He was dropped against the tower wall, in a way that crushed the air from his lungs and didn’t let him draw another breath. He struggled, and regretted it, because Bowersock _loved_ when he struggled.

“Just listen,” he murmured, because he’d dropped him still in earshot. Rowle was currently doing a very poor job describing how he and Macnair had abducted the Bones couple from their respective workplaces (it made no difference really, as Macnair had confessed approximately the same weeks ago, but was there really no honor among thieves). Bowersock remained near Voldemort. He might have been bored.

Yes, bored, because he fidgeted with the loose end of the noose as though it were a toy. “If you fell,” he muttered, tipping Voldemort a little farther over the wall, “you wouldn’t need to worry, I’d catch you.” Voldemort suppressed a shudder at imagining how summarily his neck would be snapped. Or – this part of the fortress was built out over the sea, an inky void below them now. He thought of Edmond Dantes. If only he could procure a body bag. It was presumably what the guards did with the unclaimed bodies, anyway.

He really couldn’t breathe.

_He_ wasn’t panicking, precisely, but Harry was still entangled in his mind and Harry was beginning to panic. He tried passing along enough magic for Harry to extricate himself, but of course he had none and Harry hadn’t learned to control his magic in sleep yet anyway. Or whatever this was to him instead of sleep. “Go,” he breathed in Parseltongue. Even it wrecked his lungs. “I’ll live.”

A hand clapped to his mouth. “Are you _crying_?” Bowersock said in disbelief, mistaking the sibilant sounds of Parseltongue for sobs because he could be such an idiot. And Voldemort would’ve said as much but Bowersock wasn’t moving his hand. His chest spasmed, and spasmed again, as Bowersock looked deep into his face. “ _Can_ you cry?” he asked, and it was half-mocking, half-sincere. He wasn’t human, after all.

His eyelids fluttered closed as his chest heaved. Bowersock’s other hand was between his legs. Of course. He had urinated on himself when he’d been strangled, once before. A second time when Bowersock had planted himself before the infirmary toilet and told him to piss in his robes instead. He would never ask if the man found it humiliating, or attractive, or both. He didn’t care, and in any case, it was simpler than blow jobs.

He slipped into darkness for a long moment. Harry _thrashed_ inside of him, and it was awful. He was getting light-headed and panicky, and the fear with which he looked at Bowersock now was not entirely performative. “Please,” he mouthed against his grip. The hand tightened across his face, and he had the absurd thought that he’d die by suffocation in front of a crowd, and nobody would even know. This felt like their little secret. He slipped into the blackness once more.

Bowersock shook him, angry that he should escape into unconsciousness. And when he came to a long moment later, it was with a streak of wetness down his leg. Goddammit. This was Harry’s bad influence; Harry always let go when he was choked. And it was delicious to see him lose control in those moments, but this….

Bowersock fingered the wet fabric. “Oh, no,” he said, as though this weren’t the exact outcome he’d wanted. “I think you’ve wet yourself.” He barely raised his hand.

_Twat_. “Can we finish this elsewhere,” Voldemort gasped. He’d much rather piss himself before one person than a dozen.

“They aren’t watching,” Bowersock said, and it was probably true but he couldn’t say; his field of vision was limited to the man’s face and barrel chest. _Harry’s_ field of vision, too, he though, and tried looking elsewhere. It would not do for Harry to hate Bowersock more than he already did. “You must have to go very much. Do you wait because it reminds you of him?”

The world knew of Harry’s proclivity for watersports and ageplay – _their_ proclivity really, but Harry was not the shameless one. Harry was the one by whom they could all be scandalized. Furthermore, it was wasn’t untrue. Maybe not consciously, but. The weight of his bladder had distracted him, had kept his mind on more pleasant forms of humiliation. “Yes.”

A disgusted noise. “You should let go now. You _do_ trust me to clean up, don’t you? Nobody else needs to know.”

Trust, the man loved coaxing admissions of trust from Voldemort. “You want me to piss myself here.”

“I’ll cast Scourgify.”

He lifted his eyebrows. “Choke me,” he muttered, because he didn’t know that he could do this otherwise.

The hand at his mouth took up the end of the noose, tugging. His vision went gray. Another spurt of wetness. He absolutely couldn’t have done this if he hadn’t done it for Harry before. Then again, if the world hadn’t already known he had done these things with Harry, nobody else would expect it of him.

Bowersock’s hand was cupping his cock from behind, pressing his balls in tight. Another spurt of liquid spilled from him. “Scourgify,” Bowersock muttered, twitching his fingers against the fabric, and he was dry again. “Don’t stop.”

He stared hard at the churning sea beneath them. He wondered why he didn’t turn around and murder Bowersock right now. He wondered why Bowersock would ever anticipate that he wouldn’t. He sank into his touch. It did feel good to finally piss, even if he was functionally pissing into the hand of the Wizengamot’s Chancellor. Scourgify, over and over, until his thighs burned.

The arousal might’ve been his own and might’ve been Harry’s. He could very much imagine doing this to Harry, let him picture it too. Cornwall, perhaps. Somewhere public, where instead of excusing Harry to go to the toilets, he’d pin him with a look. “Go in your pants,” he’d say, exasperated, as he’d slip a hand into Harry’s robes. And Harry would blush and squirm, in that way he always did, as though he were innocent and not the filthier of the two of them.

(He feels righteous indignation prickle at the back of his mind and nearly smiles.)

He’s pissing hard now, the stream running down his inseam. Bowersock has stopped casting to grope him, which is obnoxious. He feels the man’s breath on the back of his neck. Squeezing his eyes shut, he pretends the hand is Harry’s. He pretends that this is alright.

Harry is making a concerted effort to not be miserable or angry or even just offended on his behalf. Harry thinks in feelings, of course, while Voldemort thinks in words, and they’re passing a flurry of both across their shared consciousness right now. Harry wants to lap at his legs, from the narrow soles of his feet to the pointy ankle bone to the knees and sinewy thighs. He’d kiss away the wet streams that have overwhelmed the fabric of his trousers. He’d look at Voldemort like he always did, like he cherished the opportunity to even touch him. Nobody else had ever looked at him in such a way.

And Voldemort would love to fuck Harry in his lap, facing him, while Harry is utterly desperate. ‘You can’t piss until you’ve come,’ he murmurs in this fantasy, and perhaps in real life too. He is lost to this world. Harry can sometimes piss with an erection, and they both adore it. He wants to grab Harry’s wrists, stretching them above his head or fastening them to something, so the boy will properly _writhe_ , grinding the pert globes of his arse into Voldemort’s lap, but also so he couldn’t palm his own cock. Because he’s also quite good at orgasming without being touched, as though Voldemort drives him utterly mad –

( _You do_. Harry forces this thought into words. He sounds so happy.)

Watching the boy fall apart, lose all control of himself out of lust, is his vice. He’d known he’d been attractive as Tom Riddle – god, how he’d known it – but he had never been _desired_ like this. Not sexually, at least. But Harry melted in his touch, clamored for him, feasted on his body as though it weren’t an affront to nature.

(A great many feelings from Harry on this; he doesn’t catch them all. But Harry _loves_ his body. He is fascinated by it. _It’s yours, too_ , Voldemort thinks. _You crafted it. So perhaps you’re just a narcissist._ )

And now the touch between his legs is needy too, somehow. They can’t possibly have avoided attention by now. And then Harry forces himself to the front of his consciousness, distracting him from the present. He’s passing along the feeling of a languorous, luxurious blowjob, of the safety of being nappied as though it were the most natural thing in the world, of a sensation very new to Harry, the addictive warmth of reparative magic. A few missed thoughts, and then Voldemort grasps that it is his Horcrux who made Harry feel this way.

_I want to make you feel like that forever_ , Harry forms the thought carefully. And he manages something like it, the warm buzz of magic blooming in Voldemort’s stomach. He lets it slip lower, lower, until it’s just behind his cock. He’s very hard now. He must’ve stopped pissing some time ago. Harry passes his recollections of his favorite encounters, tied up and spanked and humiliated and absolutely enraptured. He passes Voldemort the memory of nearly having sex in Azkaban, Harry swearing that nothing of his body will ever disgust him, that he’s safe. He is safe, and he is warm, and for a moment he is happy. The warmth that Harry holds deep inside of him buzzes, expands, explodes.

Arching, he comes with a jolt – Harry just has too, he is positive, and the idea of having made an eighteen year old have a wet dream is just utterly charming at the moment. So their orgasms reverberate, sweeping over him in waves. “Thank you,” he murmurs in Parseltongue, hidden beneath his gasping breaths.

Bowersock slaps a hand over his mouth. He doesn’t care yet. Harry is happy – Harry is _pleased with himself_ specifically. He doesn’t have words but his feelings are intelligible. Every night, if Voldemort wants or needs this. It doesn’t quite rescue him from the abuse, but also, in a way, it does.

And then Bowersock is untangling their limbs, casting cleaning charms rapidly. “Faggot,” he hisses, dropping him to the ground, and reality explodes back into his vision. The Wizengamot has stopped. The guards have stopped. Rowle looks horrified to have seen his Lord lose control, publicly and shamefully.

Madam Bones spoke first. “Quintus, you can’t – “

“I didn’t,” he spat, embarrassed and furious. “ _I’m_ not the deviant here.”

Bones looked to the guards. “Take Voldemort to the infirmary,” she said. “Rowle…?”

“No,” he said, though he looked nauseated. A psychological curse, perhaps, or a poison.

Bowersock was obligated to pick Voldemort back up from the heap in which he lay at his feet, passing him off to Hummel, the nearest guard and the one who perhaps hates him the most. His shattered kneecap crackled painfully, and he anticipated the healing process tonight would be tedious.

This had brought the interrogation to an abrupt halt, or maybe they had finished already. The group disintegrated behind him: Bowersock and Bright followed him to the infirmary, Rowle was returned to his cell by a few guards, and the rest of the Wizengamot was moving toward the exit. Bones, looking furious, stalked after Bright and Bowersock. There wouldn’t be room for them all in the infirmary, so Voldemort hoped they’d stage their fight outside the door instead.

“Amelia,” Bright groaned upon seeing her face. “It means nothing. It’s better than he deserves.” The guards didn’t have magic, so the two wizards had offered their own. Mobilicorpus to help him walk and keep weight off his broken leg; now a levitation spell to place him in the infirmary’s hammock. He didn’t resist, as he was still a bit dazed, from the shattering orgasm, the lack of magic and oxygen, and Harry’s persistent presence. ( _Can’t fall asleep after sex when you’re already asleep, darling_ , he thought quietly.) He moved to accommodate the Healer waiting for him, and the Wizengamot members helpfully did fight in the doorway.

“I don’t want you back here,” Bones was saying. “Either of you, if you’re intent on defending him.” She shot a dark look at Bright. “I’m going to the Minister.”

“The Minister knows,” Bowersock said coolly. “Voldemort has begged to keep me around. Haven’t you?” He offered him a smile that was either reward or taunt.

“Yes.” Having Bowersock’s position revoked would ruin his plans at this point. He saw why Bones would pursue it. She was Prime Justice, powerful in her own right, but Bowersock had years of seniority over her. It would set her up as a pillar of the Ministry if the Chancellor was disgraced; it might give the judicial chamber more influence than the legislative chamber for once. Or perhaps she just wanted to sabotage Voldemort’s plans, as her entire goddamn family did.

“Madam Bones, could you come here?” He tried sitting up, to appeal to her, but got forcefully held down by the Healer. “Leave the wizards outside.” He pronounced it as if he’d said _the boys_.

Bones did exactly that, closing the door forcefully behind her, but she remained standing. “I am not your advocate,” she said.

“Clearly. _Ahh_ ,” he gasped as the Healer did something to his chest, and his breathing was no longer labored. Amelia flinched at the sound. “Thank you. Would you give us a moment now,” he said to the Healer. Normally the Healers were firmly indifferent to him, but this one took this opportunity to slip out. She must be new. Back to Amelia: “I only want to affirm that I _have_ told Rufus that I want to keep Quintus on. He would lie about such a thing, but in this instance he’s not.”

“This is abuse.” She pronounced the word like broken glass.

Voldemort held her gaze until she might’ve been uncomfortable. To her credit, she didn’t look away. “It is _all_ abuse,” he said. “What do you think it means about yourself that you’re less distressed by violent interrogation, the psychological torture of Azkaban, and execution by Dementors than you are by a sexual encounter?”

“I want the prison conditions changed,” she said. “All of them.”

“You haven’t answered the question.” She was not quite as fun to bat around like a mouse – that’d be Moody and his temper, full of righteous fury – but Voldemort would make the most of it. “I typically blow him, or offer myself up for intracrural sex. You do know what that is – ?”

“Yes,” she said crisply.

“The encounters are coerced, certainly, but not violent. In a way, I appreciate the time with him. I will be Minister, you see, and it’s crucial that we have a good working relationship. He is harmless,” he assured her.

“He’s not.”

He bared his teeth. “He is less harmful than I am, then.”

She made a noise of disgust. “Nevertheless, I couldn’t ask the populace to keep faith in a justice system that looks like… this.” She lifted her chin in the direction of the door.

“Amelia.” He could no longer hold his upper body up. He did have enough magic to summon a chair beside the hammock. Amazingly, she took it, even if she sat back to hold herself as far from him as possible. “His authority – _your_ authority – is exactly predicated on his lawlessness.” He’d said it to Scrimgeour before. He’d even said it to Harry before, a stirring in the back of his mind recalled. “The wixies will lose faith in the justice system much faster if this comes to light. They talk already, at your decision to keep the trials closed.”

“They’re not being put on trial to provide a spectacle.”

“Very good,” he said, as though he were her tutor and she’d just arrived at a difficult answer. She frowned at him. “ _This_ need not be a spectacle either. Shouldn’t I, as the victim, have a say in the consequences?”

She was not pleased with this argument. “Our rules on misconduct are already in place,” she said. “There is nothing to negotiate.”

He did his best to sit up to square off; Amelia, looking alarmed, shoved his chest down with an invisible spell. She wasn’t strong, but at the moment, neither was he. He sighed in something like defeat. “My entire purpose in the Ministry is to maintain stability throughout the Unification,” he said. She eyed him and said nothing. “I can’t let you remove the Chancellor in the middle of the Death Eater trials. It would be chaotic. It would be… well, some of them are regrouping. Any hesitation on the Ministry’s part would be the moment they strike.”

“You’re lying.”

He considered. “Which bit of it?”

“You’ve got a plan that relies on _these_ circumstances,” she said. “The Death Eaters have got something planned for Bowersock, and it would ruin things if he weren’t in charge.”

Very, very close, Amelia Bones. His countenance remained neutral but he and Harry shared a moment of surprise. “I’ve already made clear that I don’t care about the Death Eaters. Have you seen me do a single thing to preserve them?” He raised his non-eyebrows. “They are, at this moment, a _liability_ ,” he pronounced. “So no, I won’t save them.”

She suppressed a shudder. “You believe that the worst sort of people should be in power.” He only hummed; she went on: “There is protocol for mistreatment of prisoners. I’ll follow it. We can pick up the pieces after Bowersock.”

“I won’t stay quiet,” Voldemort said. “If you attempt to remove him, I will write to every newspaper about every time he’s pushed his cock into my unconscious mouth. I’ll write of every time he’s held me down in this hammock” (Bone now looked at it in horror) “so he could fuck me between my thighs. I’ll write of the time he urinated on my stomach and was too drunk to wank to it.”

She looked embarrassed, but didn’t retreat as he’d thought she would. “If this is blackmail, then you should make clear what you’re asking for.”

“It is,” he said pleasantly. “And I want nothing.” She looked at him with anger. “I want you to do _nothing_.”

“This is wrong,” she said.

“Mm.”

“I still believe in justice,” she said.

“Even for me?”

She glared. “ _Especially_ for you. Otherwise what use is it?”

“’Mercy is the suspension of justice,’” he quoted at her – a flicker of curiosity from Harry, who’d heard it somewhere before. Auror slogan, he supplied. _Misericordia est absentia iustitiae_. “Madam Bones, this sounds like mercy.”

“It is not,” she said sharply. “You will die in this prison or facing a Dementor. But Bowersock won’t be present when your sentence is handed down.”

Unlike the rest of the politicians surrounding him, he had nothing to offer Bones. He wished he did. Rowle had divulged essentially everything about her sister’s disappearance; Voldemort could lie in telling her the prison where her body resided now but he wasn’t even sure that was an attractive offer. Her only niece had died at Hogwarts, so not her safety. She almost certainly didn’t want to beat or fuck him. “Since you were so keen to invoke Harry,” he said, slightly reckless, “so will I. You should know the prophecy.”

“Yes.” The whole Ministry knew. The whole world probably knew, by now.

“I’ll die by Harry’s hand or not at all.”

He was speaking nonsense: it was late, his magic was gone, and Bones wasn’t needy ( _corrupt_ might be too strong a word) like the rest of them. She continued to look unimpressed. “Our Unspeakables tell me that prophecy is a touchy thing.”

“We’re saving the world together, you know.” They’d said it so often – really, _Harry_ had said it so often – that it’d nearly lost its inflection of sarcasm. Circe knows how the wixies would take it anyway; _saving the world_ was a Muggle phrase and a Muggle dream.

“Not anymore. Moody ensured it.”

He felt Harry’s pain at this. He gave Bones an enigmatic smile. “Maybe,” he agreed. “The Aurors are content to work with me these days. The _Minister_ is content to work with me these days. He adores me, really,” Voldemort said with satisfaction, and this was mostly true. “The majority of the Wizengamot is content to work with me. So,” he searched her face, “if you call for Bowersock’s resignation, where is your support? You would cause internal chaos, at a moment in which the Ministry has only just held itself together. And everyone already knows our arrangement, Madam Bones, and everyone knows I prefer it this way. They are, for lack of a better world, my _allies_.”

“If they care for your well-being, they won’t let this happen.”

He allowed a careful moment of silence to serve as his answer. “It would be unfortunate if you resigned over this,” he said quietly. “You are very good at what you do.” And he saw the look they all gave him – that they were horrified to have his approval, and gratified by it all the same. He had to be more cautious about how often he expressed approval these days; people might begin to think it was easy to obtain. Maybe Harry’s reparation of his image was undoing their fear, annoyingly. (He felt a flutter of amusement from Harry at this. _Maybe_.)

“Of what interest is it to you, what I _do_?”

“I don’t suppose it is,” he said. “But if you believe in justice” (he tried not to make it sound distasteful) “then you should embrace the place of _dissent_ within it. You dissent.”

He hadn’t meant to steer the conversation back toward Bowersock, but he saw it in the tightness of Amelia’s mouth, that that’s where her thoughts had gone. He suppressed a sigh. “I do,” she said. “Though you’ve killed my entire family for it.”

Not directly, for what difference it made. The adults had been dispatched by Death Eaters, the niece…. He plumbed Harry’s mind for answers of how the niece had died. And either he didn’t know or he was too busy feeling repulsed by Voldemort to offer up this information.

(Harry collected himself, realizing what information Voldemort was seeking. In a flurry of feelings and images, he indicated that Susan had died at Hogwarts after Voldemort had taken Harry captive from the battlefield. A Death Eater had killed her, nobody had named who specifically. Nothing with which he could disarm Amelia. Harry’s repulsion grew.)

So instead he asked the question that always gave Harry pause. Very quietly and sincerely: “Should I apologize?”

She did not give him that look of quiet internal conflict and something that Legilimency identified as _pity_ like Harry did. She narrowed her eyes. “No,” she said. “And nobody would believe your _redemption_ if you did. We are not all so easily manipulated.”

Compared to whom? Compared to Harry, presumably. He tried holding his thoughts on this away from the boy. “Then, what you’d like from me,” he said slowly, “is my cooperation in getting Bowersock out of your Ministry. Then you can sentence me personally, and then I should die without fanfare?”

She was very unimpressed. “Yes.”

“Or is it the Death Eaters you’d like to be sentencing? The Wizengamot can’t afford to change dragons mid-flight, but if this is important to you….”

“They don’t have to be Kissed,” she said, a bit too abruptly. There it was. “Just because Bowersock – and Bright, and Rufus, and everyone else – likes the _finality_ of it – we can’t put all of these families to death. We suffer genetically, economically, and in cultural memory.”

“Not many wixes care for genetics,” Voldemort remarked.

“They need to understand, though, and not after half of the pureblood lines have been Kissed.” She gave him a hard look. “At times, when I’ve told them of genetic precarity – of consanguinity, bottlenecked populations, the _rapid_ rate at which Squibs proliferate in Muggleborn marriages – they tell me that only blood purists speak of such things. That only _you_ speak of such things.”

“Because they won’t,” Voldemort agreed. “I apologize for your guilt by association,” he added dryly. Twisting in the hammock but unable to fully look around: “Is there parchment in here?”

“Why?” But she had nearly gotten up already.

“There is scholarship affirming the same, if you need credibility. Not written by blood purists.” He over-pronounced the phrase. “It’s research that would never get funding in Britain. Some of it is illegal to possess here. I assume this won’t pose a problem for you.” Bones had risen, moving to a desk in the corner. “It is mostly being done in South Asia – Manila’s university, Batan Island’s research facilities. Ah.” And Bones had put parchment and a quill in his hands, and then he was writing her a reading list, even if she still looked dubious.

“If these are all pureblood reactionaries like you….”

(Did Bones think he was pureblood? No need to ask now.) “They are not. But you must come to your own conclusions about the text anyway.” He handed her back the parchment in a moment, filled with names and titles. And Harry had a darling train of thought in the back of his mind, how consistently happy it made Voldemort to tell everyone to read more, and how the magical world might have actually lost out on a skilled teacher when Dumbledore had turned him away. Harry could be precious.

Amelia less so. She held the parchment carefully, away from herself. “Why is _this_ important to you?” She gestured with it. “Especially when you’ve said you’ll let the Death Eaters die.”

“Obviously that’s not by _preference_ ,” he said acidly, “but by necessity. You’ve seen how well it’s gone over.”

It had. Even if nobody in the Ministry was stupid enough to believe he’d repent or something like it, he at least appeared _indifferent_ to the endeavors of the Death Eaters and the rest of it. He appeared pragmatic. It’s as much as they had to tell themselves.

“You haven’t got the support to remove Bowersock,” Voldemort said to her. “But you’re not powerless. Go put your righteous indignation to _this_ instead. Perhaps you’ll even do it quickly enough to save some of the Death Eaters.”

Her fingernails, filed into almond shapes, pierced the parchment. “I don’t offer mercy.”

“You don’t,” he agreed. “I hope you think of yourself as an adequate midwife to justice instead.”

He couldn’t read her expression. (Do wixes _have_ midwives, he wondered belatedly. He’d never looked into the circumstances of childbirth in this world.) “You will die regardless,” she said, and it clearly _scared_ her to say this but she did anyway. “You’ll be Kissed, or you’ll remain in Azkaban forever. I’ve recommended that it take place sooner than next year, before you’re able to make yourself _indispensable._ ”

He wondered if she was quoting a comment by another Ministry member there, her scorn was so thick. “You don’t appreciate the sentence of exploiting my magic, labor, and knowledge first, and _then_ killing me?” he asked dryly.

“I think your… work” (she said the word carefully, for it encompassed a lot, his legislation and relation to the Muggles and the airspace shield) “is unnecessarily making some wixes feel obligated to you.”

It was the first time in his adult life that anyone had accused him of being _too likeable_ ; he probably couldn’t keep the delight off his face. “My deepest apologies.”

Amelia was not Rufus or Brightbone, who appreciated verbal sparring; she wasn’t even Moody, who seemed invigorated by being furious at Voldemort. She was just… a Hufflepuff, and deeply committed to her belief that the world ought to be fair. Even if it put her, incidentally, on Voldemort’s side for a moment. She had half-turned to the door, but she was still formulating words. “Would you tell us, before you’re sentenced, what the great point of all your recent politics is? We – those of us in the Ministry – disagree about this very strongly.”

It was a delightful question. He felt Harry stir at the question, too – certainly he’d asked it himself often enough. “What _is_ the point,” he agreed.

When he said nothing more, she faintly rolled her eyes. (Amelia Bones _rolled her eyes_ at him, as though she were a surly teenager or perhaps he was. Harry didn’t understand his amusement, but he performed various exasperations at Voldemort all the time. So he wouldn’t.) “It really doesn’t matter,” she said.

“It does.” So he relented: “It would be irresponsible to let wixenkind go extinct. You understand how possible that future is.” Pause; she didn’t respond. “Caution is killing us. Assimilation is killing us. I don’t mean,” he added sharply, at her look, “assimilation as the Death Eaters fear it. Wixen culture will exist, in some capacity, as long as wixes do. I mean that when a wix goes to live or work in the Muggle world, because our own economy isn’t robust enough to support an entire labor force, then they don’t return. It’s as much to blame for genetic attrition as the uptick of Squibs born to mixed marriages.”

He saw that it made sense to her. She’d done her research already. Still: “But what has that got to do with you?”

Yes. That. “Perhaps I am not so invulnerable to Harry’s influence as I thought. Perhaps his hero complex is catching.”

Most people got distracted and intrigued whenever Voldemort mentioned Harry. Their relationship was… not quite a spectacle (though he felt Harry shove down some unpleasant news that he didn’t know about. He’d ask later), but it was ambiguous and noteworthy and _gossip_ -worthy, most of all. To say nothing of how it actually structured and guaranteed much of their present politics. To her credit, Bones did not give him the look that most people did. “Harry is good,” she agreed blandly. “That doesn’t absolve you.”

“Well, no.” He didn’t know how they’d gotten to an introspective moment, a confessional moment. They always did, the people who wanted to _understand_ him for some reason. He had no obligation to explain anything. Instead: “But I value subtlety and Harry values heroism. Our collaboration could look no different.”

He said the word _collaboration_ easily, as though it were a given. Just as he presented himself and Harry as partners naturally, giving his audiences no time to question it. ( _Soulmates_ , Harry chirruped in the back of his mind, mostly to be obnoxious. But yes, soulmates.)

“Collaboration,” Bones said with scorn. “He’s eighteen, and he’s vulnerable. Some time apart will be good for him.”

_Oh if you only knew_. He only hummed.

Bones really was moving to leave now. “I am keeping him away from you. Bowersock,” she clarified. “It was stupid of him to put himself in this position, that you could manipulate him like this.”

He kept any expression off his face, but either he or Harry had the dark thought that he was still the one abused here. “He won’t be happy,” was all he said instead.

“No,” Amelia agreed. “He won’t be.” She left.

He should’ve seen her out. Magic still held the shattered remains of his knee together rather precariously, but. Remaining quiet, he listened, but it seemed that everyone had departed from the corridor. He was probably meant to sleep in here tonight, then. It was just as well.

He doused the lamps and turned to the wall because he’d need to feign sleep if the Healer did return. He needed to tell Harry something, and he needed to say it aloud to get it precisely right.

“Harry.” Very softly. Parseltongue, of course. “You did very well. You shouldn’t have had to experience any of that.”

_Neither should you_ , Harry thought back fiercely, nearly in words.

Voldemort shrugged, and then wondered if Harry understood bodily expression from inside his head. If he and the boy had shared an orgasm, he supposed he did. “I am invulnerable to them,” he reminded Harry. It was nearly true. “But I must ask you for something.”

Harry’s curiosity willed him on.

“I want to marry you.”

The reaction was loud and confusing: skepticism, and exasperation, and laughter, and love. He was getting better, being in Harry’s head as often as he was, at recognizing love. Voldemort said nothing, and Harry’s consciousness finally settled into simply, _Really_?

“Yes. Listen.” He spoke with low urgency into the dark. “It’s not a romantic gesture.” Nor was theirs a relationship that needed state sanction, he thought wryly. “And I don’t mean to… pollute your longing for real marriage, or a real family.” Because Merlin, how the boy still yearned for this. Abstractly, now that he presumably wouldn’t marry into the Weasley clan; but Harry had always thought of some part of his future becoming devoted to childrearing and domesticity. They hadn’t discussed Voldemort’s incompatibility with all of that, and they wouldn’t tonight.

He was turning Harry’s emotions over in his mind. Cautious, but not negative. “I considered declaring you my heir. My primary concern is – “ he sucked air through his teeth, “that if they should kill me, my body would be released to you. You’d be the rightful owner of both my wand and the remaining Horcruces. I’d want to die with all of them on my person. It would help.” Harry’s grief always felt vivid, nearly burning. But his own fear did not feel so dissimilar, now. “But there is also spousal immunity for testifying against one another in court. If you wouldn’t want to.” As though he’d get a real trial. Not even the Death Eaters were getting real trials, not even the ones who wouldn’t generate relatively much spectacle. He wouldn’t bother Harry with that tonight, though. “It would be, at minimum, our signatures on a marriage license. This might already be asking too much of the Aurors, while you’re still in their custody.”

Harry pressed a few memories forward to remind him he was in the Order’s care – Moody’s, specifically. He snorted. “Then I shall ask for your hand from Alastor Moody,” he said. “That is, if you want this.”

_Yes_. Harry pushed the word forward, joyously and immediately. It came with a rush of emotions that were almost painful in their intensity. It hurt like being touched after sex, he thought.

“You are too good for this world,” Voldemort sighed. Harry responded by filling him with warmth – filling him with _magic_ , which was a pleasant surprise. He really shouldn’t be able to do that remotely. If the boy even knew he was. “You are much too good for me, in particular.” He rolled onto his back, to look into the darkness above him. “You need to sleep,” he said quietly. “Don’t allow this,” he waved a pale hand in the dark, to gesture to the prison at large, “to consume you.”

_I love you_ , Harry thought carefully, in words. As though he needed to. As though his feelings – _their_ feelings – didn’t already burn bright between them, in perfect clarity.

 

_Saturday, August 29._ When Harry woke up Saturday morning, he was… dizzy. A happy sort of dizzy. Giddy, light-headed. Even if it was a marriage of… not quite _convenience_ , but a marriage of advantage. Of survival. He had to wake Riddle just enough to get out of bed, and he even smiled hesitantly at him.

“What?” Riddle said, instantly suspicious. “Your wet dream can’t have been _that_ good.”

Harry hummed in amusement. “Well, everything in Azkaban is still shit. But it was good.”

Riddle rolled his eyes, smoothing the covers. He’d feel the abuse, and the sex, but the more emotional moments (he’d told Harry, at least) didn’t translate. “Well done. I’m taking your cloak today.”

“You still won’t have a wand. I need mine.”

“I’ll do without.” He either fell back asleep or feigned it as Harry went to breakfast.

His light-heartedness evaporated when he found one of the Ministry’s screech owls waiting for him. Ron and Hermione, already seated, looked worried.

“Hi,” he yawned as he took his seat. It wasn’t that he had _stayed up_ last night, but being awake in Voldemort’s head did not particularly count as sleep. “Good morning,” he said to the owl, and offered it a triangle of toast before taking the scroll.

It can’t be the official proposal so quickly. Voldemort would need to go through Moody, and then a lot of lawyers, to even ask. Voldemort had also put the idea of his testifying at trial in his mind. Would he be asked to testify against the Death Eaters he’d fought at the Ministry, or at Hogwarts, or in their collusion with the Muggle military last spring? His stomach curdled at the idea of recounting the deaths of his friends in front of an unfriendly room, as he’d faced in his fifth year.

Or maybe it was just an invitation to a joint meeting with the Muggles. The sort he should be attending anyway.

He put a croissant in his mouth before peeling open the wax stamp.

His eyebrows went up at the parchment inside: the letterhead was from the Minister’s office but it was handwritten, not typed or written in professional script as usual. Ron and Hermione leaned in:

_Dear Harry:_

_Lord Voldemort has caused a great deal of chaos in the Wizengamot since yesterday. Madam Bones has posed the ultimatum that either Chancellor Bowersock resign or she does. They won’t expand on it, and neither will Voldemort. As his well-being depends largely on the stability and goodwill of the Wizengamot, I thought you might have thoughts on this incident._

_Good luck with the beginning of term._

_In Merlin’s care,_

_Rufus_

Poor Scrimgeour. Probably dragged out of bed last night by Madam Bones, with Bowersock behind her. He was smiling faintly even though it really wasn’t funny.

“Why would _you_ know anything?” Ron asked, and Harry startled because he’d forgotten they were reading it too.

“I don’t know.” He wasn’t ready to tell them this.

Hermione’s forehead was knotted in worry. “If Madam Bones resigns – or if the Chancellor does, I guess – the trials are going to get a lot worse. And they’re already… well, not quite on protocol.”

This was true. He didn’t know how to fix it. “Voldemort doesn’t want either of them to resign. He’s told me before,” he said at their looks.

“They’ve been writing a lot of legislation together recently. Maybe it’s that…?” Hermione dove into the National Politics section of the _Unexpurgated Gazette_. (The Prophet, utter shite that it was, had for most of its Politics section a retrospective on the fashionability of powdered wigs. Harry set it aside, assuming it would not be helpful.) “Free exchange of art, dual copyright and patent law, licenses to experiment on magitech…” she read out doubtfully.

“They’re doing all that?”

She looked up, frowning. “Maybe he can’t tell you about them directly anymore, but shouldn’t you still know these things?”

It was a mild reproach and a fair one. Honestly, he’d kept his distance from politics somewhat because he felt sulky that they were positioning him as a figurehead _again_ , and much more because everything about Azkaban made him feel angry and disillusioned. It wasn’t productive, he knew. “Yeah,” he agreed. “I don’t think they’re fighting about bills, though.”

“Do they… not get on?” Ron asked. It sounded like a silly question. Who _does_ get on with Voldemort, other than Harry?

“I don’t know,” he lied. “I’d better answer this.” The screech owl hadn’t stayed, but he was overdue to see Hedwig again anyway. He could think on the way up to the owlery.

The bowl of raspberries he brought to share with Hedwig soothed a great many of her hurt feelings. “Sorry,” he said, stroking her head when he was allowed to touch her again. “They kept me underground this summer, mostly.” A panic-inducing statement, when he said it that way. “You wouldn’t have been happy.” He swallowed. “I’ll look for a place to live after spring,” he said. “Somewhere with a meadow and a lot of trees.” At least he’d have Hedwig with him, even if they’d killed Voldemort by then. He steadied himself after that thought, and pulled out parchment.

He stared into the rafters for a long while. It would be an admission of guilt to tell him anyway. But he must already suspect as much, to have asked Harry at all. And if Voldemort wouldn’t say anything, presumably he didn’t want Harry to say anything either…. He summoned his most politic tone.

_Dear Minister,_

_I assume that the conflict is about the circumstances at Azkaban you already know about. Madam Bones hadn’t known everything before last night. Please don’t accept a resignation from either of them._

_Sincerely,_

_Harry Potter_

There. Guilty as sin, but so was Scrimgeour himself, and hopefully the letter made him feel it. Sealing it with one of the Hogwarts seals left in the owlery, he offered it to Hedwig. “Can you take this to the Ministry?” he asked her. “To, um, the Minister’s office. Or however far they’ll let you in…. There’s a good girl,” he crooned as she took it patiently.

That was it. While the vow with Moody provided for times that he’d _forgotten_ to take dreamless sleep (and he _had_ forgotten, last night), deliberately skipping it would have some pretty horrific consequences, mostly nightmares. It was a fucked-up vow. But he really couldn’t check in on Voldemort in any systematic way after this. He focused on the better parts of last night. The _hilarious_ part. Voldemort wanted to _marry_ him. The entire wixie world would shit itself at the news. He smiled.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Slytherin students are going to have an awful year, every single one of them. Sorry bbs :/ Also it doesn’t matter very much, but I added a list of OC Slytherins, and the ways they’re related to Death Eaters, to the cheat sheet. 
> 
> And the Horcruxes won’t have a lot of scenes together, but when they do, I hope it’s not too confusing. If it helps, the locket talks like he’s still head boy, while the diadem has shed all that respectability.
> 
>  
> 
> Allusions for Chapter 12:
> 
> Darkmantle – Crossover nerdiness. This is a creature from Dungeons and Dragons.
> 
> “He thought of Edmond Dantes. If only he could procure a body bag.” – In Alexander Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo, the hero Edmond Dantes is falsely imprisoned, and escapes by hiding in a body bag that is thrown into the sea.
> 
> Genetics – Rowling said somewhere that the total magic population of Britain is 3000 people, and ahhh that is not very genetically viable (especially as entangled as all the family lines already are). Too much interbreeding can lead to infertility, which then further diminishes the population, and eventually they go extinct from being too pure. Voldemort and Amelia know and care about this problem; nobody else does. A lot of how I’m thinking about genetics comes from [The Well Groomed Mind, by Lady_Khali](https://archiveofourown.org/works/427653/chapters/719529) and from [Hit the Ground Running, by Tozette](http://fictionhunt.com/read/9408516/1).


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The diadem studies the castle’s decaying wards, the locket reluctantly tutors, and Harry might be a bisexual role model.

_Tuesday, September 1._ These last few days were spent preparing classes, preparing the castle, preparing the dorms…. Harry ended up doing a lot of work in his suite to keep the Horcruxes company. The locket, mostly – the diadem was slipping out purposefully every day, even if it returned every night, and it was mostly faith in Voldemort’s vow against harming Hogwarts that kept Harry from worrying about his machinations too much. But the locket: even when he didn’t restore it, the artifact itself felt warm and centering on his chest, a sort of magical anti-depressant. It was… pleasant. Moreover, it felt like familiar magic, humming as Voldemort’s magic hummed, and he was so lonely and stupidly lovesick that it helped.

The Hogwarts train left Kings Cross on Tuesday morning. It was endearing to see how many faculty, ghosts, and portraits were jaunty with anticipation. He did want to see the castle full of students again. It’d be a relief – this time last year, there were already whispers of war, and it was only October when Voldemort first attacked the castle. It would be significant for them all to have term starting again. He thought of Arthur telling him how relieved the world was that he’d bypassed the full war – but really, it was more Voldemort than him. He was so very grateful to Voldemort, who wanted peace as much as anyone ever had, even if he probably didn’t recognize it well enough himself to admit it.

Professor McGonagall had presided over last year’s feast as interim Headmistress, while Professor Flitwick had put the first years through the sorting. (He’d carried a tall pink flag so he wouldn’t get lost in the sea of firsties that night. It had been great.) But this year, McGonagall had returned to sorting duty, and Snape, of course, would preside. As the faculty gathered in the Great Hall, Snape looked miserable. Harry raised his eyebrows. Voldemort had told him once that any visible emotion on an Occlumens such as Snape was an emotion that people were meant to see. There was no accidental emoting, unlike tragic cases like Harry for whom nobody would even need Legilimency. (It was _teasing_. Voldemort teased him, even if he’d recoil in horror at the word. Harry adored it.) So whatever Snape meant to convey here…. Harry shook the thought off.

Hermione was beside him, tugging Ron’s robes into place. “Have you grown since last week?” she said, fond and exasperated. “And Harry….” With her other hand, she swept his hair across his forehead, obscuring the scar. “Sorry,” she said at his conflicted look. “I thought you might not want to look… conspicuous.”

His scar wasn’t even the most conspicuous thing about him, these days. “Thanks,” he smiled at her. “Now it’s like I’m undercover.”

Ron coughed something like _Hadrian_. Hermione kicked him.

Harry wore both Horcruxes tonight. They both glowed with anticipation in their own way, soaking up the renewed magic of the castle or the excitement of the faculty. One of them – maybe both of them – _rewarded_ Harry with a pleasant sort of lightness in his core. It felt a bit like the weightlessness of kaval, so he spent some time that afternoon convincing himself he wasn’t high.

The carriages arrived late in the afternoon. Aurors had to search everyone and verify their identity, which slowed things down but not enough that the Great Hall wasn’t soon flooded with students. The faculty were instructed to remain standing behind their chairs as the students processed in. Everyone beamed. Hermione, standing between Harry and Ron, had her fist pressed to her mouth, her eyes bright.

Enrollment was as good as could be expected. Each table sat half-full, chattering and gesticulating wildly among themselves. Either not all the Slytherins had heard the news that they were being made obsolete, or they were tougher than diamonds, because they seemed no less animated than the others.

Even when the faculty were seated, the students seemed to have a preternaturally good talent for finding Harry in a crowd. He avoided a lot of gazes, and spent a lot of time wondering whether it was Boy-Who-Lived infamy, collaboration with Voldemort infamy, or weird sex infamy. Probably all three.

When McGonagall was in the front of the hall, the first years peeking through the side door (Harry grinned at one of them and they hurriedly pulled their face back), she magnified her voice. “We are so happy to see you back,” she said firmly, because Merlin knows Snape wasn’t telling them any such thing. “Let’s begin the Sorting.”

They didn’t announce that Slytherin had been made obsolete. They didn’t need to. After the seventh or eighth student, the ones who hadn’t known already began murmuring to their peers. The current Slytherins sat quietly, since they’d have no first years to cheer.

Twenty-two new students. A relief. When the sorting had concluded and McGonagall removed the hat and stool, Snape stood. And even if Harry had braced himself for this, for seeing Snape welcome everyone back instead of Dumbledore, it still felt like a bad dream.

“Welcome to the incoming class,” he began, his gaze sweeping over the first years settling into their seats. “And welcome back to you all. The faculty, governors board, staff, ghosts, and portraits wish me to pass along their gratitude and excitement that you’ve returned.” He said this in a mildly put-upon tone. Some of the other faculty shifted.

“Allow me to introduce our faculty and staff at the head table.” He went down the line: McGonagall, Flitwick, Vector, Nyx for Astronomy, Slughorn, Malfoy, Snape himself, Lupin, Spiraea for Herbology, Harry, Hermione, Ron, and Hagrid, who’d just slipped in from some last-minute task. There was a buzz at Harry’s name, from the students who didn’t know what he’d looked like before, he supposed. When Snape announced his name with only the usual amount of disdain, he waved.

“Aurors will also be a persistent presence on the grounds,” Snape continued. “You’ve already met Aurors Bragg, Tonks, and Brightbone this evening. They are here for your safety. They will monitor who enters and leave the castle; they will monitor _what_ enters and leaves the castle. If you need to summon them, you may do so with an _Auxilio_ spell. And if you recognize any perilous activity, you must report it. Bystanders will be held as responsible as culprits.” A murmur went through the hall; Snape frowned. “It is the duty of Hogwarts to educate and protect each of you. People have died so that you may have this opportunity. Do not take it lightly.”

It had real force and passion behind it. Snape had been relatively indifferent up to this point, so this was… fascinating. Harry had no idea what had set him off. Dead Aurors, dead students, dead Death Eaters? He had no idea which deaths of the past year might even have affected Snape. He glanced at back at Hermione, Ron, and Hagrid, who all looked similarly curious.

Snape moved on to more mundane threats. And yes, he did phrase everything he said as a threat. His only recognition of Harry was a good one: “Any inquiry into a professor’s extracurricular activities, ill-advised as they may be,” he said with a dark and obvious glance, “will be grounds for detention.” Harry had mouthed _thank you_ in response, and while Snape had already looked away, Remus, seated beside him, had grinned back.

This rule lasted for approximately two hours. When the students recessed out after the feast, one Hufflepuff boy – fifth or sixth year? – broke ranks to run up to the head table. “Professor,” he said breathlessly, shoving a hand inside of his cloak. “Don’t tell the Headmaster. But… would you sign this?” A novel, he was pulling out a bloody novel from Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes. Harry recognized the cover: one of the few that did not feature him ( _Hadrian_ ) with Voldemort, but a steamy locker room setting between him and a fictionalized Krum. ( _Seeking: Love and Loss on the Pitch._ God almighty.) But this Hufflepuff beamed at him. “I’m Muggleborn, and I got to tell my family that it’s okay here. Being queer, I mean. It makes sense, right – I mean, wixes already grow up feeling like they don’t belong to… _that_. That world. Sorry,” he colored, realizing how animated his gestures had gotten. “But you’ve been important to me. So, would you sign it?” He held out the book and a quill.

 _Oh boy_. “Of course,” he said, because that was the only right answer. Flipping open the first page: “Ah, sorry…?”

“Ashwani, sir. I’m a sixth year.”

“Then I’ll see you in class tomorrow.” Hurriedly he wrote on the page, _To Ashwani. Best of luck with everything. Harry._ He thought ruefully that perhaps he should’ve paid more attention to the sort of things Lockhart wrote in his dedications. “Uh, I won’t tell the Headmaster if you don’t.”

Ashwani grinned at him like a co-conspirator. “Done. Thanks, sir. Goodnight.” He ran to catch up with the rest of the Hufflepuffs.

Ron and Hermione had been waiting within earshot. Harry sighed through his teeth. “That….” They turned to go.

“He might be right,” Hermione said thoughtfully, when they were something near alone. “That we all feel like outsiders anyway, so queerness is not… well, we might have more ideas of identity in place already that help. I’ve told you this before,” she said to Ron, who was listening quietly, “that some Muggles think a relationship can only be between a man and a woman. That – in some places, or among some people – being gay is very discriminated again. It’s changing, but….” She scrubbed at her forehead.

Ron was frowning. “But _why_?”

Hermione’s skill as an educator was being tested here, as she did her best to explain it in good faith. “History. Religion, a lot of them. When I’ve said before that every culture defines itself as the pure one and the outsiders as perverse barbarians, homosexuality is a common charge. That it’s dirty or unnatural or….”

Ron still looked slightly mystified. Harry looked to Hermione. “I think you’re going to have to tell him where Muggle babies come from.”

She flushed. “But it’s so much nicer this way,” she protested. They’d come to their suites, and before Hermione and Ron disappeared to discuss the Muggle birds and bees, she turned to Harry. “ _Are_ you alright?”

“Yeah. Of course.”

Her mouth quirked at one side. “It was sweet,” she said. “Though he could’ve picked something more, er, chaste for you to sign.”

“That _is_ one of the chaste ones,” Ron said. At their incredulous looks: “What? Mum won’t stop talking about them.”

Oh god. “Right,” Harry said. “I am fine. I’ve got class in the morning,” he said with an apologetic smile. “’Night.”

 

When he was alone, he removed both the Horcruxes with a blood charm, and dropped the diadem in the restorative fire, as he’d spent the past few nights with him anyway. Riddle had come to expect this freedom, and Harry had come to look forward to the warm magic knitting his soul back together each night.

Tonight, though, Riddle might be less pleasant company than usual. “This is a perversion of the founders’ vision,” he said in a clipped tone. “A generation without Slytherins. Merlin knows the unforeseen repercussions.”

Harry didn’t disagree. “I’m sorry,” he said instead. “Did you like the feast, though?”

“Did I like the feast,” Riddle repeated as though Harry were a particularly thick troll.

“Piss off. The students getting back, the magic. We re-enchanted the ceiling last week, it took like a dozen of us. Flitwick said he has to beg the faculty every year.”

“Mm.” Riddle was not great at saying anything good or positive, less so even than Voldemort, but he couldn’t seem to think of a backhanded way to agree. “Yes. Something is… off about the magic in the Great Hall, though.”

“Off?” He recalled that Riddle had said it once before and immediately dismissed it. This time, they wouldn’t dismiss it.

He lifted one angular shoulder in a shrug. “Discordant, chaotic, incomplete. I couldn’t tell what sort of magic it was.”

They had stripped a lot of curses from the castle, and re-done a lot of the wards, since last fall’s battles. “Maybe one of the wards is wrong?” Harry asked. “I can ask the caretaker. Or Flitwick, to look at the charms. Or… oh my god,” he said with a laugh, scrubbing at his face. “Can’t quite ask the Defense professor to look for curses.”

Riddle wasn’t amused. “Yes, how charming and self-deprecating you are,” he said. “It will help very much as the castle is falling down around your ears.”

“I’ll look, alright?” He might convince Malfoy to do it with him, as a lot of lingering curses had been set in runes landmines. “Uh, thanks,” he added, even though Riddle was an absolute cock.

Still, they settled into bed as usual as Harry prepared for class. He had all the upper levels tomorrow: NEWT level first, then fifth, then sixth, and then his own Potions class to attend. “I assigned them all Sun Tzu as summer reading,” he said to Riddle.

“I see that.” He put his hand in the crook of Harry’s arm, to diffuse his magic. Harry murmured his gratitude and tipped the book so that Riddle might read with him.

“Voldemort suggested it.” Riddle’s lips pursed in thought but he didn’t speak. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“Is it that he’s a Muggle?”

“No. I said it’s nothing.” Getting up, Riddle picked up a diary Harry didn’t recognize, and a quill. “I’m taking your cloak.”

Harry glanced at the clock. “You’ll get locked out if you’re gone long.” He didn’t even fight Riddle’s excursions around the castle anymore. He figured trouble would make itself known.

“I haven’t got to sleep like you. I’m not a human.”

“What…?” Harry shook his head. “What do you need that can’t wait until tomorrow?”

“I want to look at the wards around the Great Hall. Maybe the disruption is something apparent.” He was opening Harry’s trunk now, pulling out the cloak. “Obviously it’s simpler with nobody in the hall.”

“Oh.” Harry thought. “I’d rather come with you,” he said, “so not tonight. The Aurors _insist_ on my curfew,” he said grimly, to Riddle’s disgust. “And – I mean – it’s not that I don’t trust you, I just think it’d help if I could see it for myself. So it’s believable that I should know there’s a problem.”

Riddle thought, and quietly put the cloak away. Harry, for some stupid reason, felt _bad_ about this. “Sorry.”

“Not at all.” He gathered a few library books to also bring to bed.

“I appreciate it, that you, uh, care.”

It was the wrong thing to say, and Riddle gave him an exasperated look as he settled back onto the sheets. “Hogwarts is my heritage.” His tone was low and serious, not dismissive as he normally spoke to Harry. “I don’t have a fortune or an estate to protect, but I do have the castle. Its magic speaks to me in a way it speaks to nobody else. Literally. The Hufflepuff line died recently,” he said with a cold smile, “and Ravenclaw’s and Gryffindor’s died out centuries ago. It is the only heritage I _have_ ,” he stressed. Harry put the book down because this would be their first real conversation. “My magic is, in part, the castle’s magic. Which is why I can feel… whatever this disturbance is, uniquely.”

It might be bullshit. It didn’t sound like bullshit. “We’ll fix it,” Harry said. “Tomorrow evening when I’m free, I’ll go with you then.”

“Don’t talk to me like I’m an upset child.”

Harry drew back as if slapped, because he thought they’d been doing well. This time he wasn’t inclined to apologize. “Fine.” He picked his book back up.

Riddle wasn’t done, though. “Your vow was offensive, for that reason. I don’t particularly care about the inhabitants of Hogwarts, so that’s fair, I suppose, but I’d never let harm come to the castle. I never have.”

“Did you miss the part where Voldemort attacked the castle last year? Three different times. More if you count Hogsmeade.” He thought. “I don’t know about the first war. Nobody’s mentioned it. He, uh, didn’t have a vendetta against a teenager that time, though.”

“I do know that he attacked the castle,” Riddle said, “and I hate him for it.”

Riddle’s simmering fury was a sight to behold even before he’d become Voldemort as Harry knew him. It had the looming pressure of a magma bubble about to burst once it was touched. He really didn’t want to adjudicate between Voldemort and his Horcruxes at all; but it seemed like the dynamic of self-loathing might be more literal than Harry had even known. “I’m sorry,” he said in the end. “You seem very different from him.” He offered it as a hesitant compliment.

“We diverged – became _estranged_ – very early on. It might have been different if he’d kept more contact, but he scattered us.” A frown. “Perhaps the law that a Horcrux’s distance creates power was intuitive, even then. Or perhaps we were just a handful more of sacrifices in his _slaughter_.”

Harry winced. “What can I do for you?” He asked it softly, trying not to sound patronizing. “I want to restore everything he’s taken. What can I do for you?”

Riddle rolled his eyes at Harry, and it was _good_ because it was dismissive in his standard way, not coldly furious. “That is less effective when we’re the same person.”

Harry gave a tiny, mollifying smile. “I guess so.”

Riddle was back in bed, throwing a comforter over them both. The books he had open were on Transfiguration, but that’s all Harry recognized out of them. The notebook had an obscuring spell on it. Harry returned to Sun Tzu.

They ended up with their bare backs pressed together, in order to better share magic. It was how he and Voldemort had slept for days, after the Fiendfyre, and it provoked some unpleasant memories. Riddle had snorted at Harry’s angst and had otherwise not commented.

It was nearly time for bed when he pulled out the diary:

_Term starts tomorrow. Everyone is relived to be back, even under these circumstances._

_I’ve got to save the Slytherins. The Death Eaters’ kids are scared (of mob justice? I might be, too) but even the ones who don’t ~~belong to you~~ work with them are scared too. I’d like to keep them safe, and normally that means staying in Hogwarts, but for them it might mean escaping it. I want to give them a better world than this one, anyway._

_Everyone still looks at me in that way they do, and I don’t even know why anymore. If it’s for my usual Chosen One (TM) credentials, or my ~~work~~   ~~relationship~~ work with you now. The Prophet thinks I’m a sex symbol (and for some bloody reason you are too. I hope somebody else tells you this so I haven’t got to) and one Hufflepuff tonight thought I was a gay role model._

He looked up. They’d both been quiet for awhile. “Tom. Can I ask you something?”

“I don’t want a part in the crisis of your sexuality.” Riddle didn’t even stop writing.

Wanker. Well-informed wanker, since their connection was not quite Legilimency but Riddle could feel some of the contours of his thoughts nonetheless. “It’s a bit past time for _crisis_ ,” he said dryly. “No, just – are you gay?”

Riddle heaved a great sigh. “I don’t have much to offer you in the way of mentorship, sexual or otherwise,” he said. “Why, are you worried that he’ll leave you for a woman? Because that seems unlikely.”

“ _No_.” God, this Horcrux was the worst. Still, they’d pulled themselves seated, to have this conversation for real. “That’s not it at all.”

Riddle pulled Harry’s diary from his hands, looking down at it. “Ah.”

“Nevermind.” He snatched it back. “I just think I won’t be a good example. I haven’t dated men. I’ve barely dated women.”

Riddle’s look was deliciously demeaning. “I’d forgotten how inane teenagers are. I’d offer you the locket, but he won’t care either.”

Harry thought he’d either kiss the Horcrux or smack him in the mouth very soon. In either case, he’d better grow to love their prickly nature, because it’s all he’d get from them. “You won’t tell me who you dated? Or, well, had sex with.”

“Being bisexual was mildly fashionable at the time, in some Muggle circles,” Riddle said instead. “It was associated with intellectualism. Being homosexual – gay, bent, queer, fairies, fags, inverts,” he listed off with an air of impatience, “was somewhat unfashionable. It was beginning to be associated with libertines. As your Muggle friend said, queerness has always been more… visible? acceptable? – in the wizarding world because we’re all used to identifying as _freaks_ anyway.” The way his eyes glittered, he had to know how that word resonated in Harry’s memory. “The extent that it changed in my early adulthood, might be blamed on the imposition and increasing influence of Muggle culture.”

“Don’t,” Harry said.

“ _Don’t_ yourself. I am telling you something.” And he was right, Riddle didn’t normally lapse into didactic moments for him like Voldemort would. Harry inclined his head; Riddle continued. “Parts of our society rallied to affirm Muggle values, that they’re _reasonable_ and _deeply held_ and even _religious_. They’d made a religion out of bloodless domesticity, and our politicians felt obligated to _celebrate_ it. Granted, wizards have never been _uninhibited_ – you’d be thought of as perverse in any era,” he assured Harry, who decided to find this funny rather than offensive. “But there was some sense of making ourselves more presentable for the Muggles. Including sexually.”

“Not all Muggles – “

“Yes, yes.” Riddle was utterly disinterested. “As for who I was having sex with – as inappropriate as _that_ question is. We hardly know one another,” he chided Harry, mischievous. “Men, women. Anyone I needed to charm or to blackmail. Anyone who would make me powerful.”

“Oh.” His stomach twisted with the implications of that.

Riddle felt it, in his magic and his soul. “I am not here as your emotional support,” he warned.

He really, really wasn’t. Harry shook off this line of thought. “But… were you attracted to these people?” he asked instead. A pause: “Did you have sex with Madam Smith?” he added in terrible fascination. The memory he’d seen had gestured in that direction, but if he learned that he’d watched Riddle’s foreplay in Dumbledore’s Pensieve… well.

Riddle only smirked. “There was no need. She fell apart at even chaste attention.”

So he’d seen. “Whether I was attracted to them,” Riddle went on. He twisted a hand in indifference. “Power was attractive, manipulation was attractive. Subverting their prescribed social ladder was attractive. Gender was important insofar as powerful men need to be flattered quite differently from powerful women. I suppose I slept with more men because more men were powerful than women. But unto itself….” Another indifferent gesture. “All this is to say, your ideas of sexuality are inane.”

Probably true. “And yours are bloody cynical.”

A quirk of his mouth. “Quite,” he agreed. “But you, you darling little fetishist, would fall in love with anyone who nappied and coddled you. I don’t see how you maintain the idea that gender is the most important trait in a partner.”

Harry gaped at him, at this accusation. It wasn’t even wrong; he knew he wouldn’t be able to go back to a relationship without watersports (or without Legilimency in sex, _gods_ ) after this. “Not _anyone_ ,” he finally protested, weakly. Riddle’s look was patronizing.

It was the language that had most arrested him. Gay, gay was… well, in the wixen world he didn’t really know. He thought of Remus as gay but not Snape, and obviously that was absurd. Gay in the Muggle world was everything his aunt and uncle had railed against. He thought of Dudley and his gang holding him down, or pinning him against walls, calling him a fag. Maybe he was, after all. _Good one, Duddie-kins._

He did still fancy women, even if he hadn’t given them much thought recently. Was _bisexual role model_ a thing? He was fairly sure it wasn’t.

“I didn’t want to disappoint that student,” he said, though Riddle had returned to his books.

“Mm.”

Useless, utterly useless. Anyway, he wouldn’t fall in love with _anyone_ who indulged him with nappies, obviously, because Riddle was unfazed by them, or by the times Harry had worried a soother in his mouth at bedtime, yet he and Harry didn’t even _like_ each other. So.

And the bit about Voldemort only fucking powerful people… there was just nothing to _do_ with all the questions and accusations and insecurities it raised. Riddle couldn’t and wouldn’t justify the actions of his older self. Harry’s relationship with Voldemort was _good_ , but of course it was mutually advantageous as well. So he struggled with questions of authenticity that night: the authenticity of their relationship, of Riddle’s breakdown of sexual preference, of Harry’s maybe-identity as gay or bi or queer. _Queer_ , the word Ashwani had used and he thought Hermione had too. He’d like it if it didn’t mark him as a misfit, just like every other part of his life already did.

This train of thought only made it into his diary in an elliptical line at the bottom of the page: _I know it’s real, but I still don’t know what it is._

 

 _Wednesday, September 2._ He woke up too early the next morning, anxious in typical and atypical ways. The school year always brought a sort of nervous anticipation with it. He was teaching – they would let him _teach_ , for god’s sake. This was absurd. He hadn’t planned any grand speech, anything that’d particularly make an impression. He wondered if he could crib Snape’s speech from his first year. Staring at the ceiling, he found he couldn’t think. It wasn’t just his own anxiety, but Voldemort had had a bad night too, he knew it somatically, and he might still be in anguish now. (Although fuck them all forever if they kept him up until the pre-dawn.) Something gnawed at his stomach painfully.

Riddle was asleep, or something like it. Maybe it was because they were no longer touching; they’d moved apart in the night. Harry shifted his legs until they pressed against the back of Tom’s. Not quite.

He groaned. He didn’t want to start the day with a calming draught; they made him a bit more dispassionate than he wanted to be for his first classes.

Well, there was always a wank. It’d distract him until it was a reasonable hour to get up, anyway.

He hadn’t wanked in bed since Riddle had started sleeping beside him. He had only wet himself while asleep, not awake. He could be quiet and subtle enough to get away with both, he thought. He turned away.

He needed to piss first, quite badly because he hadn’t gone in the night. He felt heavy with desperation, but – Riddle was still so _present_ , as asleep-or-something as he was. He tried unsuccessfully to relax enough to let go.

He realized at an embarrassing moment it was because he was getting hard. Not piss-hard, but arousal-hard at the absolute wrongness of planning to get off with Riddle beside him, oblivious to it all. He didn’t even…. He sighed out loud. Riddle was _attractive_ , certainly, but he wasn’t attracted to him. He only wanted Voldemort, these days. Still, the ambivalence and sneakiness of it was piquant. He’d had similar feelings sleeping in a dorm, the feeling of getting away with wanking as his roommates slept, oblivious. He willed himself to relax for just a moment.

Piss spilled into his nappy. It always came easily when he was stressed or near to sleep, and he was both at the moment. He kept a hand pressed to his mouth as he went. The stream was audible; he had been desperate. The moisture rolled over his hips, pooling beneath him before spreading into the fabric. The nappy became steaming and heavy around his waist. He groaned against his fingers.

Then, a hand slipped between his legs. He yelped, jumping, but Riddle’s other hand held him against the mattress. “You’re awake,” he said softly, in the dark.

“So are you,” Harry returned. He’d stopped himself, and his lower half throbbed with the effort of it, still slipping a bit every few moments. His blush burned, and he squirmed away from Riddle’s touch.

“You are a mess this morning. Emotionally,” Riddle clarified. “Physically too, I suppose.”

“Did you do this?” Harry asked in irritation. “I feel… wrong. Awful.”

“No. It’s him. I feel it, too.” Riddle leaned in, pressing some magic into his clammy flesh. “I’d also prefer you wank over a calming draught. I’m only affected by the latter.”

 _Affected_. He’d be affected by Harry’s wank too, intimately, if he did it in bed as planned. He sighed. “Let me up, then.” There was no point denying any of this. The man lived… not in his head, but in his heart.

“Just stay there.”

Harry’s breath caught. “I didn’t think you were awake,” he said as an excuse, apology, anything.

“Harry.” It was unusual to hear his name in Riddle’s mouth: not like the Horcrux had anyone else to address, he supposed. “It’s fine. We haven’t got to _talk_ about it.”

“I….”

Riddle pressed a hand over his mouth. Harry shuddered. When he still wasn’t fully wetting himself, Riddle moved his hand to also cover his nose, smothering him. There was a feeling deep inside of him, sort of like a suggestion charm, that he should surrender to this. It felt delicious, being held down and smothered always felt delicious. His vision went gray, his eyelids fluttered. He couldn’t, he couldn’t –

A flood of warmth as he finished wetting himself, as Riddle barely moved his fingers to let him sort-of breathe. The nappy grew heavy, and impossibly hot – and he realized faintly, Riddle’s hand was pressed against the crotch, to feel it swell. He prickled with shame at being witnessed like this. His stream pounded against the wet fabric, making clear how desperate he had been. “There,” Riddle said softly, as Harry squeezed his eyes shut. It felt like every anxiety was flooding out of him too, for just a moment. He drew a ragged breath, pressing out the last dribbles that ran over his swelling balls.

“Good,” Riddle said, very soft, not soothing but satisfied. “Would you like to get yourself off or should I?”

He wondered if Riddle knew that this was how his relationship with Voldemort had begun: blasé, indifferent, completely unimpressed with Harry’s freak sexuality but not disgusted by it. His thoughts were loud enough that he didn’t have to actually speak them. Riddle pulled the waistband of his nappy away from his skin, sliding his hand inside.

Harry blushed harder but didn’t want to stop him. The nappy was wet, wet enough to nearly have puddles in spots, and his balls were deliciously bathed in it. Still, he couldn’t ask –

“Keep your eyes closed.” A steady, dispassionate tone. The tone the diary-Riddle had used to confront Hagrid, Harry realized; it brooked no disagreement or hesitation. His stomach twisted on itself. Still, he wanted this. He arched as Riddle’s fingers wrapped around his stiffening cock. “How does he touch you,” he muttered into Harry’s ear, with a few languorous strokes.

Oh, this…. He knew he’d regret playing along when he rolled over afterwards, when he’d find not Voldemort but this shadow of him in his bed. Still, he was depressed and he was anxious and he was lonely. “He touches me like he’s indulging me,” he said. “Rough, pretending like he’s bored. Pretending like he’s less turned on than he is.” A bit of a smile played at his lips. “It was… god, probably a month before I knew he was interested. Longer ‘til we fucked.”

Riddle’s grip had gotten firmer, and he’d nearly fallen into a rhythm. His hands were nice, and nothing like Voldemort’s. In spite of himself, Harry was melting into the bedclothes. He always melted at… well, caretaking. Even ambivalent attention felt decadent.

Riddle spooned him, though he wasn’t yet practiced at making all of himself corporeal at once so parts of the touch felt wispy. It didn’t keep Harry from pressing backwards into it gratefully. His other hand caressed him through the nappy, pressing the steamy fabric around his balls and against his hole. At this, Harry shivered, throwing his legs apart so he could better finger him.

His cock strained in Riddle’s grasp. It strained against the nappy. It was such a _normal_ scene, when he and Voldemort would be up too late or too early, that they’d get one another off in order to sleep. Loneliness stuck in his throat, but nostalgia wasn’t a bad feeling really. He grew warm inside, with magic and arousal, as Riddle pumped him.

His breath got short, his head swam. He kicked without meaning to, and arched backwards deeper into Riddle’s touch. Their magic surged between them like electricity, like they were held together by a current, and briefly Harry was happy. As his arousal crested, Riddle pushed two fingers into the nappy at his arsehole, until moisture spilled from the sodden fabric, running over his hole. Vigorous, confident pumps _one two three_ –

He came hard, shooting a thick load into the nappy, over Riddle’s fingers, running down his own length. His vision went white, body straining as orgasm overtook him. “Good boy, very good,” Riddle was murmuring into his shoulder, and it was near enough to Voldemort’s words that he shivered again, pressing his arousal deeper inside himself. He’d come with only a gasp, in the stillness of the pre-dawn, but as the last tremors escaped him he sighed happily.

“God.”

“Before you fall back asleep….” Riddle wasn’t hard, as far as Harry could tell, and he didn’t know whether to offer reciprocation, until slick fingers were pressed to his lips. “You are a disaster,” he told Harry, with nothing like affection. “Suck yourself from my hand.”

Fine. Arousal lingered well enough that this was hot rather than disgusting. He turned so he could look at Riddle as he took two of his fingers in his mouth to begin.

This was a mistake. He didn’t love the man beside him; he didn’t even like him. His cold attractiveness was everything Harry was not interested in, compared with Voldemort’s spindly, serpentine queerness. He licked off the salt and slickness from his fingers anyway.

“Could you please refrain from looking so tragic,” Riddle said, more amused than annoyed. “Do you always cry after sex? Perhaps Voldemort finds that more endearing than I do.”

Harry pulled his fingers out, to move to the others, but while his mouth was empty: “No. I don’t.”

“Would you like to?” He rubbed the cooling slickness of one finger along Harry’s lower lip, playfully.

“What do you want?”

Eyebrows arched. “As I said, you’re a disaster. It hurts us all. Even him. Perhaps _especially_ him. You know better than the rest of us the extent to which you’re emotionally entangled. It is self-preservation, to keep you… stable. If not happy.”

Stable. Stable was the last thing he felt today, even in the post-coital buzz. “I’ve got a therapist this year.” He didn’t know if it answered anything.

“Your misery doesn’t only affect _you_.”

This, he thought, was a fairly shitty thing to say to someone who was depressed. “This is absurd. You’re not even real.”

A twitch of Riddle’s mouth. “Am I all in your head?” he mocked. “Because so is everything else. Clean up my fingers and I’ll give you the sort of magic you like.”

Fair, or something like it. He pressed his tongue around Riddle’s other fingers. His other hand hadn’t moved from between his legs, and he pressed magic into him _there_ , making Harry jump and laugh breathlessly. It felt like a respite, it felt like salvation, to be filled even briefly with love instead of loneliness. Even if it was artificial. Riddle withdrew his fingers from between Harry’s lips.

“I can do this for you too, as often as you’d like,” Riddle said. “As often as magic. As though they’re not the same thing. It’s for my sake, not yours, so I don’t expect anything more of you. I don’t quite understand why you’re… empty,” he chose the word carefully. “I assume it’s something to do with _love_. In any case… if you want this, I’d provide it.”

He didn’t clarify what _this_ was, but Harry knew well enough. Indulgence. The performance of caring. The infrequent, still sometimes unsettling feeling of being taken care of. He nodded.

“Good boy.” His inflection was wrong but it didn’t matter. “Go back to sleep. It’s far too early.”

“You don’t want…?” He gestured vaguely to Riddle’s body. Not quite to his cock, but the intent was clear.

“I told you I don’t. Go to sleep.”

“Thank you.”

 

He was awake again a few hours later, with just enough time to shower before class. He had the class readings in a tote; he had freshly pressed faculty robes. Minerva had advised him against wearing house colors (“You are not a Gryffindor, you are a faculty member”) so he had on a tie striped in deep jewel tones of blue and green. Nothing, as usual, could be done for his hair.

The diadem would stay in the hearth today; the locket would come with him. Drawing a pinprick of blood at his chest, he pressed the locket to it. “Surripio.” It dissolved.

It felt strange, entering the Defense classroom and moving to the front of it, instead of staking out a seat in the middle. “Hi,” he mumbled to the students already present. This would be nearly his largest class, since it was populated by both seventh and eighth years. He shook out the roster.

Ron and Hermione had both taken the Defense NEWT over the summer, and they were teaching Muggle Studies right now anyway. Of the eighth years: Parvati, Padma, Terry, Justin, Lisa Turpin. Ginny and Luna. A few names he recognized from Ginny mentioning them or from Quidditch. But – nineteen students, and the school trusted him to get them all through a NEWT curriculum.

The students arrived in twos and threes. Their gazes were not so much taking in spectacle – they’d all been in closer proximity to Harry than most, after all – but simply curious. Last to enter was Ginny, with Tonks beside her.

Ginny grinned at him before taking a set, but Tonks approached: “Mad Eye wanted me to sit in on your classes today,” she said. “To be sure you’re not, uh, recruiting for Voldemort. Or torturing the students.”

“Are those things he thinks I might do?”

“Teenagers can be trying, y’know?” She smiled in apology. “Sorry. I’ll tell him it all went fine. And I’ll be inconspicuous. Oh, here.” With a wrinkle of her nose, she made her pink hair go dark brown. “Inconspicuous.”

In spite of himself he grinned back. “Cheers.”

“Good luck.” She found a spot at the back of the class.

And then it was time to begin. “Good morning,” he said. “This is Defense Against the Dark Arts, and my name is Harry.” He couldn’t bring himself to ask his peers to call him Professor Potter. Maybe the little ones, but not the seventh and eighth years. “You all are here in preparation for the NEWT at the end of the year, and I’m going to teach you everything I know so that you’ll pass.”

Quiet. Trusting quiet, but quiet. He straightened his shoulders, charming the tote bag of xeroxed readings to distribute themselves. “Here are the assigned readings for the year. There was no one textbook to teach you everything I want you to know. I hope you brought your copies of Sun Tzu with you today.” Some nods. “Good. You might wonder why I assigned you a reading by a Muggle – well, probably a Muggle, anyway. Sun Tzu is helpful because I wanted to begin this class by talking about war.”

He paused, taking a seat at a desk himself because it was wrong that he’d stand over them and lecture them when half these students knew war as well as he did, or better. “Obviously a war put our lives on hold for most of last year. And we learned a lot on the battlefield. But I don’t want to start with the question of _how_ to fight a war – although you’ll find a lot of that in Sun Tzu too. I want to start with _why_ to fight a war. We should talk as much about ethics and politics as about magic. I want to be able to tell you we won’t see war again in our lifetimes. Obviously I can’t promise that. But I’d like for us to think about what… what a _good_ _war_ would look like. What is just, what is right. We’ll start this semester looking at the boundaries between light and dark magic, and… well, we all know it’s not always so clear, in a fight of life and death.”

The class had fallen into a more comfortable quiet. If they’d been in a tent or a lean-to instead of a classroom, it could’ve been lull in one of the Hogwarts battles instead. Looking around, it was hardly appropriate that he should be the only one to tell their stories. Parvati and Padma were experts on battlefield medicine; Ginny had worked with Ron on magical weaponry; two of the seventh years, Phaedrus and Elia, had researched cloaking and disillusionment charms. This might be… well, a debriefing. They’d never really had one. At least Harry hadn’t.

And it was Elia who now put up her hand. He nodded to her, and she took a moment to square her shoulders. “Are you going to tell us about Voldemort?”

Some people flinched, some looked at her in disbelief. But it was a smaller number than he would have expected. “Well.” He looked to Tonks. He couldn’t properly talk about Voldemort without permission.

The students followed her gaze; Tonks thought. “This isn’t a class about Voldemort,” she began.

“But it _is_.” Ginny, fierce and fearless. “He’s the only one we’ve known as _evil_ , our whole lives. Even now, after Harry’s domesticated him.” She said the word teasingly, and he had to fight back a laugh. “We’ve actually already fought him. We need to talk about him.”

So she saw it too, the classroom as a healing and debriefing space. A gap of quiet, then: “You should be able to,” Tonks agreed. “But only this class, none of the lower ones,” she said to Harry. “And let’s keep the conversation inside this class, yeah?” she said to the students. Some of them nodded. Harry shot her a grateful look.

So they talked. All of the eighth years had been part of the Hogwarts battles, and half of the seventh years. They talked about how they made choices in the face of fear and desperation that they never thought they’d make. How quickly they all became soldiers, fighters, warriors when they had to be. Nobody named Voldemort again in the class time. That’d be another day.

Mid-morning was the fifth years, and before lunch the sixth years. He didn’t promise to tell them anything of Voldemort, but they did talk about war. The almost-war. “’ _The best thing of all is to take your enemy’s country whole and intact; to shatter and destroy it is not so good_ ,’” he read the sixth years from Sun Tzu. “’ _Supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting._ ’” They were old enough to have felt the fear of upcoming war last year; they were old enough to appreciate that they were in a classroom and not in a battle or bunker right now. His classes sat very quiet and very attentive, listening for answers from him of which they couldn’t ask the questions.

It was only at lunch that he realized there were no Slytherins in his sixth and seventh year courses.

He had Potions with Professor Slughorn this afternoon. As it was a seventh year class officially, he walked in with Luna and Ginny. “Professor Potter,” Slughorn greeted him easily. “How was your first day?”

“Good, sir. Can I talk to you after class?”

“Of course.”

Slughorn was much less jumpy around him now that the world knew he and Voldemort were apart. He took a seat around a cauldron with Ginny, Luna, and Michael Corner. (Ginny accumulated exes faster than anyone he knew, he reflected.) Michael gave him a tentative smile.

“Welcome. Welcome _back_ ,” Slughorn said with something like real emotion. “It is so good to have you all in class again.”

He set them to brewing a stomach-settling potion. “Same one as Madam – as Ms. Brown uses in the hospital wing,” he caught himself. Madam Pomfrey had died of bone marrow poisoning last year, an airborne spell they never fully figured out. They all variously flinched or averted their gaze. The class was quiet as they gathered ingredients.

Harry could not fake skill this year as he had last year with Snape’s book. He didn’t figure it out (the half-blood prince, _really_ ) until sometime after Christmas break, when he had cast Muffliato in Snape’s presence and gotten a _much_ stronger reaction to that than he’d expected. The book was stashed in in the Room of Requirement, never to be removed again. Unless he was just miserable at Potions. He’d have to find a way to explain his mediocrity to Slughorn.

He did find he’d learned something of Potions from Voldemort, at least. He could pick out powerful blood berries from weak ones. His dicing and slivering had gotten much more even. (Both skills he needed to brew kaval regularly, so thank goodness for that.) Their potion was almost the right viscosity at the end of the class session. Slughorn rewarded them with a smile.

Harry lingered after class. So did Malfoy. When the latter realized Harry had stayed behind, he moved to the door. “Nevermind,” he muttered to Slughorn. “I’ll tell you later.”

“Wait,” Harry said. “This is about you, too.”

He got concerned looks from both of them. “No, it’s not,” Malfoy said. He was at the door.

“Why haven’t I got any Slytherins in my class beyond OWLs?”

Malfoy answered before Slughorn could. “Because not everyone has such unsubstantiated faith in you as Dumbledore did.”

That did hurt. Fuck him, _fuck_ him for weaponizing Dumbledore’s name and memory. Still, after a steadying breath: “I _want_ the Slytherins there,” he said. “I think it’s important.”

Malfoy shot a look of near-pleading at Slughorn, who waved him out. Slytherins.

“Some of our students already feel like they’re in a precarious position,” he began carefully. “Some of them felt it would look like….” He slid onto a stool with a sigh; Harry took a seat across from him. “Their loyalties are still under question,” he said lowly. “Their _parents_ ’ loyalties are still under question. As you know,” he said with a look. He wasn’t malicious. Just… tired. “Some thought – rightly or wrongly – that taking Defense would reflect badly on them. That they’d be under suspicion of… organizing. Retaliating. Surveilling, you or the other students who fought. As the Headmaster felt it would be best for him to keep an appropriate distance from you, for political reasons, these students have made the same decision.”

It was low and serious, because he had been intentional about treating Harry as a colleague since he’d returned. Still, Harry looked at him in horror. “I _hate_ what’s happened to the Slytherins,” he said. “I want to keep them safe. I want to keep their _parents_ safe, even if I don’t know how to.”

“Why?”

“Sir?”

“ _Why_ ,” he repeated. It wasn’t that Harry hadn’t heard him. “You are very bright, and you’ve had very good mentorship.” He looked pained enough to indicate that that definitely included Voldemort. “You are old enough and entangled enough in politics now to know there is no such thing as altruism. Even if you’d _like_ there to be,” he headed off Harry’s objection. “Nobody thinks like that, and nobody will believe you if that’s the only justification you give them. So,” he leaned in marginally, “what advantage is it to you if my students take your class? What advantage is it to _them_? If they find it profitable, they’ll listen.”

Harry shook his head. “Slytherins,” he said in warm exasperation.

“Everyone thinks in this economy. Only my house has the self-awareness to recognize it. Well, perhaps some of the more enterprising Ravenclaws,” Slughorn mused. His words were inane, giving Harry time to think.

“I need Slytherins around for my, um, political image. That politicians can’t look like they’re playing favorites.” He thought of how infrequently he considered that Scrimgeour was a Slytherin. That Fudge was… god, he couldn’t picture Fudge as any of the houses. Among the Aurors and the Wizengamot, house and (to an extent) even blood faded away, in the midst of cooperation and collegiality. “Especially if I’m going to be an ambassador. I want to say I represent everyone.”

“That’s a very… _soft_ motivation.”

“Good, then they’ll feel like they’re better taking advantage of me.”

“Cheeky,” Slughorn chided, but he was smiling.

Harry grinned back. “Tell the Slytherins… that they don’t want to be less prepared than their opponents. Than their threats, whatever. Whatever that means to them. Even if it means me,” he said steadily. “Or if it means the other houses. I swear I’ll give detention to anyone who, y’know, threatens the Slytherins. Or if it means….” He dropped his voice low. “There’s a vigilante group forming on the continent.” It was a morsel to offer Slughorn, as a favor, because this hadn’t been reported with these specifics in the papers. “They called Voldemort a blood traitor. They might…. Anyone affiliated with Death Eaters seems to be in danger from all sides,” he said with a sigh. “They should be learning everything they can, before anything _happens._ ”

Slughorn had gone unhappy. Danger deeply conflicted with his preferred lifestyle. “Affiliation with you, to put it bluntly,” he said in a very apologetic tone, “also looks like affiliation with _him_.” That particular way people stressed the pronoun for Voldemort, when speaking his name aloud – even _the Dark Lord_ – was too much. “The Ministry – the Aurors – haven’t expressed thoughts on teaching Slytherins defensive magic. But you might anticipate their hesitation.”

Harry hissed air through his teeth, weighing his words. “I really hope it doesn’t come to that.”

“Neither do I, my boy.”

“I’ve had, um, experience teaching students in secret,” Harry said. “Did you know that? That _awful_ year Dolores Umbridge was here – it’s why Dumbledore had to leave partway through the year, because he took the blame for the class I taught.”

“The faculty might have mentioned it,” Slughorn demurred. “That is a generous offer, if it is an offer, but the Slytherins might be even more, er, wary to meet with you for class in secret.”

“Oh. Right. Yeah.” He sighed once again. “Anyway, the DA – that meeting – put the Slytherins even _more_ behind, relatively, because none of them were part of it. So most of my year, all the other houses, know about dueling and shield charms and refraction spells. Most of them can cast a Patronus.”

Slughorn’s light eyebrows disappeared under his hair. “Is that so?”

“Yeah. So… it turned out to be one of our better years for Defense. I mean, it had to be, we were taking OWLs, but…. Whatever. The Slytherins wouldn’t want to feel underprepared, compared to everyone else.”

“No,” Slughorn agreed. A pause. “You might find your class content monitored, if you allowed them in.”

Harry laughed shortly. “Sir, it already _is_. Tonks sat in today. The Ministry put a restriction spell on me, that I can’t perform dark spells. It’ll take my magic if I try.” At Slughorn’s slightly alarmed look, he tried for a light tone: “I am here on a _lot_ of conditions.”

“Clearly.” Slughorn looked to the jagged stone ceiling, thinking. “I will suggest your class to the upper levels. I cannot impel them to anything, of course.”

“Oh, no.”

“Severus and Minerva might become involved. As might the governors or the Aurors.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And – I wish I didn’t have doubts, but they are all rather… cautious right now. Goodwill will always raise suspicion.”

Harry thought that being a Slytherin seemed exhausting. And then he thought of how offended Malfoy was in the moments he perceived Harry’s efforts as _charity._ Perhaps it wasn’t just because he was rich. “Is there anything…” he stumbled on the words, “that I could ask for from them, or that I owe them, to make it, uh, not goodwill. Not charity,” he said, to use Malfoy’s accusation. “Even if they don’t trust good intentions, they might trust debt. Or, like, entitlement.” He mistook Slughorn’s silence for confusion. “They won’t pay me, but it’d be like that – that they’re there because I owe them something.”

“Mm,” Slughorn murmured in some appreciation. “Very astute, my boy.”

Everything was a transaction. It was bleak but, in the moment, helpful. “I already feel that Malfoy has done me a huge favor in letting me take Runes. Can you tell him that he deserves to be there? I mean, don’t say I said it,” he added, wrinkling his nose. Let this go down in history as the day he asked to spend more time with Malfoy. Gross.

Slughorn was thoughtful. “I did find it very unlikely that Draco should agree to that.”

“Me, too. Tell him I am a pain in the arse, that he had to write an entire course just for me.”

A smile. “Well.”

“Make him remember what it feels like to be an entitled prat again. He probably hasn’t felt that in awhile.”

His smile grew. “Harry.” A teasing, mischievous tone. He was delighted.

“Tell him I probably took _weeks_ out of his life.”

“I will not,” Slughorn said lightly. “But you seem to know his psyche well. Perhaps he has thought such things independently. I will… gesture in that direction.”

Grin. “Thanks, sir.”

Slughorn was obviously relieved he didn’t need to do anything more drastic or visible. “Of course.”

They moved toward the door. “Also – “ This would chill the warmth between them, but he couldn’t neglect it. “The reactionaries – it hasn’t been published yet, but they’re in Germany and maybe France. Warn your students. In case any of them have got family over there, you know.”

Slughorn either didn’t know of the escape plans or had an excellent poker face. “Germany and France,” he mused. “The Ministry really should put out a travel warning.”

As though they weren’t badly handling the current levels of panic already. “Yeah.”

“I’ll pass this knowledge along.”

“I’m not the one who told you.”

“Oh, I am quite well-connected,” Slughorn said, though his smile grew weary.

 

After dinner, he was in his suite with the diadem-Riddle. He had promised they’d look at the Great Hall. “The wards are all new,” he was saying anyway as he put his bookbag away. “You don’t think someone would’ve noticed something wrong with them?”

“There is no point speculating about this without the wards before us.” He was prickly.

Harry was shaking out his invisibility cloak. “I guess you’re not going to ask how my first day of class went?”

“No.” He made himself corporeal enough to slip under the cloak. Harry followed.

They walked briskly to the Great Hall. It should be cleared out by now, and dimmed until the morning. It was only when Harry stepped out from under the cloak that the candles above him flared to life. Cool.

He knew from working on the castle these past couple weeks that most of the wards here ran behind the head table and over the great arched entrance. They were mostly self-sustaining, generating atmospheric magic that they’d re-absorb. It was only because Harry had worked so much with wards recently that he could pick out their faint crackle as they approached. He tugged on a few strands to make them visible.

“What are you looking for?” he asked in low Parseltongue.

“Do the rest of them.”

Harry swallowed. It’d be far more conspicuous than he’d like. He revealed more strands. They crackled. “Is that enough?” he asked. “I’ll do the ones around the arch later.”

Already these wards made the space glow like fairy lights. Some of the wards were straight like wires, some were planes like walls, and some sat in ritual knots.

“Potter?”

McGonagall was descending the staircase. Harry froze as though he’d been caught doing something wrong. He hoped Riddle was getting out of the way as she approached. “Hi, Professor,” he said. “I, uh, wanted to double-check the wards. Something seems… off about them?” Riddle hadn’t explained how, so neither could Harry. “Or maybe it’s all in my head,” he added with an apologetic smile as McGonagall surveyed the scene.

She gave him a dry look. “We have found, over the years, that we should typically treat your intuitions as credible.”

He grinned. “No basilisks this time,” he promised. “Um, if I find anything, I’ll get help. I’ll go find Flitwick for anything.”

She raised her eyebrows. “You might also call on our Ancient Runes professor.”

Right. Shit. “Yeah,” he said. “I will. I won’t be long here.”

She moved to go. “Goodnight, Potter.”

When she was gone, Harry looked around in mild panic. He had lost Riddle already. He could be anywhere by now. For the first time, he felt others’ frustration with his cloak. “Tom?” he whispered in Parseltongue. Nothing. Goddammit.

He ran his hands along the wards. He didn’t recognize them all, but of the familiar ones, nothing looked out of place. He saw runes marking the hall, the dorms, the entrance, the headmaster, each of the faculty… all guarding their safety. “Tom?” he tried again.

He saw runes shifting out of the corner of his eye, twisting and shimmering. He approached carefully. Riddle looked up from his spot on the ground as he pulled off the cloak. “Is she gone?”

Harry choked. “She’d bloody better be. Leave that on.”

Shrugging, he pulled it back on. Harry sat and climbed under it too. “What are you doing?” he asked Riddle, who was still prodding at the runes.

“These knots. They’re created this way as a security measure, so nobody can read what’s inside of them, and so they’re more difficult to tamper with. There is probably an alarm or security charm inside of it as well,” he said with a frown, and didn’t stop coaxing the knots apart.

“Shouldn’t you…?”

A shrug. “Very little harm can come to me,” he reminded Harry. “And if it’s something that would damage the castle, there will be forewarning.”

“Oh.” Still, he inched back.

“If I were to sabotage Hogwarts, I’d contain the curse in something like this.”

“You _did_ sabotage Hogwarts,” Harry reminded him. “By cursing the DADA post.”

“The… _dada_ post?” Riddle was amused.

“Defense,” Harry said, rolling his eyes. “Don’t be a prick, and don’t change the subject. You haven’t told me how you cursed it, either. Couldn’t it be the same mechanism that… whatever you’re looking for, left a curse too?”

Riddle’s hands worked at the knot as he thought. “Again, I could only tell you what I would do, not what I _did_ to. The curse was, of course, after my time.”

“You know about it.”

“I know about a great many things. _Ah_ ,” he said, as a portion of the knot retracted, cracking it open like a chestnut. He peered inside of it, and then pulled a book and a diary from his inner robes.

Harry leaned in too. He was new to Runes, and he wouldn’t recognize much. Knots upon knots. It was _fractal_. Shit.

“It may have been crafted that way,” Riddle narrated quietly. “It may have… grown that way? It is very old magic. Perhaps original.” He was copying down the visible runes inside, keeping the diagram of their web.

“Can I help?”

“Every knot will respond to an unlocking spell. Not all the same one. Don’t touch anything with a current running through it.”

“Do you know what you’re looking for? You can cast a seeking spell, like the library’s got.”

Riddle looked at him like he was an idiot. He probably was. “The library is _indexed_ ,” he pronounced. “Nobody would index the wards. Perhaps nobody even _could_. It’d be a security risk, in any case.” He took Harry’s wand to pry apart one of the inner knots.

Harry looked to this wall. There were dozens of knots here, and he’d only made half of the wards in the area visible. “Oh.”

“Yes, _oh_.”

“You’re not going to find it tonight, then.”

Riddle sucked his teeth and returned to copying runes without answering him.

Sliding out from under the cloak, Harry took a knot several yards away. It was warm to the touch. He could feel the tendrils that had a current running through them – not painful yet, just unpleasant. Grasping a thick ward that ran along the top: “Alohomora.” It loosened the slightest bit.

Well, this would be frustrating. He ran through a half dozen other unlocking spells (he was brilliant at getting into places he shouldn’t be, really) and they all worked about the same. He was getting stiff from sitting on the flagstones. He had to squint at the row of knotted wards to see the one that was shimmering with Tom’s work. Tedious, tedious work. He approached.

“Can I leave you?” he asked in an undertone. “I’ve got to teach in the morning.”

Riddle slid the cloak back to look up at him. “Yes,” he said. “Go.”

“Don’t get locked out,” he said by way of goodbye.

On his way back to his suite, he knocked on Ron and Hermione’s room. Ron opened up. “Hey,” he said. “We came for you earlier, but you were gone.”

“Sorry, I was… looking at something,” he demurred. He heard cartoons on in the background. He heard _television_ on in the background at _Hogwarts_ , what was this. He recovered from this distraction. “I wondered if you wanted to prepare for classes together?”

“Oh, yeah. Come over here, Hermione’s still working on the Vees…?”

“VCR,” she called from behind him. “Hi, Harry! Come over!”

He did, collecting the books he’d need for tomorrow’s classes. When he came back, he found Ron and Hermione shuffling through children’s videos.

“I don’t mean to be patronizing,” Hermione said, putting The Little Mermaid in one pile and Aladdin in another. Harry couldn’t distinguish the piles, but then, he’d never properly seen most of these films. “But these are, uh, more allegorical, I suppose? Than the films meant for adults.” Pinocchio went in another pile. “It might be irresponsible, though, to imply these are good reflections of how Muggles think about magic. Most of these….” She sighed, looking down at them. “Did you pack your children’s books?” she asked Ron. “Maybe we can present these as comparative myths.”

The VCR seemed to work much like the video games had: a lot of light, cast cleverly into and through the appliance. The Lion King was projected on an empty wall. Ron went rummaging for his children’s books. Harry sat on a sofa, half-facing the film, ostensibly to work on tomorrow’s class, but he really…. He suddenly felt very young. Most of his exposure to cartoons was what he could hear Dudley watching from his cupboard. The television hadn’t been lined up in a spot that he could see any part of it – on accident? on purpose? It hardly mattered now – so he only ever heard the audio. Mrs. Figg would only ever put on daytime telly. His books lay dormant in his lap. He wished he could suck his thumb.

He really didn’t have much to do for class tomorrow: he had the firsties in the morning, where he’d tell them what DADA even _was_ ; and the seventh years again in the afternoon. He wrote down what he had to for tomorrow’s lectures, and then settled in on the sofa.

Hermione and Ron were somewhere behind him, deliberating quietly about their own class (“I _told_ you we should’ve assigned Beedle the Bard as a textbook,” Hermione said reproachfully at one point). Finally, when they’d finished prepping, they joined Harry on the sofa: Ron in the middle, Hermione letting her head fall on his shoulder on his other side. Harry felt a twinge of loneliness, but it was fleeting. “It’s Hamlet, but with lions,” Hermione informed Ron, pausing the film.

“Okay,” Ron said. “What’s Hamlet, then?”

Hermione was obviously tired, and gave him a self-deprecating smile. “Let’s start over.”

She did mean start the film over, but they weren’t far in anyway. And she laughed with joy when rewinding the cassette was as easy as a Reverso spell, aimed carefully. They dimmed the lamps and settled in.

“Have you seen it before, Harry?” Hermione asked over the opening credits. “It’s new. Ish. I only saw it because I look after my cousins over the summers.”

He drew his hand guiltily away from his face. The tip of his thumb had been in his mouth, under the pretext of worrying the nail. “I haven’t.”

“There must be a better way to keep up with Muggle culture during the school year. This,” she gestured to the VCR, “isn’t a difficult spell, but wixes have to be convinced first that film is an important part of the culture, _then_ that an electronic is a good investment, even if there’s some chance it’ll interfere with their household spells…. Arthur said his department hasn’t the faintest how to get a computer running with magic.”

Harry made a mental note that Mr. Weasley was _Arthur_ now. They settled in for Simba’s presentation.

He lost himself in the film. All his previous encounters with film, other than listening to them from the cupboard, had been in school when he was young. His classmates could be distracting; sometimes his glasses didn’t correct his vision well enough to see clearly; and when he and Dudley had been in the same class, he’d have to keep an eye on him and his friends. It wasn’t _this_ , in other words. The comfortable quiet and the vibrant screen and the calming warmth within him.

At some point the tip of his thumb was back in his mouth. Ron glanced over and Harry moved to pull it out casually. Instead, reaching up, Ron decisively pushed his fist to his mouth, so his thumb slid all the way between his lips. Harry made a noise of apology; Ron said firmly, “Mate, it’s fine.”

“Really, Harry, it is.” Hermione barely lifted her head from Ron’s shoulder.

He went very warm. “Thanks,” he mumbled around his thumb, sinking deeper into the cushions.

He felt them both tense when Mufasa was about to die. He hadn’t told them yet what he’d told Voldemort – and _only_ Voldemort up to this point – that he _couldn’t_ miss his parents, in anything more than an abstract sense. “It’s alright, I swear it’s alright,” he muttered instead, to bypass that conversation until later. He knew enough of children’s stories to add, “If we skipped everything with dead parents in them, there’d be nothing left to watch.”

Hermione gave him a tentative smile. Ron was fascinated. “But why?” he asked. “I mean, Muggle lifespans aren’t….”

Hermione shushed him. “Not that,” she said. “Ask again later.” They watched the wildebeest stampede in tense silence. Harry’s grief sat low in his stomach, but… it was manageable.

Hermione fell asleep two thirds through. “She was awake early,” Ron said by way of apology. “Wanted everything to be perfect for class.”

“Was it?”

“’Course.”

 

They finished in warm, perfect quiet. Harry ended up with funny feelings in his chest. At the story itself, certainly, but also just at… this. He had missed out on this, too, in childhood. And of course it wasn’t abuse to not show cartoons at home – he had vague memories, now possessed by Voldemort, of parts of his childhood that would actually count as abuse, he didn’t need this to accuse them of such. It was just another gap, another moment of realizing his childhood had not been okay.

“Why are all the parents dead?” Ron asked, hesitantly, over the credits.

Having forgotten the earlier conversation for a moment, and lost in the thoughts he was, Harry’s stomach jolted at this. “Oh. Hermione would have more to say about it,” he demurred, but Hermione was still deeply asleep on Ron’s shoulder. “I’m not sure. It makes them grow up faster, I guess.”

At Ron’s look he felt exposed. And then Ron lifted his chin in the direction of the coffee table. “Beedle the Bard. It’s the one everyone grows up reading. Third…. Yeah, that one, the library book,” he said when Harry’s fingers landed on the spine in the stack. “Take it. You’ve got to catch up,” he said with a lopsided smile.

“Really?” he said, though he was pulling it out already. “But you need it for class.”

“’S fine, they’ll know it. And if they don’t, telling the stories from memory is the realest way anyway. Dad used to do a great gnome voice,” he added with a grin. “I’ll make him proud. Hey, Hermione?” He prodded her. “Harry’s going. D’you want to say goodnight?”

“I’m awake…. Oh,” she mumbled when she saw that the film was over. “Did you like it?” she asked of approximately both of them.

“I loved it,” Harry said, with way too much feeling. Hermione’s look was gentle and embarrassing.

But she only pressed a hand to his elbow. “’Night, Harry.” She didn’t ask why he was taking Beedle the Bard along with his textbooks. He went.

The diadem was in the bedroom when he returned, and Harry really didn’t want him there, disrupting the feeling of… what? Healing, youth, acceptance. Something like that. “Are you finished?”

“For the evening.”

Harry left a ward on the door to indicate that the Aurors could lock them in whenever. “I’m showering, and then I want to know what you found.”

“Then I’ll ruin your shower now and tell you that I found nothing,” Riddle said. “Also, I don’t _answer_ to you.”

Harry waved him off. He deserved a better night than this. “Later.”

Riddle was no less prickly when he got out of the bath, but he was perched at the edge of Harry’s bed, ready to hand off magic. “Right, you found nothing,” Harry said, peering at the notes he held. “What didn’t you find, then?”

“These wards are… old,” Riddle said. “The farther back one goes, the less familiar the runes or syntax become. I need to interpret what I’ve found, but so far it has all been structural protection. Of the castle itself,” he explained.

“Is what you… whatever, structural as well?”

“I don’t _know_ ,” Riddle ground out.

Rather than being fucking obnoxious, Harry chose to find this endearing. He smiled. “He hates not knowing things, either.”

Riddle rolled his eyes at Harry’s sappy uselessness. “It is the first continuity, then.”

Harry desperately wanted to curl up with Beedle the Bard, but Riddle had already stolen that… safety, or whatever, of earlier. The eighth years who were both teaching and taking classes were told not to put too much effort into homework – there just weren’t enough hours in the day – but he should probably begin on his self-study of History soon. He stared at the ceiling, deeply unenthusiastic. “Which NEWTs did you take?” he asked Riddle.

“All of the ones that mattered.” An obvious brush-off. He was flipping one-handed through a lexicon of ancient runes; the other was on Harry’s knee, dispersing magic at a trickle.

“Did you take History?”

“I wouldn’t recall enough to tutor you.”

“Oh. No, I was just going to ask how it was.” He did need a tutor, now that he thought of it, but.

Riddle pursed his lips. “How did you do on the OWL?”

He gave a sheepish grin. “Dreadful.”

An incredulous look. “Why are you doing this? And moreover, why are you _allowed_ to do this?”

Because he got every privilege and dispensation he asked for, Harry did not say as a half-joke. “Uh, my head of house said I came back this year with new studiousness.”

“I know Minerva.”

“Do you? I guess you would….” He frowned, trying to do the math.

“She was Head Girl the first year I was a prefect. And she taught Transfigurations while Dumbledore was away with Grindelwald. Now,” he made an impatient motion, “ _why_.”

“Voldemort said I should,” he muttered. Eyebrows up. “It’s important for diplomacy, to explain… well, everything. Did you have Professor Binns, too?” he asked. He thought it would provide some excuse.

A twitch of Riddle’s lips. “Yes. Also post-mortem. I got an O on the NEWT anyway.”

Well, shit, no excuse after all. “Yes, yes, Voldemort tells me how brilliant he is at everything, too,” Harry waved him off. “I’m not you. Any of you. All of this is really a formality, so any passing grade….” He summoned the largest introductory textbook.

“How generous of them.”

“I know.” He let the book sit, closed and heavy, in his lap. “But really, I feel behind in _everything_. It’s never bothered me before, that I don’t know much history, that I don’t know much of how politics works….” Again his eye fell on Beedle the Bard, left where he’d dropped it on his pillow. “I don’t even know their fairy tales. Er, whatever they’re called for wixes. I would be a bad ambassador, if I didn’t fix that.”

Riddle glanced at the book. “I saw that,” he said. “Are you wanking to children’s books now, too?”

“Eff off. It was….” He couldn’t explain tonight, that his best friends had sat him down in front of a kids’ film and let him suck his thumb. He was still, well, embarrassed and thrilled by it. “My friends who teach Muggle Studies wanted to teach fairy tales. Or children’s stories, I guess.”

Riddle hummed, unimpressed. “NEWTs were a third of my lifetime ago. Discounting the time elapsed since my creation, of course. I’d be better equipped to tell you of necromancy, immortality, quasi-human politics….”

“Right.” He got up, approaching the fireplace. He felt Riddle’s eyes on his back. Dropping the locket into the flames, he drew back as the younger Riddle stepped out, brushing ash from his robes. “Hi,” Harry said.

“Hi,” the locket echoed, mocking. He took in the scene: diadem-Riddle on the bed, barely looking up from his work now, Harry in a baggy pajama set, books scattered across the bedspread. “This looks cozy.”

“Does it?” Harry drew the locket into the center of the room. He was always a bit on edge when he had to account for both of them at once. He backed into the sofa abruptly, stumbling, and the locket smirked. Ugh. Still, he gathered his words: “Would you study for the History NEWT with me?”

He knew that it was to his benefit that the locket had been created when Riddle was young enough to still think of himself as a student, to still take pride in his talent in school. “Even just tell me what the exam was like,” he went on, casually. “I haven’t got any friends who took it. I’m learning on my own, too, since they haven’t got a professor this year.”

The locket considered. “And in return?”

 _Of course_. “In return,” Harry echoed. “What do you want?” If the answer was _out_ , he was as free to go out as the diadem was. So Harry anticipated it’d be something more.

Riddle’s mouth went thin. “A wand.”

Oh. That… was a good request, and a hard one to fulfill. “ _Your_ wand?” Harry clarified. “My wand?”

“If you could get my wand out of Ministry seizure, I will teach you whatever you’d like.” This was clearly not an option. “Otherwise, any wand will do.”

It was a very reasonable request. Not one he knew how to accomplish. “I’m not really allowed out of the castle. Neither are you.”

“Mm.” He took an elegant seat on the sofa, surveying Harry.

“Let me write Ollivander,” Harry said with a sigh. “But I think all my post is being searched, too.”

“How embarrassing.”

Utter utter utter wanker. Harry took out parchment and a quill with a bit too much force.

_Dear Mr. Ollivander,_

_Regarding the spare wand we talked about this summer, I’ve changed my mind, and I do want it after all. It seems like it might be useful. I am enclosing gold. Please send back the wand you think will be most appropriate and useful._

_Thank you very much,_

_Harry Potter_

“I’ll post it in the morning,” he muttered.

“Spare wand?” the locket had read over his shoulder.

“Voldemort thought he wanted a spare at one time. Our wands share a core, so we can’t duel properly. Not that, uh, I want to, at this point. But Ollivander will know what it means.”

Riddle absorbed this quietly. “Why would your wands be ineffective against one another if you were prophesied to kill one another?”

Harry blinked at him. “That’s a good question.” A really good question. Maybe they were fated to punch one another to death.

 But Riddle only shrugged, then picked up the nearest History textbook. “I’ll need to re-acquaint myself with the material.”

“Really?” he said in surprise. Riddle arched his eyebrows, mocking. “I mean, thanks. Thank you.”

And then he really didn’t have anything else to do that night. Thank god. He slumped back onto his bed, pressing his side against diadem-Riddle’s (who grumbled and shifted his book to write away from Harry). He wasn’t going to stay awake long, he was exhausted, but he did flip open Beedle the Bard. It’s what his parents would have read him, if they’d lived. Maybe his dad would’ve done a great gnome voice, too. He did know them both to be show-offs, anyway. He turned toward the wall, to be a bit more discreet as he slid his thumb back into his mouth.

Out, he was out in about ten minutes. The last thing he recognized was the shift of the bed as the diadem stood, and low voices as the Horcruxes consulted on something. He was too far into the inky depths of sleep to listen.

 

 _Thursday, September 3._ He did send Ollivander’s letter in the morning. Classes went fine. The first years were tiny and timid. His heart ached, wondering that he’d ever been that small himself. The seventh and eighth years made him ache for different reasons. The afternoon was NEWT-level Transfiguration, with both Ron and Ginny. And then, after dinner, his first class of Runes with Malfoy.

He arrived at the dark classroom with no idea what to expect. Malfoy had told him it’d be apparent when he arrived. So… there he was. At least the candles had flared to life when he’d entered.

Malfoy was just a minute behind him. “Oh,” he said when he saw Harry had already arrived.

“What?”

“Perhaps….” Malfoy strode into the room, wand aloft to gauge… something. “Stand, mm, here.” He gestured with his wand. “And I’ll take your textbook.” He did, dropping it on the front desk. “You’ll need it for the second half of class.”

Harry moved to where Malfoy indicated – and as soon as he did, dozens of wards sprang into existence, creating a complex glowing cage that covered the classroom. “Oh my god.”

Malfoy raised an eyebrow. “Oh your Muggle god. If you fail, I suppose I’ll be back… well, I don’t teach Fridays,” he said. “I’ll be back to release you on Monday.”

It was such an absurd, non-threatening threat that Harry laughed. “Wouldn’t you rather stay and watch me struggle?” he offered. “What happens if I bugger them up? Shock?”

“It won’t take long to find out.” Malfoy seemed to take his offer, seating himself at the teacher’s desk.

So presumably the wards between him and his textbook were ones he was meant to know by heart. He stepped to the closest ward, deciphering the runes bound up in it, and smiled faintly. It was the same ward as he’d caught Voldemort in once that summer, on the day Voldemort had first asked him to top. Now, what was the counter-rune….

He did the first four wards without a problem. He worked slowly, but Voldemort had taught him to watch the runes as he cast the counter-spell or sketched the counter-runes, that the characters would writhe or shrink away or occasionally blink out of existence in an act of self-preservation. It was how he knew he was doing it right. He wondered if Malfoy knew this. But Malfoy had pulled out a book, and seemed to be working on homework. He sketched a counter-rune and watched the entire knot of runes curl in on themselves, and –

An explosion, from the back of the room. A snarl of thorny vines shot right at him, fast enough that he had to drop to the ground. In the process he kicked about five more wards, setting off more explosions of sparks, water, and – obnoxiously and inexplicably – glitter.

Malfoy had had the foresight to put a shield before the desk, and he surveyed the scene with a barely-suppressed smirk. “Well done.”

Harry was still flat on his stomach, wondering how to dispel the wards that now boxed him in. “What was _that_?”

“Some wards don’t appreciate being dismantled.”

He rolled over carefully, to gaze at the criss-crossed wards above him. The vines had receded, at least. He had a terrible vision of taking apart some of the security runes only for a booby-trapped ward to blow up half the castle. Actually – “How much work did you do on the castle wards?” He sketched and erased four different counter-runes on the nearest ward, until one of them made it squirm.

“Why, wondering which wards I left in your bedroom?”

It was a shame Malfoy couldn’t see him roll his eyes. “There’s something off about them,” he said vaguely. “I looked at them last night – just the ones behind the head table – but I didn’t recognize most of it. You didn’t see anything suspicious in them, did you?”

A cool silence. “You may as well say what you’re poorly trying to insinuate.”

“What?” He unbraided a ward at his face, until it fell to shreds.

“You think I sabotaged something?” His tone was icy.

“What – I – _No_ ,” he said firmly. A bitter snort, and Harry shot up she could look Malfoy in the face. He brushed two wards, both with boiling spells attached, and hissed as he tried to collect himself. Still: “No,” he said again, making deliberate eye contact. “Of course not.”

Malfoy’s mouth went tighter. “I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary,” he said. “We only re-cast the newer wards. The historic ones were left intact from the battles. So whatever you think is wrong with them….” He eyed Harry, skeptical.

Harry shrugged. “D’you want to know if I find anything?”

“I’d rather you didn’t _touch_ them,” Malfoy said, prickly. “Some of them took quite a lot of magic to cast. And some of them are historic artifacts.”

It would be petty to promise he wouldn’t touch them, without mentioning that it was the diadem’s project at this point anyway. “I’ll consult you before I disrupt anything,” he promised instead. And then he was dispelling a ward at waist level that kept flickering in and out of existence.

Only two more explosions before he could reach the desk, seizing his book victoriously. “Right,” Malfoy said. “It seems classtime is over.” He’d pulled out a pocketwatch. “As I said, I’ll be by for class on Monday.”

This time Harry could present him with an eyeroll. “I won’t be long.” A half-dozen wards stood between him and the door: they looked complicated but doable. “Thanks, by the way,” he said as Malfoy breezed through his own wards. “This, uh, must have taken forever.” It was intricate work, really; and he knew from experience that wards consumed a lot of magic, too.

“Don’t thank me. I made the sixth years do it.”

This was hilariously just like Malfoy, and Harry couldn’t help but grin. “Thank your sixth years, then.”

Malfoy was skittish. “You know we’re not friends,” he said. “Whatever Slytherin fetish he’s given you… leave me out of it.”

Harry did his best to wipe the smile from his face. “’Night, Malfoy.” He left without returning it.

And then Harry was alone, with complicated runes trapping him in the classroom. He could read some of the deterrents on the nearest ward: if he tried to walk through it, a panic attack. If he tried to disperse it, nightmares. The creator was clearly a fan of psychological trauma.

As he worked, he considered more of what he’d seen in the Great Hall. Those blossom shapes of the knots were particular; artistic, even. Other knots were done in ritual symmetry, or to imbue them with strength or dexterity or additional range. He’d left all of those particulars to Voldemort when they’d cast the airspace shield: it needed knots at its anchors, and Voldemort had chosen them for range then, but otherwise it was a structurally simple ward. In spite of what Riddle had sneered at him earlier, there must be a way to search wards in the vicinity. Next time he ended up in Voldemort’s mind, he’d do his best to ask him. It wouldn’t solve the problem of not knowing precisely what they were looking for, but it’d expedite the search. He wedged his wand tip into a knotted ward and it barely loosened.

At some point the wards grew tedious. At some point he was exhausted and ready for bed, because teaching came with early hours. At some point, he became distracted by how badly he had to piss. Well. He enjoyed the desperation and weight inside of himself for awhile. He thought of Voldemort, how amused and deprecating he’d be upon seeing Harry’s thighs pressed together. Harry was very alone, in this classroom and probably on this entire floor. He shoved a hand in his pocket, teasing himself enough to stave off desperation. He worked faster.

Minutes later, he unknotted a ward in the wrong direction, and it spat a volley of tiny fireballs at him. Caught off-guard, he lunged away, and hit another ward that felt like an electric shock. _Zap_! All his muscles spasmed at once. As he collapsed to the floor, he felt his pants grow wet.

Well, fuck. The electric jolt was mild, and his muscles stopped seizing a few moments later, though they ached. Tentatively, he slipped a hand beneath his robes, to feel how badly he’d disgraced himself.

Not much. He was still desperate, after all. A patch of wetness over his fly ran a couple inches down his inseam. Robes covered every multitude of sin, and thank god, that they didn’t have to live in close quarters together with every awkward adolescent erection on display. He might just… leave it.

His heart skipped a beat at the thought. Going around with a wet patch between his legs, a shameful secret, moist fabric pressed to his cock. He fucking loved the idea. He wanted to wank to it. Instead, he straightened, returning to his work.

He’d never make it out in time anyway. So… he wouldn’t. As he worked on the nearest ward, he eased off his desperate control. The feeling of letting go had some stupidly obvious connotations in his mind – that with it, he’d let go of anxiety, responsibility, fear. He wished for a nappy, and every relinquishment that it had come to mean for him. He wished for Voldemort to tie him down, to tell him there was nothing he could do for himself or anyone else. It was the only time anyone ever told him such things.

Wait – no, that line of thought hurt. He focused his gaze on the craggy ceiling until those feelings receded. But they didn’t entirely, they just mutated into a memory – Voldemort himself surrendered and helpless, as he mollified Bowersock by pissing himself, into his touch, a few days ago. He’d cast Scourgify continuously then, and it’d mostly worked. Harry was _great_ at Scourgify by now. Again he slipped a hand beneath his robes.

He let go at a trickle, still freezing when he felt the first streak of piss down his inner thigh. _Scourgify_. He only mouthed the incantation. Immediately he was dry; and then more piss spilled from him, making his shorts go hot and clinging all over again. _Scourgify._

He’d turned away from the door, now resolving to do the lot. This was… dangerously easy, and ridiculously hot. He could get away with this _anywhere_. He had an exhibitionist streak that they’d never acted upon, that only lived in his fantasy life, that he now may…. He swallowed. _Scourgify_.

Wetting himself was always a distraction and a relief. It always took him away from the shitty feelings that he got caught up in more often these days. He had considered going out in a nappy – _just in case_ , or for the sensation even if he didn’t wet it – because that always leveled his anxiety as well. He could do this. It’d be perverse as hell and – if he ever got caught – wildly unprofessional, but he could do it. Maybe just on bad days. Maybe just on days when he’d been kept up by Azkaban the night prior. Or days when the panic attacks lurked just beneath the surface. Or days when the papers made him want to never get out of bed again. It was childish, he knew it was, but it was such a _relief_ to feel childish for once in his life. The crotch of his jeans grew saturated. Scourgify.

He was getting hard with the utter wrongness of what he was doing, until his erection actually impeded him. His legs quivered. He left his jeans wet for the moment, hanging heavily from his hips. He went back to wards for just a minute, letting his cock swell and rub against the heat of his pants.

He could be discreet. A hand in his pocket, quick and tiny strokes. He stepped away from the wards in case he should pitch unexpectedly. His cock strained. He undid the fly, to touch himself through the soaked part of his pants, the moisture magnifying each sensation. His breathing grew quick. He rubbed himself harder, tense heat building inside him. He cycled through his sexual encounters and fantasies as he edged closer, but it was that night of Voldemort with Bowersock that drew him in: feeling Voldemort go slack, to give in. To know he had made himself desperate just for Harry’s sake…. It was wrong, but he was smiling. He’d come a long way, really, in being vulnerable, if only in Harry’s presence. Recalling the way Voldemort had sagged in relief when he let go, keeping his mind on Harry then as deliberately as he’d keep his gaze on the ceiling the other times he’d pissed for him…. Harry arched and jolted, coming thickly in the front of his pants. He fought back a throaty groan.

His hands shook as he cast Scourgify over and over, a half dozen times until he was immaculately clean. God, that was… sinfully easy. He could get away with all of this forever. When his head had cleared, he went back to Malfoy’s wards.

He escaped the classroom within the hour, not setting off any further wards, thank god. And when he returned to his room, the locket threw his history text on the table, told him to read the first two chapters and ask him if he had any questions. While this was slightly a pain in the arse thing to do, Harry hadn’t procured a wand for him/it/them yet, so it sort of looked like charity. Maybe he really did have a Slytherin fetish. Or maybe he expected so little of the Slytherins, anything like decency was disproportionately gratifying. Something like that.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Queer – now a catch-all for ‘non-normative expressions of gender and sexuality.’ It was being used like that in academic circles in 1998, but not so much in popular language, so having Ashwani and Hermione both use ‘queer’ in this way is a bit anachronistic and would probably be viewed as a little more abrasive than it is now. Sorry.
> 
> I assume the magical world doesn't have the same historical homophobia as the Muggle world does, since so much of Muggle homophobia comes from religion and from traditional gender roles. And on the latter: are witches even considered weaker or more submissive than wizards, when magic doesn't rely on physical strength and they could equally fuck your shit up? So idk, I'm writing with a world that has very much normalized and integrated more diverse sexualities than the Muggle counterpart.
> 
> The Lion King is Hamlet with lions – It is. Think about it.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A new wand, a shared dream, a meeting at the Ministry.
> 
> (Warning: some conversation about physical and sexual abuse in Azkaban.)

_Saturday, September 5._ The wand arrived promptly, but it caused an early morning of consternation. When he went to breakfast on Saturday, he found the rather unpleasant surprise of Moody and Camilla Brightbone seated at the high table. Brightbone drank coffee; they were both obviously waiting for him. He groaned aloud, and heard a snort behind him.

“All the attention getting to you, then?” Malfoy sneered as he passed. “Do they report to you now, is that it? Have you taken over the Aurors department?”

Harry stared. “That’s not it at all,” he said, in mild wonderment that Malfoy had gotten it so wrong. “If you sit close enough to eavesdrop, though, I’m sure you’ll find out.”

“Why would I do that?”

Harry raised his eyebrows and let Malfoy go ahead of him. It was too late to turn back to his rooms, and it’d only prolong whatever the problem was anyway. At least the Horcruxes weren’t animate this morning – they, like Voldemort, preferred to work later into the night than early in the morning. Still, he wondered if the Aurors _knew_. Knew that the Horcruxes could manifest, and these… shadows, or whatever, had been set loose on the castle by a loophole in a contract that was already very generous, all things considered. That he could think of about a dozen other reasons why he might be in trouble with the Aurors probably didn’t speak well of him. It was probably not a coincidence that the two most intimidating Aurors showed up either. He watched Malfoy take a seat a convenient distance away, and rolled his eyes. He approached.

Moody’s magical eye had been on him since he’d come up the dungeon corridor, and stayed on him even as his non-magical eye watched him sit. “Good morning.” He wanted very much to ask why he was in trouble, but he’d know soon.

“Potter, remind me your terms for keeping Voldemort safe,” Moody said.

“That I haven’t got any contact with him,” he said promptly.

“ _Have_ you had any contact with him?”

“No, sir.”

Moody inflated like an affronted owl. “Then why does he say that you’ve agreed to _marry_ him?”

Malfoy, having taken a badly-timed bite of toast, choked at this. “Anapneo,” Harry cast in the direction of the coughing fit behind him. “Because I have. We talked about it. We had a lot of time together to talk about a lot of things.” Here he was grateful to have Moody and Brightbone, at least. It would have felt much worse to lie to, say, Tonks and Kingsley.

“Did you?” Moody’s mouth had gone very tight.

“Weeks ago. Look, it’s not… _romantic_.” The word strangled him, because he was sitting before the two least romantic people in his life. “It’s so I can inherit his wand, and his body,” he pronounced acidly, “if you kill him.”

“That’s the Wizengamot’s decision,” Brightbone cut in. “We only apprehend and provide evidence. They decide appropriate sentences.”

“You know what I mean.”

A look of unpleasant surprise from her. “We are nowhere near sentencing him, anyway,” she said. “We won’t even visit the subject until after the new year.”

That was the mildest relief. “I don’t know why he’s asking now,” Harry relented. “Maybe he thinks it’ll take that long.”

Brightbone made the same affronted gesture as Moody had, and Harry wondered if it was Auror standard. “Why would we _ever_ allow you…?”

“I can do it without seeing him, right? It’s just a signature on a license.”

She and Moody exchanged a Look. “His trial was delayed to avoid spectacle, if you recall,” Brightbone said. “Do you _really_ want to add that chaos to your life?” A microscopic pause. “Or to his?”

Harry was unimpressed by this bit of manipulation. “Maybe it’ll distract him from all the _torture_ ,” he returned, childishly. Another choking fit behind him. No one bothered to help Malfoy this time.

Brightbone, surprisingly, didn’t even reprimand him. “As though they wouldn’t redouble their efforts if they thought he was _happy_.”

This… was true. Dammit. “If Voldemort’s asked, then he’s thought of it already.”

Moody: “Nevertheless, there’s no reason you should be allowed.” He said it elliptically, like that, as though even speaking the word _married_ aloud was vulgar.

He was tired of the exchange he was about to have because he had had it with everyone recently. _What do you want – what can I give you – what are you missing in your life._ Et cetera. “I haven’t got anything to offer,” he muttered. “I feel like I owe you too much already.”

“You do?” Moody gave him a sidelong look.

“Of course. So if the answer’s no, just tell me. Just tell _him_ ,” Harry added. “He’s already bargained away more than I have. Everything but his life.” Most of it, somehow, on Harry’s behalf. They were dissecting themselves for one another’s sake. Queer, bloodless Horcruxes.

Moody’s jaw worked. “There’s quite a few people who will need to be consulted,” he said. “We’re not telling you yes or no now. More of them will be opposed than in favor.”

“I… expect so, yeah.” That he wasn’t getting a flat _no_ today was already a miracle.

“They’ll assume he’s taking advantage of you.”

“That’s what everyone’s thought all along, isn’t it?” He tried not to say it in a bitter tone. “I’m not stupid, I know how it looks.” He did still remind people of a child. He resolved right then to grow a beard. Maybe it’d help.

“Does he want your money?” Brightbone asked, curious and thoughtful. “Because wixes don’t usually share assets in the same way that Muggles do. You may not know that. _He_ may not know that.”

This was the most cynical, least romantic conversation he’d ever had. “He’s always refused my money,” he waved off the concern. “He’s never taken anything that I haven’t given him. And I haven’t given him much.” He thought of magic here, that Voldemort could more or less draw magic from Harry’s skin, but he’d always wait for Harry press it into him. Even when he was desperate and drained. Even in the days after the Fiendfyre, that he’d slowly been strangled in the dark rather than ask. His stomach hurt at the recollection. “He… doesn’t talk about his own death a lot. He hates naming it, and thinking about it, and letting other people think of it. That one day he could be mortal.”

“He _will_ be,” Brightbone corrected severely. “The Horcruxes can’t survive.”

“No,” Harry agreed. “They can’t.” He spared a moment to worry if this would count as killing the two versions of Riddle he was just coming to know. “But when he does talk about his death… you should listen. He’s too superstitious to lie about it.”

This quieted both Aurors. Finally, Moody: “The answer’s probably going to be no. But give us a few weeks.”

“Thank you, sir. Ma’am,” he added to Brightbone.

Neither answered. And then Brightbone was pulling a thick envelope from her inner robes. “And then there is this.” She dropped it before him. He thought incredulously at first that it was a Howler – but no, it’s a darker shade of red, and not smoking anyway. “It came yesterday morning. We’ve already searched for curses, our standard panel.”

This must be the wand, which meant Ollivander had posted it as soon as Harry’s letter had arrived. Good man. Unless that was just how people reacted when Voldemort was involved, immediately and without question or dissent. The Aurors hadn’t re-sealed the envelope, so Harry drew out the wand. Other than a tag indicating the wand was cypress wood with phoenix feather, there was no note.

“Ollivander said you wanted a spare,” Brightbone said. Her voice was not careful but dangerous. “Does your current wand not suit you anymore?”

Well. It didn’t, in a way. He drew it from his sleeve. He hadn’t adapted to the new weight of it, even now. “I don’t know,” he muttered, and it didn’t even feel like a lie in this moment. “He told me my wand was owed a death. That it… reacted, that night Voldemort and I didn’t die. He can’t take it off.”

Camilla ran her wand over Harry’s holly one, and was apparently satisfied with what she found. “See to it that we never find the new wand in Voldemort’s hands,” she said, her tone sharp anyway. “If you’re trying to subvert any Ministry restrictions…. Or if you’re trying to get around your own restrictions on dark spells,” she threw in. “You know that’s not tied to your wand.”

“No. Of course not.”

Moody had been with them at Ollivander’s that day, of course, the day Harry learned his wand would kill somebody. “Should we take it?” he asked, examining the holly wand with his magical eye. “Might be able to defuse it. Might just be able to keep it somewhere safe. In a manner of speaking.”

It was a kind offer, really – and just a kind reaction, that he didn’t follow Brightbone’s accusations with his own. Still, Harry shook his head. “It’s fate,” he said with a very small smile. “Can’t get around it. I know it only makes it worse to try.”

Moody gave him an appraising look. “Yes,” he said blandly. “Now, if we tell you you’re needed at a Ministry meeting later this month, and that Voldemort ‘ll be there too, you’ll know better than to assume it’s a _reward_?”

He laughed shortly. “Have I done anything worth rewarding?” he asked. Still, his heart was light at the prospect of actually seeing Voldemort. “I can be there. If you want me there. Could you ask one of the Aurors to cover my classes that day?”

“Yes.”

Harry hesitated. “How is everything? How are the Muggles, how is the legislation?” A beat. “How is Cornwall?”

He couldn’t ask directly how Voldemort was. He didn’t need to anyway – he knew he was alive and that was as much as he was perhaps entitled to know. “Fine,” Moody said shortly. “There’s not much more you should know than’s been in the papers.”

He couldn’t explain that he found the papers generally too depressing to read these days. “Right. Of course.” He’d have to catch up.

“He cast at Cornwall without you. He will again tomorrow. Seems the distance suits his abilities.”

Ow. Still, he said, “Good.”

Moody’s magical eye had slipped to peer into the dungeons – even though they were approximately over the Slytherin common room, nowhere near Harry’s suite. “And the Horcruxes?”

Harry’s stomach lurched. Even though the Horcruxes were inanimate, safely on his mantel at the moment, he still felt caught. For a split second he wondered if that was what Moody was looking for – but of course, none of them knew the Horcruxes could manifest. He’d need to be more careful to keep it this way. “They’re fine,” he said. “Content, you know. The castle’s magic seems to be enough for them.”

“You haven’t got them on.” Statement, not a question.

“No, sir. I usually leave them in my rooms, unless….” He paused. Vulnerability had disarmed them so far. “Unless they’re restless, or I’m depressed. They fortify my soul as much as his.” They both looked unhappy with this. “We are the same,” Harry reminded them with a minute smile. “I thought it was allowed, that I could take them out?” He was trying now to mentally calculate why Moody had asked, if some remnant of Riddle’s magic had shown up elsewhere in the castle. “I can leave them all the time, if you want. Like I said, they’re mostly content. As content as an object can be.” Right, that might have overdone it.

Moody raised his eyebrows. “Aurors come across more malcontent objects than you’d think,” he said. “They communicate with you?”

“Ye-es,” he said, drawing out the word uncertainly. “They’re part of my soul. When I’m wearing them… their magic can be restorative like mine is restorative for Voldemort. Or if they’re unhappy… they communicate like you’d say a Dementor can. They can pull up thoughts and feelings. Or just make me feel, I dunno, cold.”

Brightbone’s posture was brittle. “Surely they can exploit this power.”

“Oh. No, then I take them off and leave them in my sock drawer alone for awhile, until they cool off,” he said cheerily. Neither of them reacted, more’s the pity. “But I wrote myself into the vows, remember. That I’m one of Hogwarts’s residents, so they can’t hurt me either. And they haven’t.”

“Mm,” she frowned.

“I _would_ come to you if anything were wrong,” he said. “Whether you believe that or not.”

“That is reassuring.” She didn’t believe it at all. Fine.

“Do you need anything else from me?” he asked, looking between them. “Uh, research, magic? Anything to make the world go right,” he offered vaguely.

Moody found this an amusing and useless offer. “I’ll deviate from Albus here,” he said in a grumble, “and tell you that the fate of the world does _not_ lie with you. Pass your NEWTs and stay out of trouble.”

Harry couldn’t help it, he grinned. “I’ll try.”

Still grim: “See that you do.”

That was it. The Aurors moved to the other end of the high table to consult with Squire and Rye, the castle’s Aurors this week. But Harry only felt it as they passed, briefly enough that he wouldn’t have noticed if he’d been focused on anything else: the prodding sensation of Legilimency, only for a moment as it detached itself from his psyche. But the sort of… looseness in his mind indicated that a good Legilimens had been inside for much longer.

_Fuck shit sodding hell._

He glanced at Moody and Brightbone, who were drawing toward a side chamber with Squire and Rye. _Fuck_. Moody had said Albus had warned him away from Legilimency, but he’d never wondered about Brightbone. She’d never mentioned working with psychological magic – but then, what did he know of her, really? Voldemort had said it was a guarantee that at least some of the Aurors worked with Legilimency, that it’d make interrogations go that much faster. Harry thought back to Moody dropping Veritaserum in his tea, saying coolly, _We’re well within our rights_. Shit.

And yet… Harry had gotten everything he’d wanted. Nothing remotely bad had happened. Nothing had been taken from him. The Horcruxes were safe and he’d even procured a wand for them. He might practice some cobbled-together form of Occlumency most of the time, to dull the sensation passed between him and Voldemort, but he assumed, well, that it only worked with Voldemort. But the Aurors had said nothing about his lies, had dutifully listened and accommodated him. Either his Occlumency was better than he thought, or…. _Or_. God. He took an apple in each hand and turned to go. He noted with some amusement that Malfoy had made himself scarce. Maybe he’d break another story to Rita Skeeter. Nobody would believe rumors of their marriage, really.

The Horcruxes would have to stay put while Moody was around, maybe the entire day. But now that he’d pitched the idea of using this new wand as his own, he actually liked it. He went to examine it in the privacy of his room.

The phoenix feather felt familiar, of course: strong, dispassionate, driven. Obstreperously _alive_ , just like them both. Cypress… he couldn’t place its character. A couple spells, though, and he could feel its weight. Not physical, not like his burdened holly wand. But this was a wand meant to cast _significant_ magic. Life-changing magic. He would keep it around. He could see how the Aurors had quickly reached the conclusion that this was a wand for Voldemort (and, well, it _was_ ). It felt like him too, and Harry liked it for that as well.

Mid-morning. His Saturday mornings were usually filled with Quidditch practice, and the absence hurt. Ginny was captain this year – she’d asked him to tryouts today, to coach and give his opinions – but had seemed understanding when he’d turned her down. Anyway, his head and heart were filled with Voldemort. Slipping on both Horcruxes, because it was easier to reach his mind when his magic was nearby, he pressed himself into sleep.

Thank god, thank god, thank god. Voldemort lay in bleary light on the thin mattress of his cell. He recognized Harry’s presence immediately.

_I miss you_. Harry pressed the thought upon him. _So much.. I wish I could hold you now._

“Harry.” Parseltongue, of course. Voldemort took inventory of all the chaos in Harry’s mind. Loneliness, depression, anxiety. Ah, the Aurors had been by. He snorted at the thought of discussing marriage with Moody and Brightbone, of all people. Harry’s reaction was wry and wordless – but, Voldemort gathered, they hadn’t said no. Neither of them knew why that might be.

“The Minister wasn’t a romantic to keep us together,” Voldemort said, “and Moody’s not a romantic to entertain the possibility now.” His mouth curved. “We’ll cause a _spectacle_ ,” he echoed when he found Brightbone’s words. “I’d rather say we would. Offer it – or I’ll offer it – as a distraction at a time that the Ministry needs one. When all the barely-judicial executions begin weighing too heavily on the public.” He rolled onto his stomach, pulling a pillow over his crossed arms. “It _can_ be done with a signature on a license. If we’re meant to be a distraction, it’d have to be rather more than that. I haven’t been to many wixen weddings,” he mused. “None recently, at least. Lucius and Narcissa’s, but that was twenty years ago by now. Bellatrix and Rodolphus were even longer…. Regardless, it would profane all of your aspirations for real marriage and a real family,” he added. It was the second time he’d apologized (or his version thereof) for this, and Harry’s amusement fluttered inside of him.

Harry’s thoughts weren’t in words, they rarely were, so it took him a moment to process. _You are my family_. He’d thought of this proposal – not the entire relationship, certainly, but the proposal – as an advantageous performance and legal guarantee. A real marriage – a real family? – wouldn’t look like this. But it’s what Harry saw in themselves. Peculiar.

It was a loaded term for them both, to say the least. Maybe Harry had mistaken them for a family because he didn’t know any better. Voldemort had noticed he was careful to only christen the family who’d raised him as _relatives_ ; it held a sacred distinction for him. Yet the boy easily fell into using the word _home_ to describe any tenuous and temporary dwelling they shared. One of them, it was obvious, understood nothing.

Harry was shuffling memories then, to do his best to show Voldemort what had transpired. He’d given the Horcruces far more freedom than Voldemort had expected – he’d known the Aurors weren’t aware that the Horcruces could manifest, but that didn’t mean they had to have run of the castle. Harry’s mercy was legendary. He’d even gotten them a _wand_. There was something…. “Slow down,” he muttered. “What’s wrong with the wards?”

Harry pressed forward his exchanges with the diadem, who insisted that something was wrong but he couldn’t tell what. Harry wanted a seeking spell so they might at least look more quickly for strong curses, even if they’d still have to guess at what they were. They’d looked at the wards that ran behind the head table – where most of the major ones were crafted – but Harry had found nothing, and more worryingly, Riddle had found nothing either.

At this, Voldemort snorted. “I wouldn’t specialize in runes for another few years. Just enough time to learn how to curse the Defense post,” he added cleverly, because Harry’s exasperation never grew old. “Whatever he says, he doesn’t know much beyond NEWT level runes. Bring books.”

_Of course_ , Harry thinks in perfectly sardonic words. He forges on: it’s something do with the castle’s structure or maybe its security, and nobody else has noticed anything. But the diadem has said that as a founder’s heir he’s uniquely sensitive to the castle’s magic. Harry conveys this tinged with strong doubt.

He nearly smiles. “Yes,” he confirms. “The founders built the castle of their own magic and their own blood. Stones… come alive, in those circumstances. Wixen homes grow with their inhabitants, and so did the castle. It’s how I first began to suspect my lineage, late in my first year.”

Harry’s suspicion recedes – and really, it’s absurd that he should trust Voldemort and not _Tom_ (as much as the distinction pains him, it is useful) but it’s also perfectly sensible. “Never let them lie to you,” he tells Harry, because he knows how adept his younger selves would be at crafting a perfect, dangerous narrative. “Never let them lie to you and never let them hurt you.” He is fierce in this.

Harry feels – whatever one might call what Voldemort feels toward the Horcruces now. Anger, disdain. A bit too exasperated to be hatred, but. _But_. Harry isn’t meant to have felt this, but for his grotesque amounts of empathy, and he offers the mental equivalent of a wince. More emotions are offered up that convey, approximately, that the Horcruces are utter wankers but also fine. They’d given him magic and euphoria, to combat the persistent depression he lived with these days. The older one seemed fiercely protective of the castle; the younger one fiercely protective of the current Slytherins and their shit circumstances. Harry approved of these righteous indignations. They would keep him company. The younger one, really just barely out of NEWTs, was going to _tutor_ him, for god’s sake. And the older one had gotten him off a few times now.

Harry immediately… well, he pulls at that thought as though he could rescind it. He’s consumed with the feeling of a blush. _Sorry_. No, it isn’t just embarrassment, it’s _guilt_. What he understands of it. Oh, Harry.

He’d gathered that fidelity was some part of Harry’s equation of love and family and the rest of it, so he tempers his amusement in his answer. “I had hoped you would,” he murmurs. He can say it elliptically, Harry would gather what he meant. It’s the best case scenario that the Horcruces would fuck Harry, though not as a replacement for himself. Somehow he is self-conscious in thinking this. He has never meant this much to someone before, personally. Ideologically, of course – most of the Death Eaters now are proving they’d die for him, whether they’d like to or not – but Harry’s earnest need of him is… new. It would be alarming if it weren’t Harry, blood of his blood, soul of his soul. But the boy really doesn’t do well with being alone too long. It is curious. “I told you to pursue average relationships this year. Which you’ve failed to do,” he says wryly. He doesn’t know if Harry wants permission or forgiveness or something else entirely. Harry is his only guide in… love, or such things, so he’d wait quietly for some indication.

Harry himself doesn’t know how to feel about the Horcruces, it’s clear from the confusing flickers of memories he tries pushing forward in succession. This is exhausting. “Stop,” he finally says. Harry doesn’t stop – he is uncontrolled in sleep, and his Occlumency is inadequate still. “ _Stop_ ,” Voldemort insists, irritated this time. The thoughts cease, only because they’ve been replaced by trepidation. He’ll never apologize. “ _Please_ fuck the Horcruces, and anyone else you need to fuck. That you’d like to,” he amends, because that’s how it is with humans, isn’t it. “You only need to survive as well.” It’s what Harry has said to him often enough.

The feelings that stir in Harry hit hard enough to make Voldemort wince. He doesn’t react, because it’d only snowball ridiculously into recursive guilt on Harry’s part. Instead, in a tone of confidence: “If you’d like to remain chaste, then you’ve got a chastity cage. You _do_ still have it?” he asks, and Harry thinks in the affirmative. “Good. If you don’t want to remain chaste….” He paused to make it sound more like a confession. “I dream of you fucking the Horcruces,” he says, and it’s true, and he feels arousal stirring in his belly. “I dream of you getting fucked by them. Either of them, both of them at once,” he suggests sweetly. “You’d have to beg one of them to fill your pert arse while you sucked the other one off.” He’s swelling against his trousers. A shame he can’t get himself off now. Maybe he’d get Harry off again, at least. They turn all their trauma into fetish; it’s the only way to face it.

Voldemort presses gently into Harry’s memories. He finds that the diadem got Harry off in a wet nappy once. Harry must have been humiliated and delighted. He had assumed his younger selves would be too… fastidious and independent to appreciate what goodness Harry found in ageplay. He shuffles a bit more, to find the diadem calling Harry a _darling little fetishist_. Well. A bit more and they reach Harry’s anxiousness over being called gay, over being (at least to one overly-earnest Hufflepuff) a gay _role model_. Harry can tell what memories Voldemort considers now, and is awaiting his response – any response. His lips curve. “I took on any label that benefited me. I took any lover who would benefit me, too. I learned much about upper class propriety from my peers, but what I had not learned in school – well, it would be better for my transgressions to be those of wealthy Muggles, not poor wixies. I owe much of what I know of elite society from those Muggles.”

But in this confession, there’s a sensation of grief. Harry heard some of this from the Horcrux, their pragmatic approach to sexual liaisons. Harry, perhaps rightfully, has come to wonder if it means Voldemort only wants him for his advantages as well.

Ah. His erection subsides and he sighs. He will not get either of them off after all. He’d gone looking for erotic memories and found _this_ instead. “ _Have_ I taken advantage of you?”

It’s a conversation that would be better had in person. Even if Harry sometimes struggles with finding words to go with his passions, he should have the chance to try. Unless, hell, maybe he’ll like just flinging feelings at Voldemort, leaving him to sort it out. Harry hesitates, thinking approximately the same. But they won’t see each other for weeks, and when they do, they’ll be surrounded by Ministry wixies. So they’ll do this imperfectly or not at all.

Harry does his best to hand off feelings in succession: the Horcrux’s utter indifference to such things as love and attraction. How differently Harry thought of sex than Riddle did. The Horcrux _instrumentalized_ sex, and for Harry this was unthinkable. Sex just… was.

He wasn’t naïve, he pushes this insistence at Voldemort. Certainly he’d heard enough boys talk of girls of using sex appeal to get what they wanted. But then, he thinks, it becomes a rather different relationship. Transactional. He thinks, in an unlikely juxtaposition, of Voldemort telling him that everything is politics. The point is clear: is sex politics, too, then?

Voldemort murmurs in appreciation, both because Harry’s question is thoughtful and because he managed to convey it without words. This boy. “Sex is the most fundamental instance of politics,” he begins, slowly.

_Is everything sex, then_? Harry shoots back, in words.

He’s startled into a laugh. Harry’s acerbic moments are his favorite. “Not everything is sex,” he reassures him. “But sex is political in, well, countless ways. Should we just speak of ourselves, then?”

Harry feels some reluctance at this, that the referenda on their relationship are not his favorite. _Yes_ , he finally replies.

“Sex was instrumentalized from the beginning. Last year,” he clarifies. November, abducting Harry from Hogwarts, crafting an immortality potion (technically, a potion to slow the spread of mortal damage, but it’s all in the same genre) using first Harry’s blood and then his semen. “I never anticipated the opportunity to use sex magic with you until, of course, I had it. It was… subtle,” he said with a sigh. “Not just subtle magic – although it _did_ create subtle magic – but subtle in the ways it was crafted around the relationship. It becomes an entirely different component if tinged with love, fear, hatred, spite. Whether it’s collected consensually or non-consensually. What I needed from you…..” He stops. “I didn’t understand what I needed from you,” he says, too bluntly. “And I denied it for much longer. Magic should be a _science_ ,” he pronounces, because he does still believe this, “but what I saw of sex magic looked like art.”

He doesn’t evoke Dumbledore’s name. He feels it in the back of Harry’s mind anyway, knowing that they’d fight about the magic of love. Voldemort does not like being wrong, least of all to _him_. Harry dismisses it.

Perhaps it’s fitting that they’re doing this in the recesses of Harry’s mind after all; he’s learned a lot here. “I won’t tell you that I’ve used you,” Voldemort says. “I will tell you that I’ve needed you.” It is horrible, utterly horrible to say. “When I told you – I couldn't love you” – the memory still twinges in Harry – “it was because I couldn’t imagine willingly taking on a vulnerability. You see where it has gotten me,” he says wryly, “when you are my only bargaining tool.”

Harry jumps in here with a flurry of thoughts. That he has their relationship as leverage, as collateral, as _vulnerability_ , is holding both Voldemort’s political aspirations and the entire Unification together. It made his investment in the world-to-come believable. It made his _humanity_ believable. Voldemort tries not to recoil at this word when it surfaces in Harry’s mind. “I never wanted to be human,” he murmurs, anyway.

But he collects himself, because it is important that Harry should understand this next bit. “If sex is shorthand for how one chooses the people with whom to be vulnerable,” ( _with_ whom? _to_ whom? he wonders) “then of course you hear the political implications in that. If it’s a shorthand for desire and belonging, then it’s political as well. You understand.”

It is charming, the emotions evoked in Harry by Voldemort’s didactic moments. Harry is aroused by _mentorship_ , delightfully unlikely in such an average student. Or perhaps he would’ve done better in school if he’d had more sexual tension with his professors.

He doesn’t mean for Harry to hear this idle musing, but he does, and dryly pushes forward a memory of Snape accusing him of the same. _What finally impresses some small intellectual curiosity on you is the promise of orgasm_ , Severus says to him. _Yes_.

“I can’t answer your accusation,” Voldemort says softly. “As you say, everything of my politics is bound up in… _you_ at the moment. It is all predicated on you. You are too volatile,” he adds sharply, “and this must change, for the sake of national security. Imagine another country taking you hostage, for example. Almost every one of our vows would fail, in one way or another. I am not inclined to make anyone else indispensable to me, however,” he says, wry. For now, it all must be Harry.

_Hogwarts_. Harry forms the word, immediately and perfectly. Again the memory of the Horcrux explaining that Hogwarts was built with his blood, that it is his only lineage. He’s right: he cares for Harry and he cares for Hogwarts, and the rest of the world may burn. Those are not enough to indicate his humanity, as such.

Later, he will consider this later. For now, he sits up, wincing at the motion. “Do you know enough to know what you want?” he asks.

_Yes_. The snarls of emotion inside Harry have eased.

“If you’re able to share magic, I’ll get us off.”

Harry struggles to align their magic in the correct way at first. It goes against every rule of magic that he should be able to do this at all. Their connection is _quantum_ , disregarding the laws of space and time imposed on all others. The Unspeakables would be fascinated. He feels the first surge of warmth into his core.

Harry is confused; he is concerned. _You feel different_ , he conveys, approximately.

Voldemort effects indifference. It’s hardly difficult: the Healers hand him pills every night to serve as sedatives, mood stabilizers, anti-depressants. Baobab is the only one he recognizes, and he’s not permitted to ask. They could hand him cyanide and he’d be equally expected – obligated – to swallow them. Complacency is the cost of his medical attention, and it could be worse.

Harry gathers some of these thoughts. Harry swallows baobab every night too, but doesn’t find it _humiliating_. Humiliating to think how unreliable ( _mad, insane, unhinged_ , the much less pleasant words hang in the back of his mind) people consider him without… all of this. Magic is more stabilizing – magic, as Harry is only finding out, is its own cure for melancholia. But of course he’s not entitled to magic, so he swallows pills instead. The side effects in themselves aren’t bad, but the… _humanity_ , the word he can’t escape today, makes the effects of Azkaban much worse. “I am different,” he agrees briefly. “It is an effect that will fade with distance and time away from this place.”

Harry was meant to be pacified by this. He is not. _Get out_ , he thinks severely. _You’re not a martyr._

Coming from Harry, this is really quite funny. “No,” he agrees. “You are.” Wordless frustration from Harry. Voldemort goes on: “Darling, nothing can kill me but _you_. It is the gift of the prophecy. And my place here is still advantageous. You do know that the Wizengamot is eviscerating itself?” he asks, because Harry was there that night, when Bones learned of the abuse by Bowersock. Harry pushes a memory at him: a note from Scrimgeour, asking for information because nobody would divulge anything. He is amused. “Watch the papers. Amelia will create something interesting out of her frustration. She always does.”

He has enough magic to fix his hands. He’ll do it subtly: he hasn’t looked down at his hands with Harry here at all. They only hurt when he flexes them. But when he moves to straighten his broken fingers – every one of them, one at a time, done by a guard with a hammer as half the Wizengamot watched – Harry feels some portion of his pain and erupts in anger. He can’t tell what they’ve done to him, they’ve only hurt him as usual, and haven’t healed him as he _promised_ they always did.

Harry’s anger feels like screaming inside his skull, and Voldemort is curling in on himself. “Stop, _stop_ ,” he insists, because it hurts worse than the rest of it, because Harry is the only one with access to his soul. “You – _fuck_.” His eyes are wet, he’s curled with his throbbing hands pressed into his stomach. His insides are alight with flame. “You are hurting me,” he hisses, furious.

Instantly Harry pulls back. He wouldn’t have done it if he’d known the effect, but now that he does know – “ _Never_ ,” Voldemort chokes out. If the boy were actually here he would’ve cursed him. He feels old, familiar hatred boiling inside himself. His? Harry’s? It hardly matters. “ _Never_ do that again,” he manages. He’s too upset to cast a proper healing spell right now – or really, Harry is, but they are both accountable for one another’s minds these days.

Harry has only now realized the effect of his fury on Voldemort. He is mildly guilty, but much more intrigued. _Are you allowed to be angry?_

Oh. It’s a good question, actually. As he doesn’t know the full effects of the psychiatric drugs they give him these days, nor the accompanying spells, this could certainly be accomplished magically. “Aversion therapy,” he gives the proper name to Harry, struggling to moderate his tone. His breathing is still hard, deliberate. “It’s an interesting suggestion. Perhaps.”

And then his breathing slowed, and his sweat cooled on his skin. He carefully, painfully unclenches his hands from where they are buried in his lap. He holds them up, for Harry to see, because otherwise he’ll imagine much worse. His fingers are crooked, and limp in places. The bruises stain his pallid complexion in wine and burgundy and dusty purple. “They were unhappy with my legislation,” he says. Some of them want wixen early education to remain the work of the parents, and it’s a stupid, _stupid_ thing over which to become vindictive, but it’s also a mild punishment, all things considered.

Harry is fascinated, because he hadn’t considered any of this to be of life-or-death significance. Harry is still very young. He sighs. “Let me cast healing spells,” he mutters. “Your magic would continue to help.” Is this how it feels when humans ask for help from one another? He doesn’t understand how it’s not a deterrent unto itself. Surely self-reliance is nearly always easier. Even when Wormtail ministered to him, literally held him like a child, he didn’t feel this vulnerable. But Harry presses open their connection carefully, to hold a steady stream of magic upon him.

It takes four iterations of _Confervo_ to set his hands right. The guards and the Wizengamot will be unhappy – Madame Avril had been insistent that the healer let it alone last night, ‘as a lesson.’ In his experience, healers were politically neutral – but then Bright had jumped in, insisting the same. So, his hands were meant to torment him today, and to be healed tonight. He flexes them. _Episkey_ , twice, for the bruises. “There,” he says lowly, turning them over for Harry’s examination. He sits back against the cold, uneven wall. “Perhaps you’re right, that the legislation we work on shouldn’t be a cause of life and death.” He picks that thought of Harry’s back up, because it is important. “But it also all matters desperately. That there is no decision too insignificant to have a severe impact, in such a small and precarious society as ours. Anything may ripple, anything may devastate us. Which is why these _ignorant purebloods_ ” – he snarls the phrase. He feels Harry’s surprise. Later – “don’t know enough to anticipate the outcomes of their political whims; don’t know enough to find research telling them their political whims are stupid; and think that their lineage, prestige, and wealth will somehow save them if society collapses. Obviously if it does, we _all_ die, because there’s no respite or preservation in a community this small.”

_Even you_? is Harry’s question. He says it in wonderment and disbelief.

Voldemort’s mouth quirks. Harry’s faith in him is unparalleled. “If magical Britain collapsed, I’d leave. And take you with me,” he adds lightly, “because you can’t properly die either, at the moment. But no matter – Britain will be fine if they implement my decisions. The wixies and Muggles both. And they _are_ ,” he adds, because he can tell Harry isn’t as aware of politics as he should be. “They just resent their own ignorance and irrelevance.” Hence, their anger. Hence, his hands.

Harry thinks in self-defense that anytime he reads political news, it makes him think of how much he wants to hex nearly everyone in the Wizengamot until he can’t hold a wand straight anymore.

“They all want to hex one another as well,” Voldemort assures him. “It is part of the charm.” Something like a _sigh_ from Harry. “And really,” Voldemort continues, “you are not useful to them if you aren’t versed in their politics. Don’t become complacent. Skip the Prophet – “

_The Prophet is shite_ , is Harry’s instant reaction. And then some wordless anxiety about the bollocks it’s always printing about _them_ , individually and together. Sex symbols, indeed. Voldemort doesn’t dignify it with a response.

“Get a subscription to _Wix Policy Weekly_ if you haven’t already. _The Unexpurgated Gazette_ for their international reporting. _The Quibbler_ ,” he says with a faint sigh, “especially for its coverage of interworld politics. Also quasi-human affairs. Skip the editorials.”

And Harry conveys that he’s friends with the editor of the Quibbler. No, his daughter. The blonde one, from the Ministry. He raises his non-eyebrows. “She is spirited. So is her father.”

_You should meet her_ , Harry thinks with enthusiasm. They both feel the thought get yanked back, as though he didn’t mean it. It is absurd to think of introducing Voldemort to Harry’s friends. What would they say to one another? What does anyone ever say to Voldemort?

He will concede this point. He was practiced at putting people at ease in his youth. He was attractive then. Charming, nearly personable. And then a long stretch of only relating to people in fear. Now… he thinks of Machiavelli, as always. _Fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never fails_. He will never make people _love_ him, that opportunity passed at least forty years ago, and now he is just… caught. He is adept at navigating the precise back-biting of politics, but that’s something else altogether.

Of all this, he says to Harry: “I should like to meet Ms. Lovegood. Her work is thoughtful.” He doesn’t catch or comprehend all the feelings stirred in Harry at this. He agrees, tentatively.

He prods Harry’s memories for anything else he needs to address. Whatever has failed in Hogwarts’s wards is out of his control. He reaches the memory of Harry and the locket slipping into the Slytherin common room. They should get out, while they can. Nothing good will come to people associated with the Death Eaters this year – even as tenuous a connection as merely belonging to Slytherin.

He feels Harry ache, unexpectedly. He is bewildered at first. Harry isn’t friends with any of those people. The few times Voldemort has been in Draco’s company, the boy could barely hold his tongue where Harry was concerned, and the feeling is certainly mutual. Of the others in the room – Rowle’s daughter, the one Harry watched. Avery’s son. Yaxley’s daughter. Others whose families were sympathetic but not properly involved: Greengrass, Zabini, Archuleta, Dunlop. It would incriminate Harry to know these specifics so he withholds them. “They are resourceful,” he says instead.

Harry wonders where they will go. No, where _should_ they go. Nott is with Zabini’s mother in Rome, but certainly they can’t all…. His thought trails off.

“I don’t know,” Voldemort says lowly. Any of his suggestions would be suspect anyway, if the Slytherin students have got any scrap of self-preservation. Harry has half-formed thoughts about Slytherin’s chamber, and it’s not a bad idea, but…. “They won’t agree to anything they didn’t think of themselves,” Voldemort warns Harry. Faint agreement.

They seem to be done. He returns to what he thought Harry wanted to begin with: “Let me get you off.” He attempts to look through Harry’s mind again, encounters or fantasies to pull sensation from.

Harry is reluctant and recently improved in Occlumency. “ _What_ ,” Voldemort mutters, bewildered, when Harry pushes a memory out of his reach. Very reluctantly, the boy yields it back.

The memory he’s withholding is… well, not _innocent_ per se, but hardly scandalous. A few nights ago, Harry alone in the Runes classroom, trapped and desperate. Voldemort slides his tender hand down the front of his robes. He dips into the sensation, the emotion, as Harry’s control slips, as he considers the multitude of sins a robe will hide. Harry might be shameless but he will also never stop blushing when he pisses.

Warmth pouring into his pants, and Voldemort hasn’t got to go himself to appreciate the feeling. It’s economical, handing off feelings between them. A twitch of his fingers. _Scourgify_.

At this moment, Harry feels a surge of – _what_? Guilt or shame or sadness. Still, he doesn’t understand. “Harry….”

_I got the idea from him_. He offers it as a confession and apology.

Bowersock. They don’t speak of him often, but when they do, Harry always favors that weighted pronoun over his name. Voldemort knows it’s how enough people refer to him as well, and it makes him feel curious, that there is his own personal He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named in his life. But Harry would only be mortified if he said this, so he doesn’t.

Harry’s right, though: he had been present last week when Bowersock told him to piss himself, and cleaned him up with Scourgify, cast with a touch. It had been erotic then because Harry’s thoughts had drawn him away from the man. And he doesn’t want to tell Harry not to wank to his sexual abuse because… because. It’d mean so much less if it got reduced to a fetish object.

As always, Harry’s earnestness amuses him as well. Voldemort is still touching himself, and he doesn’t particularly want to stop to go back to a sincere, pragmatic conversation. “You need to piss under your robes as often can you’d get away with it,” he murmurs, undoing the buttons at his waist. No trousers today, only soft pants, and he puts his hand inside the waistband. He grasps this memory of Harry’s, savors it. “Do it when you _won’t_ get away with it as well,” he says, stroking himself. “Leave a wet patch on the front of your trousers, that everyone will see if your robe shifts in the wrong way. Take your morning piss as you drink tea in the Great Hall,” he offers with a smirk, because sometimes he’d find Harry like that in the morning over the summer, letting go in a nappy with the first swallow of warm tea like a perverse Pavlovian response. “And you need to confess every instance to me. Since for you it so _very_ important for partners to hold one another accountable for their orgasms,” and here he doesn’t even know if his exasperation is real or fake, “then I will control your sex life. Do you understand?”

_Yes, sir_. A crisp, immediate response.

He’s stroking himself harder. “Bring yourself off in public, as often as you can. We didn’t properly indulge your exhibitionist tendencies.” He is thinking back to Harry’s confessions that he’d like to be tied up and spanked and fucked in public. “I’d tie you to one of the chandeliers in the Great Hall,” he breathes. Harry is hard too. In his sleep, his hands are probably buried between his legs. “I’d dangle a vibrator just barely in reach, so you’d have to thrust for it to even graze your cock. Everyone would watch you struggle, your cock straining. It’s a good thing you’re aroused by humiliation, because this is _mortifying_.” He speaks in little more than a whisper. “What would you beg for then, Harry? A cock ring, to keep you heavy, to keep you from spilling semen on the floor in front of everybody? A caning,” another thing Harry mentioned once that they didn’t indulge, “from whomever approaches you from behind? You can’t move or turn your head well enough to see. It could be _anyone_.” He pauses, watching the flickers provoked in Harry’s mind at this. And Harry is humiliated but he can’t hide these fantasies: Kingsley, gentle and calm and disappointed; Brightbone, their Auror, exasperated with him as always; one of the Weasleys, the curse breaker with long hair, teasing and playful; Granger, somehow indulgent and disciplinarian all at once. People he doesn’t recognize, men and women both. Nearly all older than Harry; his fetish for mentor figures ( _parental figures_? Perverse) is nearly as pronounced as his love of watersports. He even – barely – catches a moment of Harry considering how Snape should spank him. “With unbridled enthusiasm,” Voldemort murmurs.

Harry goes hot, expels the thought from his mind, and thinks in defense it’s only because he’s done enough bloody detentions with the man.

Voldemort will save his own recollection of sex with Severus for another time. For now, he pulls Harry back into their fantasy. “Some of them cane you. A proper schoolboy discipline, fallen too far out of fashion.”

_Were you?_ Harry interjects.

This is a mild surprise. Harry has been unattracted to his younger self up to this point. “Yes,” he lies, because it is all fantasy anyway. “But this, darling, is about _you_. You won’t get out of your punishment.”

Harry wonders his crime.

“Masturbating in public, of course. Severus finds you early one morning, dying for a piss and a wank, your erection scraping the underside of the head table at breakfast.” Why not bring Severus into this. Harry is repulsed by all the same things that arouse him; his feelings for Snape probably run deeper than he’d ever acknowledge even to himself. “He strides up to you, flipping your robes open, and your cock is so prominent under your trousers that it would be more shameful to deny it than admit it. He tells you that since you’re so adamant to impose your sexuality on the world, that you will serve your detention in the great hall. And that is how you come to be tied up before the entire school.”

He can feel that Harry is close. Well, so is he. “Everyone agrees that caning will be good for you,” he says in an undertone. “It always works on children who need a bit more _discipline_ in their lives.” He says the word precisely, to feel that jerk behind his navel it always elicits in Harry. “Of course some of them spank you instead, to see and to feel the bounce of your sweet arse. A few press their fingers to your hole – “ here he turns over Harry’s thoughts to gauge his willingness. Very, very willing. “And a few slip them inside. It’s part of the process,” he says as though apologetic. “You’ll be _much_ more obedient and agreeable afterwards, you know.” He doesn’t use the term broken – Harry _has_ been broken in a great many ways, already – but it dances in the back of their minds. Broken like a wild horse.

Harry loves this. _Hold me_ , he murmurs inside Voldemort’s head. He has filled Voldemort with warmth and magic and love, and it’s almost like not being apart.

Ugh. Harry makes him feel far too many things.

“ _Hold you_?” he mocks gently. “I remain before you – a shame, because I quite like seeing your arse bounce and throb and bruise as well. But I’d like to watch you flinch now. I’d like to watch you cry,” he says with relish. Harry mentally shivers. “Anyway, we must make sure you don’t piss or come before you’re allowed to. When we took off your trousers, there was already a wet spot of pre-come on the satin knickers you had on underneath. Already wet with anticipation. Nobody knew you’d be wearing knickers, but nobody is surprised by them, either. I’ve left them around your ankles so everyone can witness them.” Prodding Harry’s mind, he finds the knickers he transfigured are still intact, at the back of his underwear drawer. “Wear them,” he breathes. “But buy yourself real ones. Or I’ll take you out shopping. I would watch you humiliate yourself picking out your own panties.”

Pre-come is making the head of his cock sticky. Harry’s control is better asleep than awake. “But I do hold you,” he says. “The way you’re tied up, you stretch, and a good caning will throw you off balance. I might catch you, or I might let you swing by your wrists. Whichever seems more embarrassing.” He has slowed his stroke, because he wants to prolong this. Somehow, just being in each other’s minds has become really good sex. “But I step in close when you look overwhelmed. When the pain crescendos and everyone presses in too close and you ache from not being allowed to orgasm – I want to see you cry,” he reiterates. “I would rather nobody else shared the experience. So I approach, taking your hair or the back of your neck, pressing your chin to your chest so you can only look at me, that the rest of the world recedes for a moment. For – well, whatever passes for privacy in this scenario. Even if it’s meant to be a punishment,” he chides easily. “And I will say in a very quiet voice, that you’re doing _so_ well, darling, that you make me so proud by taking your punishment with such grace and beauty. That it hurts because you’ll be better for it. Everyone is so proud of you.”

Harry comes hard then, an explosion of lust and magic that echoes in Voldemort’s flesh. His hips pump, spraying come against the front of his pants, making every fiber of his being throb. His body shudders, grasping and thrusting into the empty space above him. And then Harry presses the feeling of being held – being held _down_ – into his psyche, and it is merciful. He collapses against the mattress.

He watches his own chest heave through half-lidded eyes. Somehow, _this_ would be his survival this year. He didn’t intend to share this thought with Harry, but based on the flutter of grief and pity he feels from the boy, he did so unconsciously anyway. Damn.

Harry’s touch on his mind is thoughtful, careful. It feels nothing like Legilimency. Voldemort uses magic to Scourgify his pants; Harry immediately floods him with more. They _really_ shouldn’t be able to share magic at such a distance. “Thank you,” he murmurs anyway.

_Would you piss for me? Or…._ A flurry of thoughts and feelings. Harry would like to be told to wet himself, but he wants to watch, and it’s Voldemort’s body they share at the moment.

“Incorrigible,” Voldemort mutters. Insatiable as well, as always. He casts a handful of suggestion charms on himself, until he’s desperate and his stomach is nearly distended. “On the bed?” There aren’t really other options – the bed or the floor or the chamber pot, and Harry would be very politely indifferent to the last. Voldemort is reaching for his trousers, where they are folded on top of his rows of books. Harry appreciates the heavy sensation of wet fabric most of all.

_Yes, please._

The fantasy hasn’t receded for either of them. Voldemort buttons his trousers at his waist, willing Harry not to notice that they’re looser than they once were. “Would you wet yourself in front of everybody, then?” He can feel Harry’s breath catch. He’s still too proximate to orgasm to get hard again just yet, but Harry probably is. “Would you be nappied in front of everyone?”

A memory surfaces indicating Harry has considered such a thing, nappies on his bad days or sleep-deprived days or anxious days or depressed days. Voldemort hums and does not point out how much of his life would currently qualify, then. “You should,” he says, not part of the fantasy for the moment. “You are accident-prone when you’re unhappy. It would help.” It’s a perverse form of self-soothing, but it is a way that Harry has found to work. He wonders for an instant if there is anyone else in Harry’s life who will just give him _permission_ in the same way – not for anything in particular, just permission to pursue happiness or frivolity or whatever he craves, but the boy needs it. So he says it aloud: “You have my permission.”

Harry also recognizes it’s silly and meaningless, that he hasn’t asked for permission and Voldemort has no authority to grant it over anything, yet – The relief he feels resonates like an aftershock of sex.

Voldemort them both back into the fantasy then. “You had hoped this would happen,” he says. “You held off on using the toilet all day, so you might swear that it’s an _accident_.” The childish word always stirs something within Harry. Someday Voldemort will ask if he needs to go potty, to see him come from humiliation on the spot. “You’re slipping even during the caning, or while being fingered. Little shocks, a dribble down your calves or thighs that dries immediately. None of the spectators notice. Why would they, you’re already such a mess,” he scolds. “Still, you are mortified with every slip. _Hundreds_ of people are all watching you, after all.” Again he pauses to take in Harry’s fantasies. The boy is so torn between wanting to feel humiliated and wanting to feel accepted. Even his fantasies oscillate.

“But I recognize it, that look you get when you’re about to wet yourself. Your eyes glitter, did you know, as though you’re planning something very mischievous. I suppose you are,” he adds. “So I take the knickers that hang around your ankles, drawing them back up your legs. It will be much harder to hide your accident in those. Satin shows _everything_.” Harry’s mind reveals he’s picturing plain ones, in red, rather than patterned. Much better for showing stains.

“It’s normal for troublemaking boys like you to be hard after a solid caning. It is part of the punishment, for an authority figure to milk them until they’re dry and pliant and agreeable. But you,” he says with a sigh, “won’t have that release yet. I pull the knickers over your erection, pressing it down between your thighs. Do you want trousers?” he asks, absurdly, because this is Harry’s fantasy really.  He’s just facilitating it.

Harry does want trousers. Harry’s got a thing for the visibility of wet fabric. “We draw everyone back for a moment, and I pull charcoal trousers up your legs.” Voldemort’s own are black, as is everything in his wardrobe here, so he summons enough magic to shift them a few shades lighter. He lights a lamp over his head and casts Impervious on the mattress. “And I cinch the ropes that hold your hands above your head just a _bit_ higher, so you’ve got to completely stretch to touch the floor. When you’re stretched out like this, anyway, it’s evident how distended your stomach is. You must be _bursting_.” And he hands off his own desperation to Harry. He hopes the boy is squirming in his bed by now. “I slide a hand over your bladder. Not hard enough to hurt, just enough to distress you. Still, you’re already thrashing. I’d announce your intentions to the hall, but they are already very, very obvious.”

_Let go_ , Harry whispers in his head. _Please let go for me._

He will, if he’s not too hard already. “God,” he mutters, unbuttoning the first button of his trousers. A flash of amusement from Harry, who always delights when Voldemort profanes the Muggle God. And for a split second he wishes Harry were here with him, murmuring affirmative nonsense as he always does, as Voldemort always does for him. He is lost in the recollection of the last time he pissed himself for Harry here, the surrender and the safety then. _You’ll be alright,_ Harry had said then. _I swear you’ll be alright._

The words have caught in his throat. How does the boy do this to him, without even meaning to. He composes himself. “Your thighs are pressed together, until I kick your legs apart. I slide a hand beneath you, to check that you’re not wet already.” Because it’s another thing Harry loves, fingers between his legs or in his nappy, a gesture of caretaking.

Harry is deep into this imagination, and feels himself kicking away from the touch. _I can’t get harder._

“Mm. No.” Neither can he. He’s rearranging his legs, ready to piss. “If I can’t check for myself, I’ll have to ask. Unfortunately, loud enough for the entire hall to hear. Harry, darling, are you going to have an accident?”

_Yes_. The word is small in his mind.

“I’ve left your fly open so we might see those bright red knickers go dark.” And he’s undoing his own fly now, arranging his cock so it’s pressed to the bit of fabric that’s visible. “And then you go pink and still, in that way you always do, as piss spills into your pants, wetting your thighs.”

It takes a moment for him to let go, and then he feels a hot dribble into his own pants. The first bit is always burning hot and horrifying. He lets Harry watch the bloom, before dipping his fingers into his fly to press the cotton against the head of his cock. He really can’t get hard again yet.

“Are you wet?” he murmurs.

Harry aches with humiliation and desire. _Yes. Sir_ , he manages.

Holding back the flood inside of himself is a unique torment. Anyone who saw him in this instant would see exactly what was wrong, even without the wet spot on the front of his trousers. “I step back from where you hang. I won’t shield you from any of this. We’ll consider it part of the punishment, this humiliation.” Spurts slip from his cock over his hip, and he’s half-sat up to allow Harry to watch everything. “Everyone is laughing, and everyone is shocked, and everyone is so embarrassed on your behalf.” This unexpectedly gets a strong reaction; he can’t even say if it’s positive or negative. He holds off on a remark that Harry should have adapted to spectators by now. Instead he asks, “What does it feel like?”

Harry presses such a strong sensation into his body that he fights back a gasp. (Never ask such a ridiculously empathetic person how something feels, he notes.) A rush of pinpricks over his skin, as though a thousand eyes were a thousand knives. It hurt, and it twisted his insides, and it made his skin too sensitive to touch, and he could see why Harry liked the idea. He shivers. “Good,” he murmurs, and Harry flushes with happiness.

Holding on is difficult, and he lets the muscles in his lower stomach go slack in surrender. Piss pours across his hips and down his thighs, and he shudders in disgust. “You give up,” he says in a low tone, throwing his head back to get a grip on his feelings for a moment. “You were always going to give up. Your trousers shimmer when you’ve overwhelmed the fabric. There’s spatters of your piss on the floor. You should hope nobody makes you lick it up afterward.” A delightful shudder from Harry runs through him.

He stands when a puddle has begun to form on the mattress beneath him. The wetness stretches along his arse and down the backs of his thighs, making the trousers cling heavily. He’s already pulled his robes off, standing in shirtsleeves. Moving hurts. He is still quite desperate, going at a trickle. “Do you go slowly?” he asks, even as a line of piss trails down his inseam. He presses the fabric to his legs so that it stains properly. Harry’s breath has caught. “Slowly, so it runs evenly down your legs. So you can maintain the illusion that you’re fighting this, that it’s an accident, that you never intended for this to happen.” He pauses to arrange his cock so his piss spills down both legs. His trousers glisten and his skin prickles everywhere he is wet. “Or do you piss hard, to finish this humiliation as quickly as possible? To feel it pool beneath you before it drains, to hear your stream hitting the soaked fabric, hard and unrepentant.” Because it’s how they would wake up a good bit of the time, Harry pissing hard before getting out of bed, strong enough that he can hear the hiss inside the nappy. It is shameless and Harry adores it.

Harry considers. Voldemort presses his thighs together, stopping himself momentarily. _Hard_ , Harry decides. Thank fuck. He adjusts his stance, adjusts his cock so it’s pressed tight against the front of his trousers, and pisses hard.

“Shameless, shameless,” Voldemort mutters, even as he passes along every sensation he’s able. His piss sprays back onto the head of his cock and it nearly overwhelms him. Harry loves it when he is (rarely) overwhelmed, so he doesn’t stop. A rapid stain is spreading across the front of his trousers, until the fabric shines, and – there. “You piss hard, obviously enjoying it. It is stunningly obvious that you’ve _planned_ this, and everyone is so embarrassed on your behalf. Your stream begins to bubble through your sodden trousers,” because he’s now functionally pissing through his own, and he and Harry are both captivated. He presses a finger to the stream, so it spatters along the floor.

“Shall I press my mouth to you?” he murmurs. “Swallow your piss as a favor, to hide just how very _badly_ you have to go?” He is hot with shame and disgust and vulnerability. Harry’s swallowed his piss once before, and he may never return the favor, ambivalent and piquant as the experience was. But the fantasy lingers, safe.

He keeps returning to that word.

Harry is ambivalent too. “The stain has already reached your calves. Droplets run over your ankles and tickle your bare feet. Your trousers sag with the weight.” His own are heavy around his hips. He needs a belt. “I press a hand to the front of your trousers, so your piss sprays everywhere.” He lays his hand flat against his own stream, pounding hard against his palm. Harry is light-headed with lust and Voldemort must hold it off with Occlumency for the moment. “This makes people talk, too. That I touch you so brazenly, so openly. Even when you are disgusting.” Harry had told him before swallowing his piss, _Nothing you do will ever disgust me_. It has stayed with him. He doesn’t echo it now but it’s in the back of both their minds. He cups his hand around his cock.

“Before I swallow your piss, I press my wet fingers into your mouth, smearing them across your swollen lips. How do you taste?”

_Good. Really good_. The boy is deep into this thought, and they both feel him lick his lips.

“Excellent. I sink to my knees with a smile, as though I’ve fallen before you a hundred times before. I’d open your trousers at the top, enough to put my mouth on your pants. The satin is warm and sleek,” because Harry’s thinking of the heat of the cotton, the last time he did this for Voldemort. “You’ll have to piss hard, so the stream doesn’t run down my chin and my robes. You know how unfortunate that would be. I press my mouth to you, and you can feel it on the head of your cock, as I mouth, _Go ahead, sweetheart_.”

Harry would come to that alone, but Voldemort won’t allow him to. “Finish first,” he says, as he finishes himself. A puddle runs between his feet, hot on the cold stone floor. He slips a finger in a belt loop at his back to hold the weight of his soaking trousers up. He’s spraying the last lines of piss, and they run straight down. He watches himself for Harry’s sake, as he takes in the wetness, the stained clothing, and Voldemort’s hesitation, as always, at surrendering like this. “My hands are on your arse, holding you close to me, even though you are so _bruised_. Your arse swells into my touch, hot and throbbing as the rest of you. Still, even though it hurts _so_ goddamn much, you’re sobbing your thanks to me, that for a moment, you’re shielded from everyone else, that you’ve only got to focus on me.” In reality this is the mercy that Harry offered _him_ , in that night with Bowersock. “You’re so grateful that for a moment, your problem is someone else’s,” he says quietly. “And I swallow, again and again, until you’re empty. Until I feel filled by you, the way you’ll weigh me down.”

The last of his wetting runs down his legs. He hands off the relief to Harry, the disgust and self loathing and satisfaction. “Like shuddering out of your own skin,” Voldemort murmurs. But really, he doesn’t mind. “I withdraw my mouth long enough to ask who should milk you.”

_You. Please_. The response is instant.

He really can’t refrain from smiling at this. Oh, Harry. He could fantasize about anyone in the world and he’d only want him. It was really very flattering. “Nobody would believe that was a punishment,” he says easily. “As I’m sucking the last of your piss from my mouth.”

Harry considers, but he’s already so far gone. _Who do you want to see me get fucked by_? is the question he’s attempting to put into words.

A superb question. He discards Snape and Draco straight off because Harry’s patience for antagonistic Slytherins may be low at the moment.

Well, not _all_ Slytherins. The caning (such as it were) had been inspired by an offhand comment Harry had made about Scrimgeour once. He’ll see if Harry can still make eye contact with the Minister next week. “Behind you, you feel someone dragging the back of your trousers off your arse. I’ve stepped back. And then you feel a globe of solid marble at your entrance. The Minister’s got a mind to do this himself because you’ve caused _such_ a lot of trouble. And he’s very good at it, anyway.” He slides down the wall onto the mattress once more, lying back fully as he touches himself through his soaked clothing. Harry’s feelings burn.

“There’s a lubrication spell, and a push. The marble slips inside you easily, your hole closing around the globe. The Minister leans into your ear and asks congenially, _You don’t mind holding this for a bit, do you_?”

_No, sir_. He can feel his arse quivering around the girth.

“You will hardly need to be touched. A few fingers on the front of your knickers would do it. But this is a proper punishment, used for generations, and we will do it right.” He’s slipped a hand inside his pants now. The cotton steams and sticks. “Abstinence has historically been valued as a source of… well, _vitality_. Soldiers would be told to abstain in the days before battle, athletes before games. Perhaps this is what you need. You won’t be so very defiant and combative and mischievous after this energy has all been milked from you.”

Harry doesn’t believe this bit of storytelling, even though it’s true, but it doesn’t matter. “As the Minister is pushing your clothing out of the way – it’s all _filthy_ , he shouldn’t deign to touch it or you in this state, but he does – I’m apologizing on your behalf. That this accident is unacceptable, that you’re often in nappies but clearly were too arrogant and defiant for them today. Perhaps you should be kept in them all the time, as punishment and prevention.”

Harry _loves_ this idea. Nappies have been reward rather than punishment before now. At the beginning, he supposes, it made Harry pliant by humiliating him; though Voldemort had only ever meant them as a way to preserve the sofa if he charmed Harry unconscious. He makes a note to revisit this. And then the recollection of Harry’s first reluctant days in nappies are in his mind too, and he’s gone hot with shame and lust. Voldemort quirks a corner of his mouth. “You do very well after being humiliated,” he says, as a compliment. It was the only way they got through the week of his abduction last November. “So we shall humiliate you. You’ll feel much better afterward,” he promises with a smirk.

Harry is immersed in this. Harry can feel everything: the warmth of his trousers, the way his arsehole quivers, the sheen of satin knickers around his thighs. The beautiful burn of feeling watched, feeling on display, still consumes him. “Scrimgeour is lifting your cock now. It is embarrassing how hard you already are. People laugh, because it’s clear it’s the humiliation itself that drives you so wild. But only he will touch you, for the moment.”

He’s stroking himself hard now. His spine is already arched. “Harry, he looks _so_ indifferent,” he mutters, squeezing his eyes shut so they only have fantasy and feeling between them. “His hands are rough and quick. More practiced a motion than you expected. He’s very frustrated with you – you’re a thorn in his side, and this is the last measure – but you are his responsibility as well. At least for the moment.”

He’s shoving his trousers down before his wrist cramps. His erection springs free and he groans. Harry _insists_ , in a forceful feeling, that he should watch Voldemort stroke himself off. He hasn’t seen it before, somehow. “There hasn’t been any need,” Voldemort says absently, “when I’ve got a perpetually-aroused schoolboy throwing himself at me, begging me to put my cock in any orifice I’d please.” His hand twists around his cock, precise and perfect now that he’s being observed. Pre-come shimmers at the head. He doesn’t usually come again this quickly, but then, he doesn’t usually have Harry so deep in his mind.

“You thrash and you shudder, because you’re already so close. To still you, Scrimgeour grabs the end of his cane, protruding from your arse, and he’s hissing in your ear to stop it, to take your punishment like a man.” Harry never knows what that phrase means but he is sure he has failed at it. “He presses the cane deeper inside of you, until you’re choking back a sob because you want to impress him, to impress everyone. It hits your prostate and you shiver.” As he always does. “The head of your cock is already so slick, that your pre-come is nearly spilling onto the floor along with your piss. He strokes you with utter indifference. What does it feel like, being touched so intimately by a stranger?”

And he’s done it right, because Harry’s full of that ambivalent arousal at this again, so intense it nearly hurts them both. “Next time,” he breathes, “if you can’t behave yourself, I might let them fuck you. Whoever would like to. We’d splay you out over a table, your legs open so everyone’s fluids dribble back out of you.” Harry is disgusted and captivated by this idea. So is Voldemort, really. “But this time, I told them no. It’d be inappropriate. You’re only a boy.” His soft, patronizing tone makes Harry want to lick him. He arches higher, tighter as their arousal ricochets off one another’s.

He can’t speak anymore, so he strokes himself off, letting Harry watch. Letting heat build in his belly until his head swims with it. Harry is pressing incomplete thoughts, feelings, memories into his mind, the way their hands and mouths feel on one another’s bodies. A wave crashes deep inside of him, he arches –

He comes on his chest, all over his hands, along his stained trousers. He is gasping, loud and artless, as his hips pound of their own accord. And when he collapses, satiated, he finds himself desperately wishing for the weight of another body beside him. It is unexpectedly devastating. He dismisses these feelings before Harry can grasp them.

No, he doesn’t. Harry’s preternatural goddamn empathy catches it all. _Me too_ , he thinks carefully, in lieu of passing on his own grief, because it wouldn’t help. He passes along magic, filling those empty spaces inside of him.

He scrubs his face with one hand as he casts a volley of cleaning spells with the other. The sheets go crisp and dry, the stains are lifted from his clothing. Perfect. He lets his eyes close for a long moment, lapsing back into the narrative: “After you’ve come,” he says lowly, “Scrimgeour takes his cane from your arse to sever the ropes. You fall into a heap on the ruined floor, panting.” His own voice is still thin and breathless. “You struggle to get your footing – you’ve _got_ to look alright before this crowd, unfazed. But you’re shattered and you’re shaking. Finally I stride forward, pulling your clothing back into place before setting you on your feet. Loud enough for the hall to hear, I ask if you feel any better now.”

_Yes_. Harry sounds dazed even in his thoughts.

“Everyone is trusting that you’ll be cooperative from now on. That you’ll be _good_. Everyone is so happy for you.” Harry’s gone warm at this. “As I tire of propping you up, because you’re still rather unsteady on your feet, I fully pick you up over my shoulder.” It’s not impossible – he is a good bit taller than Harry, and some gentle levitation spells would assist. “And it is such a relief, that you’re still not responsible for anything, including yourself, for the moment. In a much lower voice, I ask if you’re alright. Really.”

Harry loves this question. Voldemort hears how… _soft_ it makes him sound, but he’ll ask it for Harry’s sake, in any case. Harry’s affirmative is a flutter of happiness and magic.

“You’re overwhelmed. We’ll put you somewhere quiet, to… consider it all.” But he is taken aback at Harry’s half-thought, that being tossed over a shoulder and carried to bed is what every parent will do for every child. Or so they’ve both heard. This _hurts_ , unexpectedly. Voldemort will instruct Harry to call him Daddy because the disgust and aversion is piquant, for them both. This rather more sincere iteration turns his stomach, and he’s pulling out of the fantasy before he even realizes it.

Harry’s caught some of this. He didn’t mean for him to. But he’s not apologetic so much as just… grief-stricken. “Don’t,” Voldemort mutters. “It means nothing.” But Harry insists that it does, it means everything, and he is so _proud_ of Voldemort for adapting to intimate, vulnerable relationships as well as he has, all things considered. As he does with every conversation he wants to let pass – especially since they’re both _so_ raw right now, from Legilimency and sex – he lets the silence envelop it. Harry understands.

“Are you staying?” he asks after a time, because he’s practiced enough at getting Harry out of his head efficiently even when the boy can’t do it himself yet. “I need to work; there’s a meeting on tonight with the Muggles. Military tech exchange, primarily.”

Harry does want to stay. The warm ease of contact between their magic is a mood elevator for them both. Harry’s feeling behind and left out of the work with the Muggles. Of the political world altogether, really. “Of course you may stay,” Voldemort says crisply, moving to retrieve the Panopticon and a scroll.

It’s a peculiar cool-down and pillow talk. Harry reads, essentially, over his shoulder. Muggle and magic papers, white sheets on Muggle tech, notes that Voldemort makes to recommend later. Harry doesn’t have much input – national defense, in either world, has never been a subject of much interest to him. At least not in the organized bureaucratic sense. He does convey that _some_ of his friends – the two youngest Weasleys – researched quite a lot of magical weaponry last autumn. They were ranged weapons though, for individual soldiers on the ground They knew nothing of nuclear weaponry, chemical weaponry, ecological terrorism… and none of the Muggleborns wanted to tell them.

“Mm. Our Defense department _does_ know of bio-warfare, though,” Voldemort murmurs. “Though they only have the faintest idea of nuclear power, in spite of all living through the Muggles’ second world war. We – the few halfbloods and Muggleborns present – are likewise disinclined to tell them more about it.”

_Good_ , Harry thinks. His only certain feeling about any of this is that they can’t go to war under any circumstances. It is soft and naïve and utopian, and yet Voldemort doesn’t disagree, really. The wixes haven’t had enough time alone to coordinate on what information to leave out for the Muggles; and Voldemort wants to get the Muggles alone long enough to tell them to say nothing about large-scale warfare to the wixes. It is… frustrating.

_But you love war_ , Harry approximately says.

Does he? He’s intimately aware of both Muggle and wixen warfare, and both governments need him for this. “They’re nothing alike,” he says. “We don’t have a large enough population for cannon fodder. The Muggles have a place for unskilled labor in their military. Hell, the Muggles weaponize deaths that they never knew were alive. Their _indifference_ – “ He’s raised his voice. He stops.

The feelings within Harry are guilty, horrified, and sad. His words amount to, _What did they do to you_?

“Nothing.” Later. “I only find Muggle warfare to be particularly dehumanizing.”

Harry doesn’t disagree. And then Harry thinks of Cedric Diggory. _The spare_ , he thinks in Voldemort’s own cool tone. He is right, and it takes his breath away.

They’re too raw for this moment, either. Harry thinks that he should go, because they’re not in a position to fight or to process this together. He wonders if he can do this again, next weekend.

“Yes.” Voldemort is taking all of his stray magic, as much as he can hold. He should break his fingers again before the Wizengamot collects him, and it will be much easier to do magically than manually. He’d rather spend days with him than nights, when they both have more control over everything. He’s untangling their psyches so neither of them is hurt when he pulls Harry out. Harry is pushing gratitude and love and sadness onto him in the last moments. “Goodbye, Harry,” he murmurs, and performs a swirl of Occlumency that separates them. He is alone.

He looks to the craggy ceiling for a long time, as his mind settles. Then he picks up the Panopticon. He has an hour or two for work before he’ll have to shatter his hands again.

\\\\\\\ ////

Harry woke up sore, and laughing, wondering if his fantasy sex had real world repercussions upon his body. He was definitely a fucking mess, such that he tried not to touch anything before casting Scourgify about a dozen times. So… wet dreams were going to be a part of his life again. That was delightfully humiliating.

As always, he was euphoric and empty and angry at the circumstances all at once. It was too many feelings to hold together. Voldemort hadn’t meant for him to hear that he’d shatter his own hands. So, what, the Wizengamot could rescue him from the violence they’d inflicted in the first place?

He hadn’t intended to think of Cedric today. By now, some days passed that he didn’t think of him. He scrubbed his face.

Voldemort was right that he was embarrassingly uninformed about current events. He did do well, having it all explained to him. The Horcruxes were similarly didactic when they wanted to be, but decades out of date on current events. He needed a class in politics. For the moment, he summoned the past week’s papers from the coffee table, to read the headlines at least.

It was worth his time, after all. Voldemort was involved in about every piece of legislation. He didn’t have proper perspective for how goddamn impressive he was, really. Most legislation wouldn’t involve Harry – he figured out a highlighting spell for the bits of culture exchange and liaison that he should know. He found a couple instances of Antonia’s name, so at least _she_ was at work in liaison politics even if he wasn’t. Finally he moved to take all of this and the upcoming class prep, out to the lake. The Horcruxes could come too. But carrying everything out, with the Horcruxes against his skin and Voldemort’s circumstances still in his mind, he felt impossibly weighed down.

 

_Tuesday, September 8._ On Tuesday, he entered his sixth year class to find the room a little fuller and tenser than usual. Three Slytherins sat along the back wall. All girls: Astoria Greengrass, Hypatia and Hyacinth Pickering. In his NEWT class on Wednesday, he had Bulstrode and Zabini. He minimized his pleasant surprise at this. And thank fuck they’d moved on from talking about the war or (obliquely) about Voldemort and the Death Eaters – though none of the Slytherins had fought on either side at Hogwarts, and if they’d fought elsewhere, they were never named or arrested as such. He’d ask Voldemort sometime. The class would begin on the construction of curses and counter-curses, which was not so politically loaded. And whatever the rest of his students felt about the presence of the Slytherins, they didn’t say in front of him.

He’d have to bring Slughorn pineapple.

 

_Wednesday, September 16._ The Ministry meeting would take place the following Wednesday. Moody would teach in Harry’s place himself, making everything awkward because his sense of humor was infinitely darker than Harry’s. “Thought I’d make sure I hadn’t missed out on much,” he said, causing Harry to choke on his tongue. Wednesdays were all his upper levels, so most of the students who had fought knew Moody already. He couldn’t think of a more qualified teacher. So he was leaving them in good hands.

“Just don’t let anything happen to the Slytherins,” he said anyway, as he was giving Moody his lesson plan.

His thick brows furrowed. “What’s meant to happen to them?”

“I mean, probably nothing. Everyone’s just… tense.” He’d had the sense that the rest of his students were refraining from antagonizing the Slytherins as a favor to Harry, so…. “It’ll be fine,” he said with a smile.

“Damn right it will be.”

Moody. His faint smile became a real grin. “Yes, sir.”

 

Tonks collected him. Dumbledore’s office still served as the usual Floo to the Ministry. Harry did not, however, expect to find Kingsley, McGonagall, and Hermione waiting for him.

“Harry, hi,” Hermione beamed at him. “Sorry for not telling you I’d be coming. There were some, ah, uncertainties until the end.”

“No, it’s great,” he said, and he mostly meant it. The Aurors had said this would be a meeting on education, and his input as a current student and someone who’d attended Muggle school would be helpful. Which, maybe. Far more likely that he was there as a peacekeeper, so he was relieved that Hermione would be there as someone who _actually_ might have clever ideas about schooling. They departed.

In the Ministry, they fell in formation with Aurors Dawlish, Samuels, and Squire. This was confusing – did _he_ need to be protected? Did Minerva? The meeting they were going to was fairly apolitical, and not contentious. Curious. It did at least give him a chance to slip beside Dawlish casually. “So the Death Eaters from Diagon Alley….”

Dawlish was always indifferent to him, as he was now. “What we know has to remain confidential,” he said. “When something’s made publicly available, you’ll see it in the papers.”

“But they wanted to kill me. _Me_ , not ‘the public,’” Harry enunciated. “That doesn’t give me any special insights?”

Dawlish side-eyed him. “Sure it does,” he said. “Here’s your insight. There are more of them. They _still_ want to kill you. The first instance may have only been a distraction, or misdirection. They’ll be better prepared next time. Don’t go anywhere without Aurors. Don’t chase this group down, as you’re so prone to doing,” he added dryly. “It is not your job.”

“What _is_ my job?” Harry asked before he could stop himself.

“Some sort of emotional support animal for Voldemort, near as I can tell.”

Harry grinned in spite of himself. Dawlish, the most boring Auror in the entire department, _sassing_ him. He loved it enough that he was distracted momentarily from his line of inquiry. “Yes, sir.” He amused himself the rest of the way wondering how Voldemort would feel about this pronouncement that he was one of those people who’d benefit from the company of a capuchin monkey or a pygmy goat or a miniature pony.

Actually, giving Voldemort any of those animals sounded sort of brilliant. It’d get him away from his snake thing, at least.

The meeting room was large, with a circular table in the center and whiteboards along the walls. Before they entered properly, Kingsley stopped them. “Wands.” He gestured to a slotted box beside the door, not unlike the wand dropbox at Azkaban. They processed in.

They were nearly last. Muggles in pantsuits or ties or blazers; a number of the Wizengamot in their formal robes, though sans powdered wigs; a few school governors marked by Hogwarts pins; and a few members of the Ministry Harry couldn’t otherwise identify. Dawlish, Samuels, and Squire peeled off after a nod to Scrimgeour, who waved them away; Tonks and Kingsley stayed. Harry’s heart thudded very painfully when he surveyed the room and didn’t see Voldemort. He wondered if he could manage Legilimency to learn whether he was coming.

Kingsley, seeing his expression, took pity on him. “It takes longer to travel from Azkaban than anywhere these folks have come from. I’m told they are in transit.”

Harry felt very stupid and needy and obvious at this. He managed a smile. “Thanks, sir.” In the meantime, he went to introduce himself to the Muggles. Or rather, let Toni do it for him, as he shook hands graciously. Departments of education, vocation, child welfare…. He was extremely out of his league here. He did at least embrace the title of liaison. He told them he was an interim professor, and a student taking his A-levels. It sounded exhausting when he said it all like that.

Finally he felt something tug on his soul. It felt like a cord ran from his heart into the corridor. He tried not to grin like a maniac.

Voldemort entered elegantly, easily. Amelia Bones was on one side of him, and a woman in minister’s robes was on the other; Harry wasn’t close enough to see the pin that indicated her department. They were talking lowly, and seemed unaware of how the room flared around them as they strode in.

Scrimgeour moved to acknowledge them. They finally looked up. Voldemort shook hands with everyone in the vicinity as easily as the rest of them. Harry watched the others and saw no fear on their faces. Voldemort might as well be _harmless_ , at least in this moment and these circumstances. The thought somehow made him unhappy.

People were moving to pour another coffee before taking their seats. Voldemort finally reached the Muggles, and Harry. The proximity nearly _hurt_ , since they’d been trading magic at a distance for a month now. “Good morning,” Voldemort said, extending his hand to the nearest Muggle. (And Harry saw now the elegance of formal robes denoting rank, approximately. How did he know who the highest-ranking Muggle was?) “Lord Voldemort. Thank you for your time today.”

“Annabel Stryker. Under-secretary of education in England.” Toni had departed; Annabel introduced her colleagues _thank fuck_ so Harry didn’t have to.

And then it was time to begin. Voldemort took Harry’s elbow as they moved to the table: “Sit by me,” he murmured in Parseltongue.

“But I’m not important.”

“No,” Voldemort agreed, too easily. “But there’s not much hierarchy to be imposed on a circular table.”

He was still holding his arm. Harry felt the drought. “They’re not giving back your magic when they should,” he realized, irritated.

“No, they’re not.” He sounded far too… indifferent if not accepting. “I’d rather strip you down and keep you in my lap all day; but for the moment, proximity will help.”

The blush that spread across Harry’s face gave away what the Parseltongue wouldn’t.

Scrimgeour opened the meeting. Hermione sat across from Harry, between McGonagall and Madam Bones; and Harry thought _that_ would be a friendship for the ages. Harry sat beside Kingsley; on Voldemort’s other side was the Muggle secretary of education. Everyone got a name plaque, conjured by Tonks. Under the table, Harry slipped his hand into Voldemort’s cold touch.

Not for long. “As the proposal and preliminary work is Voldemort’s,” Scrimgeour said, with a glance, “he should be the one to explain the measures we’re drafting.”

Voldemort shook off Harry’s touch as he stood, moving to a whiteboard. “Education is under-regulated in the wixen world,” he began. “Hogwarts’s curriculum is set by the governors and faculty, but that begins at age eleven and isn’t compulsory for anyone of pureblood families.” He drew a chart: at the top, columns of _Pureblood, Halfblood, Muggleborn_ ; on the sides, two rows that read _Current education_ and _Proposed education_. In the corner of the room, Harry heard furious scribbling, and looked up to see Percy Weasley copying all of this down. Huh.

“There is no early education in magical Britain. There is no higher education either – students who want advanced degrees attend institutions in Switzerland, Brazil, or Singapore. I propose that today we work only on early education, as the more pressing matter.” The thick whiteboard marker looked wrong in his spindly, elegant grip. Harry was distracted. “I asked Madam Jessup, the wixen Secretary of Education, to pull figures for current circumstances of early education among purebloods, halfbloods – and other wixes with legal obligations to both worlds – and Muggleborns.”

Madam Jessup, the other woman who’d walked in with Voldemort earlier, rose to take the marker. Purebloods first: a third were homeschooled by their parents, fifteen percent had a tutor come in. “The emphasis is on magic, not – shall we say, a common curriculum. Grammar, maths, the like. A quarter of pureblood children attend Muggle education – nearly all of them live in mixed or Muggle areas, so truancy laws require this. The remaining quarter,” she sighed at her statistics, “declined to speak to the Ministry.”

Voldemort had sat once more, taking notes. Harry did a double-take upon seeing they were in Parselscript. On his other side, the Muggle secretary of education was horrified and fascinated.

Madam Jessup skipped the halfblood column for a moment, moving to the Muggleborns. “Of course Muggleborn children attend Muggle school until they’re old enough to receive a Hogwarts letter. When they do, faculty will do a home visit to pass along information. And, ah, proof,” she said with a small smile. “Is there printed material now?” she asked in Minerva’s direction. “A primer to leave with them?”

“No. There should be,” McGonagall said. “We expect their textbooks to be an early source of information. And of course we explain how to owl – how to contact – us from the Muggle world, for any questions.”

Nodding, Madam Jessup wrote _Primer_ under the proposed changes for the Muggleborns. Then, stepping back: “The halfbloods are last because their circumstances are the most diverse. The Muggle parent or family will often insist on putting them in Muggle education before Hogwarts. They tend to be rather taken aback that our only school doesn’t include what they consider common skillsets,” she said with another small smile. “We’ve found that families schism fifty percent less frequently when halfblood children begin their lives with a Muggle education. But virtually none of them hire tutors of magic. Wixen parents will instruct as frequently as we see in pureblood households, for about a third of children. Their exposure to magic covers the entire range of options – some parents get their child tested for magic as soon as it’s born – “

“Not very accurate tests, mind,” one Wizengamot member interjected.

“Others refrain from so much as mentioning the child’s potential magic until their letter’s arrived. So the halfbloods are the most… uneven group to summarize.”

“You should include Squibs,” Amelia Bones said quietly.

“There aren’t statistics for Squibs,” Jessup replied.

“Include them anyway. If halfbloods are characterized as having obligations to both worlds and spending most of their childhoods _waiting_ , so do Squibs. The outcome just… goes the other way.”

Jessup added a column for Squibs. Voldemort had a thoughtful frown. “Squibs are non-magical – or low-magical – people born into wix families,” Jessup explained for the Muggles. “In addition to the Muggle education most of them get – those families that can navigate the educational system – they often get tutors or courses to _coax_ their magic out.” She sighed as she wrote _Muggle ed; Squib courses_ on the board. “There’s perhaps five or six born a year. It’s too small to account for properly.”

One of the Muggles had his brows furrowed. “And then… they come live with us?”

“Ah, largely, yes. Some take what might be called incidental jobs in the wix world, but that can be difficult for the ones born without enough magic to see our shops or such.” She glanced at Voldemort, who nodded. “Really, what you’re asking is a question of attrition rates. As that’s Voldemort’s interest….” She passed the marker like a relay baton as he stood once more.

“Thank you, Madam,” he said, surveying the chart as it stood now. “The population stands at about forty percent pureblood, forty percent halfblood, twenty percent Muggleborn. Squibs are a rounding error, but it would promote genetic health to keep them around as well. Anyway, the purebloods virtually all stay in the wixen world – by that I mean they’re economically obligated to it, with jobs in our economy, most of their money spent in our world, and so on. The halfblood attrition is about a quarter.” He stopped to cross out the 40% and write 30% in its place. “Higher if they have a Muggle partner, non-magical children, or jobs in the Muggle world. The Muggleborn attrition is around half.” Eyebrows went up at this, including Harry’s. Voldemort crossed out the 20%, writing in 10%. At the end of the row he wrote _Defectors: 20%_. “We haven’t got a term for them,” he said, not even apologetically. “Clearly we _should_ , since we’re losing a fifth of our population to the Muggle world.” He paused for question or comment; there were none.

“My plan for decreasing attrition is twofold in this meeting: one, to get every wix a comprehensive education from age four to seventeen, so families with children aren’t obligated to the Muggle world if education is important to them. Two, to substantiate Britain as having exceptional education, to drive immigration. And trade and international leverage and all,” he added. “We need immigration, bringing in either education-focused or career-focused families. So,” he snaked the marker between his fingers, “proposals.”

Harry had never been so turned on in his life. Like, of course Voldemort was brilliant and commanding, but he hadn’t _seen_ it before, not like this. Voldemort wasn’t even trying to be especially charismatic, not for this crowd, but his talent was just… _hot_. Harry was chewing the inside of his lip.

The conversation, from Voldemort’s prompt, went on for hours. Questions about curriculum, about finance, about appropriate skill sets in this new world, about childhood development. Harry and Hermione got pulled in to translate some bits of modern Muggle education into wixie and vice versa. Later, they had a rather alarming conversation about the most and least helpful parts of the Hogwarts curriculum. Somehow McGonagall and the two governors present waded patiently through Hermione’s measured critique and Harry’s muttered, “Uh, it’s all pretty useful.” The whiteboard filled with ideas.

At some point Voldemort had passed on the role of scribe to Harry easily, nodding him over with a look, as he captained the conversation from the table. And at seeing Harry’s sad scrawls on the whiteboard, Voldemort snorted, casting a transfiguration charm on the board that’d morph his writing into something more legible. Harry muttered, “Wanker” in Parseltongue with his back turned, just for Voldemort.

They’d generated a curriculum list, a list of common skillsets, and a few different lists of proposals for each demographic, all before they broke for lunch, very late. Harry’s hand was cramped. Scrimgeour broke the meeting, saying he had an appointment to be at anyway, so perhaps an hour…? They all rose, stretching.

Hermione circled the table, to Harry. At the same time Voldemort was drawing near him. Hermione was first. “Harry,” she said a bit breathlessly, exhilarated by the discussion because she was such a nerd, “Professor McGonagall and I are going to lunch with Madam Bones. I didn’t want you to look for me. Unless,” her eyes slid past his face, to Voldemort, who’d just come up behind him, “you’ve already got plans?”

“Um.” Harry glanced up at Voldemort. Surely he was important enough to have scheduled lunches with these people, because that apparently was a thing?

“We haven’t got _plans_ ,” Voldemort said. “I hope that wouldn’t preclude having lunch.”

Harry rolled his eyes. He’d found the room relaxed this morning in Voldemort’s difficult moments when Harry was clearly, lovingly exasperated by them. Hermione did not relax. Harry tried a smile instead. “Thanks, Hermione. Enjoy lunch.”

“You, too,” she said, rather doubtful.

“Ms. Granger,” Voldemort said, and Hermione kept her face impressively neutral. “Excellent work this morning.”

“Thank you, sir.” She nearly turned on her heel, and Harry had a sense he should be apologizing to one of them for the other, but he didn’t know which. He turned to fully face Voldemort.

“Haven’t you got more important people to see?”

“Happily, no.”

Harry held his tongue as they left together, getting curry from the cafeteria and taking it to a sort of shallow alcove, meant as a private table, on the far side of the room. “Moody would kill me,” Voldemort muttered as he drew privacy charms over the space. A shimmering plane enclosed the open end of the alcove. “It looks like a continuation of the wall from the other side. People get distracted upon looking at it. It’s not unusual for sensitive meetings to be held here.”

Harry did want to learn this spell, but he had more pressing ideas. “Let me blow you.”

Voldemort faintly choked. “That wasn’t what the privacy charms were meant to imply.”

“No. I know.” Harry circled the table, pressing his body to Voldemort’s, pressing his tongue to the hollow of his throat.

“Which part of the past four hours have you found erotic?” Voldemort wasn’t pulling away, but he was only amused, not yet aroused.

Harry pressed his cock into Voldemort’s thigh. “All of it. Do you know how _stupid_ it felt to be holding off these feelings while you made me write on the whiteboards?” It was a decidedly unerotic conversation, but – “You were just so….” He sucked on the hollow of his throat more deliberately now as he searched for the words. “So good at it all. I hadn’t really seen you like that before.” With the Death Eaters perhaps, but that hadn’t been… this. “I loved it.”

Still amused. “You are incorrigible. Someday, you must explain where this… whatever it is, mentoring fetish came from. For now – “ He dropped delicately into the chair behind him. “You can touch yourself while you blow me. But we’ve got to be quick.”

Harry grinned, dropping to his knees. “I _told_ you it was stupid. Are you sure…?” He raised his chin to the smoky wall separating them from the crowds.

“I could make it opaque on this side as well, but the space would feel a bit cramped.”

Of course. Voldemort had spent weeks if not months dealing with Harry’s various moments of claustrophobia. This was kind of him, really. “Thanks,” he said, undoing the buttons on the lower part of Voldemort’s robes and his own. Voldemort’s trousers were wool, nice ones, and he took a moment to rub him through the fabric. An appreciative murmur. “Are you happy with this?” Harry asked. At Voldemort’s look, he clarified, “The meeting. The work we’re doing today.” He slipped a hand into Voldemort’s fly.

“This is so unprofessional,” Voldemort said, sounding not at all displeased by it. “And yes. Though we’re very far off from having anything workable. When you’ve got a project that needs _popular support_ ,” he said it as a toxic phrase, “best to get the largest group you can manage invested in it from the beginning. These people will all return to their departments as advocates for the eventual legislation now.” His hips were pressing into Harry’s hand, though he still teased rather than properly stroked.

“You seemed happy,” was all Harry said to this. “I wish you would’ve….” He stopped his babbling, that would’ve gone something like, _I wish you would’ve skipped your Dark Lord phase and gone right into politics like everyone thought you should_. He pulled Voldemort’s cock out, thumbing the foreskin back, pressing his mouth to the warm tip, to abort this conversation. One hand tugged around the base; his other was in his own pants, untangling his cock from the fabric so he could pull it out through his fly.

“Hold off on coming,” Voldemort requested, leaning forward to better watch Harry.

“Hm?” His mouth reverberated around the head of Voldemort’s cock, and the shiver they both felt was transcendent. (Legilimency was such an amazing addition to sex, he wanted to shout it from the rooftops.)

“I’ll make you come later. I will _let_ you come later,” he amended easily, “if you prove yourself useful.”

Oh Christ. His hand on his own cock became less deliberate. He sat up to better thrust his mouth around Voldemort’s cock, licking and kissing and suckling as he rubbed firm circles into his swelling balls. The back of his throat tasted like precome. Voldemort’s fingers were tangled in his hair, pulling experimentally until he found the way Harry exactly loved.

He went quick, bobbing and sucking hard. They hadn’t been pressed for time before, really, and it was exciting. Actually, having to trust Voldemort that this was a truly private space was exciting, too. He scrubbed his tongue along the underside of Voldemort’s cock until he moaned. Precome was thick and bitter on the back of his tongue.

Voldemort passed on every sensation he could, Harry’s mouth and his tightening balls and the tension of arousal, and Harry wasn’t sure he could refrain from coming exactly when Voldemort did. He plunged his mouth, wet and deep, on his erection, swallowing until he gagged. Voldemort’s hand in his hair got tighter. Their erections throbbed.

He felt Voldemort’s balls go tight in his touch, he felt his thigh muscles and the muscles of his lower stomach contract. His eyes were closed and his mouth gasped minutely. Harry did _so_ love watching his face as he came. He sucked hard, and harder, keeping his eyes up. And Voldemort came hard, shooting fluids down the back of his throat, spilling over his lips and onto his hands. Still, he only emitted a strangled, “ _Ah_ ,” and his adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed the sound. Harry licked the sheen of come from his member decadently, until Voldemort was too sensitive and pulled Harry off. “Good boy,” he murmured. “Please tell me you didn’t come.”

“No.” His cock was quite stiff in his lap. He wouldn’t last long, but. “Sir.”

Voldemort pulled him to his feet. They were both quite wobbly. “Put your hands on the shield.” He dragged Harry over to it.

His cock was very prominent. “It won’t, uh, short? Or dissolve? Or… whatever?”

“Mm.” He didn’t properly answer, taking Harry’s hands in turn and plopping them on the wall with sticking spells. Harry laughed breathlessly. It wasn’t quite being fingered in the center of the great hall, but this was _real_ , as he looked through the shield into the crowds of the canteen. Nobody he knew was in his line of sight, but still. A shiver ran through him.

Voldemort shoved his trousers and pants to his knees; Harry didn’t quite have the range of motion to properly look back. “Just to finger you,” Voldemort promised. He conjured lube in both hands.

Harry arched backward as soon as he touched him. “Oh my god.” Fingers pressed at his hole, stroking and flicking to elicit every reaction from him. He loved feeling stuck and helpless and exposed. As Voldemort stroked him, firm and practiced, he withered. “Why are you so bloody good at everything,” he muttered.

In response, Voldemort pushed a finger inside of him. Harry melted.

A second finger. They curved to stroke his prostate until he buzzed inside, hot and desperate. “Please – “ He shoved his cock into Voldemort’s touch insistently.

“Do you _deserve_ to come?” Voldemort kneaded just under the head, making him whimper.

“Yes, please, I’ve been so good – “

“Or shall I send you back in there, impossibly stiff and flushed? They would _stare_.” The shield was semi-reflective like glass, and Voldemort was watching his reaction. “Harry, everyone would _know_.” He ducked his head to Harry’s throat, sucking deeply.

He flushed, keeping his gaze on the room. Wishing they could see him, used and marked and defiled. And happy, both of them so fucking happy. Every time a wix glanced in their direction, his stomach twisted a bit. The tip of his cock was very wet.

Voldemort kicked his legs farther apart, pressing his hand in. Another.

“I won’t last – “

“I know.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Yeah, then.”

It only really hurt at the third finger these days. It turned out to be a brilliant plan, because the weight and fullness and burning stretch of being fingered made him gasp and groan. They were going to get caught, they were going to get fucking caught by his shitty, obvious sex noises. Voldemort thrust shallowly, stroking the tight ring of muscle until Harry quivered around his touch. A drop of precome ran down his shaft. Voldemort stroked harder, and Harry’s breath caught every time he grazed his prostate.

His head swam. He was warm and tight all over, ready to explode. He wrenched his hands from the wall, but of course they stuck, and Voldemort pressed in instead to steady him as he bucked, his come spilling over Voldemort’s fingers. He stroked until Harry was empty, until he would’ve sunk to the floor if he’d been able to. Voldemort dispelled the sticking spell, catching Harry momentarily until he could set himself upright again.

“Oh my god,” Harry panted, happy. He moved to kiss Voldemort, who flinched (at the blowjob, or the sentimentality?) but let him. “Thanks,” Harry said cheerily.

Their cleaning spells were legion. The entire space reeked of sex – even though they _hadn’t_ , not the full, thrusting, penetrative sort – and their mingled fluids were everywhere. “Let me,” Harry said as Voldemort cast another spell to scrub the floor. Harry’s magic wasn’t limited as Voldemort’s was. Anyway, the encounter as his fault. He handed magic off to Voldemort to do his own robes, and cast a volley of Scourgify and Tergeo on just about everything. Lastly, a warming charm on the curry, that had gone quite cool. They sat.

Harry found a last speck of moisture on his tie, and moved to scrub at it with a napkin. It might not even be come. Voldemort made a terrible noise in the back of his throat. “Use a proper cleaning charm.”

Harry glanced up, not even realizing he’d been watching. “Okay? It’s not, uh, conspicuous.”

“Do you pay _no_ attention to American news, then?”

He didn’t, and made a note to find out about this newsworthy American semen later. They ate quickly and perfunctorily, having dedicated so much of their lunch hour to sex. Finally Harry swallowed. “Will this actually happen? The schools.”

“It’d be an extraordinary waste of everyone’s time if I didn’t believe it would. Everyone present believes it will happen too, at least as much.” His lips curled. “We’ll bring in the dissidents at a later point.”

He shook his head faintly. “It will just change so much. In a good way,” he clarified. “If we’d had anything like it before, I would’ve….” He didn’t like where this thought was heading. He stopped. “They do trust you, then,” he said instead, “to just… pull apart our entire world, and put it back together, better.”

Voldemort looked surprised at this. “Yes, I suppose they do.”

When they reconvened (after Voldemort _swore_ that Harry didn’t look recently fucked), Scrimgeour had departed for afternoon meetings elsewhere. Bowersock had taken his place. Voldemort _felt_ Harry’s reaction, and shot him a look. “Don’t,” he muttered in Parseltongue. He was right, it wouldn’t help. It did not keep Harry from stabbing a quill into his palm under the table to disperse some of the restless fury he felt.

They had a list of proposals, pretty much: compulsory wix ed and common fundamentals for the purebloods; compulsory wix ed or some sort of addendum to the Muggle system for the Muggleborns; career counseling for the halfbloods. A Squib boarding school, not that it was anyone’s top priority at the moment. There was something of an explosion when Voldemort said that proper education _should_ promote patriotism. A larger explosion when one of the Muggle ministers asked why they weren’t including the quasi-humans – mermaids, centaurs, goblins – in their educational system as well. (Harry looked subtly to Hermione; she didn’t quite look back but a corner of her mouth curved up.) It was not a bad meeting, all in all. Harry got to see – obnoxiously – that Bowersock commanded a room nearly as well as Voldemort did. It wasn’t ill-advised to keep him close, politically. It was just… awful.

Early in the meeting they’d said they’d forego questions about finance, in the interest of negotiating the most advantageous education before monetary realities cut it down again. But at the end of the day, one of Hogwarts’s governors, an elderly woman named Madam Childress, frowned at the writing all over every whiteboard in the room. “It isn’t just a matter of cost,” she said. “But of facilities. Of labor force. Hogwarts might accommodate higher education programs,” (for it’d been a brief discussion, of having graduate students and apprentices around to teach or TA or do their masteries with Hogwarts faculty), “but the castle isn’t, ah, equipped for young magic.”

Harry amused himself for a few moments by pondering how they might childproof Hogwarts.

“But that _is_ all about cost,” the representative of the wix education department said. She glanced to the Muggles. “Hogwarts is fully subsidized by the Ministry. We could talk of changing that, to divert funds to early ed, but….” Nobody really wanted to.

“Hogwarts is free to students because they’d be a menace without proper training,” Voldemort said. “It’s a public good. Surely the same could be said of early education.”

“Well, yes, but…. I don’t want to be the one to argue for school fees. But this,” she lifted her chin in the direction of the whiteboards, “isn’t tenable.”

She went on to explain where the funding for education currently all came from. In a moment when nobody was looking at either of them, Harry brought a quill to the corner of Voldemort’s notes. Concentrating hard on Parselscript even if he couldn’t sound out the words, he wrote, _What happens to the seized money of the Death Eaters?_

Voldemort’s face remained impassive as he considered. _Every other pureblood family hopes to be the closest innocent relative_ , he wrote. _Reparations_ (this in English because apparently snakes didn’t need such a word) _would assist us financially_. He looked back to the conversation.

It didn’t matter: Harry wrote his final thoughts anyway. _I don’t want you to do it. What about survivors?_ (To use a horrible term, but he couldn’t think of a better one.) _What about Malfoy_? Voldemort’s eyes darted to take in the comment in an instant. He otherwise had no reaction.

They finished up at five. Bowersock, the utter cock, called it to a close with, “Well, some of us have got families waiting at home.” Wanker.

It only happened when they were leaving, when they’d nearly reached the Atrium and the Floos. Tonks and Kingsley would take Harry back to Hogwarts; Dawlish and Samuels would go with Voldemort to Candle Quay and on to Azkaban. A larger group was walking the Muggles out – _out_ properly, onto the street, because apparently getting to the Ministry of Magic by car was a thing one could do. A few dozen Ministry employees milled, at the end of the day, but none particularly approached or wanted to be near Voldemort. He was somewhere between indifferent and pleased by this.

When the Muggles were being ushered out, there was a _crack_ over the entrance door as the stained glass shattered into a million pieces. An unnaturally cold gust of wind swept into the building, even as far as the Floos. Voldemort and the Aurors sprang to attention equally quickly, running toward the entrance with their wands drawn. Harry didn’t think about it as he followed.

The wind brought ash – thick and gritty, far too much to actually have been carried in through the open door. As the room filled with perfect darkness, Harry realized it wasn’t ash at all. There was a brush on Harry’s shoulder, and then his face. His Diffindo barely lit the darkness, and hit nothing. He ran toward the entrance, unable to parse the shouting and spells and sirens everywhere.

_He – couldn’t – see_. Every dispelling and sucking and clearing charm wouldn’t lift the darkness. He gave up on trying, and surrendered himself to his other senses. A cord stretched between his heart and Voldemort’s. He’d phased it out like Occlumency before now, a constant of their lives. This time, he followed it.

He brushed past people – wixes, not Muggles, but other than that he couldn’t tell. “Sorry, sorry,” he muttered, hoping he wouldn’t get killed by friendly fire. Only at the last, a hand grabbed the front of his robes, and a wand raised to his face barely cut through the darkness. “Harry?”

“Tonks? I – “

“Get _back_ ,” she hissed. “You’re not trained for this.”

It would be a lot of paperwork if he died. On the other hand, they’d all die if Voldemort ran out of magic. Of that he was certain. “I will,” he lied.

So obviously this was the least likely thing he’d ever say, and it only frustrated Tonks. And then something else brushed his face – _feathers_? – and they both reacted with spells shot into the air. Tonks pulled Harry beside her, until he could nearly see her, as she shot off a volley of stunning spells. Nothing hit. Harry pulled out of her grasp, not feeling safe standing still, and he ran.

It was an intense feeing once he concentrated on it, like a hook behind his breastbone. He shot stunning spells before himself as he ran. He found nobody.

They must have gotten nearly to the door. He kicked what had to be a limb, someone’s arm or leg, out from under his step. Then beside him – “ _Voldemort._ ” Parseltongue, of course. There was a powerful crackle of magic and Voldemort chanting in a low tone. Without stopping his sallow hand cut through the darkness and pulled Harry close.

He didn’t recognize the spell – he’d never learned any sung or chanted spells. He didn’t even recognize the language. Carefully, he drew himself beside Voldemort, pressing their sides together, taking his off hand, and offered his magic.

Voldemort was weak. His robes were rent around his abdomen, and sticky with blood. He seemed completely indifferent to his own wounds – he would live, after all – but Harry would heal him as soon as he could. For now, he propped Voldemort against himself.

There were explosions and shots around them, but they sounded muffled. Voldemort must have shields up. A good thing, too, since Harry felt horribly vulnerable just standing here. Standing here _together_ , as the two most attractive targets in the room. Stupid, really. But their magic was a strong current between them, stronger for being interwoven. Voldemort still chanted. Harry kept his wand up, protecting them both for the moment.

The chant finished with a throaty hum. His magic – their magic – _shuddered_ , and then Voldemort shot an explosion straight up. It burst like fireworks, illuminating the ash, thinning it and lifting it toward the ceiling. Their vision became smoky but functional, everything bathed in the red and violet and deep blue of infrared. He could tell people in the distance by the way their magic glowed around them. With the air cleared, everyone dashed into action, and spells cracked through the air deafeningly.

Voldemort swirled his wand in the air once more, and froze. Bubblehead charms on them both, and he leaned into explain. “Poison. The air’s poisoned. Go tell – “

Shit. “What about you?” He was pushing magic right into Voldemort’s core now, where the spell had gashed him open. He was too panicked to produce a proper healing spell. It hurt them both to force magic between them too fast, and he did it anyway, until he was light-headed.

A crack of magic, far too close to their heads, and Voldemort pushed him away (nevermind the wince that this produced). “ _Go_.”

Harry ran into the crowd. It was dangerous – visibility was still poor enough that he had to get precariously close to identify anyone. He found Tonks again, with Dawlish and surprisingly Moody. “It’s poison!” he shouted through the bubblehead charm. Alarmed looks, and they each cast charms on themselves. Harry was about to run off he – he thought he recognized McGonagall and Hermione through the haze – until Moody caught him bodily, slamming his staff against Harry’s chest. Fuck.

“You’re too important,” Moody growled in his ear, pulling him backward, casting a Disillusionment charm over him. “It’s not worth it, you need to – “

Two crows swooped very low over their heads, intent and ominous. He could feel the malevolence of their magic – with the infrared, he could nearly _see_ it emanating off them. Shoving Moody off him – “Diffindo! Diffindo!” The shots all missed and the birds circled higher, out of range. Moody cast a lightning storm over them – cages – fire. The birds swirled, seemed to aim for them, and dove right through their shields. Partway through the dive, there was a grotesque ripple through each of them. A _transformation_ – fuck. They didn’t have time to move and then – _slam_. A wizard in pitch-black robes and a bone-white mask was upon him, wand jammed against his throat so he couldn't breathe. His arms were pinned beneath the man’s legs.

“The only thing he cares about,” the man murmured, tugging on a damp lock that lay on Harry’s forehead. “What _does_ he want with you?” His accent was indistinct, guttural, as though he’d lived a great many places before.

Shit. He’d have to use wandless magic, his wand was pinned underneath him, but he still needed his _hands_ to do so. He pulled at his arms, but the man’s thighs were above his elbows. He had no leverage. “Who are you?” he demanded, twisting his hands to determine if he could reach anything.

“You don’t know?” The man’s eyes were bright and mocking. “Ask _him_. I wonder why he hasn’t told you about us.”

Oh, what the fuck. The back of the wizard’s robe pooled across his hips. He didn’t have long but he had to know, as the man enjoyed his helplessness. “You’ll kill me, then?”

His eyes got brighter, a curl to his lips. “You don’t understand at all.”

This arsehole. In a motion, he grabbed the back of the robes, wrenching backwards. The wizard fell back just enough to loosen his legs around Harry’s arms; he twisted sideways to pull himself from his pinned position. Up before the wizard, but he fumbled for his wand. Beside him he already heard Moody cursing the holy hell out of the other wizard. He could’ve smiled.

Instead, he cast a shield and shot off a half-dozen spells; his opponent did the same. If he could get in beyond his shield he could take him down with wandless magic, he’d done it before. He flung a severing charm back at the wizard, and some psychological spell, even as he scanned the room’s poor visibility.

Unfortunately while looking, he missed the other wizard beside him, the one who’d attacked Moody. Lunging in, he bypassed Harry’s shield, grabbing the back of Harry’s neck. Shite.

He whipped around in panic when he felt the pull of Apparition. He _couldn’t_ – he slammed his hands into the man’s collarbone, shoving Diffindo through them. Chaos – blood everywhere, the nausea of apparition, shooting pain up his arms – he seemed to be barely lifted from the ground, and then dropped again. The man melted from his grasp. There was blood pooling beneath him, slick on the stone.

Moody had stunned the other wizard, levitating him into a shimmering cage above the fray. They gave each other a once-over. “Don’t get killed,” Moody muttered. They ran in opposite directions.

By this time the others had realized about the poisoned air, thank fuck. The room smelled overwhelmingly of blood and magic. He stumbled over what might have been a corpse. Looking down – one of the defectors. In an instant, he bent to take the mask. It sizzled with unfamiliar magic but didn’t hurt. The defector was ashen, his jaw slack. Nobody Harry recognized. But even as he looked, the graying flesh twisted and rippled, wiping his features in an instant. Harry choked back a surprised cry, dropping the mask on the man’s – corpse’s – chest. As Moody did, he lifted the body out of the way. He didn’t know the spell to create a cage, so he improvised with a sticking spell to hold him onto a rafter. Then he ran.

He saw a cloud of dark hair through the haze, pressed against a wall. _Hermione_. She hurled huge chunks of ice and frost at two wizards who’d cornered her, but she was flagging, and she had nowhere to run. Harry swallowed. Running in, he raised his wand. The most vicious spell he could think of, burning him up as he feared for her safety: “ _Sectumsempra_!”

Nothing. A spark. _Fuck_ , he’d forgotten the Ministry had taken his capacity for dark magic. Before the wizards could fully turn around, he hit one in the back with a stunning spell. He stumbled forward and Hermione caught his body with a spell, hurling it into the other wizard. A crack, and the wizard’s form melted into a crow, launching itself toward the ceiling.

“They’ll dive again, they did before,” Harry panted, but he lost sight of the bird immediately in the thick smoke above them.

Hermione’s dark complexion was obviously ashen even in the strange lighting. “Harry, you need to go,” she said urgently. But then, there was a strangled cry in the distance, and they both ran for it. Still: “Even if they won’t kill you, they’ll take you and torture you to get to him. You’ve got to get to….” She scanned the area in a panic, looking for safety. “ _Out_ ,” she said finally. “You’ve got to get out.”

“Not until everyone’s – “ He broke off with a gasp. Professor McGonagall and Governor Childress were back to back, caught in a flaming cage held together by two wizards as a third flung curses at them. “Hey!”

“Harry – “

He ran in, throwing every curse he could think of, fire and ice and blood boiling and dismemberment and panic and fear. He felt the sizzle of Hermione’s magic beside his own. “There you are,” one of the wizards leered, but he didn’t have goddamn time for their creepiness. Lunging in, he jammed his wand to the man’s throat.

“Leave them.”

The man laughed, his breath hot on Harry’s face. His eyes were wild. “ _You_ leave them.” Like the first, his accent was unplaceable, but then, the scene was loud and chaotic. Hermione was untangling the cage even as McGonagall and Childress fought the other wizards. This one was Harry’s alone.

“Do you want him dead, is that it?” He was pacing backward, for the space, to draw him from his colleagues. “Do you want revenge? Blackmail?”

He flashed very sharp teeth. “ _Yes_.” And then he lunged.

Harry was on the ground again without realizing it, his skull aching where it’d struck stone. The wizard didn’t bother with his wand this time: tipping his head close, he pressed his incisors to Harry’s throat. _Fuck, fuck, fuck_. The movement of his lips, a spell too quiet to hear, but already he felt the pulsations of dark magic, nauseating him. He shoved backwards ineffectually. The man’s lips had stopped moving but his teeth bore down on his throat. He shoved and shoved, and –

A blast from behind the defector, and he fell heavily onto Harry. Gasping, Harry shoved his body off, rolling it sideways before he stood. Voldemort was there, and already moving past him, even if his gait was uneven, even as alarming it was he hunched around his shredded torso. Still, thank fuck. Harry about threw himself at him, pressing magic into his hands. He looked drawn, but so did they all.

“Out of the way, Ms. Granger.”

Hermione hadn’t gotten the cage open yet. McGonagall and Childress were enervated, scarred and bloodied. “Don’t kill them,” she said. “We need to know – “

“You’re aware they as good as die in captivity.” He stepped past her, and she fell back in nearly a panic. Both of the defectors were fighting to keep the cage in place, and to take down McGonagall and Childress. They were outnumbered now, and going to die very soon.

The nearer defector spared a wry glance. “Are you the savior now?” he asked Voldemort, even as he flung a fireball back at Childress. “Now they’ll see how much they need you.”

Voldemort didn’t dignify this with a response. “Avada Kedavra.” The man dropped heavily to the floor. The other, scrambling backwards, was rapidly shifting into his crow form. “Opsideo!” The transformation halted immediately, leaving the man with feathers in place of fingers, and grotesquely twisted legs. The noise of anguish he made was inhuman. “I’ll leave one alive for you,” Voldemort said to Hermione.

The cage melted away. They were all frozen before the twisted figure. “Don’t stun him, it will take his mind and memory,” Voldemort said. Apparently leaving the three witches to this task, he drew close to Harry. “They’re nearly all dead. Here.” Wrapping his arm around Harry’s waist, he moved as though Apparating.

But it wasn’t, it was just levitation or something like it. They rose above the fray, above the blasts of magic, and the shouting and the thick smell of blood, to land lightly on the rafters. The poisoned ash was thick up here, and Harry re-cast the bubblehead charms. He couldn’t heal Voldemort, but he handed off magic as they both took in the scene below them.

Voldemort was right, the defectors were nearly all incapacitated or dead. One dueled Moody, one was cornered by Kingsley and Dawlish. For the moment they weren’t necessary, so Voldemort looked over. “You’re covered in blood.”

“Oh.” Harry glanced down. “Most of it’s not mine. I think. Actually – “ Stepping in, he tipped his head back, exposing his throat. “That last wizard might have bitten me? I don’t think he broke skin. Could you…?”

“How uncouth.” Voldemort ran a finger over his throat. “I expect you’d feel something more if you’d been infected. But there’s not enough light…. And don’t clean the blood off yet, the Aurors will need it for forensics,” he added.

Harry shuddered minutely. “Right.” He felt… he didn’t know how he felt. He’d been cursed for certain, but it hadn’t manifested yet. “I’d rather just be done with this.”

“Mm. Yes.” In two quick motions, he killed each of the remaining defectors. Kingsley and Dawlish looked startled. Moody was impassive as his magical eye slid upward to look at them. He began lowering the bodies from where they hung in midair.

There were more people than there had been at the start: Aurors, emergency services, Healers, curse breakers. An entire team worked on the ash that still hung in the air. They needed to get out of the rafters, where it remained thickest: Harry’s bubblehead charms were a bit spotty, and just being in contact with the ash was unpleasant anyway, causing hives on any exposed skin. It seemed nearly safe to re-enter the space. Voldemort took him by the waist again, and they stepped from the rafter as though stepping off a curb. They sunk to the ground gracefully.

Immediately they were collared by two Healers. “Uh, I’ll need an Auror as well,” the one nearer to Harry said, wrinkling his nose at how much blood was saturating both of their robes. Harry could scarcely feel how heavily he and Voldemort were leaning on each other. He was very light-headed. They let themselves be led away.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Allusions for Chapter 14:
> 
> Emotional support animal – I believe this term is slightly anachronistic for the era, sorry. Emotional support animals assist people with mental or emotional disorders.
> 
> “He made a note to find out about this newsworthy American semen later.” – This is set in 1998 so hell yes it is a Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky joke. MORE SHAMELESS 90S CULTURE IN HP FIC.


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The aftermath of the attack on the Ministry. Hermione objects to Voldemort. Harry channels all his adrenaline into sex.
> 
> (Not a real warning, but: the entire latter half of this chapter is sex. Not sorry.)

The Ministry building, like Hogwarts, occasionally rearranged itself to suit occupant needs, and it had done so now, as the Healers explained that a rather large infirmary had emerged at the end of a narrow corridor. Others were being shuffled in that direction: Hermione, McGonagall, Childress, the secretary of education. But none of the Aurors, which clearly made Voldemort impatient. Stepping back from the diagnostic spells the Healers were casting on him as they moved, he said, “I need to see Moody.” He turned to go find him again, shaking off Harry’s grasp.

“No – Vol – _why_?”

Voldemort’s look was intense. “Because if those Muggles aren’t Obliviated, everything is wasted.”

Shit. “You’re right,” he muttered.

The Healers, seeing they were both about to revolt, jumped in. “We’ll summon Moody,” the senior one promised, still trying to shepherd them toward the infirmary.

“I’ve got to be there while they’re making decisions _now_.” With a twist of his fingers, Voldemort’s wand was in his hand. The Healers retreated a bit. “Oh, and Harry should be there as well,” he added. “Where have you seen Moody last? Or Scrimgeour, if he’s still here.”

“Next corridor over,” the Healer relented. “But could we…. You’re both bleeding quite badly,” he pointed out, nodding to blood spatters on the floor.

Harry looked down, startled at the fresh puddles. “Oh.” He took inventory of his body. He was still numb on adrenaline and light-headed, he supposed, on blood loss. The blood fell from his fingertips; he shook back his sleeves. Deep grooves ran along his forearms, revealing bone. He made a strangled noise. “What the _fuck_.”

“Splinched,” Voldemort said, before the Healers could. He looked to them. “Come with us, or I’ll do it myself. There isn’t time for anything else.” His robes billowed as he strode through the halls.

“Sir, we’ve got professional vows….”

“Then _come_ ,” he said over his shoulder. “Ah.” They reached the next corridor, quieter, with a number of conference rooms spilling light into the hallway. He raised his wand to point himself.

“Voldemort.”

“Oh thank fuck,” Voldemort said, with such sincerity that everyone else nearly started. Scrimgeour had approached, his face drawn and angry. “You’ve got to Obliviate the Muggles.”

“I was in a meeting in Cork. I’ve only just returned.” He did look rather cleaner and less bloodied than the rest of them. “Moody?”

“Yes.”

They fell in step together. Harry’s Healer was already at work, pinning back his sleeves and Tergeo’ing his blood into little vials. “Are you… putting that back in?” Harry asked in doubt, because he couldn’t think of any other reason to preserve it.

“There will be traces of your opponent’s magic and, hopefully, blood. Especially,” the Healer said, frowning at the ribbons that once constituted Harry’s flesh, “if they were splinched too.”

Oh. Probably. There had been a _lot_ of blood.

The conference room where the Aurors and bits of the Wizengamot had congregated had been cleared of its furniture and filled with hammocks and cots. Onofre, one of the Healers who’d seen to them in the safehouse, pressed calming draughts upon each of them when they entered. “Thanks,” Harry muttered.

Moody, Kingsley, Robards, Bowersock, Bones, all variously ministered to by more Healers inside. Their looks of relief couldn’t have possibly been for Voldemort. Harry summoned a hammock for them both, pulling it into the loose circle. Nobody was surprised by seeing them touch, these days. He could’ve crawled into Voldemort’s lap, for all the difference it made. Their magic stitched one another back together, even as Healers fixed Harry’s splinching and the deep gashes in Voldemort’s stomach.

Scrimgeour waved off a real debriefing, saying he’d follow from whatever they needed to discuss. None of them had much time: the Aurors had to orchestrate questioning and memory collection, Scrimgeour and Voldemort (and somehow, _Harry_ ) had to decide what to do with the Muggles. The investigation of the instigators, as it turned out, was not particularly pressing, because the only one who wasn’t dead or in stasis (the Unspeakables _still_ didn’t know what precisely it was, the anonymization curse, Kingsley said) was the one Voldemort had trapped mid-transformation.

Muggles first. “Take their memories,” Voldemort insisted, intense instead of angry. “It will cause a diplomatic crisis if not a national panic, if they recount this.”

Robards pursed his lips. “Our team of obliviators is mostly home for the night.”

“I’ll do it.”

“You would.” It wasn’t a pleasant rejoinder.

“This is twice the Muggles have been attacked by them as well. They may not be incidental,” Moody said.

“Mm.” He tipped his head back. “I suppose if they’re protesting my _collusion_ ….” He said it with deep irony.

Scrimgeour, the one Voldemort nearest to trusted, leaned in. “Who are they?”

A short and unpleasant laugh. “A collective large enough to afford to send a dozen mediocre wizards on a suicide mission. Are there casualties on the Ministry’s side?” he asked Moody. Harry heard, even if nobody else did, how _our side_ was in the back of his throat first.

“Not yet. But there’re a good number of poisonings.” He frowned at Voldemort. “It’s meaningful that they haven’t killed anybody?”

“Oh, they _tried_.” Voldemort was handed a capful of capsules and threw them back without question. Harry saw it as an echo of the quick and obedient treatment he’d get in Azkaban, and it made his chest hurt. “But Diagon Alley was an embarrassment. They were underpowered if not precisely outnumbered tonight. It’s a suicide mission, by choice or by punishment.”

Bowersock looked up, surprised at this. “ _Punishment_?” he asked. “Is that common?”

Voldemort gave a very small smile and didn’t exactly answer him. “We also need Minerva McGonagall here. She would know what magic could produce the same Animagi – or magic analogous to it – for a dozen wizards.”

“I’ll get her,” Harry said, half-moving to get up.

Voldemort grabbed his hand, harder than he’d let anyone else know. “ _You_ have ruined the floors with enough of your blood.” Harry knew what this meant, and passed his magic faster, before he became faint.

Moody, as this unfolded, cast a falcon Patronus into the air. “Oh,” Harry said, sheepish. Moody’s eye rolled as he watched the Patronus traverse the building.

“The remnants of the Death Eaters are dead,” Voldemort volunteered as they waited. “Archuleta and Dunlop today were the last of the Britons who could even be nominally associated with me. Beyond Greyback himself, or Pettigrew.”

“Still think it’s a group led by werewolves?” Moody asked.

“As I found one about to bite through Harry’s jugular, I do.”

He got a few looks of horror at this, but more indifference. The Aurors had all seen – experienced – much worse. “I’m fine,” he muttered anyway.

“Does intel have anything on upheaval or regime change among the werewolves recently?” Voldemort asked Robards.

He was shaking his head even as he took out a diary of notes. “Nothing. But they haven’t managed to get close.” He was making notes now.

Voldemort lifted one bony shoulder. “It remains, then, a band of mostly wix dissidents under the auspices – in an unknown capacity – of werewolves. Their goals seem… scattered, apart from disposing of me.” A small, unamused smile. “Attacking Muggle-involved meetings could certainly be ideological. Attacking meetings with Harry equally so. Does it matter their ideology?” he mused. “It wouldn’t seem to affect our security response.” At everyone’s silence, he looked around. “I ask because uncovering their intent would certainly involve sending people in among the werewolves. So if you’re willing to _sacrifice_ them….”

“Fine.” Moody. “I don’t give a damn what these people” (he pronounced it in a thoroughly prickly way) “want, of you or anybody else. I doubt….” He looked around the room. “Amelia cares. Potter does, certainly,” and Harry started at hearing himself acknowledged like a real person. “Otherwise we’d rather just dismantle them.”

“Mm. Yes. You’d still need to understand them well enough to understand who would be the most attractive bait.”

Moody took this in. “Would you?”

“Yes.” He let that settle for a moment before moving on: “Let me Obliviate the Muggles. I will be so gentle.”

Harry pressed a free hand to his mouth to hide his smile. Nobody else was nearly as amused. Still, after a lot of glares and a few tense exchanges, Robards said, “We’ll Obliviate the Muggles. _You_ will not. That’s cause a greater scandal even than letting them retain their memories.”

“Any casualties among them?”

“Thank Merlin, no. Some of them will be getting false memories of new scars, though.”

“Mm.” Voldemort had relaxed beside him, his one demand met. And a moment later Professor McGonagall arrived, assisted by her own Mobilicorpus but looking no worse for it. Harry summoned a cot for her.

Her pronouncements were grim: creature transfiguration bypasses wix transfiguration rules, to an extent. The curse that anonymized all captured and killed agents was dark magic, but unfamiliar to her. She couldn’t recommend any process to slow or reverse it. And the crows today weren’t proper Animagi, but an old spell, the fruits of some binding blood magic.

Finally, the Aurors had to reconstruct the night. They began with the memories of those present. “Oral statements later,” Robards said as he handed out Pensieve vials. “But we’ve all rather got business.”

Harry really wasn’t sure he did. Because everyone else (including Voldemort, _what the christ_ ) seemed familiar with the memory bit, he had to be the one to ask. “How much of it do you want?” It would be a long memory.

Robards hummed. “Start with the explosion. End with… wherever you were at the end,” he frowned, and Harry couldn’t tell him they’d waited in the rafters like snipers. “Your care and accuracy should go most toward unique encounters. Bits that won’t be in other reports.”

Oh. Yeah, he could do that. He needed a moment alone with Voldemort to ask about those wizards, actually. So when Voldemort collected him and took him to the wing of Muggles afterward, the walk was valuable.

“They were all so… blasé. Something. Mocking.” They spoke in Parseltongue, as always.

“They knew they’d die. Perhaps they were trying to goad you into killing them.”

He shuddered. “Maybe. I asked one if he was going to kill _me_ , and he said I didn’t understand. To ask you.”

A look over at him. “Everything I said was true. Or rather, my best conjecture.”

Paranoia gnawed inside of him. The adrenaline was wearing off and so was the calming draught, and it was all very uncomfortable. He _got_ that Voldemort was a lightning rod for hatred by a great many people, and that knowing wouldn’t change much about the Ministry’s response, but still. “Would you question the one they captured? Well, _you_ captured.”

A snort. “The Aurors have _protocol_ , I am told.” He said it in an irked tone. “Otherwise I’d like to. Here.”

They entered a dimmed room, to find the Muggles held there, asleep or in stasis, left on sofas and chairs. A group of three obliviators worked carefully, drawing out shimmering memories and spinning them into complex shapes. Auror Rye was here, supervising.

Voldemort took a quiet position beside her. “Difficulties?”

She didn’t look surprised to see them. “None. They were sequestered almost immediately. We’ve only taken their memories, we haven’t replaced them yet.”

“Let me.”

Her heart-shaped mouth went tight, because she didn’t appreciate confrontation with Voldemort like some of them did. Still: “No. Why?”

“Because somehow your team is entirely purebloods. I grew up in Muggle London.”

Harry saw that Voldemort would dole out bits of insight about himself as rewards or bargaining tokens. Rye saw it too. “There’s a pub setting we use often enough. Blood’s got nothing to do with it.”

They were being politely dismissed, and Voldemort wasn’t happy about it. Harry pressed more magic into his skin, placating if patronizing. And then Voldemort was wrenching magic from him, drawing his wand in an elegant motion. Anya stepped back, alarmed even as she drew her own wand, taking the Aurors’ defensive stance. And then with a crack, Voldemort cast a spell that made the room go bright, twisting the atmosphere into a larger version of the knots crafted by the obliviators. Everyone jumped back from the Muggles. Their eyelids fluttered. They remained in stasis.

Rye whirled around, angry. “You need to leave,” she said in a low, dangerous voice.

“Of course.” He dipped minutely, as though bowing in the most sardonic fashion. “Goodnight.” They both kept their wands out until they’d left.

Harry knew they couldn’t undermine each other before the Aurors, so he’d held his tongue, but once they were in the hallway: “What the _hell_ was that?”

Voldemort shushed him. It wasn’t even Parseltongue. “Really, they should be grateful.”

“Can’t you trust them _just_ enough to not muck up their jobs? Or is it that you’re such a narcissist, you can’t stand _not_ being in the center of things for once?” It began teasing, but swerved hard and serious partway through.

Voldemort didn’t retaliate, didn’t even seem particularly offended. “I’m leaving you in the infirmary. You’ll need a round of potions for that blood curse.” It was all the healers had found on him, when he’d told them of the incantation murmured against his throat. It was slow-acting, but he’d best deal with it tonight.

“And you? You’re still….” He’d been bandaged around his torso. The spells shot at him had intended to rip through his organs, and thank god they nearly glanced off.

“I’ll heal with time. And I’ll be obligated to debrief with an Auror. I’d prefer to assist with forensics in the Atrium.”

Oh. “And then?”

“I can’t imagine we’d be left anywhere but the safehouse.”

He really didn’t mind the idea; he’d sort of been angling for it anyway. It was shitty, to celebrate this catastrophe as a cause for time alone, but. “Right,” he said instead. “I know the way to the infirmary. Do you need magic?”

The brief, painful silence was answer enough, before Voldemort even said in a strained voice, “Yes.”

So Harry pulled them both out of the way, into a small and empty office. Leaving the door cracked as though it’d give them _any_ plausible deniability, he shook back their sleeves, stepping in close to press his body to Voldemort’s as magic diffused across their skin. “ _Are_ you alright?” he asked, laughing suddenly at his omission. “I should’ve said that anyone else should, y’know, slow down if they were hurt, but you….”

Voldemort’s breathing had gone slow at his touch. “Mm.” He conjured a sofa onto which they both sank; Harry felt it pull from their magic as though they had one reserve between them. “Yes,” he said. “I would never consent to the restrictions on magic to which you’ve consented, but our magic….” He waved a pale hand as though to indicate the circumstances. So he felt it too. “Anything I cast that you’d be unable to, resisted me. It took a bit of magic to overcome. And it did more damage than anything _they_ were able to do.”

“Sorry,” Harry said, though it wasn’t properly his fault.

“ _Don’t_ tell the Aurors,” he said rather severely. “They’ll take your magic to restrain me.”

“They wouldn’t – “ Rethinking this, he sighed. “Right, yeah.”

Voldemort made a vague gesture. Then, quiet and nearly apologetic: “I didn’t intend to take your magic with Rye, before. That was probably unpleasant for you.”

Harry had his head pressed to Voldemort’s chest, beneath his chin, and didn’t want to look up in incredulity. Even so. An _apology_. Not for any big thing, but a small and immediate and insignificant harm. He knew better than to brush it off, for all it cost Voldemort. “Thank you,” he said instead. “I’d rather you apologize to Rye, and the obliviators, though.” And this time he did sit up to glare, albeit without any fire.

A flash of Voldemort’s teeth. “No,” he said curtly. “Next time, she won’t take my offer of assistance so lightly.”

Harry rolled his eyes. He recognized, too, how much it cost Voldemort to offer up anything of his childhood – even if Rye hadn’t know how fraught it would be, at all – and how damaging it was to have it discarded. “ _I’m_ going to apologize to her, then,” he said.

“Such is your lot in life.”

He smiled, letting his teeth graze Voldemort’s clavicle. Their magic was nearly at equilibrium. A pause, and then he offered, “You _have_ made yourself indispensable to them. Somehow.”

“Of course I have,” he said. He sounded unexpectedly exhausted. “It’s quite conditional. As long as I am only the second-greatest threat to them, I can be – and _will_ be – the protector.”

Harry’s brain ground to a halt. “Uh, who’s the first?” This disorganized group of dissidents certainly didn’t qualify.

An amused hum. “Not who, _what_. Though you’re right, something like breaking out Grindelwald from Nurmengard so that he might attack Britain would be… well.” He said this lightly, as though it were an amusing prospect and not a horrifying one. “The _first_ threat to them, however, is Muggle society. They don’t mean to be,” he clarified, because after last spring’s captivity in Muggle hands and subsequent treaties upon treaties, their worlds coexisted nearly peacefully now. “But the precarity of everything we establish now…. They would almost not mind it all going wrong, if it would be my fault and distinctly not theirs. They could call it treason, if they liked.”

Harry took this in. “The last defector – er, whoever – said that, too. That they’d need you more if they were in danger.”

“The savior,” Voldemort echoed the wizard’s words. His hands curled into Harry’s, nails almost painful. “I swear to you, I didn’t _orchestrate_ them. As I say, it wouldn’t be a bad idea, but I didn’t. I prefer more abstract existential threats, anyway,” he added wryly. “As does everyone else. It allows them to more readily overlook how talented I am at murder.”

_That_ was certainly true. Still, he felt nothing for the wizards Voldemort had killed earlier. Voldemort had _saved_ Moody, and wasn’t that a funny thought. “Do you know what happened to the first two? The ones from Diagon Alley. Dawlish said he’d hold them until the full moon, and that was what, last week?”

“Yes. The anonymization spell seems to begin on the surface and spread inward,” Voldemort began. “I asked for an autopsy. It was atypical, since as you’ve seen, medicine in our world is otherwise profoundly disembodied.” (Harry thought of Mr. Weasley explaining Muggle stitches to Molly, and smiled in spite of everything.) “Presumably the spell originates with the mask. You’ve seen how their facial features are erased. The same happens internally. There was bone, but veins and organs and blood were all transforms into very smooth, bloodless flesh.”

This wasn’t the answer he’d expected, at all. “That is awful.”

“Maybe. It’s brilliant magic, though,” he said with relish. Harry nearly gagged. Voldemort went on. “There’s nothing to recover of these wizards once the spell takes them. I tried Legilimency, but there wasn’t a consciousness left either.”

“Or a soul?”

A thoughtful pause. “There might be a soul. The bodies are kept in a Ministry holding cell now. We might as well transport one to Azkaban, to see what the Dementors make of it.”

Harry shuddered again. “So it is a suicide mission.”

“Yes,” he said. “For punishment, or for glory….” He twisted his hand in indifference.

“What happens if they take you?”

Voldemort sounded faintly surprised. “They know of the Horcruxes. Including yours, it seems.”

“We haven’t been subtle,” Harry cut in.

“No. But that is to say… you’ll be a target before I am. Why _haven’t_ I taught you to duel,” Voldemort mused. “Though you survived today admirably.”

“ _Thank_ you,” he said, amused. “I survived off Diffindo and stunning spells. Wandless magic is just… _unfairly_ powerful, anyway. And I don’t like the way it makes me feel, when I cast offensive spells wandlessly.”

“What does it feel like?” he asked with curiosity.

“I’m not sure. Sort of… twisted. I might just have a problem inflicting pain at close proximity.” He wondered if the allure or appeal or addiction of Dark magic felt like this to Voldemort. He didn’t want to ask.

Voldemort tipped his head back, thinking. “You’re nearly as safe as you can be, without going into hiding,” he began.

“No. I won’t.” He hated the idea. He hated everyone this afternoon who had told him to hide, he was _too valuable_ to fight, as though his value weren’t in being a child soldier anyway.

Voldemort went on without acknowledging this. “Ask Flitwick to teach you to duel. He did a mastery in it when he was young, you know. You don’t need to know dueling as a formal art, only the strategic bits. The bits that will keep you alive,” he said, overly candid.

As the previous calming draught had begun to wear off, panic welled up inside him at this, unexpectedly. He fumbled for another in his pockets, snapping off the top and downing it in a go. Voldemort looked on with faint surprise. “I haven’t got _time_ ,” Harry said, when he’d swallowed. “I’d love to, I just _can’t_. I’m not you, I need, like, sleep.”

Voldemort considered him. “Right,” he said, at last. Sitting back, he tested his magic with a wandless explosion of blue and silver sparks above them. “Brilliant.” He moved to get up.

“Wait. Fuck. I just told you – “ He didn’t understand what was happening right now.

“I _promise_ that we will be sent to the safehouse tonight,” Voldemort stressed. “If you could hold off on this conversation for an hour. You need to be in the infirmary when you have the proper panic attack you’re about to have.”

This was not untrue. Still, it hurt. “I didn’t say anything wrong,” Harry defended himself as Voldemort pulled him to his feet, re-buttoning his cloak as though he were a child. “You are _exhausting_. I’ve never been so busy in my life, and you tell me it’s not enough. That I’ll ruin your life and get us both killed – “

“Would you like a cheering charm?” Voldemort interrupted him as he pulled Harry out the door.

“ _No_.”

“I shouldn’t have kept you from medical attention for so long. As you know, when the adrenaline of battle recedes….” He gestured to Harry broadly.

He knew it was true, that the things he felt were a delayed response to stress, to violence, to proximity to death. Still, it felt bloody awful to have Voldemort calmly invalidate it all. He bit his inner lip very hard, until a blister formed.

The Ministry was quieter now. The employees must have been diverted to other exits, because forensics were not taking place in the Atrium, a careful team working through the blood and ash. Voldemort pulled him down the correct hallway.

“As I said, I’ll need to report to an Auror. You will, too.”

“What do I tell them? What _can_ I tell them?”

Voldemort’s non-eyebrows went up. “What shouldn’t you?” he asked. “They already have your memories. I don’t recommend discrepancies.”

Harry took a breath, thinking. “The first wizard said you’d know who they were. The last one said their attack made you the savior. I don’t want you….”

“Ah.” He considered. “Tell them to come to me if they’re concerned. It’s not your responsibility to justify this.”

That was only part of Harry’s question. The other part was that the accusations seemed _credible_. Voldemort would do anything. He admitted that the crisis was advantageous. He shook it off, not knowing how to put this into words. “Right. I will.”

They stood before the door of the temporary infirmary. Maybe separating – even briefly – only hurt so much because he was so emotionally fucked right now. Or because their magic had only just healed, and they were about to rip it open again. “Kiss me,” he murmured. He craved much more cathartic touch, but for the moment….

Voldemort pressed him to the wall, running a hand through his hair as he pressed cool, perfect kisses to his warm mouth. It made him want to cry. He wanted to be tied up and spanked and fucked, all while being told it wasn’t his fault or his responsibility, any of it. He couldn’t possibly save the world, not tonight.

And then Voldemort made a tiny sound and Harry realized that their consciousnesses were as entangled as their magic. “Sorry,” he muttered against his mouth. With a last sucking kiss to his lower lip, Voldemort moved back.

“Find me in an hour,” he instructed, stepping aside to usher Harry into the infirmary. “Ask for calming draughts and anti-toxins.”

“Do you need anything?”

Voldemort considered. “Blood replenishing potions. And baobab,” he said. “Enough for both of us.”

This was a bloody brilliant idea, actually. “Right. Alright,” he said with a sigh. They went in opposite directions.

The infirmary was a large, bright room, with cots separated by curtains. It looked to have once been a ballroom, with glittering murals still lining the walls. Harry took in the number of beds, feeling a bit sick. It had seemed as though only the dozen wixes from today’s meeting had been involved in the attack, but there seemed to be more than that here.

“ _Potter_.” His healer from earlier, looking very reproachful. “Where _were_ you? When I said the poison was slow-acting, that wasn’t permission to leave.”

“Sorry. Uh.” He let himself be led through rows of beds. “Voldemort. We didn’t mean to be long.”

The healer pursed his lips, perfectly conveying what he thought of _that_. Stopping by a bed with drawn curtains, he checked the patient chart. “Granger? I’ve got him.”

“Oh, Harry!” Hermione spelled open the curtains. Her eyes were bright, but most of her exposed skin was puffy and rose-tinted. “I’m infectious to touch,” she said by way of apology. “Otherwise I’d hug you. Where _were_ you?”

“Voldemort.” His constant excuse, these days.

“Oh.” Carefully neutral. “Here, take the next bed over, it’s empty.” And the healer did gesture for him to take the bed. He sat.

“Is Professor McGonagall…?” He’d looked, but most beds had their curtains drawn.

Hermione took a moment. “I’m not the one who should be telling you this.”

Harry’s heart dropped into the pit of his stomach. “No,” he said. “Moody said there weren’t casualties – “

Hermione made a strangled, horrified sound. “No! No, she’s fine. I mean, nearly. She had to return to Hogwarts. There was… an explosion? An attack? Snape sent a Patronus, but he didn’t properly say. He, uh, also said that _you_ should stay away until you’re no longer such a lightning rod for destruction,” she quoted ruefully.

It did sound exactly like him. Harry slumped hard against the pillows, taking this in. “A coordinated attack, then. Voldemort said it was a suicide mission – that like at Diagon Alley, they were outnumbered and underpowered. But if this was only a distraction….”

“We know _nothing_ of what happened at Hogwarts,” Hermione stressed. “Unauthorized people can’t even get onto the grounds. It might be sabotage, but it might just be a coincidence.”

“Some coincidence,” Harry murmured. He looked up at the healer, who was casting spells that took his vitals. ( _Healer Otto F. Branwen_ , he was now close enough to read his nameplate.) “Can I have a calming draught? And baobab. Please.”

Branwen popped his chart into existence, looking it over. “You may.” A few more flicks of his wand, a bottle of each appeared on his bedside table. Harry moved carefully so as not to disrupt the diagnostic spells as he threw back the baobab capsules, swallowing them with calming draught.

Hermione found this… surprising? Embarrassing? Something. She averted her gaze until Harry was done. Then she asked in a deliberate tone, “Suicide mission?”

So Harry recounted what Voldemort and the Aurors had discussed. He didn’t _think_ it was confidential; and anyway, Hermione was savvy. She listened with cool concern. He _did_ leave out the bits of how advantageous an attack would be for Voldemort, politically. People were probably already muttering the same to one another.

When he finished, Hermione took it in quietly. “Moody said he wanted to take your report himself,” she said instead. “I’ve already done it. You can summon him here if you don’t mind the…” she waved her hand around, “openness.”

“Oh. No, I don’t.” He drew his wand, casting a Patronus (flickering, not his best, but it’d work anyway) to alert him. “Are _you_ going back to Hogwarts tonight?” he asked curiously.

She gave a small smile, holding up her blotchy hands. “The last thing Hogwarts needs is an outbreak. I should be – we both should be – but Snape and the Aurors forbade it.”

She was right. What kind of shitty Defense professor was he, abandoning his post to come play catamite for Voldemort. His fingernails dug into his palms as he clenched his hands beneath the sheets. “Could we Floo them, you think? You’ve got a Floo in your room, Ron’s probably left it open.”

“Neither of you are getting out of bed,” the healer cut in. They were all very good at becoming unnoticeable in the midst of things. “Ms. Granger, you could currently infect the _entire_ Floo network. It’d be criminal negligence on both our parts.”

She gaped at him. “Really?”

“Yeah.”

So apparently bioterrorism through the Floo network was possible. They both considered this, until Moody arrived.

“What happened at Hogwarts?” Harry asked, before Moody had even conjured a chair.

He grimaced. “Explosion in the Great Hall. Presumably coordinated with _this_.” He sat heavily, kicking out his wooden leg. “No suspects entered the grounds. So it was sabotage remotely – like Muggle letter bombs – or it was triggered by a resident. Both are unpleasant options.”

“Was anyone…?”

His grimace intensified. “The Great Hall exploded at dinner. Use your head, Potter.” Then he softened: “No deaths. Plenty of injuries. Some of these beds – “ he waved his gnarled hand backwards “ – are students. Our healers are stretched thin tonight.”

Harry dropped his gaze to his lap for a long moment. “Fuck.”

“Yeah,” Moody agreed. He conjured a leather portfolio and a quill. “Can you give a statement about the attack?”

“Yeah. Of course.” When Branwen moved to draw the curtains, Harry shook his head. “I’ll tell Hermione everything anyway.”

The healer looked to Moody, who made an indifferent gesture. “Ms. Granger understands the art of discretion.”

“Yes, sir,” she murmured.

Harry sat up a bit straighter. “Right. Um, from the beginning then?” It still felt like an emergency, even when he wasn’t being shot at. He reached for another swallow of the calming draught.

Three defectors. Reactionaries. Whatever. He struggled with verbiage and Moody didn’t offer him anything different. He recounted what he did, what they said. At the last encounter, the one who called Voldemort the savior, he added with some desperation, “But I told Voldemort, and he said – “

“No,” Moody cut in. “This isn’t what your statement is for.”

“But this is important.”

Moody’s eyebrows furrowed. “ _We_ decide what’s important. It’s not your responsibility.”

“Right.” He didn’t point out that they’d already taken his memories, that this felt like an exercise in redundancy if he wasn’t explaining it as well. He did his best to recall the bits with Hermione, McGonagall, Governor Childress. Voldemort finding him. They always did draw back together, in time and space. Voldemort’s levitation, the last survey of the scene, killing the last two defectors. “Not to, uh, undermine you,” Harry added, because Moody could have dispatched the wizard on his own.

Moody only shook his head. “And then?”

“Then, that was it? We could see everyone was dead or stunned. Except for the one he, uh, trapped.” He looked up at Hermione. “I heard he was being held. Good job, taking him alive without stunning him. I assume that triggers the… erasure. Whatever it is.”

“Minerva didn’t recognize it,” Hermione murmured.

Moody didn’t offer insight on this. Instead, flipping the page: “Injuries sustained?”

“Blood curse. I don’t think they know which….” Harry reached for his own medical chart, just handing it to Moody because he had no sense of privacy anymore. “But it all gets treated the same. Oh, and I got splinched. When I was holding onto the one who apparated. Just a bit,” he reassured Hermione, who looked alarmed at this. Both his arms were already bandaged, smeared with tingly sap that held his flayed skin together.

Moody wrote, copying things from his chart. “Anything else you want to add?” he muttered without looking up.

“No, sir.” He was itching to swallow another mouthful of calming draught. The image of the defector’s face fading from his skull was so prominent in his mind. “Did Voldemort make a statement already?”

“He’s with Rufus. Your thumbprint goes here,” he said, as though changing the topic. The portfolio was put in Harry’s lap, the square in the corner glowing.

Harry took it in. “There’s no ink.”

“Merlin’s sake.”

Oh. He attempted not to blush, pressing his thumb to the parchment.

“He’ll get you when it’s clear,” Moody said, standing creakily on his staff. “You know you’re staying in the safehouse tonight. Possibly longer.”

“Oh. Yeah, sure.” He reached for his bag, for parchment and a quill. “Do you need me for anything? Meetings – uh, liaison. Peacekeeping. Anything.”

An appraising look. “No.”

Against his better judgment: “Tell Rye I say sorry on Voldemort’s behalf. He won’t do it himself.”

Moody’s jaw went tight. “What happened?”

“She’ll know.”

He didn’t pursue this; he could only handle being so exasperated at Voldemort at one time. “He’ll have a Portkey for you. We’ll be by in the morning. Take…” he looked to the end table of potions, “what you’ll both need to get through the night.”

“I will. Thanks.” He handed back the portfolio. Moody had about a hundred other fires to put out tonight. He left.

When they were alone-ish (the healer had other places to be, too. But still, this wasn’t the place for privacy), Hermione swung her legs over the side of the bed. Her shoes were off, ankles swollen to the size of her calves from infection. Harry winced. “I’m fine,” she brushed off his concern. “What have you told him about me?”

Harry was momentarily very stupid. “Moody?”

“ _Voldemort_ ,” she hissed. “Harry, why does he know who I _am_?”

“Oh.” Her anger was very justified. What _had_ he told Voldemort of Hermione? He did know Hermione and Ron and Ginny ( _Ginevra_ , in the times she wasn’t _Ms. Weasley_ to him) by name. “I told him I’d be dead a dozen times over if it weren’t for you.”

Her glare was fierce. “Really.”

“Really,” he insisted.

“ _Brilliant_ , Harry. Well done.”

Oh. He could see how that might sound like unwanted notoriety. He tried over: “He knows of everyone in the Order. And he knows everyone close to me. It’s not so much what I’ve _said_ …. We can share memories, or feelings. Of course you’re a lot of that.”

“I’d really prefer not to be.”

This was understandable but it made him very sad. “He won’t… whatever you assume will happen.”

“Oh, he’s _promised_ not to _kill your friends_?” She was perfectly vicious. She cast Muffliato before he could. “That is not so endearing as you might think.”

This time Harry did reach for the calming draught, swallowing it as he thought. This didn’t help: Hermione slapped the bedspread, frustrated. “And stop _drowning_ your feelings in potions!”

He stared, and put the bottle down. “I haven’t changed,” he began cautiously. “He hasn’t changed me.”

“Of course he has.” She sounded bitter. “Maybe, in ways, not for the worse. But don’t say – Of course you’ve changed.”

“Is that why you’re angry?” He’d moved to sit sideways as well, spelling the curtains so they enveloped both beds.

“No.”

When she didn’t elaborate, he cleared his throat. “Should I keep guessing, or…?”

“If _you’re_ not good, if _you’re_ not just, then who will be?” Hermione asked. She was somewhere between angry and devastated.

Jesus. They were still so disappointed in him. And rightfully so. “I still am. I mean, I try to be.”

“He _murders_ people. He murdered people _today_. And you were so… indifferent.”

He hadn’t realized he was being watched at the time. Hermione would. “He did,” Harry affirmed. “D’you want me to justify it? Because I don’t really want to.”

“I want you to justify _everything else_ , then. How do you – “ She stopped herself abruptly, throwing her head back to think. “You must recognize the morality involved. Everything you do is an endorsement. So many people admire you, believe in you.”

“Believe in me to do _what_?” he asked, bewildered. “Maybe when they needed an assassin. Maybe before and even through the war.” (This always felt like an inappropriate term, for the few months of skirmishes they fought. He persisted anyway.) “Now… doesn’t everyone just want peace? Don’t they deserve it? He and I temper one another. His ideas and my reputation… well, you saw how much we did today. I don’t know how the public will feel about it, but everyone in the Ministry is happy with him. And it keeps him from….” He struggled on these words. “It keeps him invested in, uh, the wellbeing of the world. He’s not the greatest threat to us anymore. Not because of _me_ , really. But because… this was his way out. He had enough self-preservation to take it.”

“That’s it, though.” She was looking at her hands, held carefully in her lap. “Of course he is opportunistic. And you know he’s lived with _waiting_ for longer than this.”

“You think he’ll get to the post of Minister – or whatever,” he said at her alarmed look, “charm the Wizengamot into giving him sole power, and then murder all the Muggleborns?”

“I do.” Her voice was small. “And Harry, it’s _terrifying_ that you don’t find that credible.”

“You don’t know how many non-aggression treaties and spells he’s bound by. And how many he _would_ be bound by, as Minister. Already, I’ve got a vow that will kill me if he hurts anyone affiliated with Hogwarts.”

“ _You_ can’t be the only… collateral on his part. He must know that’s stupid too, to imbue you with so much political significance.”

“It is.” He didn’t bother pointing out that she’d been arguing that he was their sole hope a moment ago; he knew she’d say that was different. Instead he said, “But he’s so broken, Hermione.” Her lips curled in disgust, and he went on in a hurry: “Don’t – I don’t mean he deserves any pity. He doesn’t. I mean, I’m the first and only person he’s ever loved. I’m the first person to love _him_.” He didn’t expect to end up here, telling of their relationship so candidly. It was his narrative as much as it was Voldemort’s, but…. “It’d be unethical to not _acknowledge_ that.”

“You’re trapped, then.”

“No.” He couldn’t hear anything else in the way he phrased it, fair enough. “I mean, by fate, maybe. We are _equals_ , you know.” His friends knew the prophecy. The whole world probably did, by now. “I’m not being exploited.”

She winced at this because it was clearly her train of thought. “You’ll hate what I’m going to say.”

“Will I?”

A sigh through her teeth. “You feel so obligated to him… and if you involve fate in it. are you really _free_ to enter into this relationship?”

“Do you believe in fate?” Harry asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” she waved him off. “You do. He does. That’s enough. But that’s not the part you’ll hate. He’s obligated to _you_ too. And it’s so… advantageous for him, the way you’ll protect him. Why wouldn’t he do whatever kept you, um, involved?”

Jesus. There was a burning nausea inside of him now. “You think he’s sleeping his way through politics?” His voice had gone a bit funny and thick.

“Well, no – “

“Because he _is_. Not with me.” This was awful. He re-cast Muffliato, to explain to Hermione how awful her accusation was. “It’s an open secret, how the Chancellor treats him. Nobody will do anything about it. And he _takes_ it, because he says it will help in the end. Between here and Azkaban, he probably has to see Bowersock nearly every day. And he just… survives.”

“I thought he didn’t deserve pity,” Hermione said. “It doesn’t _absolve_ him, in any case. Or you.”

“I can’t justify his politics,” Harry said. “Ask him yourself about them, if you want.” (She shuddered at this.) “I’m trying to tell you…. We’re as miserable as the other when we’re separated. Really, I….” Hermione’s critique of his self-medication would go well here. He didn’t want to get into it. “It’s soul injury, to keep us apart. It _hurts_. I am so fucking depressed, and he is….” That felt too personal to share. “He is more stoic and more _timid_ than I’ve ever seen him. I hate it. When our magic touches, though, we can _feel_ things again. It’s like I’ve been holding my breath until that moment. Not because I’m in love,” he said, sharp because she looked skeptical, “but because we share magic and a soul. And _my_ soul isn’t really very damaged, by comparison. I don’t know how much worse it is for him. He’s very strong,” Harry said sadly, “even when he hasn’t got to be. So.” He squared his shoulders. “It’s not a relationship like… well, like anyone else. We are soulmates. We probably should be _more_ entangled,” he added. “But we agreed to stay apart, in exchange for the safety of his Horcruxes. Really, he was just trading the well-being of different bits of his soul for one another.”

Hermione was quiet. “I’ll never support him,” she said.

A short laugh. “He doesn’t want _me_ to believe in his politics. He’d never ask you to.”

“I still don’t know that I could support you while you’re… together.” Her jaw was set but her eyes were bright with tears.

“What does that mean, though?”

“As long as you keep doing this work of… defusing him for the Ministry, I can’t support it. I won’t come back,” she said, clenching the blankets in her grasp. “This was a mistake.”

He knew this side of Hermione, of course, staunchly ideological, but it hurt to have her passion turned against him. “I can’t keep you from going,” he said. “But it’d be a loss. You were brilliant today.”

He didn’t mean it as a compliment to mollify her, and she didn’t take it as one. “Being here looks like complicity,” she said. “And I’m not complicit.”

“Would you stay on if he weren’t involved?” As far as he could tell, the Ministry had asked McGonagall for student involvement, and she’d gone to Hermione. And Hermione _had_ been bloody brilliant today.

“But he’s involved himself in everything.” She said it as though he were a bit thick. “I know _why_ , but… he already controls the Ministry, in some ways. They’ve practically _handed_ it to him.”

“He’s done everything _right_ , though.”

“Oh, how would you know,” she said with a skeptical look. “You don’t even read the papers.”

This was irrefutable. Still, he took it hard. “I _love_ his proposal for early education,” he said, with far too much feeling. “It would have saved me.” It was an embarrassing admission. Not even Ron and Hermione knew how shitty his childhood was. Ron probably had a better sense of it actually, having pulled the bars off his bedroom window one year.

Hermione normally went quiet and gentle at the moments Harry would allude to his childhood, or his relatives, or how often he’d tried to just not exist through childhood. She was not quiet or gentle now. “Listen to yourself. _He_ made you an orphan, Harry. Is he, what, _repenting_ of that now?”

“It might have saved him, too.”

Dumbledore had allowed – encouraged, really – Harry to share what he’d learned of Voldemort’s life and Horcruxes with Ron and Hermione. He’d never expected to live long enough to find all the Horcruxes himself, so somehow he entrusted it to the trio. Hermione knew… well, enough. Before she could yell at him anymore, not that he didn’t deserve it, he went on. “Dumbledore said that you can only judge morality when both love and violence are possible.” He was quoting Moody, and he hoped he’d gotten it right. It had stuck in his head, anyway. “You can’t judge someone as evil unless they’ve got the option to be good. Otherwise it’s just… survival.” He thought of their conversation on starvation, how indifferent the world had always been to Voldemort.

“ _Survival_.”

“Nobody else will take responsibility for what he’s done. Dumbledore told us once that wixes fear change so much because we’ve got to live with it for so much longer.” The _us_ there meant him and Voldemort; Hermione’s eyebrows went up slightly at the idea of the three of them in conversation. “He’s already, y’know, antisocial enough to not care if people like him, or his proposals. Really, there’s nobody else who _could_ see through the Unification.” (The label the papers gave to the work they did to rebuild their world alongside the Muggles’. It generally sounded too weighty and significant for Harry to use it himself, but its weight fit here.)

Hermione’s freckles were visible against her ashen complexion. “He’s not the _savior_ ,” she said with scorn. “Of you or anyone else.”

“That’s what one of the attackers called him today, too.”

“It’s disgusting. It’s wrong.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, suddenly so tired. He hated fighting, he hated conflict with people he loved. “But I won’t let anyone else grow up like I did. _He_ won’t let anyone else grow up like he did. Now that we can stop _hiding_ , stop fearing for our existence… it can all be so different. He’s the only one who hated how we were living enough to have these plans to change it all. We’d be… well, rather more chaotic right now without his resolutions.”

“You do believe in him, then.” She was, if possible, even more ashen.

“Sometimes. But that’s not why…. He’d die without me.” Harry’s voice now held a timbre of desperation. “His magic isn’t strong enough to sustain himself now, really. And the more of his soul he’s got, the more, um, human he is. He _trusts_ me, Hermione. It’d be devastating if I didn’t love him for it.”

“You aren’t obligated to save him. Much less _love_ him.” She was still disgusted.

“I know.” He dropped his gaze for a moment, to give them both time to recover. “I’m not saying _he’s_ good. He’s not. But _I’m_ good. Or I try to be. I’m not doing any of this because he _deserves_ it. I’m doing it because everyone else does.”

Hermione was quiet and furious. “I’ll never accept or condone this.”

“I know.” He desperately wanted to ask if they could stay friends. He didn’t. Instead he began collecting the potions he’d take with him, because he needed to leave before falling apart. “I _am_ trying to protect everyone.”

“Mm.” She sounded doubtful.

“If you write Ron tonight, would you tell him I’m okay? Tell him everything.”

“Yes.” Hermione had sat back, massaging her inflamed joints as a distraction as she thought. “He’ll support you more than I do. He did last time.” Their last fight, the day after his birthday, when Nagini had been killed. “You both think with your heart over your head. But then….” Her words strangled her, it was clear. “He’ll be rather safer if Voldemort becomes Minister than I’ll be.”

It hurt like being stabbed. “I swear you’ll be safe,” he said, and he couldn’t put enough emphasis on it. “I’ll never let him…. You see how much power I’ve got over him, right? Most of the time I can threaten to just kill myself,” (Hermione choked on this) “but he left me his Horcruxes, too. They’ve got even more of his soul in them than I do. That’s…. He _wants_ to be accountable to me. And that’s it, and that’s enough. He doesn’t get attached to things, or people. Just me.”

“This is so unhealthy.”

He managed half a smile. “Maybe I’ve still got to be the one to save everyone from him. Just, not in the way we thought.”

“I hate this,” Hermione muttered, scrubbing her face in her hands. Apparently the rash was growing painful, because she winced, dropping her touch immediately.

“I’m sorry.” Her eyes were red, from the inflammation or from grief, when she looked up at him. “Really, I’m sorry.”

“Just go.” She dispelled the Muffliato and spelled the curtains around her bed closed. “I’ll tell Ron you’re alright.”

Harry slumped deep into the bed, for just a moment. Assuming she hadn’t cast a two-way silencing spell already: “Do you remember in our third year, when you reported my Firebolt to McGonagall?”

A sniffle. He felt awful. “Yes.”

“You were right then, too.”

She made a noise between laughter and sobbing. “Goodnight, Harry.”

He tracked down Branwen before going, so it didn’t look like he’d just deserted his bed. He left with handfuls off calming draughts, dreamless sleep, and baobab. Blood replenishing potion, and a few vials of hydrating potion when he unsubtly asked if he and Voldemort could drink tonight. (“It’s not a problem medically, but….”) He found his way to the atrium.

As he’d hoped, Voldemort was there, pulling apart strands of magic stuck to the site’s debris. He scarcely reacted when Harry approached, fitting himself at Voldemort’s side as usual. “Have you found anything interesting?”

“Yes. It’s all conjecture and classified.” He was unknotting a security ward that would’ve captured what it could of the intruders’ magic. A perfect pearl resided inside. “Ah.”

“Nice.” He was handing off magic without thinking about it, these days.

But it made Voldemort wince. “You are damaged.”

“Am I?” He didn’t know what that meant.

“Yes. I’ll fix it, later tonight.”

He’d told Hermione that keeping them apart was soul damage. So too might be the battle, or witnessing the attackers’ death. His fight-or-whatever with Hermione probably didn’t rise to the level of breaking his magic traumatically. Voldemort let him stay at his side anyway, even without trading magic, as he worked. He levitated the diagnostic pearl, and then a few knotted wards, to a team of Aurors and Unspeakables in one corner, working through the evidence.

“We haven’t got to stay,” Voldemort said after a long few minutes, maybe even recognizing Harry’s grief. “I’ve already got the Portkey.”

“You were right, then.”

“I typically am.”

This reminded Harry, somehow, of Dumbledore so much, that he smiled. “I’d like to go.”

“Go tell Moody, then. He’s….” Voldemort waved a vague hand behind them.

As Harry went, he cracked open another calming draught. He really shouldn’t. But a panic attack seemed just below the surface of his warm skin. Everything was too stimulating, and too tragic. He hadn’t even begun to deal with the idea that Hogwarts had been attacked. Fuck.

Moody was working at a table with a diagnostics team. He wasn’t allowed to get close, in case his magic contaminated it. “Go, go,” Moody waved him off. “We’ll see you in the morning.”

“Uh, have I got class?”

Moody’s non-magical eye stared. “No, Potter. You haven’t got class. Students aren’t even allowed out of their dorms until the Aurors _there_ have determined… anything.” He seemed very tired. Harry winced, getting out of their way.

They couldn’t Portkey from the Atrium as usual. It’d disrupt everything, rip through the wards that had been made visible. Voldemort took him down a smaller corridor, walking in silence because he was tense and Harry was obviously grieving.

The safehouse was as it had always been. When Harry looked around in some amazement, Voldemort said, “Some days, Cornwall will run late. Some days the _Ministry_ will simply run late. I’ve informed the Aurors that I could return myself to Azkaban, but they remain skeptical.”

Harry snorted. He dropped his bag on the sideboard, causing a distinct tinkle of glass. “I brought potions.” It was the most unnecessary statement.

Voldemort spelled all the lamps burning. “Thank you.” Immediately he was pulling out calming draught and baobab for himself. When he offered them to Harry, he shook his head.

“If I take another calming draught, I’ll overdose.”

“Yes, what _is_ wrong with you?” Voldemort asked. “Actually, you should justify yourself over a meal instead.” He moved toward the kitchen.

“Wait. Would you take a memory from me? Just for tonight.” He’d be too sick with grief to sleep otherwise.

“Yes.” Voldemort was pulling out vegetables and hummus and bread. Harry found knives. “You didn’t seem nearly so… unsettled immediately after the attack, though.”

“It’s not that.” He wanted to stab something. He cut open a bell pepper instead.

“Should I…?”

“I don’t care if you see it. It’s about you.”

“And Ms. Granger.”

For a psychopath, Voldemort could be astute. “Yes. I hope she didn’t come across as….”

Unexpectedly, Voldemort pressed a hand to his mouth, and then replaced it with a kiss. “I’ll take your memory. I need you to say, _yes or no_ , whether you want me to see it.”

“Uh. No. I’ll tell you about it tomorrow, if you want. Tonight I just want it gone, and I want to get drunk, and I want to get fucked.” He already felt restless, off-kilter.

“Stay still.” Voldemort drew his wand. “You must know how to do this yourself.”

“I know the other one. The one that only draws out a copy. But I’d rather you do… this kind. Has it got a name?” The difference between remembering one’s memory and not.

“No, only the incantation. How long ago…?” He was raising his wand to Harry’s temple.

“Since the infirmary, is all. It wasn’t – She’d known we were… _whatever,_ before this.”

“Whatever,” Voldemort echoed wryly.

“Do you care about words?” Harry challenged. “She knew we were together. She just didn’t have to _see_ it before. And I know she’s right,” he said in a sigh. “This looks like endorsement. Or something.” He didn’t remember the specific accusations Hermione had made, exactly. He remembered the feelings it created.

“Mm. Yes.” He was working carefully; Harry felt the Legilimency carding through his memory, which was weird but not bad. When he found the memory, he pulled. All his shitty feelings were taken away at once. It was nearly an _addictive_ feeling.

“What do you want gone?” Voldemort’s tone was low and deliberate.

“All of it. I’ll _deal_ with it,” he promised, though Voldemort never needled or lectured or patronized like everyone else. (They both recognized how hilarious it would be for him to lecture on mental health, anyway.) “From the beginning of the infirmary ‘til the end.”

Voldemort pulled a smoky strand from his mind, dropping it in a spare glass. “It will dissipate within the day,” he said, at Harry’s look. “Bottle it if you want it gone any longer.”

“Right.” His chest hurt much less already. He’d fought with Hermione, he knew that much…. That was it. It was a glorious feeling. “You’ve heard about Hogwarts?” he tried (poorly) to change the subject.

Voldemort’s visage went hard and dark. “Yes,” he said. “I’d go join them for diagnostics too, if I could.”

“You can’t?”

Harder, darker. “Well. It would be ill-advised.”

“Sorry,” Harry muttered. “I thought you meant literally.”

“There’s no magic that could keep the Founder’s blood out.”

“Right.” He was slicing bread now, though he felt off enough that slicing off his fingers was a possibility. “The Horcruxes said… well, not quite that. That they – you – understand the castle’s magic in a unique way.”

Voldemort, for some reason, lit up at that. “Yes,” he said. “Where were they today?”

“It wasn’t them!” He hadn’t been accused but felt it anyway. “They weren’t… whatever. Materialized.”

“Ask them anyway.” Voldemort was spreading hummus on bread for them both. (Harry didn’t realize how much of his mood had been hunger until he swallowed. Really, he’d been accustomed to this. He’d been hungry all the time, once. How could he complain about this life, even, when he could eat whenever he wanted.) Voldemort went on: “And… you’ll need to convey it. In sleep. I have conjecture,” he said, “but so does everyone.”

“They’d be stupid not to use you, if you _are_ so involved with the castle’s magic.”

“ _They_ include Severus and people invested in keeping him alive. I assume this is why he was made Headmaster to begin with.”

“Oh.” The memory that had been taken… had something to do with keeping people safe from Voldemort. Not Snape, certainly. People he cared about. “Are you worried?”

Voldemort chewed carefully as he thought. “It’s not coincidental,” he said. “Any idiot knows that. But in the interest of, what, open-mindedness? the Aurors are treating them separately.”

“Do you know what happened?” Harry asked. “Nobody really told me anything.”

“An explosion in the great hall, is the only thing I’ve been told. Since there haven’t been bodies, I assume there _aren’t_ bodies.”

Jesus. It must have been part of the block of memory jettisoned, but learning of it a second time (presumably) hurt at least as much. “When I’m back – If there were a way for you to see it,” he stuttered. “It’s stupid that you can’t.”

Voldemort gave him a partial, delicate smile. “Perhaps,” he said. “I am not wanted… most anywhere. Obviously.”

“ _I_ want you,” he said, too fiercely.

For his efforts, he got a dry laugh. “That’s very kind of you, Harry.” His voice was silk. “I can’t account for Hogwarts anymore than I can account for the Ministry. I wish I could.”

Harry ate, and they passed a bottle of beer between them, but it was a solution to a different problem than the one he had. “I wanted sex,” he sighed, “and I wanted it to be cathartic. But if I can’t even recall….” It was the silliest problem.

Voldemort only looked at him. “The lunchtime blowjob would have been slightly less necessary if I’d known we’d end up here tonight,” he said. “Nevertheless, it _did_ make the afternoon quite a bit more tolerable.”

“For me too. _Oh_.” The memory removal only worked if one didn’t strain to recall what was missing; obviously he was. “Hermione won’t come back.” It wasn’t the least of what she’d said, it was just what had surfaced first. “She was so good, though. Everything about today was good.”

Careful silence. Then: “It was. It was… gratifying.”

“You know this, but… I care about this more than anything else you’re doing.”

“I know.”

“I’m so proud of you.”

Voldemort’s reaction was abrupt and startled – more in their magic than on his face, but his forehead knitted. Rather than acknowledge this, he said, “How should I get you off tonight?”

Harry made a frustrated noise in the back of his throat. “You’re not listening.”

“What am I meant to say to that? _Thank you_? Thank you, darling,” he said with utmost sarcasm. “Did you expect it to be anything but successful?”

“I’m not saying I didn’t expect – _ugh_.” Harry waved him off. “Nevermind.”

He thought they were fighting, but apparently not, because Voldemort reached to tug a lock of hair behind his ear that was always wild. “Today doesn’t need to be any more fraught or emotional for you than it already has been. Tomorrow. Save your sincerity for tomorrow.”

“No.” Reckless. Hermione’s accusation had been something akin to the Horcruxes’ – that Voldemort would fuck him as a political maneuver. He didn’t quite recall. All he wanted was sincerity. All he wanted was love that wasn’t _advantageous_. Putting down the crudites, he stepped around the island counter, grasping the front of Voldemort’s robes. “Give me your Legilimency.”

Voldemort had moved to save his robes, before consciously dropping his hands. He dropped his Occlumency too, and it was like Harry could feel both of their hearts beating in his chest. His own confused emotions shone hotter and brighter than Voldemort’s, but then, they always did. “I love you,” he said fiercely. “I love you, I love you. I want to marry you,” he said with a laugh, because he hadn’t thought of it since last week but it was still such a hilarious proposition.

“That’s not meant as a romantic gesture,” Voldemort reminded him.

“Piss off, I’m making it romantic. Sofa?” Harry requested.

“Are we having sex now?”

“No,” Harry said cheerily. “I’m going to hold you until you can’t stand it any longer, is all.”

“I think,” Voldemort said, “that you are a bit manic. Are you always, after battles?” He followed him out.

“I don’t remember. Maybe.” He knew he was fucked, but it wasn’t unpleasant, at least. Maybe he _had_ already OD’ed on calming draught, and it had a paradoxical effect. He lit the hearth and pulled them both onto a sofa. “ _God_ , I have missed this,” he marveled.

“It’s only been a month.”

“I fucking know.” He was unbuttoning the top of Voldemort’s robes by hand. Of course there were dressing and undressing spells, but it’d ruin the effect. He paused a moment to examine the wounds from today along Voldemort’s torso. Faint silver scars already. His own scars from the splinching in his arms were as unimpressive. Good.

After letting him enthusiastically suckle at his throat and nipples for awhile, Voldemort sat back. “Here.” He cast a summoning spell. A vial popped into his hand.

“What – Oh.” He recognized it when it was uncorked, steam still rising in spirals. (It had been bottled a month ago; how did it still steam?) Amortentia. “I thought you gave it to the Unspeakables.”

“I gave them half. This was preserved in case I decided to re-absorb the Horcruces after all. Or simply for recreational use.” He swallowed a mouthful, handing it to Harry.

Harry swallowed too. He was so full of potions. And none of them alone had a particularly strong effect, but together he was getting… floaty. And then physical contact became amazing, and he returned to Voldemort’s soft throat and dusky nipples with fervor, as Voldemort ran long fingers through his hair.

And then Voldemort was undressing him too. Harry’s robe did not have nearly so many buttons, thank Merlin, but he did have a dress shirt on underneath. “What does Amortentia smell like to you?” Harry asked, his head back so Voldemort could undo his collar.

“What do you think?”

He tipped his head to frown at him. “Blood. Snakes. Dead Muggles.” He suddenly regretted asking.

A smirk. “Does yours smell like piss, then?”

Harry choked on horrified laughter. “No,” he said, “but maybe it should.” Given all the connotations it had for him with love and safety, it was somewhat plausible that it _would_. “Why won’t you tell me?”

“You’ll find it tragic.” He tossed Harry’s shirt and his own robe to the edge of the sofa. Harry ran a teasing finger beneath the top of his trousers as he considered.

“Oh,” he said at last. “Nothing, then?”

“Nothing,” Voldemort affirmed. “It never has. Obviously it still affects me physically, but…. I lied in sixth year potions, when we studied it. I’ll lie to you now, if you’d like. I recognized even then that it would be revealing, if not wholly sinister, if they knew.”

He _did_ find it tragic. Pressing a dry kiss to the hollow of his throat: “You don’t lie to me. Thank you.”

Voldemort hummed in acknowledgment; Harry felt the reverberation against his mouth. “You were brilliant today,” he murmured. “How are you so good at bloody _everything_?” He was undoing Voldemort’s belt teasingly, leaning in close, so magic burned on their exposed skin.

“Why is this a fetish of yours?” Voldemort was only amused, as he had been at lunch. “Do you have some sublimated desire to fuck one of your professors, and you can’t pursue them?”

“Ugh. No. I don’t know. You probably bruise easy,” Harry mused, sucking right beneath his ear.

“I will if you continue doing _that_.”

“They’ll go away with just Episkey.” That he knew from experience. “Or you could just leave them,” he added, playful.

Voldemort didn’t answer, but shifted them both so he could kiss Harry properly. He was insistent too, sucking and biting to make his lips swell. They’d mark each other tonight. What other chance would they have.

But first, Harry was going to crack Voldemort emotionally. “I haven’t loved anyone like this before, either,” he mumbled into his mouth. “I don’t want to.”

“You should,” Voldemort said. “I’d hate to constitute the death of your sexuality.”

Harry snorted. “Really, you’re not.” Voldemort had even witnessed his fantasies of other witches and wizards, hadn’t he? He thought of mentioning how fit his healer had been today, but it wouldn’t matter. He suckled Voldemort’s lower lip as he thought. “It’s important to me, um, fidelity. I really like the idea of stability, I guess. And of trust.” He cast a summoning charm in the direction of where they’d kept the wine, and was gratified to find a bottle pop into his hand. Wine glasses on the table. “Fancy…?” He had to remember how to properly use the corkscrew charm. It’d been awhile.

“Yes, please.” While Harry poured, Voldemort spoke. “You’ve said as much before. Or I gathered as much, in any case. I maintain that it’s a bad idea for you to hang so many of your dreams about the future on me.” He didn’t sound himself as he said it. Harry hated this quieter, relatively more deferential version of Voldemort.

“I’m not too young to know what I want.” He picked up both glasses, handing Voldemort one. “And I’m not telling you about my dreams for _forever_. Just, say, within the next year.”

Voldemort sat back, a curious look on his face. “Harry, they could kill me within the year. _If_ they kill me, it _will_ be within the year, actually.”

_Crunch_. Harry’s hand had tightened around his glass. There might have been magic involved. There was the sting of glass in his palm, blood and wine dribbling down his arm, staining the bandages he still wore from earlier. He felt nothing, until Voldemort sighed, setting down his own glass to coax Harry’s hand open, to pick bloodied shard from his skin. “I know,” Harry murmured. He hadn’t moved to fix himself, but let Voldemort do it, like he was a child with a skinned knee. “I know that, I don’t mean to keep making you say it. I’m sorry.” His soul felt too raw. He summoned another wine glass, and the jar of baobab tablets.

“I thought it would help, being apart. Granted, our contact has been… _immensely_ porous in spite of it.”

He smiled, somehow. “The way you got me off with just Legilimency,” he said, “I want that again. Even if we don’t need it.”

Voldemort pulled the last of the glass from his hand, vanishing all the bloodied little shards before casting Episkey. “I would, too.” They both swallowed baobab tablets.

He’d ruined the mood. He’d ruined everything. He drew back from Voldemort. The Amortentia still compelled something magnetic between them, but…. He quaffed wine much too fast instead. “Nevermind,” he muttered around his glass. “I should probably just sleep or something.” That sounded about right. He was so out of sorts, on adrenaline of battle, on the guilt of Hermione and of Voldemort, and potions, and wine. “You probably have work to do anyway.”

“Let’s move to the bedroom.” Voldemort moved everything upstairs with a swish of his wand.

 He didn’t pull his robe back on, but did pull the Panopticon from one of its pockets. “You’re correct. You’ll sleep, I will work. Magic will help, in any case.”

“You said earlier that my magic was… I don’t remember. Broken, or something.” He was spelling his bandages clean, so they wouldn’t dirty the bed.

“I don’t recognize _what’s_ wrong about your magic. If it persists in the morning, I’ll cast diagnostics.” He pulled Harry off the sofa. So much for a night of snogging to repair him.

It was only when they were actually in the bedroom that Harry groaned. “Fuck. No. I can’t.” He turned to go take the other bedroom down the way. Voldemort, behind him, caught him.

“You can’t?”

This was somehow still so embarrassing that it hurt. “I might, um, wet the bed. There aren’t nappies, and most nights I’ve been….” Most nights, after dinner, or after Runes on his late nights, he’d gotten into a nappy as he studied and got ready for bed. Even though Voldemort hadn’t asked for justification – did he ever? – Harry went on in something of a babble. “Maybe I don’t _need_ them. I just want them. They make everything feel a little less, um, awful. But with you here – “

Voldemort brought him to the bed, pulling back the quilts and covers. “We do _magic_ ,” he said as though Harry were a very thick child. “Aguamenti.” The bed was soaked, sheets going dark with saturation. “Tergeo.” The liquid was lifted in an instant, leaving the bed pristine. “Really, a first year could do it.”

He was missing the point. “I don’t want _you_ to wake up to… that.” Why was this so difficult? As though Voldemort didn’t nappy him, didn’t indulge this entire perversion of his.

_Oh_. An accusation, half-remembered. Of course he’d indulge Harry’s fetishes, for the safety and the power he got in return. Why else would anyone ever pretend to be attracted to… _this_ , to his desires centered on his utter failure of adulthood?

Voldemort hadn’t let his shoulder go. “If I wake up to a wet bed, then I’ll likely want to fuck you. May I? Intercrural sex, you wouldn’t even need to wake up for it.”

“But… why?”

“ _Why_?”

“Why would you pretend to want this? And when I’m asleep! You haven’t got to indulge me when I’m _asleep_.”

Voldemort pushed them both onto the sheets. “Harry. You are less disgusting than you think. And your fetishes are less unusual than you think. Do not flatter yourself.” He was undoing the fly of Harry’s jeans. (Over lunch, he’d said that jeans made him look like a Muggle child, and that he was a disgrace to the Ministry. Harry had pointed out that they were only visible, say, if someone had the audacity to undress him.) “I’ve told you before, sharing a fetish is insignificant, when we share blood and soul.”

“The Horcruxes don’t,” Harry said stubbornly. “And you’ve got every reason to keep me happy, to keep me close, so I can keep you safe from the Ministry for just a bit longer.”

He hadn’t meant to say it all like that. Voldemort’s face was perfectly impassive as he worked through the tomes of subtext that accompanied this. Already Harry regretted it. “Sorry, I’m not thinking clearly, of course – “

“Up.” He made Harry shift, to accommodate his jeans coming off. He dropped them heavily.

“Say something, please.” As he braced himself for the rebuke of the awful accusation he’d just made.

Voldemort ran a finger under the waistband of his briefs. “Would you rather I transfigure these?” he asked. “They’d be imperfect, and they wouldn’t have all the charms real nappies have got, but you seem so unusually distressed….” He took in Harry’s expression. “If you’d like to accuse me of whoring myself out for politics again in the morning – a charge which, by the way, I can’t wholly deny – then we’ll discuss it then. I don’t understand _this_ – “ he waved his hand to indicate Harry’s manic-depressive state at large, “but nothing productive will come of it. _For now_ , would you rather sleep in nappies or briefs?”

Harry should have been mollified. He wasn’t. His eyes still wide and chest still aching: “Why are you so good to me?”

“Briefs, then,” Voldemort decided for him. “Let me get you off before you sleep, at least.”

Somehow it sounded like a relief. Even if he didn’t fully trust that Voldemort wasn’t having him on. “Right,” he said. His voice sounded wrong. “Do you want to, as well?”

“Not now.” His trousers concealed whether the Amortentia had had much of an effect on him. Harry could conceal nothing, not his mind or his face or his cock. He was heavy if not hard yet.

“Would you panic if I spanked you first?” Voldemort asked.

Harry flushed. “I’m not really this delicate,” he muttered. Voldemort’s kindness, brief and circumstantial as it was, was never not unnerving. “And no. I might cry,” he admitted in a somewhat strangled tone, “but that doesn’t mean I don’t want it.”

“Perfect.” Pulling Harry over his lap, he threw his leg over Harry’s, pinning them. His briefs were pulled down to his thighs. A thumb at his hole made him quiver, but Voldemort didn’t enter him, only touching enough to tease. _Smack_. Light, as though testing the bounce of his arse. And upon finding it satisfactory: _smack, smack¸_ along the underside of each cheek. Harry’s disposition changed immediately. Pain was centering, and real, and such a relief. He went a bit slack.

“Tell me what a disaster you are. Or what is your phrase? How _fucked_ _up_ you are.” _Smack, smack._ Still light. Barely warming his arse.

Harry laughed dryly in surprise. “What, that I shouldn’t want this? _Ah_ ,” he gasped, at a rather harder blow, making one globe of his arse bounce.

“Talk faster.”

“Uh.” _Smack_. He gasped. “I am, though. A disaster.” _Smack, smack_. His eyes fluttered closed for a moment as he absorbed the pain. He pulled a pillow to himself, to prop up his chest or bring his face into, as necessary. “What kind of bloody hero am I, stowing away here to get fucked – _ah_ ,” he gasped again as Voldemort’s hand dipped low, hitting the soft crease of his thighs, “instead of _doing_ anything? I wish I could say – “ a hiss through his teeth at beautifully stinging swats, “say that I’m upset by today, but I – _ugh_ – feel awful all the time _anyway_. Wait,” he groaned, letting the pain settle in deep. Voldemort held him without speaking. “Alright,” he said, though he’d begun to feel his pulse in his arse. _Smack, smack, smack_. “And this – sex, nappies, all of it – looks stupid but it _helps_.” A sharp slap on the side of his arse; he arched into the pain. “And it helps that it’s you,” he said. “And that I feel the safest when you’re hurting me. It’s so….” But the heat in his arse was enveloping him now, and he couldn’t think what it was.

Voldemort’s Legilimency was gentle on the back of his mind, watching him struggle with the conflict and the pain and the – what? – fear, or something like it. Not of Voldemort properly, but of… he didn’t know. _Smack, smack, smack_ , hitting his arse in perfect rhythm. He found his breath catching in anticipation every time. His skin seemed to pulse just before each blow.

Somehow, in this moment, it felt obvious that Voldemort wasn’t doing this to manipulate him. Maybe enough of his Legilimency bled back into Harry, to feel… was it love? It was Voldemort’s concern and investment in him. It was their irrefutable place in one another’s lives. It was the wholeness they felt when they were together, and the emptiness – brokenness – they felt when they were apart. And after all the care he’d taken to explain love to Voldemort – who might just be broken _forever_ ; the bit about Amortentia had been crushing – he’d thrown it all in his face in an instant, accusing him of an inability to love except as manipulation. It was horrifying. He deserved every moment of pain tonight brought and more.

_Smack, smack_ – Voldemort ceased when Harry struggled to sit up. A hand on the back of his neck held him down, and it was stabilizing and infuriating all at once. “No, I’ve got to tell you – “ His legs were still pinned, leaving him without much leverage. Was Voldemort usually stronger than him? He couldn’t remember.

“Tell me in the morning.” His fingers slid along the cleft of Harry’s arse, admiring how swollen and warm he was.

“It can’t wait,” he insisted. He twisted sideways, to break Voldemort’s leverage on his legs, and then he could at least lean back on his elbows to look him in the face. “What I said was _horrible_ ,” he pronounced. “Someone said it to me today, and it stuck. That, um, you’re performing all this so I’d protect you from the Ministry.” Saying it a second time felt even more grotesque. “I’ve told you before, you haven’t got to love me, I don’t expect…. But you do anyway,” he added fiercely. Voldemort had leaned back, and Harry kicked off his briefs so he could move into his lap, unimpeded, to straddle him. Their erections brushed against one another. “Even if it’s new and, uh, foreign to you. Or difficult. It doesn’t hurt, does it?” he asked with a sudden surge of anxiety.

Voldemort was obviously puzzled and entertained and overwhelmed by Harry’s rapid manic-depressive cycle. Maybe he _had_ always been like this after battle. Moody had warned him of melancholy as a response to trauma, but Harry never did things by halves, anyway. Voldemort slid a hand behind his throbbing warm arse, so he didn’t topple off backwards when he was overcome by emotion. “No. It doesn’t hurt.”

Harry was frotting their erections now, reflexively. Voldemort’s trousers were, frankly, obnoxious. He moved to undo them. “Is this alright?” he asked, popping open the buttons. “Or – you wanted to get off when I’d, um, wet the bed. What is wrong with me,” he sighed. “What is wrong with _you_.”

Voldemort lifted himself enough to pull off his trousers. Harry felt inappropriate relief at feeling him hard enough, that his accusations or his general state weren’t overly off-putting. But then, they’d both had Amortentia. “I should have the stamina for both,” he said. He left his pants on. “But if you’d like to perform _repentance_ ….”

“I do.” He needed the catharsis, in any case.

“Close your eyes.”

He did, without question. Voldemort was scooping him up, off his lap. Some flare of magic assisted in moving him, and he was on his back, hands tied – no, _stuck_ , with a sticking spell – to either of the posts at the foot of the bed. Voldemort pushed his head back, exposing his throat and causing his head to fall backward, off the bed. When his glasses slipped up his forehead, he felt them removed from his face. A second later – _snap_! He’d just broken them very deliberately in half.

As furious as he was confused, Harry tried pulling himself up. “ _What the fuck_?” he demanded. Voldemort sat near the head of the bed, Harry knew by the weight on the mattress but he couldn’t sit up enough to properly see. The entire world was a blur anyway. “What the fuck,” he repeated, though this was the very worst position from which to fight, prone with his cock rigid against his stomach. “I _need_ those.” Again, panic welled over him.

“Keep your eyes closed,” Voldemort instructed again, disregarding his fury. “Here.” Another cloud of magic, and some bit of perfectly-blackened cloth tightened around his face.

The blood rushing to his head made it all so much more intense. He was already fucked up and disoriented, and…. It didn’t impede his hard-on, at least.

“Clearly the spanking didn’t work the first time.” Voldemort’s voice was silky. “A pity we couldn’t do this in the center of the Ministry earlier. They’d understand, wouldn’t they, how much you need the discipline?” He was pushing Harry’s legs up, pressing his knees to his belly with another sticking spell. He nearly laughed at the absurdity of the position, temporarily distracted. His arse was very, well, accessible, as were his thighs. Everything was puffy and warm from the spanking, but not properly painful yet. “Flogger or riding crop?” Voldemort asked.

“Uh, can you tell me why you broke my glasses first?”

“Because they’re awful Muggle things and you deserve better,” Voldemort said. “Why are you forcing me to ask twice?”

“Mm. Sorry.” He really was light-headed. Somehow it helped. “Something wider, please? Your hand was just really good. Or if there’s a paddle or a strap…. I like those bruises more than the thinner ones.”

The bed shifted; Voldemort rose. Quiet noise in another part of the bedroom. “Do you really keep the sex toys here?” Harry marveled. Some were transfigured, more were Voldemort’s and he didn’t ask the origins. Harry had pled to let him buy something but they had wanted for nothing already.

“Should I bring them back to Azkaban?”

Harry shuddered. “No. I meant – the Aurors – “

“Know already,” Voldemort said calmly. “Know explicitly, not just because they took your memories, but because we had a long and _awful_ conversation after you undressed before Shacklebolt and he found you covered in bruises.”

“Oh my god.” It had been about a month ago, when Kingsley had painted protective wards onto his naked body. “I swore to him I wanted those. I didn’t even want to heal them.”

“So he said.”

The absurdity and embarrassment of this faintly cut through whatever anxiety lingered inside him. He couldn’t account for it. Hoping this wouldn’t be a churlish question: “Uh, before you, y’know, could I have a calming draught? Or baobab, whichever you brought upstairs. It’s not you,” he added in a hurry. “It’s just… how things are going to be tonight.” Particularly his already-present claustrophobia, occasionally triggered by being tied down. ( _Stuck down_ , his mind corrected, hilariously.)

More indistinct noise.  And then Voldemort was at the foot of the bed – he must be leaning over him, Harry realized, as he pressed their mouths together in a kiss. Harry was upside-down, essentially, and the new sensation was delightful. He found a moment later that Voldemort wasn’t only pressing his tongue between Harry’s teeth for fun, but because they were splitting a mouthful of baobab tablets. As Harry had done for days for Voldemort. He swallowed, smiling.

Voldemort moved away. A long moment later, he was on the bed again. “Some decent discipline will help,” he murmured. “ _Somebody’s_ got to keep you in line.” Dipping his hand beneath Harry, he ran his fingers from his arse crack to his hole. It quivered. If he’d been a girl, he thought, it’d be wet right now.

“Mm,” Voldemort said appreciatively.

“Oh – I didn’t realize – “ That his Occlumency was down, and Legilimency now bridged their minds.

“Are you already wet for me, then?” He magicked a handful of lube, pressing it messily inside Harry, so it was dripping back out, slippery and sensitive. The sensation was _amazing,_ and disgusting, all at once. “You _do_ know this is a punishment, don’t you? This is depraved, really, that you’d be brought before the entire great hall and you’re already _dripping_.”

Oh thank fuck, he had thought they’d never do _this_ particular roleplay again. He had difficulty thinking as Voldemort barely dipped his fingers inside Harry, rubbing just at the tight ring of muscle. He could feel the Legilimency now, if he concentrated on it. “Yes, sir,” he murmured. It’d be different, not just thinking his whims.

“Everyone so wants you to be _good_. They all believe in you, that with a bit of discipline, you could become so very good.” Voldemort had dipped low, pressing his mouth to Harry’s nipple. He still had the piercings in, delightfully, though he’d transfigured the hoops into simple bars. Voldemort tongued them lightly, enjoying how much more sensitive they made him.

“What did I…?” Harry seemed to have a hard time forming words. Voldemort could have taken pity on him and said his thoughts were perfectly intelligible, but… no.

“Hm. What _did_ you do?”

“Got caught wanking,” Harry said, laughing breathlessly as Voldemort moved his mouth to his other nipple. “On my broom. I thought nobody would be able to tell, y’know, so high up. I was in my Quidditch uniform – Gryffindor colors, sorry,” he said with a teasing smile in his voice, “and I just had my cock fully out. God, that’d probably feel brilliant,” he mused, and his cock twitched as he considered it. “I’d fly over the lake and wank there. Just, um, let my come spill into the air. I do my best thinking up there anyway, and wanking always clears my head.” Obviously he was planning to do this for real when he returned to Hogwarts.

Voldemort hadn’t expected to be interested in an _athlete_ ; it wasn’t a form of socializing or indeed masculinity that he had ever understood. And yet here they were. “But you’ve been caught,” he said. “By whom?”

Harry’s mind flitted through a roster of options. Voldemort only recognized some of them. Ginevra. A Chinese girl who he gathered had also dated Harry at some point. A boy years older than Harry, who must have been his Quidditch captain. A few Hufflepuffs, boys and girls. A glowering young man who didn’t look like a Hogwarts student (were those Bulgarian colors?). The Quidditch instructor, who was the most obviously lesbian woman Voldemort had ever seen, but let’s not bother Harry’s fantasies with that now. But a moment later, Harry switched tactics.

“Well, sir, you did.”

Eyebrows up. “Indeed?” He’d moved his mouth from Harry’s nipples, down his torso. As Harry pulled together his thoughts, he summoned olive oil from the kitchen, dribbling a bit on Harry’s stomach to lick it off. Harry enjoyed runniness and liquid and _mess_ , that somehow his panic about staining the sheets was an erotic sensation. As such, Voldemort tipped a measure of oil into his navel. “If you breathe very slowly and shallowly, you won’t spill it,” he said.

Harry thought this to be frustrating and brilliant. It certainly wasn’t conducive to thinking. He held his torso very tight and still. “You’ll just… leave it?”

“You’re still _very_ concerned about the sheets.”

“Wanker,” Harry said with a grin. Deliberately he exhaled, letting his belly go slack, and the olive oil glistened down his sides. As expected, it got a more dramatic shudder than the sensation would warrant.

Lapping at one of the trails, Voldemort prompted, “I’ve found you wanking on your broom.”

“Mmhm.” He was inching deeper into full daydream now. “ _Found_ is the wrong word. _Caught_. I was trying to bring myself off a second time, and I let my broom drift too close to your office window.”

His only reaction was a thorough swipe of his tongue down Harry’s side, removing every trace of oil. “It might appear as though you _wanted_ to be caught, Mr. Potter.”

Harry let out a startled laugh. “That is exactly…. Yeah.”

(Of course it was exactly what Harry had been thinking. Legilimency still hung between them, after all.)

“Am I fucking a student in this fantasy? That seems rather ill-advised.” Harry was nervous at proposing this scene, and somehow, it was twisting Voldemort’s insides as well.

“God, no.” Harry swallowed. “Is this alright?” he asked in a quieter, more sober tone. He moved as though to look at him, but of course he was still both bound and blindfolded.

“You sweet, sincere thing,” Voldemort said in some astonishment. How could someone who shared his soul be _this_ good at empathy? It was unthinkable. “Yes, it’s fine. Get on with it.” To punctuate his statement, he pressed a finger inside Harry again. The boy gasped.

“Right,” he said faintly. “Um. I drift past your office window a few times. It might look deliberate. I really should know better, ‘cause you’re in there a lot, and you’re always working. Your office is so lined with books, you can’t even see the walls,” he said with another smile.

This was fascinating. Harry did have a clear sense of this office in his mind, and he did find it erotic. Not that _Harry_ wanted to be well-read himself, but how much he adored that Voldemort was. Voldemort had only remarked offhand about Harry’s mentorship fetish, but… well. They’d explore it tonight, then. “What do I teach?”

“Defense. Of course.” Harry sounded vaguely puzzled he’d even have to ask.

Voldemort lubed his fingers again, slipping a second one inside of Harry. Another breathless laugh; that sound had become so familiar and erotic. “And what is our relationship? Prior to finding you wanking, that is.”

“Mm. Complicated.” Harry gasped and jerked when Voldemort’s fingers rubbed at his prostate, but he wasn’t going to get any farther without being stroked. He’d have to get through an entire paddling with his erection first. “Because you don’t like Gryffindors very much. You think we’re all – whatever you said that one time. Competing to be heroes. And whyever else you might hate Gryffindors,” he said lightly.

“You’ve about got it. Loud, oblivious, self-entitled and self-impressed heroes.” No need to hold back. Harry was _enjoying_ this bit. He was lingering on it even though it’d get him no closer to orgasm.

“Right, that. And I get in a lot of trouble. I’ve had a _lot_ of detentions, with you and everyone else. Everyone probably _is_ exasperated with me. Or they’re wondering when I’m going to grow up.”

“A worthwhile question.”

“But I’m also _really_ good at Defense. That’s it, Defense and Quidditch.”

Voldemort found it charming that Harry couldn’t even make himself a good student in his fantasies. “I imagine they all hope you’ll learn to apply yourself as well.”

“Yeah. You’ve said as much to me before, here. But the thing is – well, you know I’m a good student when I want to be. Whether you defend me to the other professors….” He flashed his teeth. “You’ve told me I’m the most Gryffindor of the Gryffindors, whether you believe it or not.”

“Oh, I do.” More lube; another finger. Harry whined in a rather becoming way, rocking in time with the fingering.

“And I… maybe I get annoyed by that sometimes, or how you favor Slytherins, or how rarely you acknowledge how good I am at Defense.” Voldemort hummed in an amused way; Harry blushed such that it crept down his throat and chest. (Or maybe that was just his blood pooling. Voldemort pulled him fully onto the bed; he didn’t seem to notice.) “Piss off,” he said good-naturedly. “You tell me how brilliant you are at everything all the time. I _am_ good at Defense. I’ve had to be.”

Oh. They both heard the implication of that. Voldemort hadn’t been about to ask, but…. Harry got to it all in a rush. “I don’t know. My parents would still be dead. Who would I even _be_ with a proper family,” he said with a half-laugh.

(Voldemort teaching DADA was a more plausible fantasy than Harry having parents, he noted in the back of his mind.)

“I, uh, doubt that Dumbledore would keep you on if you’d tried to kill me,” Harry said. “Mm. There’s still a prophecy about us?” he tried out. “Yeah. But Dumbledore says he’d keep it from me until I was an adult. And he’s warned you off it too. Maybe neither of us knows, except that it exists.”

(Voldemort having a collegial relationship with Albus was somehow more plausible than Harry having parents.)

Harry was having more difficulty holding onto a thought, now that his arousal burned so bright. “We’ve gone quite far afield of you wanking in front of my window,” Voldemort remarked.

The click of his teeth as he grinned again. “Yeah. Sorry. Um, I just wanted to say… it’d be complicated. But I’d really admire you, more than almost any faculty member. And I’d really want, I don’t know, your attention. And for you to like me.”

This was perfect. It hadn’t even hurt much, speculating about this other world, a lifetime ago by now. Last time when he’d taken Harry through the fantasy of being disciplined in the great hall, Harry hadn’t remarked on how unlikely it was to think of Voldemort standing within Hogwarts ever again. He hadn’t thought much of it himself, until later. But _this_ , this was predicated exactly on Voldemort’s… belonging. In a sense. He strangely didn’t mind it as much as he thought he would.

“It seems you would need some instruction on more subtle techniques to get this attention.”

“Yeah,” Harry said happily. “You don’t even let me in, you just write the detention slip standing at your window, while I hover there, trying to put my cock away with one hand. I’m not even trying to be subtle about it by then because….” His position precluded a shrug, but he tried anyway. “Because by then you’d have seen it all anyway.”

“Seen it all,” Voldemort echoed dryly. “The entire school will _see it all_ , Mr. Potter, and you can report afterward how shameful you found it.” Before proceeding, he found the Amortentia among the potions on the bedside table. A swallow for him, a swallow for Harry, for stamina.

He let himself dip farther into Harry’s mind, observing the fantasy even as he paced through the bedroom. “So you find yourself in the Great Hall. You always do enjoy being a _spectacle_.” He said it in a cool, prickly tone. Harry’s cock twitched. Voldemort wondered if he weren’t more affected by Severus’s ire than he realized. “You’re tied up, perched on an elevated platform where everyone may watch you. Would you like to explain to your peers how you’ve earned this detention – this rather _unorthodox_ detention – or shall I?”

“If I do it, I don’t think I’d be able to avoid explaining how much I want you, to everyone. I’m sure _you_ know it already, but do you want the school knowing?” Embarrassment burned on his skin as though the scene really surrounded him. It _itched_ , this visceral humiliation, in a very satisfying way.

“Ah. You think it should be _our secret_ , then? I don’t know that I should share secrets with students, anymore than I should fuck them.”

“I’d tell the school if you wanted. I’d tell the _world_ , if you wanted,” he said more fiercely, and for a moment, they weren’t discussing a fantasy.

“Tell them, then.”

There was a charming flutter of nervousness in Harry, as though this all were real. “I’m looking out over the crowd, right?”

“Oh, yes.”

“So I try to look out at them – but I don’t actually want to make eye contact, especially not with my friends. My face is so hot,” he mumbled, and this is true. “I got this detention because earlier, when I was flying alone, I got caught, pleasuring myself.”

A strained tone for a strained phrase. Voldemort wanted dearly to ask where Harry had even _learned_ this phrase. Instead, he was withdrawing his fingers slowly, enjoying the wet quivering that still enveloped them.

Harry went on with this confession: “I got caught by Professor…?” He hesitated, intuiting that _Riddle_ was not a welcome name in this space. Goddamn him for making Voldemort consider this minutia of the life he never lived.

“Gaunt,” he rescued Harry from his awkwardness. “My mother’s name. I would have blood claims for it. I would prefer simply _Voldemort_ , though.”

Harry relaxed because this obviously suited him too. “Thanks,” he murmured, for the direction. Voldemort twisted his fingertips just inside Harry as a response; he arched and hissed. After a moment he returned to the fantasy: “Voldemort caught me outside his office window. I didn’t mean to – but, um, subconsciously – Bollocks,” he sighed, ruining his fictional confession.

“Do it again.”

He was going pinker and pinker. “I was wanking outside on my broom, and Voldemort saw me. He thought it might be a deterrent, if he showed me how humiliating _real_ exhibitionism is. There,” he said, as though the words were hot coals falling from his lips. Merlin, was the boy always this easy to embarrass? He was very deep in his fantasy.

“Barely adequate,” Voldemort pronounced. “ _Please_ recognize that discipline isn’t even a foremost part of my job. But every other professor is at their wit’s end with your mischief. I _do_ know how much you crave my approval. So, even if it particularly humiliating to have the professor you most _want_ ,” he pronounced this word so as to be unambiguous, “to be the one to administer the discipline, we’ve agreed that it will be the most effective.”

“Please just hit me.” His voice was raw with need.

“Will you even be able to withstand coming on yourself as soon as I touch you?”

“Oh god.” Perhaps not. “Coming in front of everyone – they’d all know.”

“I’d make clear if they didn’t.”

Harry was chewing his lower lip. “The… what, platform dais? Whatever I’m tied to might keep my cock a little less visible. But of course I’m hard. And wet,” he added, with a pleasurable prickle, because he really loved the indication of his arousal pooling beneath him, running down his legs….

Voldemort’s fingers slipped the rest of the way from his arse, and he groaned. “Would a buttplug hold it all in?”

Another groan, deeper. “Maybe.”

“Beg me for a buttplug, Harry.”

“In front of everyone!”

“Of course. Your clothes are coming off in a moment. I can’t paddle you through your trousers. The school has _protocol_ for such discipline as this.”

“Right,” Harry agreed to this nonsense. Voldemort smeared more lube at his arsehole, generously, so it slid back out. Then, tipping more Amortentia into his palms, he rubbed it warm so it became viscous, and dribbled that over him too. He squirmed.

“You are a _disaster_ ,” Voldemort pronounced.

Harry’s legs were still up, but he was trying to kick, trying to shudder. The wet, dripping sensation – even just as much as he passed through Legilimency – was maddening. “ _Please_ put a buttplug in,” he said in a near-whimper. “I’m so wet, and sir, it’s already so embarrassing that you know – “

“Is this what my class does for you, too? It’s a wonder you retain anything, if you find yourself this… distracted.”

“Yes,” Harry gasped. His hips bucked on their own as the extra dose of Amortentia took hold.

“If you come on yourself before you’re required to” ( _that_ phrase got a reaction from Harry) “then I’ll leave you spattered in it. Granted, nobody else would be particularly surprised, but…”

“Yes, sir,” he gasped.

Voldemort summoned a butt plug. Harry was so wet that it’d be redundant to lube it; and he was so loose from his fingers that he didn’t particularly have to work it in. It just popped in, as though it completed him. “Thank you,” Harry groaned. His utter relief at being filled again was perfect.

Cock ring next. He really wouldn’t make it through a paddling otherwise, Voldemort could feel within himself. Harry hadn’t expected a hand on his cock, and jerked into his touch, but he was quick and perfunctory about it. “You really can’t get off yet.”

“Thank you,” he said again, absurdly.

“Shall we start?” he asked in a brighter tone. Nevermind how pink and warm Harry’s arse already was. “You already know this, but you haven’t got to count. I’d much rather you _cry_. It will purge all of these horrible feelings inside you much faster.”

He was asking Harry to lose control utterly. It had to be enough to fix whatever bit of his soul was unsettled. He hadn’t figured it out yet, but this would be a diagnostic. Primarily, though, he wanted to share in the humiliation and relief.

“Yes, sir.” Harry pressed himself higher, arranging his hips so his arse was fully accessible.

He picked up the wooden hairbrush. _Smack_. Gentle, testing. Harry laughed. “Is that…?”

“One of your Quidditch crushes hands off a beater’s bat,” he said easily. He was fairly certain that’s what they’re called. “I also prefer the bruises it leaves.” He held one of Harry’s knees with his off hand so he could tilt him backward. _Smack, smack, smack_ , along the thickest part of his arse. Harry sank into the sheets.

“The hall is silent otherwise,” he narrated. _Smack_. _Smack_. “Everyone is waiting for you to just… _break_.” Smack. “The sooner you break open these feelings and your shame and your need to act out, the sooner we can fix you.” Smack. Smack. Smack. He could almost feel the heat coming off his swollen arse. Harry could jolt on every blow – and he _should_ , already as bruised as he was. He smeared some of the lube outwards, wetting his cheeks, so the next blow resounded off him, loud and stinging. Harry fully _jumped_ , and then made a noise like laughing and crying.

“Do I let them touch you? They would all very much like to.”

Harry had pressed his face into one bicep, a smile curling his lips. “Mm. Yeah. If you want.”

He thought of asking when he’d become the gatekeeper of Harry’s sexuality – but he _had_ said as much, hadn’t he? Last time he told Harry that he wanted no orgasm unconfessed, and while it’d been nothing more than a threat to get him off…. Or perhaps Harry had a _fidelity_ fetish as well. Though he couldn’t properly demand Voldemort be left untouched this year in return. In any case. “I do. I’d like to step back and watch you writhe.” Harry shivered.

“I spell your legs high and spread,” and he tipped him back a bit farther, so his knees were nearly on his chest, “and your cock out of the way.” He lifted his dark, heavy cock and balls toward his stomach, using another sticking spell to keep them out of the way. Harry blushed at this, as though it weren’t already completely rigid against his stomach anyway. “Would you prefer to be blindfolded, so you haven’t got to look at them? Or do you want to watch?”

Harry considered, and shook his head. “I’d rather see them,” he muttered.

“You’re very exposed,” Voldemort said. He twisted the buttplug for emphasis.

“Let them touch me.”

“I step back, offering the beater’s paddle to the nearest of your friends.” A pause, as he let himself into Harry’s fantasies. He’s surrounded by people again, who are all so embarrassed and so proud of him at once. The conflict burned on his skin.

_Smack. Smack_. Voldemort had gone quiet, letting Harry’s fantasies substitute for his narrative. Harry doesn’t know any attractive beaters, they found. His first fantasy is the glowering Bulgarian. _Smack, smack, smack_. Firm and unrelenting, as he looks like he’d be. There was not just a drop but a _pool_ of pre-come under the tip of his straining cock.

With his off hand, Voldemort stroked himself. The bounce of Harry’s arse on every blow was intoxicating. The smell of sweat and sex already filled the room. The full body shiver that ran up Harry’s defined torso with every surge of pain. _Smack. Smack. Smack_. He pressed the back of his hand to Harry’s arse briefly, and found it burning. Harry whimpered.

He cycled through his fantasies quickly. Shacklebolt probably had broad, beautiful shoulders and arms. The Gryffindor keeper had a brilliant smile and better arse, Harry knew from the showers. (Voldemort noted faintly that Harry had been queer long before _he’d_ defiled him, in any case.)

A few women: Ginevra would be light and teasing before beating him mercilessly. Rye, Tonks, in professional capacities, telling Harry he’d get through this, that he needed the punishment but he’d feel so much better afterward. (Certainly there were less attractive departments in the Ministry to fetishize than the Aurors.) A fierce, willowy blonde woman, vivacious and teasing – part Veela?

Ronald and Hermione would each have a go, and that idea hurt and thrilled Harry more than anything, to be so exposed before people he needed in his life so much. Hermione would be poised and perfect, as in everything she did; Ron would be red up to the tips of his ears, muttering that it was better him than that git. Himself. Harry’s friends disliked Voldemort even in the fantasy world; this amused him.

‘But it’s not like that at all,’ Harry protested in his mind. He even mouthed the last few words. ‘I deserve this. And I want it.’ In the back of his mind he held the thought that Ron had been the one to stay to listen the day after his birthday, when Ginny and Hermione had walked out. Ron had been the one to insist Harry suck his thumb as they watched a film. (Voldemort would ask later.) Hermione’s comment – what was it – that both of the boys thought with their hearts instead of their heads –

Something difficult and painful had tangled inside Harry. Voldemort’s hand fell for a moment, resting the hairbrush on Harry’s thigh. He was beginning to get sore himself, in his elbow and shoulder. He eased his Occlumency off, to allow more pleasurable pain in. His arse and the back of his thighs seared as Harry’s did. He made a faint noise, and Harry grinned. “Yeah,” he said, pulled away from his thoughts of Ronald. “I start feeling floaty after awhile. Like now. That only the good parts of the pain are left.”

“What should it feel like, then, to endure a more delicate touch again?” He left the brush at Harry’s side, moving to dip his head. He breathed hot, wet air on a particularly red blotch, and Harry _jerked_. The heat was searing and unbearable.

“Oh my god,” Harry said shakily.

“Shall I get you off in front of everyone? They understand that it would be strictly professional.”

“It’s _your_ bloody detention.”

His mouth was so close to Harry’s arse that he allowed his teeth to scrape it as he smiled. Another whimper. “So it is. You still haven’t cried, Harry. You promised that you would.”

“Nothing’s been bad yet,” he defended. “Or, you know, overwhelming.”

Eyebrows up. “Ah.” He licked a broad stripe across Harry’s arse, improvising a spell that would make his tongue feel hot and cold by turns on his skin. _Another_ whimper. “You sound like such a perfect coquette,” he muttered in between short laps. “Shall I cast Sonorus so the entire castle can hear how you moan?”

“Maybe.”

Voldemort prised open Harry’s mind just a bit, to find what would humiliate and relieve him, such that crying would be the least of his catharsis. “We are all so proud of you,” he began. Harry was unaccustomed to being spoken to gently, to be the recipient of such praise. Such _childish_ praise, at that. Ah.

Reaching up, he pulled one of Harry’s hands from the bedpost. Harry nearly _panicked_ , wonderfully. “You can’t stop now.”

“No?” He allowed a moment for the panic to hurt, before relenting. “We’re not finished,” he said. Lifting his free hand to his mouth: “Suck your thumb. It will help.”

Harry went _red_ , and it was delightful. “I don’t know that it’s, um, a sexual thing for me.” True. His thumb would sometimes end up in his mouth while he slept, on nights he didn’t have a soother.

“Harry. Do it, or you’ll suck _my_ thumb. And I’d much rather use my hands for other things.”

Obediently he slipped his thumb over his tongue. Something warm and simple filled him inside. And the physical sensation, echoed in Voldemort’s own hand, was strangely erotic. Since Harry couldn’t properly watch him, he gave himself a moment to take in the sight.

But Harry _could_ , he realized as the boy arranged his sprawled body into something more alluring. Their Legilimency was only two-way during sex, as Voldemort deigned, so he looked at Harry unabashedly now. “Better?”

“ _Ye_ – Yes,” Harry said, switching to English because his thumb wrecked his sibilants, rendering Parseltongue unintelligible for the moment. “Thanks.”

“What does it feel like, to be exposed as being so childish in front of everyone you know?”

He didn’t expect Harry’s smile, slipping his thumb from his mouth. “Really, really good.” Nor did he expect the utter _safety_ that this evoked in him. He got the same feeling when he was nappied – but that was actual protection. (Harry would never believe, _really_ , that his clothing or the sheets could just be spelled clean.) This had a less obvious anxiety to solve. He didn’t recognize it.

“Should I spoonfeed you?” Voldemort asked, half-mocking but half-sincere. “Or bottlefeed? Breastfeeding would require some rather tricky spells….”

Something good and painful fluttered inside of Harry. “You’ve done more than enough,” he demurred. “And no. You know this but… I like all this because it’s so embarrassing. I don’t want to be _coddled_ , really. Just humiliated.”

Voldemort stashed away the idea that he’d humiliate Harry by bottlefeeding him someday.

“Could you spank me a little more, though? I want to feel it like, um, this.” His thumb was at his lips again.

Gasping and whimpering into his own touch. “Should I?” Voldemort mused. He dipped low again, licking Harry’s arse wetly so the next blows would sting more. He could feel his pulse beneath his tongue, could almost taste his blood beneath his tongue. Mm.

“Please,” Harry begged. Speaking around his thumb, it sounded something closer to _Pleazh_. He blushed at the childish inflection.

Sitting back, Voldemort retrieved the hairbrush. “Everyone can already see that you’re very close. Most of them move off. A few linger, to hold you down, because you’re going to thrash violently. But they return the hairbrush – “

“Beater’s bat,” Harry murmured.

Still lucid enough to critique his narrative continuity. “— the beater’s bat to me. This is _my_ detention and you are _my_ student, after all.”

With his free hand, Harry pulled the blindfold up his forehead, because he had something real to say. “Some of the papers use the word protégé.”

Voldemort had been about to spank Harry now, and faltered at this sudden moment of conversation. His own cock was stiff between his legs, though not as stiff as Harry’s, curved up his stomach, and he was impatient. “That’s very discreet of them,” He’d anticipated more along the lines of _catamite_ , _courtesan, boy_. Some of the Prophet’s more horrendous op-ed pieces phrased it as ‘the Dark Lord’s Golden Boy,’ an unambiguous reference to piss of course, but the rest had better taste than that. Either the world wanted to protect Harry from humiliation, or they all found it too horrid to even allude to. Anyway.

But Harry was frowning thoughtfully. “I like it. It took awhile to feel right. And it doesn’t include the sex parts.”

“Well, it doesn’t _exclude_ them.” He was stroking himself even though there was no chance of going soft on Amortentia. He really hadn’t expected this interlude. “I like it as well,” he said. Harry nearly _lit up_ with happiness and relief. Back into their fantasy. _Smack_. Harry’s eyelids fluttered in lust.

“Since this is my detention and you are my protégé, it is only appropriate that I see this through. In fact, it’d be wholly _in_ appropriate that anyone else would.” _Smack, smack_. Harry had shoved his thumb back into his mouth, as though to quell all of his feelings. _Smack_. There wasn’t much of his arse that wasn’t a deep red by now. Harry groaned. _Smack_. “Tell me how much you want this.”

“Please,” Harry said, squirming. He had his eyes closed but he was half-watching himself through Legilimency. His cock had never been so thick and dark. Needy. “Please get me off. _You_ should too, sir. You’ve been so good to me – _ahh_.” A swat that resonated through the bedroom. His thighs and the crease of his arse were already too sensitive, he’d break skin if he hit there anymore, so he would only paddle the meaty parts of his arse now. _Smack, smack._

“It would be very unorthodox for the disciplinary faculty to also _get off_ , as you say.” He made his tone as dry as possible.

“I need you to hold me down and fuck me, in front of everyone. They’ve got to know.” He had begun to sound desperate. It looked good on him.

“That’s quite shameless.” _Smack._

“Well, _yeah_.”

_Smack, smack._ Harry was frustrated, near to boiling over, from how long they’d both stayed on edge. He was _anxious_ by now, sure he’d pop off as soon as he touched, and he had ideas about how orgasms needed to be _significant_. Well. _Smack. Smack_. He’d slowed the paddling, just short of stopping, when Harry let out a dry sob. “ _Please_ fuck me,” he said raggedly. “I’m so close already. I want you on top of me, covering my body with yours. And people will see and will hear everything you _do_ to me, that I lose all control around you but it’s alright, that you make it so _safe_.” Ragged, manic, desperate. “I’ve never felt this safe with anyone. And if it’s like my soul has cracked – “ (on this, his _voice_ cracked actually, and Legilimency indicated this was a fear of his. He knew trauma damaged souls. Voldemort couldn’t even honestly reassure him it hadn’t been) “if my soul’s cracked or if I am, it will always be okay with you.” Tears were glittering beneath his lashes. “I always feel whole again, with you.”

Voldemort allowed a moment to pass before answering, in case Harry’s lusty babbling wasn’t over. It was. “You feel that way for very non-metaphorical reasons, you understand.”

“Mm. Yeah. But either they don’t understand or they don’t _care_ – “ His face was wetter. Voldemort had asked this of him. He always learned interesting things, about their magic or just about _Harry_ , when he cried. “And it’s such a _relief_ ,” his voice cracked again, “even if nobody believes me. To think that you’re, um, protecting me.”

He couldn’t decide if this was roleplay or real. The latter, he would guess. He cast Finite on Harry’s sticking spells so he fully flopped onto the bed. The corresponding burn in Voldemort’s thighs made him wince. “You should have said – “

Nevermind, Harry already regretted letting his arse touch the sheets. With a groan that was also a laugh, he lifted his arse from the bed. “Jesus.”

In a motion, Voldemort pulled his legs to his shoulders, so Harry was obligated to scoot in. “Oh, or this,” he said, breathless. “This is good.”

“Is it?” he asked, amused. Leaning in, he ran his tongue beneath Harry’s eyelashes. “Mm. Are you done?”

“Crying?” Harry asked, incredulous. “Is this a _thing_ for you now? I spent years learning how not to cry, so I don’t know that….”

“You haven’t properly reacted to the attack yet. I’d prefer you not have a panic attack while I’m inside you, you see.”

Harry smiled at this. “So thoughtful,” he purred. “Uh, no. I’ll need dreamless sleep. But today wasn’t even _bad_.”

The muted sort of trauma he could feel sticking to Harry’s soul indicated otherwise. He wouldn’t pursue it, especially since neither of them were exactly thinking right, all the blood gone to their cocks. “Good.” He reached to twist the buttplug, testing how loose and warm he was. They both reacted to the sensation.

Harry let his eyes fall closed again, trying not to kick as Voldemort rubbed the knots out of his legs. It was for his own sake, really. “Fuck me in front of the entire school,” he murmured. “The entire Ministry. The entire _world_ , for all I care.” His hips were bucking as Voldemort withdrew the buttplug, tantalizingly slow. “They need to know how happy and safe I am with you. And god – “ a violent involuntary thrust of his hips “ – how much I bloody _want_ you.”

“I’ve told you before, I treat my protégés very well.” _Pop_ , the buttplug slipped past the ring of muscle. The raw need to be filled echoed in them both. “I tell you that in the great hall, in an undertone. Do you still speak Parseltongue?” he asked. “Or should I say it in English, so we might be overheard?”

“Mm. In English.” He thrust himself on Voldemort’s fingers, inside him to ascertain whether there was enough lube. He really was still dripping. He moved to slip off the cock ring, tight enough to be painful to them both, nearly. It took all of Harry’s self-restraint not to plunge his rigid cock into Voldemort’s grasp at this moment.

“In English, then, I tell you that you are shameless. You’re already so hard and so wet, before I’ve properly touched you. You understand, though – some boys who _especially_ act out, manual stimulation isn’t enough to purge their mischief. But it seems a shame to give you what you want – and you _have_ made clear that you’ve wanted it for a very long time. Wanted me,” he amended, itself an unusual idea even if Harry _did_ , wholly and vociferously.

“My plan worked,” Harry said, sounding pleased with his fantasy self. Charming, utterly bloody charming.

Rolling his eyes would be wasted. “So as I join you on the dais, I’m explaining to the audience that in _some_ young men, penetration is the more helpful discipline. Something about being held down and fucked in that way – not that protocol would ever use such a word – uniquely keeps them in line. Perhaps it restores order, or hierarchy, or a good relationship with their authority figures. Some Greeks considered mentorship to include sexual mentorship, as well. It’s meant to draw young men through the maturational process.” He was speaking now as its own sort of torture.

“You have,” he said, but it was nearly lost in his panting. Harry was gripping the bedclothes to keep from fisting his own cock. His stomach where it lay was shiny with pre-come. He’d never delayed coming for so long. And then Voldemort’s cock was aligned with Harry; he pushed forward. He wondered idly how long he could continue lecturing, even as he thrust into his warm, ready hole.

“The _erastes_ and the… dammit, what is the word,” he muttered, thrusting deeper, his hands tight on Harry’s forearms because he loved the feeling of being held down. “The beloved, in any case. That would be you,” he said, not even noticing the pleased, soft look that elicited. He couldn’t think, lost in the way they moved so perfectly together. “Another moment of sex as politics,” he muttered absently, tipping Harry’s pelvis higher to bury himself in that arse.

“How – _ah_ – do you _do_ all this?” Harry demanded faintly, his hips bucking to graze his cock against Voldemort’s stomach.

“What, penetration?” A gasp for breath, before he was able to continue. “It’s really quite simple – “

His didacticism and wit were finally stopped a moment later, when Harry arched to crush their lips together.

With their Legilimency open, they shared every sensation, ricocheting off the other’s. Harry’s hips bumped in time with Voldemort’s, and they were then _grinding_ in addition to the penetration. Their torsos too were slick with sweat and pre-come; when Voldemort conjured lube to spread between himself and Harry’s cock, Harry tried to fuck his fingers too. “Mmm, sorry,” he muttered. “I’d rather….” A vague hand. He’d rather get off humping Voldemort’s torso.

Legilimency really did insist that they be generous lovers to each other. Voldemort could feel Harry’s fullness in himself, slightly abstracted but _delicious_. Their mouths lingered on one another’s, lips soft and slick. Magic buzzed between them, wild and untamed and whole.

Harry pulsed around him, taking in his entire length with ease now. They’d never fucked in this position before, his legs at Voldemort’s shoulders instead of his waist, and it made him feel _bottomless_. He loved it. He pumped his hips harder, to press his rigid cock against him. Needing more, he drew Voldemort in close, scrubbing their bodies together. “ _Ohh_ ,” he groaned as his frottage got some purchase. Voldemort was so _soft_ ; he never thought of him as such before. Voldemort held him tight with his off hand then, raising their bodies together. Harry might have cried again.

When Voldemort was close, the muscles in his back straining in that particular way they did, Harry arched to murmur into his ear. “I love you, I love you,” he was saying as though it were a secret, a very important secret. Voldemort shuddered, spilling thick ropes inside Harry, as Harry plunged his hand between them to pull himself off at the same time. He flooded him, enough that it felt as though it should pour back out. They had needed this so much for so long. Harry pounded his hips upward, eliciting aftershocks in both of them. Voldemort was near enough now to press his tongue to Harry’s scar.

As he softened, slipping out, he sat back to look at Harry. Sprawled, beautiful. “You can’t fall asleep yet.”

“No, I can’t.” Looking at him groggily, after a moment, he said, “Sorry, I was thinking of, like, lost time. What did you mean?”

“You are precious.” With a spell he flicked on a vibrator, teasing the outside of Harry’s slick hole before pushing it inside of him. Harry, always so sensitive after coming, _thrashed_. He went to get ready for bed.

When he returned from the loo, more wild spatters of come dotted Harry and the sheets. His face was strained, scar white against his pink complexion. His hips bucked on their own, and he wasn’t coordinated enough to give himself a handjob right now, so his cock ground erratically against his splayed palm. Voldemort moved back in, twisting and dipping the vibrator. Harry’s orgasms were dry by now, having spent himself. When the string of orgasms began to really hurt, Voldemort withdrew the vibrator, dispelling its charm.

Another breathless laugh from Harry. He felt boneless; so too did Voldemort. Every muscle in his torso and legs and guts untangled at a different speed. Finally he looked up, his eyes bright. “D’you want another?”

“No. As I said, I’ll fuck you again while you sleep.”

“Mm. Yeah.” This time Harry actually sounded interested in this idea. “When I wet the bed. If I do. Really?”

“Yes.”

“Yeah,” he said sleepily. “Then I haven’t got to get up now, I’ll wait….” And he fumbled with teeth-cleaning spells in lieu of a toothbrush.

He’d said he needed dreamless sleep. Another calming draught would still whatever damage he’d done to his soul, for a bit. There was no kaval. As Harry was already nearly dropping off and Voldemort planned to work a bit longer, he went to get the potions himself. To the basement, where their summer brewing kit and stock still resided. Where the massive stash of calming draught and baobab from the healers resided as well. He would hardly admit they helped (“Oh, do they cure evil, then?” he’d asked one healer who’d insisted that Voldemort take them in his presence. It hadn’t gone well) but they _did_. They put people around him at relative ease, at the very least. Enough baobab for them both, and a dreamless sleep to split, because otherwise waking up early tomorrow would be difficult. Blood-replenishing charms because they both still needed them too, after today.

Harry had curled up without casting a cleaning spell. Maybe he wanted to sleep so debased. Voldemort cleaned him up and slipped in on the other side of the bed, summoning the Panopticon to read. “Harry?”

“Hmm?” He’d already been just beneath the surface of sleep. He squinted at the proffered potions, and something good and painful hurt in his – their – chest. “Thanks,” he said, sentimental and soppy after being so wrung out. “You didn’t have to.”

Voldemort shrugged, clinking their blood replenishing potions together.

Not much in the papers officially reported – there’d been an evening edition of the Prophet to cover the attack at the Ministry and explosion at Hogwarts, but it couldn't say more than Voldemort had known this afternoon. Really, the Aurors couldn’t and shouldn’t keep Voldemort in the center of making these decisions, but it was maddening to be sequestered away from whatever meetings were taking place _now_. Altering the Muggles’ memory today might have been the last involvement he was able to have.

Or perhaps not. He spent two or three days a week in the Ministry, and he hoped that would still be true. He knew Harry secretly longed to be kept here for days together, not because he loved inaction any more than Voldemort did, but because they’d be together for once – but Voldemort would be very annoyed if the Aurors _didn’t_ collect them tomorrow morning to pick up the politics they’d put down this afternoon.

He slept lightly. But then, he always did. It made him feel primal, a lion guarding its pride (to use a terribly Gryffindor metaphor. A snake guarding its clutch? Hardly better). At one point when they were both close to sleep, Harry moved to slip Voldemort’s thumb in his mouth instead of his own. It was…. He didn’t have words for these feelings, they were too bound up in sex, caretaking, and soulmates to have to any particular word for it. Harry would cheerfully tell him it was ‘love’ as though it were so multifaceted as that.

Deep into the night, Harry kicked his leg between Voldemort’s. He was warm and pliant in sleep. He’d pulled his briefs back on in the last moment of wakefulness, and the cotton was now pressed against Voldemort’s thigh, so he felt the first bubble of wetness as Harry let go.

He wanted to watch. It was just so… innocent. Soft. Harry was his equal, and it would scorn fate to forget it, but Harry was also so young, and so… worthy of care. He begged Voldemort to take the weight of responsibility from him, only an option in fantasy, but then they would fantasize. He cast a cushioning charm under his arse before rolling him onto his back.

His accident was slow, in spurts and dribbles that fell down his toned thighs. Voldemort pressed his legs together, with the tip of his cock lying on them, so he urinated a puddle in the delta of his thighs. He seemed to relax deeper still into the bed, having been tense from holding in his sleep.

Voldemort hadn’t dressed again. And the lube was still in reach. “Harry?” he murmured at his ear, slicking lube between his piss-wet thighs. “You’re having an accident, darling. Your pants are already soaked.” He wasn’t going in a full stream yet, just these early shocks of desperation that escaped him. A murmur out of Harry. He probably thought he was in a nappy, as always. “You must be exhausted,” Voldemort said softly, still just above his ear. “Just go in bed. We’ll clean up later.” A smile curved Harry’s lips, whether he was awake enough to hear permission granted or not. Voldemort plunged his erection between Harry’s thighs.

Mm. He was toned but not hard. His body had even filled out over the summer, no longer the underfed, tragic waif he’d grown up as. He fell into a rhythm of fucking him again, moving recklessly this time so his cock plunged in and out of Harry’s legs.

Another squirm. Harry tried rolling over, but Voldemort held him down. This was perfect, the wetness in his lap running down the crease between his legs, soaking Voldemort’s own cock. He thought of _marking_. He’d thought of it often enough in the days that Harry suggested he might as well piss down the back of his nappy. That Harry should mark him reciprocally…. He didn’t hate the idea as he should.

Suddenly, Harry gasped, jolting awake. “No.” He plunged a hand between his legs, groaning at the excessive wetness. Still groggy: “I thought I had a nappy on – I always do, with you. What – ?”

Voldemort held him down harder, fucking his thighs decadently. Harry’s panic was intensely erotic. He was certainly blushing. “You need to finish wetting yourself, and then we might clean up.” He thought he’d found a reasonable tone, even as breathless as he was from thrusting.

“You’re fucking me but… not.” Harry, newly awoken, was not the most astute thing.

“I told you. Intercrural sex. Between the legs.” He repositioned himself higher, to nearly frot Harry’s pants. The space between his thighs steamed, as hot as being inside him.

Harry reacted by putting a shy, useless hand over his pants. “I’m so sorry,” he said again, but he wouldn’t move.

Right. Permission. What he’d whispered in Harry’s ear while he’d been asleep. “You seemed exhausted,” he said with saccharine sympathy. “Just go in your pants, darling, it’s alright.”

Harry’s wide eyes glittered in the darkness. “Really?”

“Just give me your responsibility,” Voldemort said. He’d slowed, holding Harry’s legs together now to properly rub between them. Harry reached to hold him in return. “I’ve told you to wet your pants, and I’ll clean up. _Ahh_ ,” he groaned as Harry tightened his legs.

But Harry was blushing because he _loved_ this idea. How humiliating and exciting it would be, to wet himself because he was told to, and that was enough. With Voldemort it was. Harry pulled him tighter. “Yeah, alright.”

“Don’t stop,” Voldemort breathed. “You were swollen before this.” As nice as it was to be held, he would also sit back to watch. A stream bubbled between Harry’s legs, the bit of his sodden underwear where it came out marking the head of his cock. Harry watched too, half-sitting so he could look into his lap. “How does it feel?” Voldemort asked lowly.

“Uh, decadent. To just ruin furniture because I want to. I know it’s not really ruined,” he added promptly. “What does it feel like for you?”

Nostalgia; fucking a man this way felt like nostalgia. “It makes you look quite young,” he said instead. “Not too young to know better, though.”

“Am I in trouble?” His voice was luscious.

“Lie back and pretend to be asleep, and you won’t be.”

It was with some difficulty that Harry fell back. And then he was wetting the bed, his piss hissing softly through his pants before spattering on his thighs. Delicious. Harry took Voldemort’s off hand, slipping his thumb between his lips. His breathing became even and shallow. It was exquisite.

Intercrural sex offered more angles than penetration, and he found himself thrusting _up_ between Harry’s legs. The head of his cock grazed Harry’s wet pants. He groaned each time.

Harry was good, Harry was innocent. Or an approximation thereof. Harry was patient and taught Voldemort to be patient with him, a miracle unto itself. Harry was powerful, but had these moments of yielding power as though it meant nothing. He’d been vociferous about the pleasures he took in helplessness.

The first time he’d seen Harry in a wet bed had been last autumn, in Harry’s abduction from Hogwarts. He had asked then if Harry had wet the bed to act out; Harry had blushed and mumbled that it was only when he under a lot of stress. Perhaps he’d been cornered into that vulnerability, but Harry had since spoken with fondness about how understanding he’d been. Maybe they had always performed vulnerability before each other. Voldemort hadn’t wanted to be seen as gentle then, anymore than Harry had wanted to be seen in a wet bed. And yet there they were.

“Do you want anything…?” Harry mumbled around his thumb. “’M nearly done.”

“Spray the rest up your chest. As you so enjoyed coming on yourself earlier.”

Harry moved to pull his cock up above his waistband. And then he let it fall there, without slowing or stopping his stream at any point. His piss sprayed up his torso, nearly to his chest. Their Legilimency was still fairly open and they shared a reaction to this. Filthy – reckless – gorgeous. Harry’s streams ran down his sides, as the olive oil had earlier, and Voldemort dipped his head to lap at this too.

Harry shrieked, and laughed, and squirmed. “Sorry,” he muttered, because he was meant to be asleep. He lifted Voldemort’s thumb from his mouth once more. “But that is… depraved. I love it,” he added in reassurance or maybe glee.

He shoved his thumb back in Harry’s mouth to quiet him. And he sucked hard, laving and flicking his tongue and gliding the tip across the sensitive parts…. Of course it went straight to his cock. “Don’t stop,” he gasped.

Harry gave him a blowjob in miniature as he plunged in between his thighs. The bed beneath them was sodden; Voldemort could feel puddles formed beneath his knees. He thought of _not_ cleaning it up afterward, just… sleeping in the wetness. It didn’t disgust him any longer. Harry would enjoy the idea. Harry might feel free to curl up against him, because this all meant _safety_ and _trust_ to him. He would have never imagined getting to a point where he found those feelings erotic, instead of disgusting, either. But then… well, he’d never had an equal before.

His motions grew erratic, at the end. Harry’s legs quivered around him. He held Voldemort close again. He sucked his thumb as though sucking him off, because they both loved the perversity of innocent scenes. _One – two – three_ – He plunged between his thighs, spurting heavily. Harry held him tight. A shudder, again and again. There was still Amortentia in his blood, and it made him come forever; and then there were the aftershocks he felt in Harry’s Legilimency, getting off on the sensation a second time. The backs of Harry’s thighs grew sticky. Voldemort fell back.

“Alright?” Harry’s voice cut through the darkness. He hadn’t fully let go of him yet.

Voldemort drew a long breath in response. There hadn’t been many encounters in which he’d gotten off and Harry hadn’t. He couldn’t imagine Harry wanted another orgasm yet, so it was just… him, shattered and open for them both. “Yes.”

Harry’s hands ran down his spine, pressing at each vertebra. They were both like this in the dark, soft and entangled. He didn’t intend to be. But he melted into Harry’s touch, that was turning into a backrub, nonetheless.

“D’you want to clean up?” Harry asked, amused, as he pulled Voldemort nearer to him.

“You may, when you tire of the sensation.”

“I _may_. Thank you.” His tone was teasing. He left it all, for now. A bit of Voldemort had hoped he’d slip back into sleep with his legs still covered in Voldemort’s come.

But Harry was awake for awhile now. His hands were warm on his back, rubbing out the tense parts along his spine and in his neck. He didn’t even think about sharing magic these days, he just _did_ it. In ways it was enviable, how his magic swirled around him, anticipating what he wanted without even crafting proper spells for it. If Voldemort’s life at this point had been different, he would have been considering how to persuade Harry to give him these powers; he could at least put them to good use. But he didn’t need power, particularly, at the moment. Of the things he _did_ need, Harry had already anticipated them.

“Good boy,” he murmured into the darkness, as Harry rubbing a tender spot in his neck. As such, he couldn’t turn back to look at him, and that made everything simpler. He thought of offering Harry a reward, asking what he’d like in exchange for being so patient and so thoughtful. He had the sense of being a _project_ and, well, it was somewhat embarrassing. He knew what Harry would ask for, anyway, and it was hardly a reward. “I swear I’ll keep you safe.”

“I know.” Still that affectionate tone. His hands crept higher, rubbing sensitive points at the base of his skull. They both felt it. He couldn’t think of a reason at the moment not to indulge in Legilimency all the time. As though they weren’t actually aware of each other’s bodies, anyway.

“That is, I’ll keep everyone safe.”

He didn’t expect this to cause a twinge in Harry. “Hermione – _god_ , what good did it do to take out that memory,” he interrupted himself.

“ _Weigaron_ is incredibly more effective if the subject _wants_ to forget a memory’s contents.”

“Right. I’ve been worrying it. Hermione said something like, am I going to make you promise not to kill all my friends.”

Ms. Granger today had been talented. He still disliked her. And it would devastate Harry if he knew. “Should I?”

“What, that’s not what you meant? I mean, I know you’ll keep _me_ safe. Me and all the other Horcruxes.” Still amused, not angry. They could only have conversations like this in the dark of night, in the ease of lying together, entangled. He wondered how much simpler the political world would be if all diplomatic meetings took place in bed, participants holding each other.

“I won’t kill your friends,” he promised. “But I spoke rather more expansively of your country. Your world. I want very much to keep Britain safe for you. Peace is much simpler in ensuring your safety, anyway. You are weaponized in war and… I won’t allow it any longer.”

He felt Harry’s chest rise and fall against his back. “I can’t be the only thing keeping Britain safe from _you_.” Another objection on behalf of Ms. Granger, he saw in Harry’s thoughts. “What if we, y’know, break up? What if I die?”

The former suggestion was more interesting than the latter. As terrified as everyone was of him _now_ (they really did have an indecent amount of mood stabilizers and elevators from the healers), he could only imagine the berth he’d be given if he were _jilted_. “You are not the only thing I care about,” he said, “if you are what I care about _most_.” He hated this, he hated speaking of the weakness of love and now the weakness of – what? Caring, altruism? Even if part of Harry’s value was as a Horcrux, it still felt like too sincere of a confession. “Every vow is insured by our relationship already. I apologize for swearing everything on your life instead of my own,” he added dryly.

Harry snorted at this. “Really, I kind of like it. It makes everyone else feel safer, anyway.” He took his hands off Voldemort momentarily to cast cleaning spells, because the bed was getting cold and everything felt a bit sticky.

“But that’s quite it, do you see?” He allowed a significant moment of pause. “You haven’t got to be the savior. I’d take that responsibility from you, with every other.” He had a great many biting remarks about Albus’s imposition of this pressure on a _child_ , but he let them be. “As you know, what people believe and want to see is more significant than any realities. Perhaps _they’ll_ always want to see you as a mediator. But… you ought not let it burden you. Really.”

Harry always took time when working through implications. _It was over_ , Voldemort wanted to say to him. His era as a threat to Britain was functionally over, only because Harry had carved out another way for him. This was too painful and too humiliating to speak aloud. (Humiliation wasn’t a common or welcome feeling for him either. How did the humans survive.) But Harry had access to his emotions. He thought.

“It was amazing how much they listened to you today,” he said at last. “I know I’ve said it before but… it was. I know you don’t need me there, as much as you’ve done in the past month without me. I don’t mediate because I think you need me to. I don’t even do it because _they_ need me to. But they’d never let me see you again if they didn’t think there was a point to it.” His teeth scraped Voldemort’s shoulder, where he now nipped and suckled, as he smiled. “Really, it’s selfish.”

“You’ve done well, being apart.”

“I haven’t,” Harry scoffed. “I swallow my feelings with potions and beg the Horcruxes for _their_ magic, is all.”

He put aside his surprise that the Horcruces would particularly acquiesce to this. “You’re not weak,” he said, a bit sharply. “You are incurring soul damage. You do know that?” His question was sincere, because he had assumed Harry would have recognized the risks of their separation before they’d parted, when they’d offered it to the Aurors.

“I mean, I’ve felt it.”

So, no, he hadn’t particularly known beforehand. Well, nothing to be done for it now. They needed that vow of separation, politically. Harry had taken on this damage – it’d manifest as melancholia or paranoia – just because Voldemort had asked him to. It was a wholly different feeling than causing someone pain by, say, the Cruciatus. “It’s not more than can be healed,” he said. “Though not quickly.”

“Oh.” Harry’s voice was small. “I thought it was just me.”

He refrained from telling Harry they woke up with the same sensation in their gut every morning: panic, anxiety, grief. “No,” he said. “For the functional difference that makes.”

“It does.” Harry sounded surprised that he didn’t see it as such. “I thought I was just _broken_.” Among all of the feelings held between them by Legilimency, there was a blossom of relief.

“If you are, it is temporary.”

Harry rolled onto his back, scrubbing his face. “Why didn’t you _tell_ me it was going to be like this?” He wasn’t irritated, somehow. He’d always take on self-inflicted grief over anger, when he could. The diplomat-martyr. “It was so…. I couldn’t explain it to anyone. They’d assume I was just… lovesick.” He said it as a terrible word. “ _I_ assumed I was lovesick. It wouldn’t change anything,” he said fiercely, at the feelings from Voldemort he intuited. “I’d still agree to the vow. But I’ve felt so… _awful_ in the past few weeks.”

“You’re not weak,” Voldemort said again.

“Everything _is_ actually awful. I didn’t think it was an unreasonable way to feel.”

“It’s not.”

Harry pulled him over, so they lay face to face. “And you?” he asked, with trepidation because he expected an answer he didn’t want.

He said carefully, “Your empathy grants you a wider range of emotions than the range to which I have access.”

_That_ implication, Harry caught. There was only one broken person in this bed, and it wasn’t Harry. There was grief and pity in his bright eyes. Nobody else had ever, _ever_ looked at Voldemort like this – the nearest was when he’d been a student, and some of the faculty who knew of the orphanage looked upon him as a precious Dickensian waif. He had stifled _that_ neatly. This, he didn’t stifle. He awaited Harry’s response.

“Let me save you,” Harry said.

His breath caught. He wanted to dismiss it. Like calming draughts and pity, it made him feel weak and sickly to receive this sort of attention. But this – it’d be like the deliberation of telling Harry he loved him. So, gentle: “You may.”

Harry was surprised by this. He’d expected to be rebuked. Pressing a kiss to his throat, firm and insistent, he slipped back into sleep.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On the fight with Hermione: she’s going to be somewhat of an antagonist to Harry at points in this story, and I want to say that she is mostly morally correct and probably the most reasonable person in the story. So, take her objections seriously because they’re not just here to drive Harry away from his friends. 
> 
> Also, I’ve found that in a lot of “Harry dates a villain” fics, it’s often Ron who objects to the relationship while Hermione ends up supporting it. idk why, maybe people would rather just write Hermione? But I’m doing the opposite here, in part to break those tropes and in part because I think it’s more true to their characters. Ron is loyal to people, Hermione is loyal to ideals. (And I think the broomstick in POA is already the best example of this.) So Ron will handle Harry’s relationship with Voldemort better not because he likes it any more than Hermione does, but because he is less willing to give up their friendship on principle. But. I’m not demonizing Hermione, is what I want to say.
> 
>  
> 
> Allusions for Chapter 15:  
> I love stories of Tom as the DADA professor. Much of how I characterize the professor he would be comes from [Reparabilis](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9146410).
> 
> “Some Greeks considered mentorship to include sexual mentorship” – Greek pederasty was commonly a joint mentorship/sexual relationship, between an influential older man and an adolescent. The terms Voldemort searches for are the erastes (lover, the older partner) and the eromenos (the beloved, the younger partner). Also when I tagged this fic ‘unrealistic amount of talking during sex,’ I was calling out this scene. Just shut up and fuck.


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry has a panic attack. Harry has a lot of panic attacks. The Unspeakables try to figure out what’s wrong with him.
> 
> (Not a real warning: massively indulgent hurt/comfort. This entire chapter. Somebody stop me.)

_Thursday, September 17._ Harry was awoken by awful dreams. He was awoken by being shaken. No, _he_ was shaking, he realized. Sobbing. He wished he’d swallowed more dreamless sleep when he’d been awake in the middle of the night, though that didn’t work on the visceral responses to his dreams so much as his memories of them. He remembered this one in technicolor – everyone was furious with him, all his friends and all his professors and all the Aurors and the entire world; and he couldn’t yell loud enough at them to just _explain_ himself. Everyone was so disappointed in him. Guilt and grief gnawed at him.

And it wasn’t _untrue_ , really. He dreaded Hogwarts now, the aborted fight with Hermione. She would’ve told Ron and Ginny by now. Hell, the papers had probably reported that he and Voldemort had been together again, which always provoked tense conversations and wary looks and some hideous letters. _I want to save you_ , he’d said last night, light and sweet, but he’d have to sacrifice every single other relationship to do so. He wanted to _belong_ , to belong to everyone at once, and it was ruining everything.

He couldn’t breathe, he was crying so hard. Silent and dry, as he’d learned when he was very young. His chest hurt, and he was covered in a cold sweat. He’d ruined _everything_ , and the entire world would come apart at the seams now.

A hand on his shoulder some time later made him jump. He was bent double, as though he could put his head in his lap to hide himself. “You are having a panic attack,” Voldemort said behind him, calm and collected. “Do you wake up like this every morning? You really shouldn’t.”

He knew his face would be a blotchy, snotty mess. He didn’t want to turn around to show it. “No.” Fuck, and his voice was sticky, too.

“Have you already taken calming draught? Or baobab. Or anything, really.”

“I _told_ you,” (he had to clear his throat so he didn’t sound so miserable) “I can’t drown my feelings in potions. It’s all _real_ and it doesn’t help to try pretending everything is alright!”

The bed shifted as Voldemort rose. Harry went cold. He’d dreamt of Voldemort being furious with him too, leaving him too. In some ways Voldemort was the most accepting person in his life, the one least likely to leave him, and that _really_ didn’t mean he could be shitty to him anyway. He jumped up, ready to keep Voldemort from walking out. “Sorry, I’m so sorry – “

As Voldemort had _not_ walked out but had only circled the bed to take potions from the nightstand, he looked faintly alarmed at this. And then he moved to push Harry seated on the bed once more, but grimaced and stopped. Oh. The bed where he’d lain was quite wet, not all with sweat. Voldemort pressed two vials into Harry’s hands and moved to cast their usual cleaning charms.

He was still so panicked, he could hardly make out the labels, but of course it was a calming draught and baobab, as always. “There is also thestral’s blood in the basement for mania,” Voldemort offered. “Does this qualify?”

Harry tried not to gnash his teeth. At least he’d have Voldemort after everyone else denounced and deserted him, he couldn’t jeopardize that. “Everyone _hates_ me because of you.” (Admittedly not the most endearing statement, anyway.) “I don’t want to go back. I really, really don’t.” He might cry again, in the way he couldn’t manage during sex last night. “I worked so hard to _belong_ somewhere and I’ve bollocksed it all up. _You’ve_ bollocksed it all up,” he said, but it came out as hysterical instead of vicious.

Voldemort moved closer so Harry threw himself backward, stumbled so he ended up seated on the bed anyway. “Please don’t touch me, I can’t be…” If the vials in his hands weren’t spelled unbreakable, he would’ve crushed them in his grasp by now. His face was very wet. Goddammit.

Voldemort was strained to react calmly, he could see. “Take the calming draught, Harry.”

“ _Fuck_ the calming draught.” He slammed both vials hard on the nightstand. “Don’t dismiss my feelings, when I’ve given up _everything_ for you!”

He was shouting again. He was crying again. He hunched, to hide his face and to press these awful feelings inside him into the smallest possible space.

He felt Legilimency in his head and didn’t care. Let him see that Harry wasn’t doing this for attention. (He had a faint memory of Vernon bellowing the same at him whenever he was hurt or upset.) Hell, let _him_ take on this misery. He’d caused it, in a way.

Footsteps followed him to the bed – firm, not cautious or gentle. “You will hate this,” Voldemort said, stopping before him to uncork the vial. A hand on his shoulder, holding him in place. Glass lifted to his lips. And – _ow_ – a suggestion charm, not Imperio but strong enough that it may as well have been. The vial tipped, and he swallowed compulsively.

Voldemort held the vial the entire time, when Harry made no move to hold it, down to the dregs. Then the vial of baobab capsules, shaken into his palm. His long finger slipped them between Harry’s lips. He swallowed, again and again, nearly against his will.

The last panic attack he’d had had evaporated completely with a calming draught. This one didn’t, though something partially eased inside of him. He was lonely and guilty and terrified of being abandoned again, was all. He stared up at Voldemort with wide eyes, but he couldn’t think of anything to say.

Voldemort could. “Get in the shower. Don’t drown yourself,” he said wryly. “I’ll summon the Aurors when you’re out.”

He found the bedsheets clenched between his fingers. “Uh… Healers?” he corrected. “I swear, I’m not like this. I want to die.” His voice cracked, and some form of dread lodged firmly behind his breastbone.

“The healers are idiots,” Voldemort fumed, “and missed the _soul curse_ placed on you. Granted, I did too, since it feels so very much like the damage done by the separation. It took awhile to manifest, as well. Sex probably staved it off longer. Really,” he said as Harry’s incredulous look.

“Then the Aurors…?” He was wiping snot off his face with the back of his hand. His eyes still watered. His chest still hurt, a lot.

“You’re joining me at the Ministry today. Specifically, you’re going to see the Unspeakables. I _recognize_ the curse, I can’t cure it. There’s a hospital ward within the Ministry, should we need to summon healers as well.” Voldemort was pulling clothing from the wardrobe. “Do you want the robe you wore yesterday, or one of mine?” he asked. “And when you’re out of the shower, you’ll show me how to share magic. It will help.”

“Oh.” He couldn’t think about any of this. He didn’t have to, as long as Voldemort was. In the midst of all these shitty feelings, the relief felt so much better. He went to shower.

It was psychological, of course – they’d cast enough cleaning spells on themselves and the bed. But the sensation of steam on his face and water pounding into his back was only somehow irritating. He ended up slipping to the floor, sitting in the stream like a prat. He knew he was so, so alone.

Voldemort gave him a very long time alone in the shower. Presumably Harry wasn’t a great joy to be around right now, so…. When he entered to use the toilet and brush his teeth, though, he didn’t even remark on the pathetic heap at the bottom of the shower that he was. “I should have recognized it sooner, Harry, I’m sorry.” He nearly sounded it. Harry let his head fall back against the tile.

“So what,” he said, turning off the tap but not otherwise moving. His voice echoed off the wet tile. “It wouldn’t change that Hermione and I _actually_ fought, and she’s _actually_ disgusted with me. And she should be. I need that memory, by the way. It might be better to just face it.”

“It’s bottled in the kitchen.”

“I just….” His sigh went a little high-pitched at the end, a little close to a sob and he _didn’t_ want to cry, god. “Everyone around me is so much more valuable because I haven’t got family, anyone who’s got to love me unconditionally. Except for you. Until they kill you.”

A sharp intake of breath. Oh god, he hadn’t meant that, he was only anticipating it as the last abandonment. Voldemort didn’t speak for a long time, faced away from Harry, his hands braced on the countertop. He wasn’t even angry, he was just…. Oh. The panic affected him too, residually. He was just better at all of this than Harry was. “I’m sorry,” he said weakly.

Voldemort turned, offering a hand to pick him out of the shower stall. “Just tell me what I said was horrible,” Harry pled as Voldemort wrapped him in a towel. (Also psychological, since he’d used a drying charm first, but it was nice.)

“They might kill me,” Voldemort agreed instead. “That is a discussion for later. What I’d like to tell you _now_ is, I’ll take care of everything. You aren’t weak, but you haven’t got to hold everything together, all the time.” He was bringing Harry back into the bedroom, putting him on the end of the bed.

“You said that last night. During sex.”

“It extends well beyond sex, clearly.” He handed Harry back his glasses – _whole_. “I wondered whether they were really Muggle,” he said, offhand. “You can do better.”

“Uh, maybe.” He dropped them back onto his nose. “I’ve got an image to maintain, by now.” He was somewhat lucid by now. Enough. With calming draughts near at hand. Still near to hyperventilating, but he could think clearly, in a way.

“Hm.” Voldemort held up a robe for Harry. He couldn’t tell the difference between any of Voldemort’s robes, they were all equally black and floaty and sinister.  A crisp white button down, and gray trousers.

Harry eyed the last of these dubiously. He and Voldemort were both thin – though only Voldemort unnaturally so – and a temporary hemming spell would account for differences in height, but: “I’ve got more of an arse than you do, you know.” (Even more now: it was the first summer he’d really _eaten_ , and he’d filled out everywhere but especially there. Voldemort swore he loved it, pressing his tongue into the creases of his thighs and his arse whenever he could, especially since it made Harry protest and squirm away.)

“We do _magic_ ,” Voldemort reminded him. “I can’t believe you wore Muggle jeans to the Ministry yesterday. And there will be journos there today.”

He felt an uncomfortable lurch at _that_. Though of course there would be. “Right.” He stood to accept the outfit.

“Stay.” Voldemort approached him instead, pushing him backward on the bed, pulling the towel open.

“Uh. Is there time for sex?” he asked, doubtful. “I know you said it’d helped, but if we’re getting to the Ministry….”

“Not sex. Though that’s not a bad idea.” In a still-practiced motion, he picked Harry’s legs up, measuring out the towel beneath him.

_Oh_. “Oh my god,” he said faintly. “I can’t go out in a nappy.”

Voldemort cast a healing charm on his bruised, spanked arse, because it would just be an obnoxious distraction today; and then he was transfiguring the cloth in his fingers, so it shrank and stretched in the right places. The fabric was made a little finer, with a sleek waterproofing spell on the outside. On one hand, it was enough of a relief to loosen some part of his soul. If they’d been staying here today, he couldn’t have asked for anything better to calm him. But they _weren’t_ , they were going out, to a quite public place. Photographers would be everywhere. The Minister would be there. “You’re embarrassed to be seen with me in jeans there, but not in a nappy?”

“Mm. Excellent point.” He was charming the rest of his clothing to fit Harry now. When he looked up to see Harry still (understandably, he thought) reluctant, he said in a more reasonable tone, “Nobody will know. Of course. I don’t mean to put too fine a point on it, but today will be little more than a string of panic attacks, with brief interludes of depression. That you should be preoccupied with _control_ ….”

Voldemort had mocked him before for how much he loved _permission_. Closing his eyes for a long moment, he willed the delight of being taken care of to overpower the anxiety of it. He had permission to be in a nappy today, of course, anything to get through the day. “Yeah, alright,” he said. “I mean, thanks. Thank you.”

Discretion spells, silencing spells. When Harry pulled on the trousers, he cast a mirror charm before himself to ensure it wasn’t the least bit noticeable. It wasn’t.

Voldemort waited on the bed as Harry dressed. “It took a few tries for the Horcrux to see how I shared magic,” Harry said, because that came next. “But they haven’t got Legilimency. Er, I don’t think. But you do, so I’ll give you magic, and you can see how it feels. Unless I’m too tainted,” he added with a dark smile.

“If you are, then _our_ soul has already been affected.” He played with the pronoun. “Another reason to take you to the Unspeakables instead of the healers, actually. The latter would know fuck all of Horcruces.”

“Can I skip the tie?” he asked, tucking in the shirt. Dressing like this strangely brought back memories of the Wizengamot hearing in his fifth year. And he really didn’t need to feel _chastised_ today.

“That style of robe is generally worn without even a shirt. You should skip the tie.”

“Huh.” This was helpful, this inanity. Domesticity. It felt like the sort of life he wanted forever with Voldemort. After pulling on the robe, he joined Voldemort on the bed.

Handing off magic. It’d always been him giving his magic to Voldemort. Until recently, when it’d been the diadem-Riddle giving Harry anti-depressant magic. An unpleasant thought. “Did the Horcruxes know how fucked my soul is?”

“They must, I suppose, since they’re bound to it.”

He was the last to know, then. “Um, do you want me to explain as I go? There’s not a lot to it.”

“No.” Voldemort was taking his hands. Legilimency held their minds open to one another.

He nearly had to stop the habitual – reflexive, really – exchange of magic, so he could be deliberate about it. “It’s a bit like Legilimency,” he said, even though he didn’t need to narrate. “The magic come from… well, it’s channeled through your hands usually, but it feels like it’s coming from around your solar plexus. Really deep. And it’s not a bad feeling for the, um, giver. It doesn’t hurt. I think I find it sort of stabilizing.”

His brow was furrowed in thought. He nodded. “Here.” Harry dropped his magic, to let Voldemort try.

A few stuttering stops. Voldemort’s mouth went thin (well, thinner), as it did when he was determined. Harry didn’t ask when he’d last willingly yielded power of any sort. He already knew _that_ answer.

“Would it help if I pulled?” he suggested, when Voldemort hadn’t gotten it yet. “To begin, at least.”

“Please don’t.” A few charms, inadvertent, died in his touch. “I’d never learn it correctly.”

Harry sat quietly. His soul was beginning to ache and tighten again. He hadn’t taken that calming draught even an hour ago. Shit.

But it was for the best, because Voldemort figured out the mechanism for sharing magic then. It was gentle at first, and warm. “Yeah,” Harry said softly, in case it distracted him. “Perfect.”

More firmly now. It felt like the punctures in his soul were being filled in, with light and heat and well-being. It was a new sort of wholeness, moreso even than the Horcruxes could give him. _Of course_ they shared a soul. This felt like the most natural thing in the world.

Harry wasn’t _dire_ then, though, so Voldemort withdrew. “I’ve been doing _that_ to you all this time, then?” Harry asked faintly.

A quirk of the corner of his mouth. “Yes. Should I have been more forthcoming about how pleasant it is?”

“I feel so in love with you right now.”

Of course he was raw and vulnerable and desperate and not thinking straight. Voldemort’s mouth quirked farther. “Yes,” he said again. “It’s not a solution, however. Just temporary relief, and it won’t heal you faster than the curse will destroy you.”

“Oh.” His voice got small.

Somehow, this amused Voldemort. Cock. “Perhaps that was overly dire. We’ll remove the curse. Today, if possible.”

“You can’t remove the vow of separation that’s _also_ apparently killing me.”

“Well. No. If that ever ends up so tragic as this, find Moody before you throw yourself from the astronomy tower.”

“What, to ask permission first?” But he was being dry and not devastated.

Voldemort told him to pack potions as he summoned the Aurors. And he was an utter fool, because he _did_ , and of course it was a diversion. When he heard raised voices in the garden, Moody’s and Voldemort’s, he sprinted up the basement steps – and ran straight into a ward strung across the doorway. _Lying arsehole_ , he swore. Still, so far every Runes class had been a variation on this exercise, dismantling wards. He was still gritting his teeth when he tore the ward away, to dash into the garden.

He barely stopped short when he saw a dash of pink in the sitting room. Tonks sat on their sofa, flipping through a book they’d left out. “Hullo,” she said cheerily. “Voldemort said you were falling apart. Are you?”

“Uh, yes. Not at the moment.” He’d swallowed a few mouthfuls of calming draught before packing them. A vial usually sustained the effect for about six hours; now it was lasting one. He really must look up the possibility of overdose. But in any case, the painful, panicked buzzing in his ears had started again as soon as he heard Voldemort and Moody in the garden again. They’d cast some spells that made their words indistinct, but… well, the tones were unmistakable. He looked at Tonks with incredulity and desperation. “You aren’t _doing_ anything about this?” He indicated the front door rather wildly. The windows had been strategically frosted.

“No. They’re like that,” she shrugged. “I guess you wouldn’t know, but…. I mean, they’re together a lot. And they fight and everyone goes very tense and then they decide on something. Besides – “ Reaching into her inner robes, she partly withdrew two wands. One was Voldemort’s; the other was a knotted vinewood that would fit into the top of Moody’s staff. “The Muggles ‘ve got a phrase, _mutually assured destruction_.” She gave a lopsided smile. “We all thought… it’s better this way.”

“Oh my god.” Harry sank into a chair, relieved but not entirely convinced. “I could see them still, y’know, strangling each other.”

Her eyebrows arched. “Could you?” She was so amused by this. “Really, they’re fine. Didn’t say what was worth fighting about. Voldemort seemed really angry on your behalf.”

Huh. Maybe angry that the healers hadn’t found the curse yesterday. Or maybe the Aurors hadn’t wanted to let him out. They were _both_ targets, after all. Trying to be subtle: “Voldemort’s probably got a lot of meetings in the Ministry today. We read the papers last night, but they didn’t say much for certain.”

Her expression darkened a bit. “We really didn’t learn anything new overnight. He seemed convinced that we would. Or should.”

Oh. That made sense. Voldemort had fought hard to belong too, to make himself _necessary_ to these people. And then he’d be cut off here, with only an unhelpful Panopticon and a panicky teenager. “And Hogwarts…?” he tried.

She shook her head. “They’ll be by to tell us more today. All I’ve heard from Dawlish is that the attacks were somehow triggered in the wards.”

Oh, _shit_. Whatever the Horcruxes knew of the wards, that they’d been _wrong_ somehow…. And it even happened in the great hall, where Riddle had brought him. If they’d worked faster – if he’d recognized something more in the wards that might – Fuck.

Tonks didn’t need to know this. _Couldn’t_ , unless he wanted to jeopardize the safety of the Horcruxes. But Voldemort did. Not that Voldemort would be especially allowed any participation in Hogwarts’s problems.

“Do you want tea? Coffee?” He suddenly felt absurd, waiting around for Voldemort and Moody to have it out. “I dunno what breakfast food there is now, otherwise I’d offer….” He went to go paw through the kitchen.

The shimmery vial of his memory sat on the kitchen counter. Taking a deep breath, as though he were about to be stuck with a needle, he uncorked it and lifted the memory to his throat to reclaim it. Fury and guilt and loneliness flooded him again. He stayed very still for a moment, until he’d tamped down those feelings deep inside himself.

The food didn’t matter after all, because while he was dithering about tea, the front door swung open. “Would you come in,” said Voldemort. Harry nearly bounded to the front entrance.

Both of them looked no worse for the wear. Tonks thought so too: “Well done,” she said in a delightfully dry tone as she passed back their wands. “Potter broke out of his prison, so if you could fill him in.”

Moody studied him. His magical eye too, and suddenly Harry was self-conscious. “Good morning,” Harry said, wary.

“Soul damage,” Moody mused, and Harry realized the magical eye was _looking_ for it, studying his aura or something. “When did _that_ happen?”

“I wondered that too,” he said. “It must have been…. There was one wizard, the one who was going to rip out my throat.” _That_ phrase sounded much more terrible now that he was in this state. He could still feel the man pinning him down, sharp teeth pressed against his flesh. “He cast an incantation right into my skin. I thought it was just the blood poisoning, but that must’ve been a, um, decoy.”

Moody thought about this. “When the Unspeakables figure you out, ask them to pass it along to the Aurors. Most other magic we saw yesterday was physical, not psychological.”

“So I am going to the Ministry.” He couldn’t keep relief from his voice. Voldemort shot him an appraising look.

Moody’s mouth knotted. “Since Voldemort is now, in addition to all other things, also your advocate, yes, you are. Don’t mistake this for being _safe._ ”

“No, sir.” Would he ever?

“And you may stay here through the weekend. Classes are already cancelled until Monday.”

Harry looked over at Voldemort. “With you?”

“It wouldn’t be much good for you to be alone. Since our separation exacerbated all of this to begin with.”

“It was _stupid_ of you not to say anything,” Moody said, suddenly fierce. “You can’t think that’s how the vow was meant to work. It wasn’t meant to _hurt_ you.”

He was too broken to be chastised right now. It wasn’t significant enough for Voldemort to intercede on his behalf, though. He took a breath. “Sort of. Maybe. I don’t know.” He really wasn’t going to make it much longer, being sedate as he was forcing himself to be.

Moody glared. “I’ve told you before that there’s no virtue in suffering.”

Moody was exasperated with him, not truly angry. But the space in Harry’s chest that feared abandonment, aloneness, exile was making him collapse on himself emotionally. “Sorry?” he tried, unconvincing. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“That you know we didn’t do this to you out of _cruelty_.” Moody sounded fairly disgusted.

“Oh. No, of course not. You were just… protecting us.” He didn’t know if that was true, he hadn’t worked it out for himself yet, but it seemed to be what the Aurors wanted to hear.

Why the _fuck_ would Moody think he wanted a confrontation right now.

“Have you got what you need, then?”  Voldemort cut in, glancing at the bag at Harry’s hip.

He nodded. “Even though that was very clever, trapping me in the basement so I couldn’t jump between you.” Voldemort looked pleased with himself.

On the way out, though, Harry was about to fall into his arms. “Thank you, thank you,” he was muttering in Parseltongue, overcome. He’d begun to feel chastised, like Moody and the rest of the Aurors did hate him. Why wouldn’t they? And they’d been so good to him and he’d repaid them so shittily, running off behind their backs at every opportunity. He was thinking of confessing how often he skived on dreamless sleep, how much time he and Voldemort had already spent in each other’s minds, when a Portkey was shoved into his grasp.

“Harry.” Tonks. “You’ve got to focus for a minute.”

“Sorry.” He was covered in a fine sheen of sweat again. Voldemort, who obviously didn’t believe him, clasped their free hands. They were off.

The sensation of the Portkey when he was already near to panicking was terrible. Voldemort fully caught him when they arrived in the Ministry, setting him on his feet again. He looked around. Not the atrium, which would still be under investigation, but a temporary receiving area. It was busy by this time, people nearby pouring out of the Floos. It was loud. He pressed into Voldemort’s magic – which, even when they weren’t deliberately sharing it, still warmed one another like sitting near a hearth. He saw or perhaps imagined how Moody and Tonks avoided looking at him when he was so physically affectionate – dependent – whatever.

They were talking above him, about him. Tonks and Moody had to be on the fifth floor for some debriefing, Voldemort would take Harry to the Department of Mysteries and then join them within the hour. Harry was reaching for a calming draught when Tonks stopped his hand. “It’d probably interfere with the Unspeakables’ work,” she pointed out, apologetic.

“Right.” The knot in his breast grew tighter.

This was the cue for Voldemort to take him. They parted with last words and well wishes, Harry couldn’t really tell though the rush of blood in his ears. He felt the cool trickle of a Disillusionment charm, and then Voldemort pulling him toward the lifts.

“I’d rather not be collared on the way there, either of us,” he explained briefly.

“But you should be…. I wasn’t thinking last night, that you should’ve been with them instead of with me.”

Voldemort ran a hand through his hair without answering. The lift descended.

He only realized when they reached the bottom level how _stupid_ it was to return to the Department of Mysteries like this. He was chewing on his lip until he tasted blood. His legs suddenly felt very heavy, and his breathing grew very short. Voldemort was saying something but he couldn’t tell what. They hadn’t moved from the lift, because it somehow felt less confusing than the department itself.

Voldemort’s touch became deliberate then, taking both of Harry’s hands in his own. Legilimency, too… not that Harry had _any_ sort of Occlumency at the moment. Magic coursed up his arms, flooding his chest, loosening the tension in his chest in the tiniest increments. It didn’t dull panic as the calming draughts did, it just…. He couldn’t say. It added something like hope or peace or well-being, and that made the desperate feelings a little less overwhelming.

_Ha_. The first and only time Voldemort had ever been associated with such squishy sentiments.

Anyway, after a long moment, his tension eased. He blinked up at Voldemort. “Thanks.”

“Mmhm.”

“But my godfather died here.”

Voldemort had been pulling him from the lift, and glanced back. His expression indicated he hadn’t thought of this, even if he’d known it at some point. “Yes.”

They both knew that if they delved into apology, there’d be no end. And if Harry expressed some desire for vengeance – some part of him _did_ want Bellatrix dead, he probably always would – then _that_ led nowhere productive either.

“Take my magic,” Voldemort said, looping an arm at Harry’s waist to press warmth closer to his core as they descended into the corridors. It nearly helped.

The Unspeakables seemed to have been alerted that they’d be coming. Two of them, a young-ish wizard and witch dressed in those shifting blue-purple robes, were poised to receive them. _Unspeakable Wu, Unspeakable Jafari_ , their name plates glittered on their chests. “Good morning,” Wu said carefully. “Why don’t we take a lab.” She nodded them down the corridor. Harry wondered if the rest of his life would be characterized by people not needing introductions to him or Voldemort.

The lab was like the one in which he’d been kept in June, when he’d first revealed that he was a Horcrux. When the Unspeakables had copied all his bloody memories for what felt like the entire world. There was another egg-shaped exam table – well, half-egg – hovering a few feet off the floor, and Voldemort let Harry down on it.

He was recounting the past day, on Harry’s behalf. That what he’d characterized as a manic-depressive state in the aftershock of battle was _this,_ of course, and as closely intertwined as their souls were, he had _no_ reason not to recognize it. Et cetera. Harry wanted to quaff a calming draught desperately. The cool, crisp room was the furthest thing from comforting. He chewed on the corner of his thumbnail to approximate sucking his thumb.

“Can you offer another bit of your memory, Harry?” Voldemort asked at that point. “Just the attacker and this incantation.”

He thought his memory would be rather warped right now. He didn’t want them to see the world as he saw it. It would make them pity him. Or make them _laugh_ at him, this paranoid child who’d start shaking now every time he thought of the wizard’s mouth at his throat. God, he’d nearly – if the man were a werewolf, or _had been_ a werewolf more accurately, Harry had only been moments away from becoming like Bill, or Lavender. Marked by something inhuman.

Of course, he _was_ marked by something inhuman.

Why hadn’t he been horrified by this yesterday? Hubris. He only ever escaped by luck, he’d done nothing to save himself from that possibility of infection. It had barely registered.

There were tears on his face bloody _again_. He didn’t realize that he hadn’t even answered. He stared into the distance but his vision was filled with a sort of dark tunnel. He was shaking, very hard.

Someone was picking up his legs to place them on the bed, pressing him semi-reclined. All the voices in the room sounded the same to him. They all sounded harsh, loud, indifferent.

He was going mad.

When an arc of magic curved over the table, _caging_ him, he might have shrieked. The voices got louder, as though punishing him, but then the bands of magic receded. There weren’t any bedclothes to grip, nothing but his tight fists. He felt his wand against his thigh, but no spells came to mind. And he didn’t want to fight his way out, he just wanted it all to _stop_.

A weight beside him on the exam table. He recognized the buzz of Voldemort’s residual magic, but like the shower this morning, the normally-pleasant sensation was just a bit irritating. “Harry.” English. “ _Harry_.” Parseltongue. Something moved within him, as Parseltongue reached places inside him that the humans couldn’t touch. He looked up.

Voldemort’s eyes were very dark, with caution and displeasure. Not displeasure _at him_ , Harry knew as much, but he still shrank away.

“We need to examine your soul,” Voldemort said. “It will be a bit like using a Pensieve. You’ll understand more than we will, if you’d be able to explain it.”

“I wouldn’t, though. I….” He took a deep breath. He was a bit more lucid in Parseltongue than English. “Look, could I have a calming draught. Baobab. A bloody cheering charm. It feels like I’m dying.”

“You certainly are not.”

He shook his head. “No, it _feels_ like… the anticipation of it, of being about to die. I can’t – “ His palms were very wet, not just with sweat but now tinged pink with blood, from where a few of his cuticles had split.

“Nevertheless, you can’t. We couldn’t observe the effects of the curse.”

“You’d _leave_ me like this.” His voice had gone high, accusing. “I didn’t mean it earlier, when I told Moody I knew he wasn’t being cruel. He was spiteful, at least. But you – “ Higher. He was about to alienate his last, best advocate, and he couldn’t stop himself. “I guess if your Horcrux isn’t affected.”

It was a pattern for him by now, panicking and spitting some thoughtless accusation at Voldemort. He didn’t react this time either, except to offer, “You’d be able to see the Horcrux in your soul. You’d see quite a lot.”

“Would I be able to take it out?”

A moment. “Would you like to?”

“No. But _they_ would. They tried, last time.”

“Ah. Yes, they would. They won’t be able to change anything of your soul without your will. It is, after all, _your_ soul.”

“ _Our_ soul,” Harry echoed, half-mocking but also sincere enough. “Would you stay with me, then?”

Voldemort looked surprised that he asked. “Yes. Of course.”

Harry did not grit his teeth or point out that he had quite a lot of abandonment issues at the moment.

“What helps?” Voldemort asked. “I’m not actively giving you magic right now, just the usual residual bits. Should I? Until it’s disallowed, at least.”

“God. Yes. If you can.” He was mopping sweat from his face with the back of his hand, until Voldemort conjured a damp cloth for him. “And, uh, Parseltongue helps apparently, but that’s not useful to….” He and Voldemort both had their heads down together, so he didn’t have the rest of the room in his field of vision. Tunnel vision still darkened the edges of his sight. He assumed the Unspeakables had that uncomfortable look on that people always got when they spoke in Parseltongue. As though they were plotting their demise in their evil serpentine language, or some muck.

“When they saw my memories, it ruined everything,” Harry said. Voldemort had taken his hands, diffusing his magic into them. Everything hurt a little less, for a moment. “D’you really want them inside my head again? Or, er, wherever a soul’s located.”

“If I could tell them to piss off, I would,” Voldemort promised. “You are right to distrust them. But the only soul magic I have mastered is the Horcrux. You do need them.”

God. For as many cumulative weeks ( _months_ , probably) as he’d spent in the hospital wing, infirmity should be less humiliating to him than it still was. He’d rather regrow the bones in his arm a dozen times over than let people into his head. Other than Voldemort, obviously. He hadn’t even gone to see the Hogwarts therapist yet, and pretty much everyone he spoke to agreed that he should be her first client. Still, he sighed, looking up at the Unspeakables for the first time. English felt hideously wrong in his mouth. “Shouldn’t there be a healer as well?” he asked. “I won’t do this twice.”

Wu pursed her lips with thought. “Yes. They might need a minute.” Pointing her wand straight up, she shot off a dark blue sphere that sprouted wings, like a Snitch. “Intra-Ministry communication,” she said cheerily at Harry’s look. “Everyone got bored of cleaning owl droppings from their inboxes.”

Beside her, Jafari cleared his throat. “About the memory…” he said awkwardly. “We could do without, but identifying the curse would expedite the process.”

He was so close to snapping, _You can’t be trusted with my memories_. Of course, this one they couldn’t do much with. Not prurient at all. Still: “It’ll be wrong, though.”

Jafari was attractive when he smiled. “Inflected by the curse? Yeah. It’s good that you recognize that. We’ll be able to use it, anyway.”

He’d just be petulant if he refused any longer. “Alright.” He drew his wand.

Jafari took his memory to another part of the lab, and Wu set up diagnostic spells, as they waited for the Healer to arrive. Voldemort held him firmly, dispersing magic at his torso and back, where they found it to be most effective. When they had a quiet moment, though, Harry twisted to look at him. “Tonks said the explosion at Hogwarts was triggered in the wards,” he said lowly, in Parseltongue.

“That seems to be true.”

“The diadem told me there was something wrong with the wards.”

“Ah. Yes, you’d mentioned.”

Had he? _Mentioned_ probably meant _conveyed_ , anyway, in his sleep. “If I’d taken him more seriously – or if I’d brought on somebody else – or if I knew runes better myself – “

Voldemort didn’t react the way his friends did to his regrets: _Harry, there’s nothing you could’ve done, you can’t save everyone, you’re being unfair to yourself_. Those comments were lovely but Voldemort skipped them all. “It must wait until you’ve returned, then. There are diagnostic spells that the Horcrux could cast, and you’d convey in sleep. I can’t say much more without seeing the magic for myself.”

Oh god, Voldemort. He was nearly amused when he said, “I only meant that I feel shitty about it. I didn’t mean for you to _solve_ it.”

“Well. I haven’t, yet.”

Harry tipped his head back to kiss Voldemort’s jaw, beneath his ear.

The healer arrived then. Branwen, the one he’d seen yesterday, and _that_ was a problem because Voldemort might eviscerate him for missing the curse the first go-round. “Harry. Good morning. Good morning, sir,” he said with a nod to Voldemort. He had no reaction to their position, though Harry was not quite sitting in Voldemort’s lap.

“Otto. Hi.” Wu approached. To Harry and Voldemort: “This department needs healers more often than you might expect,” she said lightly.

Harry clenched his teeth because anything he said would invoke Sirius in some way, and he _couldn’t_.

Branwen was being introduced to the tests they’d use. Voldemort asked Harry in low Parseltongue, “Would you like to explain what’s wrong with you, or should I?”

“Honestly, I think you know more about it. Also,” he sat up. “That’s my healer from yesterday. Don’t be an arse.”

“Harry. Didn’t I spend last night promising you that I’d keep all of Britain safe for you?”

“You did.” And it made him so relieved, so grateful, as to nearly hurt. “I didn’t say _Don’t kill him_. I said, _Don’t be an arse_.”

“Hm.” He was surveying Branwen as he spoke with Jafari. No further promises.

“Also, that…” _statement, promise, vow_. “Uh, I’d mostly prefer that people not be scared of you. But – some journalists have been writing, asking me for an interview, about us. And I’ve been writing back that I’d give them an interview after they get one from you. I thought it’d be a deterrent. So, er….”

“Terrify the journalists. Yes.” He was deeply amused by this. “And now, I’m sorry to do this, but we need you in something more of a state of turmoil.” He unfolded his skinny body, slipping from the exam table.

Harry understood this, he just hated it. It had been a reprieve. “Thank you,” he said, though.

An odd look. “We suffer together. You know that.”

He did. It was probably wrong to feel like it helped. Voldemort endured the echoes of his panic, _and_ had just taken responsibility for everything involved in fixing him. He would probably hate it if Harry shouted this from the rooftops, but he wanted to, anyway. Generosity; he would minimize it, but it _was_. When would he have ever thought Voldemort would give up any portion of his magic; but here they were.

Voldemort joined the Unspeakables and Branwen. (“You _have_ heard of a Horcrux before?” he asked in scathing tones, as though he expected no better.) And Harry experienced what he’d meant by shared magic being a temporary solution. It was like taking off mittens while still standing in the cold. And he _did_ go cold, if only as a contrast to the warmth of magic and of Voldemort’s body. The knot behind his breastbone tightened.

The Unspeakables were casting magic in sheets now, with runes meant to… capture his magic? Copy his magic? He only recognized a few symbols, but that was definitely his name in runic on a few strands.

Voldemort and Jafari were currently arguing about – or, well, _discussing_ , but Voldemort _discussed_ with his inhuman intensity, always – a process they called soul visualization. Harry gathered it was the way they’d craft his soul into something visible, to work with. Sometimes it felt like being the Boy Who Lived meant that people assumed he’d offered his body up as a public resource.

Well, in a way, he had. Not knowingly.

He hoped the Unspeakables were satisfied when he was properly upset and hyperventilating again. When it felt like he was too near a Dementor again. When it felt like his heart was imploding and exploding at the same time.

Jafari approached first. “Ready?” Taking note of the pronounced change in his posture, he winced. “Yeah. Sorry.”

“I’m ready.”

“So the soul visualization spell – it manifests your soul as a sort of tableau around you. We won’t see it like you will – we’ll see a sort of skeletal structure of it, made up of magic. Hence the sheets.” He indicated the warded planes that had been cast throughout the room, now dense enough that they formed a sort of film. “So, if you could tell us what you’re seeing. Especially anything amiss.”

This wasn’t bad. It nearly felt like privacy, that he’d see it alone. He sort of wanted to offer that Voldemort use Legilimency, just because he wanted him to share it. But he knew he’d have to be alone, mentally and emotionally, for something like this.

The feeling of anxiety, as familiar as it’d gotten, had become no more tolerable. There was no way to get used to the feeling of not being able to breathe, of holding back tears that had no bloody reason. “Right. Can we do this?” Before he deteriorated any further. Wu, Branwen, and Voldemort were at the edge of the room, ready to cast or observe or whatever they would be doing.

Jafari raised his wand, obviously trying to make it a non-aggressive gesture, but there were only so many ways to point a wand at someone’s chest. “ _Psuchegrapho_!”  


The room flared into a thousand points of light, pulsing in time with his quickened heartbeat. And then it resolved, columns of light at first, and then he could see magic twisting and shimmering in the air to form the scene.

The Gryffindor common room. Sort of, a bit of it anyway. It was a partial structure, set in a forest that was not quite the edge of the Forbidden Forest. The haphazard placement of it in the landscape, and the crumbling-looking brickwork, made it seem more like a ruin than the common room.

“Harry?” Jafari, sounding very far off. Though he knew that they were in a lab and Jafari stood maybe ten feet from him, he couldn’t see him behind this structure. He could barely hear him. “Where are you?”

He couldn’t move far in any direction, he knew. But the forest looked like it extended forever. “The Gryffindor common room. But it’s open, and the walls are worn down, and it’s set in a forest.” Unease was bubbling inside him, even as innocuous as this scene was. He felt _watched_ , and not by the Unspeakables. He wondered if he’d look like a dolt if he tried circling around the back of the brickwork.

A window appeared, where there wasn’t one in the real common room. Ah, he could _think_ things into existence, then. But when he approached, for a split second – a hideous face, melted with gnashing teeth, flared in the reflection. He might’ve shrieked like a girl. He definitely brandished his wand without thinking about it. And then his own face was all he could see in the pane, his eyes wide and wild behind his glasses.

The Unspeakables’ voices were indistinct by now, drowned out by the whooshing of blood in his ears. But of course they were asking what he’d seen. “A face in the window. For just a moment….. Not animal, but not quite human.” He felt stupid, that he’d reacted so dramatically to such a simple thing. Especially since he _knew_ this was all functionally a hallucination.

( _Is it all in your head_? the memory of Riddle had mocked him at one point.)

At that recollection, he felt a tug on his attention. The Horcruxes, both of them, sat on the mantel of the hearth. The fire glowed green, like the Hitchgalach spell that would manifest them. Curious, and forgetting himself, he reached for the diadem. His hands hit a sort of invisible wall. No, not a wall – a plane of magic, twisting under his touch, weighting his palm until he could believe he held the diadem. But then, trepidation of what might _actually_ happen settled over him – the Horcruxes were kept in his soul, after all, and the artifacts themselves only a vessel or witness – so he put it back.

Movement behind him, and he swung around before properly looking. “Reducto!” A crack in the distance, and the sound of a tree being felled. Voldemort stood before him, quite still and pale, his wand up to deflect the spell. “Oh my god,” Harry said weakly.

“I can’t give you magic,” he said, quiet and even. “I’m attempting to withhold even residual magic. We can’t see what you see, Harry. Could you explain it?”

The scene was fully unfolding around him now, now that he wasn’t tensely considering how this world worked. “Yeah. Well.” He looked back to the room – really, he didn’t want to take his eyes off it since he still felt _watched_. “The Horcruxes are here, on the mantel. I just picked up the diadem, but I didn’t want to put it in the fire. Um, over the fireplace are portraits of my family. Extended family on both sides.” He only recognized them from the Mirror of Erised – which was itself an illusion, so who could say really. But then, the faces seemed to shift when he wasn’t looking, such that he glanced back sharply when something moved in his peripheral vision. “I’m seeing things,” he said weakly.

“Well, yes. That’s the point.”

“I see faces _everywhere_.” Always in the corner of his eye, whenever dark blotches were arranged just enough to suggest eyes and a mouth. “I’ve got – I can’t stay here – “ The eyes all winked at him as he realized he had nowhere to go, in this world that wasn’t even real.

“What else?” was all Voldemort asked.

The fire was too hot, and willing it cooler, as though they were in the Room of Requirement, didn’t work. The flames were no longer green like the manifestation spell, but white-hot, threatening to leap out of the hearth entirely and consume them. “The fire,” Harry said weakly. “It moves like Fiendfyre.”

“Good. What else?”

“Can’t I do something? I mean, I know it’s fake, but can’t I just will it out – “

“No,” Voldemort said flatly. “We don’t create our own subconscious. It creates us. _What else_?”

“I hate this.”

Voldemort’s silence felt like punishment.

Right. Explaining the space. Stepping back from the fire: “There’s beanbags and pillows instead of furniture, all along….” He gestured to the corner where they were heaped. “And someone’s left a stack of books and papers on the table.”

He didn’t expect books in his soul. He wasn’t Hermione, whose soul-space would obviously be a library with every edition of _Hogwarts: A History_. He approached the low table, and nearly laughed when he saw it. The Prince’s potions book was at the top of the stack, as marked up as it was in real life. “Um, a potions textbook that helped me cheat last year. I’ll explain later.” Beneath that: “A photo album that Hagrid made me of my parents, from first year. Oh, your diary. Still ruined, with a hole in the middle left by the basilisk fang. Dailies.” He shoved the newspapers off to the side. Like in dreams, there wasn’t so much writing as the impression of writing, but they seemed to be the Daily Prophet. Fair point, soul-space. There was a thin book underneath. “Huh. And Beedle the Bard.” The children’s book he’d borrowed from Ron. Warm to the touch, its spine bulged with something wedged inside. He opened it. “Inside it are the vows. The one I’ve got with Snape, and the one you’ve got with Moody.” The Horcruxes were bloody liars when they said that the vows made this space _crowded_. He set the parchment aside.

Glancing up: “My Patronus is behind you,” he said, surprised not only because it hadn’t been there before but also because he wasn’t nearly happy enough to actually conjure it. He could scarcely think of it. That’s why the forest was there, he realized, so the Patronus could gambol. Though it was very still, watching them, at the moment.

Voldemort looked back, gazing too far out when it was _right there_. “Where?”

“Right – Here.” Simpler than explaining it. He approached, taking Voldemort’s cool hand and placing it on the stag’s back. “Does it hurt you?” he asked, anxious. The magic of a Patronus _had_ to be antithetical to Voldemort’s.

“No.” He twisted his fingers around a strand of magic, which became visible to Harry. It looked strangely like _circuitry_ , a cord outlining the arch of the stag’s back.

“Oh. Could you… it’d help if I could see _that_.” He plucked the string of magic himself. Warm, but obviously not a real Patronus. Damn. He looked to the edges of the room, looking for the Unspeakables, but they were obscured by the illusion.

Voldemort relayed the question, and with a few minutes of toying with the magic, he and Jafari carving runes into some of the planes of magic hanging in midair, the cords of magic resolved into existence. Everything was slightly transparent, and it looked a bit like it all had bones. Obviously, his paranoia suggested this horror, and he tried dismissing the thought. “Thank you.”

The Patronus had left. The forest was wrong. He drew closer, pressing a hand to the illusion of bark. The current beneath jolted. “A forest,” he narrated. “But I think it’s all dead? They’re sort of gray, and dry.” The fire still crackled behind them, much too close. This would all go up like kindling.

“A forest that you know?”

“Sort of the Forbidden Forest – wait, yeah.” He moved forward, assuming Voldemort would keep him from walking into the exam room walls. “That’s unicorn blood.” Pearlescent spatters beaded on the soil; he reached to touch them so the Unspeakables could mark its location.

He returned to the common room. He’d swear the stones had weathered in the time since he’d looked away. Pacing back through the half he’d seen, now that the circuitry was visible, he touched it all again. “Books. Vows. Coffee table, beanbags. A window, out into the forest. Fireplace. Horcruxes. Photos. Muggle photos, actually, the sort that don’t move. Oh, _urgh_ ,” he said when he glanced up at the photos again. “There’s a photo of my relatives – the ones who raised me,” he clarified. The beaming family portrait they’d kept in the front hall. Summoning it – he knew this wasn’t real, but it felt so bloody good anyway, when he threw it into the fire. Voldemort recognize the gesture and snorted quietly.

The room’s details shifted into existence as he approached them, and faded when he moved away. Eyes peered at him in the fading corners of the room. Hands, too. They’d disappear if he got any closer, or tried looking at them any more carefully. His chest was tight. He’d normally be confident in defending himself if he was attacked, but the threats weren’t even _real_. And his Patronus was gone.

Moving toward the far side of the room – it grew dark. The entire room got dark, really, like how the atmosphere changed into a thick sickly fog when Dementors were nearby. He already knew the Patronus would be useless; this feeling was already _inside_ him, eating him from the inside out. His next breath was strangled.

“Harry?”

Voldemort, very quiet and deliberate behind him. He resented him so much right now, that he’d asked Harry to live into these feelings that he’d been trying to suppress. That he recognized these feelings not just from the past day, but because he woke up in a panic every damn day for a month already. How would he have ever thought this was normal.

He realized that he hadn’t answered. “It feels like a Dementor. Not visible, just… the sense of one. That’s probably not helpful,” he said, since there was no tangible bit of magic for the Unspeakables to work with. He gulped in breaths. It was probably just his anticipation of it, that he had thought he heard his mother screaming. The room got very dark.

“I don’t want to do this.” His voice was small. No answer from Voldemort. He whirled around. He wouldn’t have _left_. He wouldn’t have. But then it was nearly too dark to see anything, even the moonstone pallor of Voldemort’s skin. “Voldemort?” Nothing but the whine of wind and his own blood.

The fire in the fireplace seemed to absorb light, even. Looking around, straining to see the edges of the room or any movement or any light from beyond the forest – Oh. A bright rectangle just behind him. It slipped out of sight a few times when he looked, but he’d recognize it anyway. “Erised,” he said as though calling it back. It blinked into existence, and stayed there. He was at the wrong angle to see into it. He approached.

The scene was not very different from what he’d seen in his first year, himself, surrounded by people. His parents were still there, though not so prominent, standing with their friends that he knew. Hermione, Neville, Luna, all of the Weasleys. Cedric sat with them, laughing. They were all at a feast, the end-of-year feast but the hall was all done in shimmering silvers and golds instead of house colors. He watched everyone in his life mingle: students, faculty, friends, the Order, his parents’ families. Voldemort stepped behind him in the reflection and, startled, he looked behind him.

He was really there. Thank god. “Can you see this?” He spoke softly because the space felt so still and so vast. They couldn’t see anything but each other. “The mirror of Erised. It’s right….” He dragged his finger along the frame. “Everyone’s in it. There’s a feast in the Great Hall, and….” His finger slipped to the glass, which wasn’t glass at all, but rippled like quicksilver. His reflection looked at him curiously, and dipped a hand into his pocket. Withdrawing it, he showed Harry a blood-red stone. The philosopher’s stone.

He nearly laughed. Plunging his hand in his own pocket, he found the stone. It was smooth and warm and surprising. _Oh_. It pulled on his magic in an utterly intimate, familiar way. He turned to Voldemort. “The Horcrux. It looks like the philosopher’s stone. Here.”

He held it out. Unlike the rest of the room, he couldn’t see the underlying cords of magic within it. It undulated as though actually blood-filled. Voldemort picked it up carefully.

“Yes,” he said with some surprise. “It’s very… coherent magic, for as chaotic and destructive as that night was.”

“I do want to keep it,” he stressed.

“Nobody could take it from you like this.” He handed it back.

Harry still cupped it in his hands as he looked back into the mirror. Then – _crack_! The mirror split down its center. Dread filled the room, and he pushed Voldemort back instinctively. _Crack_! It splintered the rest of the way and –

A cloud of Dementors poured forth from the mirror, plunging him into pain and grief and fear. He thought he was screaming. He thought his heart was being sucked from his chest. He was alone, so alone and so cold –

He’d wheeled backwards, but he stumbled now, ripping through a sticky plane of magic behind him. The Dementors seized him, shoving him down fully. He was going to die, and he was going to die alone. He looked desperately to the mirror, but its shattered surface was dark. Those eyes, those hands he’d seen in the shadows… of course they were manifestations of Dementors, shapeshifting whatever they had beneath their hoods to mock him with their inhumanity…. He was nearly close enough to peer into their hoods now, anyway.

His wand was a dead stick in his hand. _They’ve taken my magic_ , he thought, panicked and miserable. Unbidden, the recollection of the time he’d asked Voldemort to tie him up in a closet came to mind. _What would he have ever been without magic_ , a question that had terrified him then and now. He raised it anyway, willing himself to even recall the words to summon his Patronus. The feeling of it. Anything. It only exacerbated his panic.

The Horcrux flared in his grasp – unbearably hot in the freezing darkness. The pain was centering for a moment, and then unbearable. He threw it away from himself – threw it _at_ the Dementors looming overhead for all the good it did. When it hit the ground, though, it sparked, flaring bright in the darkness.

It was as though the Fiendfyre behind him only needed a signal. There was a roar and a pop – he recognized it faintly, from some time ago – The Fiendfyre rushed forward as if bidden, as if taking the place of his Patronus.

It was enervating, as he recalled it being. _That_ night, the night Voldemort had nearly killed them both, the night their wands became burdened by death deferred, the night they lost Hufflepuff’s cup. The Fiendfyre swept over everything in its path, low and fierce and _vengeful_ , there was no other word for it. The stone walls took on a glazed look; beyond them, the forest blazed. Harry was still inert. The Dementors had pinned him to the floor as if they’d put a stake through his heart. The fire surged overhead, and the Dementors swirled higher to escape it.

The fire licked his face. It didn’t mean him harm, exactly, not as the Dementors did, but it would destroy him nonetheless. His claustrophobia flared, pinned and caged in and boiling as he was. He was peeling off his robes, his hands shaking so much that he nearly popped the top buttons off. He was so light-headed that he swooned back onto the stone floor, which now felt like liquid beneath him. Was he breathing? He wasn’t breathing, the fire had sucked away his breath with his magic. He was ripping through his shirt now to claw at his chest – he thought his heart might explode.

Above him, a terrible noise. The Fiendfyre had _seized_ the Dementors, reaching out as though it were conscious. It wanted to kill them. It wanted to destroy _everything_ , and in that instant, the idea came as such a relief. He could only watch as the infinite darkness of the Dementors swirled around the infinite light of the Fiendfyre, vicious and desperate.

And when it couldn’t dispel the Dementors, the Fiendfyre instead dropped low to the ground, surrounding Harry and arching around him. He would scramble to get up, but it was already too close, creating a cage itself hardly any bigger than Harry was. The darkness became abstracted; he could hardly see it through the flames now. The Fiendfyre couldn’t dispel how the Dementors made him feel, cold and desperate, but there was room within him to feel its heat; to be so, so grateful for its destruction and protection.

It overwhelmed him, awakening each of his nerves as once, making his head swim. His heart jackhammered in his chest, and he still made desperate attempts to breathe. He couldn’t, there was no oxygen and no space above him, the Fiendfyre swelling to enclose him more completely. Sweat and urine and tears evaporated from his wet skin immediately. He lost complete sight of the Dementors.

He had been saved, and it would kill him. In these last few moments, it was a euphoric thought. The Fiendfyre licked his face now, spread down his body, caressing him like a lover. He could feel every nerve of his body reaching for the contact, so hot as to be purifying. Waves washed over him as the fire lowered itself onto his sprawled body – His hips slammed upward in violent orgasm – He drew unsuccessful gasping breath – And then he wilted, satiated and in love with death, against the molten floor.

 

He didn’t properly sleep or pass out or die. The first moment he recognized his own consciousness, the disappointment was excruciating. He was still alive, and still trapped in these feelings, in this hellscape inside of him. Reluctantly, he opened his eyes.

He didn’t quite understand what he was looking at. Gleaming, polished stone arched over him in stalagmites, where the Fiendfyre had enveloped him. Red and coral and bright, bright oranges, so before his eyes focused, he thought the Fiendfyre was still burning. He reached up to touch it, and his fingers slipped from the slick surface.

Voices. Not addressing him. The stone was in a cresting wave shape, so he wasn’t _trapped_ , but he didn’t want to be under it nonetheless. He faintly registered warm cloth underneath him, and found that in the throes of Fiendfyre, he’d peeled off his robes and shirt, with his trousers unsuccessfully pushed down so the top of his nappy was visible around his waist. His body didn’t yet work well enough to slip the robe back on in such a confined space He was having a hard time moving at all, really. He felt, physically, as though he’d crashed his broom; and mentally, as drained as he always did when coming in contact with Dementors.

But they weren’t real. None of that was real. The coral stone was nearly so thin as to be translucent. He could at least tell he was under the bright lights of the lab, not the dark sconces of the common room any longer. With difficulty, he slid from beneath the stone wave.

The Unspeakables, the Healer, and Voldemort were all immersed in… he couldn’t take all of this in. Everywhere that a cord of magic had run through his soul, great columns and arcs of polished stone in every color now stood. Some were spiraled, some were jagged, some curved into each other. Where Erised had stood in his mind was now a twisting trellis of deep silver. Where the philosopher’s stone had hit the floor, a fluted column of blood-red shot straight up. His vows were low to the ground and curling like plants, in cloudy blues. The diadem and locket remained as jade stalactites. And most striking – the entire ceiling had been covered like a vault, storm clouds of stone in red and copper and onyx, where the Dementors and Fiendfyre had swirled. He was speechless, and overwhelmed.

Voldemort was winding bits of magic around the trellis. He was the first to notice – to _feel_ , Harry was certain – that he was awake. “Well done.” His voice was quiet, as though Harry might break if he spoke any louder. And then he was crossing the room, pulling Harry to his feet. He was suddenly _desperately_ aware of his nudity, just as Voldemort pulled his trousers into place and dropped his robe over his shoulders. He clutched the robe closed, even though the Unspeakables and Branwen had already seen his body ( _the bloody nipple rings were still in, god_ ) and looked distinctly unsurprised. He really didn’t want to share any of this with strangers.

He still needed to explain the last parts – the rest of the room wouldn’t recognize what had happened, or what he had hallucinated happening in any case. He looked up at the ceiling, where the dark clouds seemed to smother them all. “Found the curse, then.”

A curve of his mouth. “Yes. _This_ ,” he waved his hand to gesture to the cavern of polished stone, “is as imaginary as your visions, of course. There are many theories and mechanisms for visualizing the abstract nature of magic. All of them are imperfect, but they expedite the process.”

“Can I have magic now? Or a calming draught? Anything.” He still sounded desperate. He was slightly propped against the coral wave, because otherwise he would’ve given in to his desire to slip to the floor in a heap.

“The visualization is still dynamic in your presence, so you may not. Look.” Voldemort put his hand on Harry’s shoulder, letting magic go at a trickle. Immediately a corner of the coral wave curved toward them like a flower toward the sun, going bronzed. He pulled away and Harry nearly groaned at the loss. “The Unspeakables need you here for a few more hours. You may have magic this afternoon.”

This was devastating. The purification and euphoria of the Fiendfyre hadn’t stuck, and he was once again trapped in his own melancholy. He swallowed the resentment and the pain. Speaking up and looking to the rest of the room, he tried for affront instead of brokenness. “Can I at least clean up?”

To his surprise, Voldemort also turned to Branwen. “May he clean up?” he asked, as though Harry were a non-entity.

“What the fuck,” he glared. “I’m not so infirm.”

A flutter of amusement. “No, but you are speaking Parseltongue,” he said, switching to English to demonstrate the difference. “You did from the beginning. I translated,” he assured him.

“ _Can_ you manage English?” Branwen asked, approaching carefully. “I don’t know of selective aphasia as an effect of the soul visualization, but it’s rare and arcane magic anyway, so perhaps….”

“Yeah,” Harry said in English, with some thought. “I’ll tell you what happened at the end. But can I go?” He was very wet, and very sticky. He probably smelled terrible. And he still held the shirt, with his robe just held closed. A mess.

“Yes,” Branwen agreed cheerily. “But use only your own magic. Voldemort already demonstrated, his disrupts the process, when you’re nearby. Here.” He thrust out a small pill bottle, and a purple envelope.

He took them without asking. “Thanks.” He brought Voldemort with him into the toilet anyway.

He wanted to tear off his own skin. “There was Fiendfyre at the end,” he said. “ _Again_. The Horcrux sparked it, and then it was trying to divert the Dementor….” He was casting Scourgify on himself over and over, until his complexion had gone pink. Voldemort had re-attached all the buttons to the shirt he’d rent off.

“That is unsurprising.” When Harry peeled off the nappy (had he _really_ revealed the top of it to them? Fuck everything forever), Voldemort told him, “Vanish that to the safehouse. Here.” He was ripping open the envelope, extracting a new nappy that became full-sized as it was pulled out.

Harry’s stomach dropped. “I can’t,” he said. “I can’t look any of them in the face anyway. Can you Obliviate them?”

“I could.” Tugging down Harry’s trousers, he was pulling the soft cotton between his legs. “Did you orgasm, at the end? It felt as though you did.”

The bluntness of it twisted him inside. As though he had any right to be shy. “Yeah. It was…. I could feel _everything_ , all at once. And I thought I was going to die. And it was just… amazing.” He winced. “That sounds wrong. But it was so pure, and I was so happy for a moment. It sort of washed over me.”

Then he pulled on actual clothes. He stepped before the mirror to see if he could do anything for his hair. Of course not. His complexion was still ruddy, and the overall impression was slightly that he’d just come in from a run or something.

“I need to be in an intel meeting this morning,” Voldemort said carefully, before they stepped out of the loo. “You will stay here. I’ll collect you in the afternoon, if you’d like.”

He knew he was being unreasonable when he wanted to shout at him for abandonment and beg him to stay. _I hate you, don’t leave me_. Still, feeling awful would be typical until the curse was lifted. “Okay.”

Voldemort looked mildly surprised to _not_ have a row about this. “Are you ready, then?”

“Yeah. Probably.” He popped open the pill bottle, hoping desperately it was some sort of magic. Paracetamol. Huh.

So he had to go recount the last bit of the soul visualization, the mirror and Horcrux and Fiendfyre and Dementors. He had to tell them the way he _always_ reacted to the Dementors. He had to tell them that in the last moments, he was so overstimulated that he’d come on himself. He had to tell them what a relief it was, that he thought he would die.

Jafari took notes as he spoke. Wu and Voldemort both spun magic around the stone sculptures, making notes about how they changed color or shape, how runes written on the surface twisted into new, arcane messages. Branwen sat with him, taking his vitals and fiddling with diagnostic spells attached to the exam table.

And then Voldemort left, as he was required in more important meetings. He scarcely looked at Harry before going, instead telling Wu to send him a summons when Harry was free.

When he’d gone, Harry saw movement in the corner of his eye. The nearest sculpture, one of the low curling ones that signified – contained – whatever, one of the vows, cracked the slightest bit. Nothing significant, just a spiderwebbing of the glazed surface on one corner.

Jafari followed his gaze. “Yes,” he said. “It was suppressed with his magic here, but that’s the soul damage you’re incurring by being kept apart. His would be worse. Souls aren’t meant to be pulled apart like hot cross buns.”

Harry blinked at this. Then: “Oh. That’s pathetic.” And revealing. Even if his soul was abstracted in these sculpture, it was still _here_ , for all of them to examine and prod and cast invasive spells at.

“You don’t need to be strong right now,” Jafari said, a bit sharp. “We can’t do our work if you are.”

He felt like his soul was flooding slowly, with very cold water. “Right.”

 

He had to sit quietly for hours as they worked. That is, they didn’t require either sitting or quiet of him, but he’d fall apart with anything more active. They offered him lunch but he couldn’t eat without a calming draught. His stomach hurt. The spiderwebbing spread across his soul.

It _was_ pathetic. As much of a relief as it had been last night, when Voldemort had told him of the soul damage of separation, it was still so _intimate_ to have it here in material witness that he actually fell apart without Voldemort. The Unspeakables said they thought nothing of it, that if anything they’d expect a human vessel for a Horcrux to be far more affected. Naturally they were trying to be nice because Harry was so pitiable. He was finding that too much pity, too many smiles and soft tones, made him sick to his stomach. Feeling weak made him sick, and it’s all he felt right now.

Finally: “Alright.” Wu snapped closed her folder. “The rest can be done without you.” She was giving him some nervous glances as he scrubbed at his wet face. “This all is dynamic as long as you’re in proximity, so if you could only take a calming draught when you’re a few floors up.”

“Yes,” Harry said, immensely relieved. “Then, later today…?”

A frown. “Tomorrow,” she said. “We’ll try to break the curse by tomorrow. But it’s nothing like we’ve seen before.”

He should be flattered. The only psychological curse used that battle, and an unknown one at that. “Okay.” He didn’t know what else to say to it.

“Could you sign off on sending a copy of our notes to the Aurors?” Jafari asked, holding out his dossier, with a glowing line at the bottom. “We’ll be able to say _what_ the curse is. Saying _why_ is their task.”

Harry signed. Wu shot off another blue fluttering message, saying Voldemort could fetch him. Branwen pressed handfuls of calming draughts and baobab and a bottomless thermos of pygmy sprout tea on him, obviously guilty that he’d had to withhold them until now.

Voldemort strode in shortly afterward. “Well?” he addressed the Unspeakables.

“It’s unusual magic,” Jafari said reluctantly. “We might ask some other arcanists to pop in. Private sector, if not another country’s team.”

His lips were quite thin. “I see. Harry.” He turned to survey him, and found him to be only a partial mess. “Would you join me in a debriefing? You haven’t got to listen,” he promised, with incredible dryness.

“Yeah.” What was he supposed to do otherwise, ask to go curl up fetally in a quiet corner of the Ministry instead? Still, he was not feeling particularly fond of Voldemort, who’d left him without a backward glance, and so Harry sort of blamed him for the endless panic of the past few hours.

The Unspeakables promised a report by the end of the day. Branwen gave him directions to the hospital ward in case he managed to drink all his five calming draughts and needed more. They left.

Harry couldn’t touch Voldemort, yet. They got in a lift. “What do they know about the attack?” Harry asked.

“What have they told us,” Voldemort corrected. “Not nearly enough. The healers – well, the ones who work in the Ministry’s medical ward, they hardly did any healing – came in to testify that the casualties’ magic is gone, unrecoverable, et cetera.” He already sounded tired. “And then we fought over what to do with the survivor. He’s non-verbal, but that hardly precludes taking his memories. Legilimency has worked only partially.”

“Oh. That’s….” _Good_ wasn’t quite the word. “Then why fight about it?”

“If the Ministry wants access to and a record of his memories, they must be put in a Pensieve. It can be done by force. He won’t survive it.”

Harry considered this. “And people are worried…?”

Voldemort was amused by this. “He is a captive. The Ministry does have a standard of human rights to uphold.”

Oh. Yes. He’d spent too much time with Voldemort, he thought, if such things as human rights slipped his mind. He opened a calming draught as he thought, since they were a good distance from the soul space now. “What do they want to do instead?”

“ _Try harder_ ,” he enunciated with disdain, “to keep him lucid and make him cooperative. We had it backwards, though: instead of the masks holding the anonymization spell, they’re a _manifestation_ of it. Hence melting away in his transformation. You couldn’t keep their souls from being erased by taking the mask off, as we’d hoped.”

“You should do it,” Harry decided. “Take his memories. He meant to die when he came.”

He expected Voldemort to make a scathing remark about his newfound bloodthirst. Instead, he sighed. “That’s the other bit of their hesitation,” he said. “There’s some reason to believe that this group was impelled to attack. Sent against their will.” They got out of the lift; Voldemort cast Silencio around them even though they were already speaking Parseltongue. “The magic to give a dozen wizards all the same Animagus forms is… unknown, currently. Unthinkable, really. But if _that_ much control can be exercised over this group….”

“Oh. Yeah.” He thought. “Not Imperio, though. You can’t Imperio someone to turn into a bird. I don’t think.”

Voldemort found this darkly funny. “Not unless they’re able to already, no.”

He thought of looking into the wizards’ faces. “They seemed so… I don’t know. Normal. Not that sort of calm Imperio has, anyway.”

“This could be answered very easily by taking his memories. Here.” He stopped before a set of deep purple double doors. “They’ve mostly gone out for lunch. We’ll resume in a bit.” He let them in.

Clearly a meeting had been taking place there: quills and parchment and large mugs of tea all across the rectangular table. Everything was spelled with privacy charms, so the words all shifted themselves into scribbles and inkblots when Harry looked at any of it.

The room wasn’t unoccupied. Minerva was there, and introduced him to two Namibian transfiguration scholars she’d asked to Floo in as consultants. Robards was there, talking with a couple witches who wore DMLE badges. Moody was there, his magical eye lolling to peer through the ceiling as he thought.

They took a seat across from Moody – or rather, Voldemort took two seats, transfiguring them into a bench, to better maintain physical contact. It was thoughtful. They’d get hideous looks for looking like they were cuddling in a debriefing. At Harry’s hesitation, he said, “I’ll answer for it. You haven’t got to. Really, they all should have more pressing concerns at the moment.”

He sank onto the bench, grateful. “Can I have your magic, then?”

“Yes.”

He told Voldemort of what the Unspeakables had tried this morning, but there weren’t any great breakthroughs or even much magic of interest. He hesitated in some embarrassment before saying, “They cracked a bit when you left. Just the surface.”

“We really shouldn’t be kept apart.”

Harry looked at him in surprise, at this bluntness and… something. It was a promise, obliquely. “Do you feel it too?”

He flashed his sharp white teeth. “My soul is a wasteland,” he reminded Harry sweetly. “’These fragments I have shored against my ruins.’ You’re the least of it.” A moment. “But yes.”

“Then can we….” Moody was right there. Harry was raw from this morning and a little more inclined to desperation and begging than he’d normally be.

“Negotiate? No.” He was taking dried fruit from the tin that Harry offered. (The healers, like Molly, would forever insist that Harry was too thin.) “It is yet another sacrifice you’ll make for me.”

He sat with this thought. “Can you make it worth it?” He was incurring this damage solely to keep Voldemort’s other Horcruxes safe. He didn’t mind, really he didn’t, but – “I told you I want to live together after this.”

Voldemort hummed in thought. “That seems like it would be for the best.”

He’d expected a protest, and had to halt the justification that were nearly on his lips already. Then: “Wait. But do you want it?” Insecurity still gnawed at his insides, clearly.

“Yes.” Voldemort said, with the same sort of strain in his voice as when he’d tell Harry he loved him. “Very much. You already know it’s not in our control, however.”

“I know.” He did not shoot a resentful look at Moody because really, his job was to protect them, not keep them happy. And then there was… Harry couldn’t allow himself to think of trial or execution right now. That constant pain of anxiety sat in his chest as always.

Wixes filed back into the boardroom, looking no worse for the wear. Harry supposed this wasn’t an especially critical crisis – no casualties, not even any attacks on civilians unless one counted Remus and the Weasleys at Diagon Alley last month. _They_ probably considered themselves to be enlisted in his own secret service. Not that he wanted one.

He got a couple curious looks. But the room had some overlap from the meeting yesterday, and he and Voldemort were very publicly working together, and he was just conspicuous in general; so he also got some nods of recognition, and most brief glances of indifference. Perfect.

Perfect until Bowersock entered, with a few legislative wixes. Harry couldn’t stand his presence anyway, but particularly not when he scanned the room, found Voldemort, and found Harry gently pressed against his side. (They were inconspicuous, honestly, but Voldemort’s magic was the only thing that kept him from feeling that his heart was being shredded.) “Potter?”

He swallowed his animosity. “Good afternoon.”

“You haven’t got clearance to be here.”

“If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be.” _Obviously_. Voldemort had said as much yesterday, that unauthorized wixes found themselves barred from the room of classified meetings with some rather explosive wards.

“Potter’s got the same clearances Voldemort has,” Moody interjected from across the table. “Leave it, Quintus.”

He nearly did, but cast one last look at them together. “You don’t find this inappropriate?” he asked Moody.

Harry couldn’t help it; a dark laugh escaped his lips. If it had been anyone else, he would have withered in insecurity right there, because he _didn’t_ feel like he belonged. But Bowersock –

“ _Leave it_ ,” Moody said again, cold and impatient. He didn’t outrank Bowersock (he didn’t even outrank Robards, who sat a few seats away) but apparently he scared Bowersock as much as he scared Harry. He sat. The rest of the room either genuinely didn’t care, or had the good sense not to get involved in a three way confrontation with Moody, Bowersock, and Voldemort.

Harry threw far too many baobab tablets in his mouth, willing his heart to stop pounding against his ribs. He offered the vial to Voldemort, who waved it off. “Now is not a time to be sedate, I think,” he murmured.

“Oh. Right.” And he sank a little deeper into his touch as everyone took their seats, Robards called them to order, and they launched back into the investigation.

Obviously Harry wouldn’t do more than listen. He barely had to do that either. But Voldemort didn’t do much but listen either. Yesterday he had been central: running the meeting as much as anyone, delegating tasks, impatiently explaining their options and why his was the best. Here – he _was_ sedate already, his face angular in thought as he listened.

They’d clearly left off on the question of taking the captive’s memories, because that’s where they returned. Moody said they’d had an interrogation squad on him, “but he hasn’t quite got a mouth anymore;” one DMLE executive suggested releasing him and following him back to wherever he came from. Quite a few people were in favor of Voldemort somehow undoing the interrupted transfiguration, in spite of it being the only thing also keeping the anonymization charm off.

They’d been at it for nearly an hour when Moody began advocating for taking his memories. “It’s no life to keep him alive in, anyway,” he said grimly. “Write that he succumbed to his injuries. He will.”

That was a turning point. The people invested, really invested, in human rights and fair treatment of POWs were a distinct minority in this room. Harry saw the world he would’ve entered if he were still angling for the Aurors program, and he didn’t like it. He was the least cynical person in the room, by a large margin. At some point, then, he began to zone out. He downed a calming draught and, taking a sheet of parchment from Voldemort, began drafting a note to Ron that he should’ve sent on Wednesday.

_Ron (and Hermione if you’re reading),_

_I’m writing to say that I’m safe. You’ve heard about the attack on the Ministry from Hermione and from the papers by now. I’m fine. My soul has been slightly cursed, but don’t worry, the Unspeakables are on it._

_The Aurors are keeping us in a safe location through the weekend. Could you give Hedwig a few rashers of bacon? I have been the worst owl owner._

_If you haven’t already heard from Hermione why we fought (or something?), you should ask her. It’s about what you’d expect: that I shouldn’t help Voldemort gain power in the Ministry because he is horrible. In my defense, every non-aggression vow is literally sworn on my life and our relationship, so people should prefer this to the alternative. I do ~~like~~   ~~love~~   ~~care about~~ whatever but that might be beside the point for now. We’re fated to be equals, anyway._

_I’m not writing this to defend myself. Hermione thought you’d take my side, but I’d rather you take hers. It’s what partners should do for each other._

_I think I’ll be back on Monday. I’ll tell you the rest of it then. Tell everyone I’m fine._

_Harry_

He spelled out the splotches and scribbles before rolling it up. It’d go in the Floo later. He didn’t know if he was allowed to put the soul magic all in writing. He didn’t know if writing that they were staying in a Ministry safehouse constituted divulging his location. (They had several safehouses. He couldn’t give directions to it anyway. “Go to the lowest floor of the Ministry and then dig straight down.” Christ.) He had cracked open another calming draught as he wrote, so he didn’t start crying about his potentially ruined friendships in the middle of it. It seemed to unknot his insides, if only for an hour at time. And it was a relief that it worked, really – as though that were an indication that this was an artificial feeling, that could be solved by artificial measures. He drank until he was full of it.

The wixes were now on some intel about the attackers’ country of origin. French wand wood, Ollivander had already told them. Clothing handmade, not mass manufactured, of textiles that could be Hungarian or Slovakian. The masks appeared like lightweight stone, so thin as to be nearly translucent, that might have been Greek. No IDs on them; and by the time the anonymization spell surged through their captive bodies, no useable DNA either. (Here was a long digression explaining what DNA _was_ , why it was useful, how the Muggles used it in investigation…. Most of the room remained mystified but took the forensics tech’s word for it.)

They put up a map marking these significant locations first. (“Were they traveling?” one DMLE witch had asked with a frown, tracing a line from Greece through Slovakia to France to England. Nevermind that Harry had never known magical transit to go in a line, except the Hogwarts Express. Not even the Knight Bus did.) Then, imposed on this map, Moody added every known anti-government group, radicalized group, enemy of the state, and ‘person of interest,’ as he pronounced it grimly. Whatever that meant.

There were dozens of markers now, and Harry felt Voldemort faintly snort. “It’s his job,” Harry muttered in Parseltongue, too low for anyone to hear. He was surprised to find Voldemort wasn’t the only terrorist in England, though of course he wasn’t. The Death Eaters were still marked too, despite the imprisonment of most of them. Shockingly and upsettingly, _Dumbledore_ was on there. He looked around, to find nobody else reacting.

Voldemort’s Legilimency was steady on his mind, not that he needed it to guess Harry’s thoughts. “Later,” he murmured.

“I bloody hate the Ministry.”

With this map, the room began to work through likely origins, likely people involved, likely motivations. It all seemed pretty bleak: the groups most likely to develop experimental magic like the Animagi spell and the masks didn’t have any obvious ideological conflicts. The ones large enough to sacrifice, at this point, fourteen wizards were all the sort to take credit for attacks. The werewolf packs were all accounted for elsewhere. Foremost, they couldn’t agree on reasons a non-British terrorist group, if indeed it was, was protesting British politics that didn’t even have significant international impact. Harry didn’t have any visibility or investments on the continent; nobody would want him dead over there. Hell, _Voldemort_ hardly had any. (“International courts are rather more dire to cross than the British legal system,” he said dryly, and Harry could _hear_ the teeth grinding from everyone in the room.)

But Moody seized on Voldemort’s thought. “You said yesterday that these ones might have been forced, as punishment,” he said. Gesturing to the map: “Who’d do that?”

Voldemort’s eyes were bright as he regarded Moody. “You should be able to account for criminal psychology at least as well as I could. Shouldn’t you?”

The aggravated way Moody puffed up in Voldemort’s presence was commonplace to Harry by now. “I have been hunting down dark wizards since you were a child,” he snapped. “I should have smothered you in your cot.”

Harry winced at this, but Voldemort _adored_ it. He always loved antagonizing the Aurors, and Moody most of all. “Infanticide, Alastor?” he clucked. “I suppose we all become what we hate.” Then, straightening, he indicated the map. “It wouldn’t be uncommon. Svetlana of the Carpathians does frequently. Dažbog, Nicodemus Notaras. There must be more. It’s efficient, you see. Either the reluctant followers succeed, or when they fail, one hasn’t got to expend the energy to kill them.”

A few intakes of breath at this; Voldemort glanced at one of the wizards in disdain. “To have such a _large_ selection of reluctant followers to send out, though…. It must be an unstable group. Dying. Erasing all traces of itself in these last gestures.”

Moody’s hand was tight on his staff. He didn’t thank Voldemort, but he never did. Robards and his assistant both took notes furiously.

It wasn’t that this was boring exactly, but Harry by now had enough calming draught inside him to overpower even all of the adrenaline that made him so devastated all day. And the Horcrux had put him to bed with magic sometimes, so the association of Voldemort’s magic diffusing across his skin was powerful. And he really had been awake much too early. He found himself slipping more and more heavily onto Voldemort, head against his shoulder. “Harry, just sleep,” Voldemort muttered when the attention was elsewhere. “Nobody will mind. They’ve entirely forgotten you’re here.”

The idea sounded brilliant. Still: “I could go have a lie-down somewhere else.”

“You _could_.” His magic flared against Harry’s flesh, making him euphoric for a moment. “But why?”

He wanted to say yes. “Can you, uh, wake me up if I start screaming? Or just cast a silencing spell on me.” He didn’t have dreamless sleep on hand, and even if he did, he slept too soundly under its influence.

“I promise.”

It was half-sleep, with the conversation still unfolding around him, his own self-consciousness, and his pressing need to always listen for Voldemort being a twat so Harry could intervene. Finally, Voldemort cast a bubble of silence around him, to drown out the rest of it, and he dropped off.

An indeterminate time later, Voldemort was shaking him awake again. He’d swear that he had withdrawal symptoms from the calming draught, because he was considerably more shaky and anxious when he awoke. Voldemort let him press his face into his shoulder for a moment as he steadied himself. “Are you done?” he asked, mostly mumbling into the cloth.

“For today.” He was vanishing all the empty vials before Harry – christ, _that_ was embarrassing. “We’ll return tomorrow, though?”

The question wasn’t directed at him, he found, but Moody. “Yes.” Pulling out a Portkey, he passed it to Harry. “Will you need anything?”

He’d go back to Hogwarts if he could, to collect an overnight bag. He knew instinctively that that’d be shut down, that Hogwarts had its own crisis, and Harry’s presence only ever invited problems. “No, sir.”

Moody gestured them out. Nobody talked to them on the way out, not the Aurors or Minerva or even Bowersock. Voldemort left a hand on Harry’s back, to guide him through the crowds of wixes leaving for the day. Harry dropped Ron’s letter in the nearest floo.

When they reached the ground floor, Harry made a strangled noise. Every paper was here, reporting on the attacks and the meetings and probably just their presence. “I can’t,” he muttered. The Portkey location was on the far side of the floos. The journalists were already collaring all the prominent wixes who’d been in their meeting, but some of them by now had seen them and were running toward them, quick quotes quills drawn.

“You don’t wish to speak with them?”

“ _No_.”

They were shouting questions at them both – “Can you tell us more about the attacks?” – “Any statement on Hogwarts?” – “Do you think it’s retribution?” – “Do you feel as though you’re in danger?” – “Mr. Potter, are you dying?”

_Am I_? he wondered in bewilderment. The roaring in his ears was very loud, and sweat dripped from his fingertips. He might be dying. It seemed likely.

When Voldemort raised his wand, some of them fell back, but not fast enough. There was a blast that shoved them all out of the way, shoved them backwards as though an explosion had erupted in their midst. There were screams and shouts and thank fuck, they were all of _indignation_ instead of pain. Nobody tried getting close again, and Harry kept his head down as they ripped open the Portkey.

When they arrived, he fairly staggered into the safehouse. “ _Ugh_.” He wiped sweat from the end of his nose. He really did feel awful; already he was fishing in his bag for another calming draught. “What was that?”

“Mobilicorpus. Approximately. It wouldn’t harm them, and more’s the pity.” He studied Harry to ensure he wasn’t upset or offended or whatever.

He incredibly wasn’t. “It was brilliant.”

“Not if you wanted to stay out of the papers tonight.”

Shrugging, Harry went to have a cold shower.

 

He was right. Later that night, they were on the sofa together, flipping through the Panopticon’s articles. “I need one of these,” Harry said, idly fingering the paper-like edge of it. “I haven’t kept up with anything.”

“You haven’t?” Mild surprise. “You should be interested in our recent measures.”

“It just all… hurts.” It was stupid, admitting this, that he couldn’t see Voldemort’s name in the papers without falling apart. Especially in proximity to Bowersock’s, to Bright’s, to everyone who was complicit in the abuse at Azkaban.

“Mm. I assume something will change, now. Moody is incredibly protective of you.”

“Is he?” Harry asked, doubtful.

A sidelong glance. “Yes.”

“Huh.” A pause. “Tonks said not to get between you this morning. Everyone in the meeting seemed to feel about the same.”

“We’re together quite often.” His voice went a bit flat. “It would be reckless _not_ to have a working relationship.”

“Oh. Yeah, it would be. But all I meant to say was, you seem really happy antagonizing powerful people.”

A small quirk of his mouth. “I am,” he assured Harry, and it felt like a queer sort of promise. Then, gesturing with the Panopticon once more: “Write to Ede if you’d like one. She prototyped this, and another wouldn’t take her long.”

“I think I will, yeah. I’m just so behind in everything,” he sighed. “I’m not like you, I can’t be brilliant at everything all at once. I’m thinking of skipping NEWTs,” he offered tentatively, “and just taking those classes to see my friends sometimes. Teaching has taken up all of my time, I can’t….” He trailed off, feeling pathetic. No. Inadequate, at least.

Voldemort was only amused by this. “Do you want sympathy,” he asked, “or direction?”

Right, so Voldemort was infinitely better at the latter than the former. “Direction,” he said, “or maybe just permission.”

Further amusement. “You do understand that I don’t _own_ you.”

“Wanker. I know. But this is your life, too.” He _wanted_ to share his decisions with Voldemort, as a partner and a mentor. They were two different power dynamics, but… they were already entangled in a hundred different ways. What were a few more?

“The Muggle Liaison Office will be disbanded any day,” Voldemort said, “since its primary purpose was cover-ups and Obliviation. You’ll be included in whatever department emerges in its place, regardless. You don’t need NEWTs, if you’d prefer not to take them. Or some of them.”

“Really?” He was gobsmacked. He’d have sworn Voldemort would insist on NEWTs. He had single-handedly already impressed Harry into both runes and history.

“If you’d like to be given a career based on your exceptionalism.”

Oh. He glared. “You could have just said no.”

Eyebrows up. “I don’t _mean_ to say no,” he said. “I meant, people will always talk about you, and you must decide what they should be saying.”

He drank from his wine glass as he thought. “They know I’m already doing this now,” he said. “Well, a bit. I hope they wouldn’t think I’m unqualified. Or,” he offered with a very wry smile, “that I’ve shagged my way into the post.”

“Unless you’re also shagging someone else, we will not be working particularly closely.”

“Oh,” he said, surprised. “But the Unification, and the work with the Muggles, has all been _yours_. Much more than it’s been mine.”

“And I’d be happy to pass it off to you entirely. It’s what I’ve worked toward, anyway.” A pause. “You can’t think I mean to liaison with the Muggles for the rest of my career. Everyone already has fits about it, whether in terror or disbelief.”

It took him a moment to synthesize this. “You haven’t got to, whatever. Look after me. Provide for me.”

“You reflect on me,” Voldemort reminded him. “And everybody thinks so, by now. And as you say, your life is mine now, too.”

It was a relief, _such_ a relief, to have this support. He did, certainly, have Arthur and Molly and Remus and any number of the faculty, if he wanted adult input, but their dreams for him were… well, approximately Dumbledore’s dreams for him, and Dumbledore was a mentor who’d been leading him to his death. He didn’t fault him for it exactly, but…. “Thank you.”

Voldemort wasn’t expecting the sincerity of his reaction. “You’re welcome.”

The evening papers had been printed again, to cover what they knew of the attacks on Hogwarts and the Ministry that they hadn’t known this morning. There was no magic in Hogwarts yesterday that hadn’t already been present. Some faculty and students got their wands searched. The ghosts and portraits were being questioned as witnesses. Voldemort was frowning as he read, forehead knotted. “When you return….”

“I know. I’ll look at the wards. Or make the Horcruxes do it.”

“Yes.” He made a motion to flip the page.

Harry reacted first. “ _Goddammit_.” The headline ran: _What’s Wrong with Potter?_ Beneath was a photo of him, asleep on Voldemort’s shoulder in today’s meeting, his hair hanging in his face. A couple empty vials glittered on the table before him. Voldemort was listening to someone out of frame, but his arm was tightly at Harry’s waist, to keep him from slipping fully onto the floor. The thing was, he’d adore this photo, if not for its use in the claims he was dying or whatever. He hoped Ron and Hermione would see it. He hoped everyone who suspected Voldemort was exploitative or cruel to him would see it.

“It’s extracted from a memory,” Voldemort said.

“What?”

“Weren’t you wondering where it came from?” he asked, faking patience. “Obviously there weren’t cameras or journos allowed in. That’s why it’s grainy.”

Harry’s guilty expression indicated that he was not thinking of this very intelligent, practical question.

“From the angle…. Well, it hardly matters who the leak was. I need to work with these wixes for months, and I must be judicious about which difficulties I pose.”

“That’s really sensible of you,” Harry said with some surprise. Voldemort snorted.

The article was rubbish, of course. The authors snidely suggested that he “perhaps found the attack on the Ministry particularly traumatic, though no sustained injuries to British citizens have been reported.” Wankers.

They skipped past the article. “They’ve done worse,” Harry sighed. “Hermione says that if I sued for libel – slander? Whichever it is – just once, they’d never write about how touched or delinquent or untrustworthy I am again. But it really _would_ make me into a sort of person I don’t want people to think of me as.”

Voldemort was quiet, his thumb rubbing at just the right spot on the back of Harry’s neck. He moved the Panopticon on to a page of international affairs, his forehead knotting even tighter.

“You should go down to the basement before bed,” Voldemort said carefully, some time later. “The kaval should have finished steeping by now.”

Harry had missed it last night; the herbal potion undid all the snarled feelings that lodged deep within him. “Did we have some…?”

“I brewed it while you showered,” Voldemort said. “As I’ve said, it’s… not ideal that you should take on an addiction on my behalf. Two, really, since dreamless sleep is habit-forming as well, but that one can be blamed on the Aurors. Withdrawal can cause panic attacks, so – “

Harry was touched. He pressed a kiss beneath Voldemort’s ear, gentle at first and then insistent when the contact and magic just felt _so_ good. Voldemort stopped talking, setting the Panopticon aside. And then Harry was dipping lower, putting his mouth to his prominent collarbone. “I love you,” Harry murmured easily. “Can we…?”

“Yes.” He was shifting so Harry could better undo the buttons of his robe.

He slid his tongue farther down Voldemort’s narrow chest when it was exposed, flicking each of the dusky nipples in turn. Pity might make him sick to his stomach, but care made him hot as hell, obviously. He straddled Voldemort’s lap to grind his arse in, until he felt his erection. “I want you inside of me,” he hissed into his ear, pulling at his own clothing to undress as quickly as possible. And then Voldemort’s hands were on him too, peeling off his robes. Everywhere they touched, they burned, as though igniting their soul. Just for a moment, he was so happy.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Allusions for Chapter 16:
> 
> Mutually assured destruction – A theory of warfare which says that once both sides are armed with massively destructive weapons, they have incentive to neither fight nor disarm. Really Tonks is saying here that Voldemort and Moody do not duel because neither wants the injuries or consequences.
> 
> ’These fragments I have shored against my ruins.’ – T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland.


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry is treated, the rebel’s memories are examined, and who does know what’s going on with the explosion at Hogwarts?

_Friday, September 18._ Of course, on Friday morning he awoke depressed and fearful and miserable again. This time it felt familiar, though, and he could crawl into a too-hot shower and drink his calming draught there. He didn’t even wake Voldemort.

Once again, they were collected by Aurors, and Harry was dropped off with the Unspeakables before Voldemort went to rip the captive’s memory out. ( _This_ decision was made not because Voldemort was the best at psychological magic, but because the act was itself illegal, and it would cause problems if a real Ministry employee performed it. “The scapegoat, then,” Voldemort had said serenely. “Heap your sins on me, and I’ll carry them into the desert to die for you.” Nobody had been amused.)

The Unspeakables were optimistic but still stymied. He had handfuls of spells cast on him, each coming back with a different color of blazing light that they found significant. Jafari had asked what had helped yesterday, and after he told them that the calming draughts worked for under an hour at a time, and the baobab and pygmy sprout tea were a little better, he explained how physical contact with Voldemort had filled the empty spaces inside of him. “And, um, sex,” he muttered, because it wasn’t worth leaving that out. Jafari only nodded as though he already knew, but still.

This time, when the Unspeakables had enough data to go on, Voldemort sent Tonks to collect Harry. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” she was telling him as they got into the lift. “It didn’t look anything like taking out memories for a Pensieve. It was closer, really, to how a Dementor’s Kiss looks. He just sort of… stopped.” The lift arrived; she looked over at him. “You can’t go in; the magic is too delicate. Would you wait for awhile in a meeting room nearby?”

“Sure.”

Tonks left him in a small room down the corridor from the lab. But on the way, he’d seen a sign on another door: _Department of Ancestry and Legacy_. He was unspeakably curious. Throwing baobab tablets in his mouth to keep himself emotionally steadied, he decided to pop in.

The department was quiet, as a witch with two waist-length braids worked at the front desk and two wizards in glass offices worked behind her. “Hi,” Harry said. “Uh, what do you do here?”

“What do _I_ do?” the woman asked, skeptical. “You’re the one who walked in. What are you looking for?”

“My family.” He winced. “I mean, records of them. This would be the office, wouldn’t it? Their name is Potter,” he said, because he’d rather not assume everyone knew him on sight.

“Ah.” The witch had some interest in this now. “Yes, sit down. Let’s see what we’ve got for you….”

He was here not just out of idle curiosity, but because this time with Voldemort had prompted him to think of _real_ homes, homes that they could live forever not under the Ministry’s surveillance. He watched hungrily as the witch opened a few expanding cabinets along the back wall, pulling out handfuls of parchment.

Some time later, all those parchments were in stacks before him. The witch’s name was Blanche, and with a few spells, she set a large phoenix feather quill to drawing a family tree for him. “For property….” More shuffling. “Neither of your parents had wills. The, er, property at Godric’s Hollow was made into a historical site years ago, you know. You inherited a home from the Black family?” she asked, looking up.

“Yeah. I’ve already got that one.” And he wanted to deed it to the Order as soon as possible, but that wasn’t a conversation to have here.

Some more shuffling of papers. They found his parents’ wedding certificate; they found what was essentially a prenup. They found the agreement that Sirius would be Harry’ godfather, and that shouldn’t hurt by now, but it did.

(“Huh,” Blanche said. “They must’ve missed that one. Most of Black’s paperwork went into his evidence file – “

“Please stop,” Harry interrupted, a mess.)

And then they were finished with Harry’s life, meager though it was, and they were waiting on the phoenix quill to finish transcribing his family tree. “There is one more thing,” he said with some hesitation. Blanche raised her eyebrows in mild invitation. “Is there anything for the Slytherin family? Like, the founder. It was Gaunt, at least recently….”

Voldemort had said he’d have blood claims to the Gaunt line if he used it. Harry had seen the family, of course, and he assumed he wouldn’t want to inherit that hovel. (Was it still standing? It didn’t look like a thing that would survive decades.)

Blanche, frowning slightly, looked over the newly-inked family tree. “You’re not related to the Gaunt family.”

“No, I’m not.” (Although really, he wouldn’t have known that without the tree in front of him.) “But Voldemort is.”

“He sent you?” she asked stiffly, rising to sift through more paperwork. She didn’t seem to expect him to answer, so he prudently didn’t.

“There’s not much,” she said, her voice muffled inside the cabinets. “And less that’s publicly available – which is all I could give you until he comes in with a blood signature. The state owns the Slytherin estate as a historical site, you know, but it’s been very badly neglected. It’s upsetting, but it’s not anyone’s priority, particularly without heirs or benefactors who want to see it restored.”

“Uh… sorry?” He had missed about all of that.

She gave him an impatient look. “Slytherin’s ancestral home. In the fenlands. The state’s got it primarily because of the ley lines underneath. The home itself is in ruins. Was that not what you were asking about?”

“Oh, no, that’s exactly it,” he assured her hastily. “Could someone, y’know, live in it, if it were fixed?”

“It should be a museum,” she sighed, “but I say that as a Slytherin and a preservationist. Nobody from the Gaunt line has lived there in generations. I don’t know what happened.”

Certainly, Harry thought, by the time it got to Voldemort’s mother, they didn’t know it existed. Or maybe they objected to handing over their blood to the Ministry. “I want to restore it,” he made the decision at that moment. Voldemort would want the property back. It would make Harry happy, too, to have some tangible indication of a future together.

Blanche sort of blinked at him. “Right. If you make an earmarked donation, of course we’ll look into its restoration – “

“No,” he interrupted, “ _I_ want to restore it. I want to build us a home. Nobody could object, could they, if I make it less of a blight on the area? The Ministry could keep the ley lines.”

She pondered him. Then, turning toward the rear offices: “Holland?”

Mr. Holland was a very old historian, who hadn’t seen any work done on the Slytherin estate since he started here forty-five years ago, he said. Harry re-stated his case. “Also,” he said into the silence when Holland was thinking, “is there any way this could be kept confidential? Just until next June.” When whatever would happen with Voldemort’s trial, would happen. “I want it to be a surprise.”

Their faces showed with perfect clarity what they thought of surprising Voldemort. “You’ll need to write to the Ministry’s lawyers,” Holland said. “They’ll likely say no. I like the idea, but a historical site such as this one….” Still, he began sorting through some business cards. “Write them, copy this department.” His weathered face showed utmost skepticism, but still he said, “I wish you luck.”

Harry put away everything before him: the business cards and all the copies of his parents’ documents. The family tree was by now finished, though the ink was still wet. It went back to the 1500s. It was breathtaking. “Thank you,” he said with some reverence, levitating it into a protective bubble.

And it was a good thing too, because on his return to the conference room, he nearly ran literally into Brightbone, with Tonks behind her. “Where _were_ you?” Brightbone hissed. “Have you _really_ got such poor judgment as to run off in these times?”

He normally would have gotten angry or defensive in return. Today, though, he was still so depressed and insecure and panicky, he sort of crumbled. “Sorry.” He shrank into himself. She was right, it was stupid of him to leave. The Ministry had _just_ been attacked, and on his behalf. He brought the bubble to his chest as he followed them. Both Brightbone and Tonks were so surprised by his deference, they didn’t even ask where he’d been or why.

There was an unmarked laboratory at the end of this corridor; and this time, they could let him in. As soon as he walked in, he wanted to backpedal out. Evil, destructive magic had been done in here.

Voldemort emerged from a back room. “Harry. I’ll tell you about the morning over lunch. Unless he should be elsewhere?” He lifted his gaze to Camilla and Tonks, who stood behind him like jailers.

“Go,” Brightbone said, and Harry nearly cringed before her like a submissive dog.

As soon as they were alone, Voldemort said, “You look guilty.”

He was cracking open a calming draught; he was overdue for one. “Chastised, maybe. There was an office of… inheritance and legacy? Something like that. I wanted to ask if they had anything for my parents.” He shrank the bubble a little so he could put it away. “They wanted me to just wait in a conference room, though.”

“Mm. Were you satisfied?”

“Are you kidding. I didn’t even know my grandparents’ names before now. I didn’t know….” Something abruptly stuck in his throat. “Their house at Godric’s Hollow was made into a memorial. I was seven when it was memorialized. I know why I couldn’t have been at the dedication, but….” He sighed.

“You should go,” Voldemort said, offhand. “When you’re allowed in public again, that is,” he added.

His heart thudded to a stop at the idea. “Maybe.”

“I wouldn’t go with you,” Voldemort added, anticipating what was sort of Harry’s next question. “I enjoy perversity, but not _that_ much.”

He smiled for the first time today. “You won’t have to go,” he promised. Voldemort scrubbed a thumb over the back of Harry’s neck.

 

Over lunch (well, Voldemort ate and Harry nibbled on naan from the edge of his plate, as sick-full of potions as he was), they traded mornings. Voldemort was impatient at the Unspeakables for not curing Harry already, “as charming a tearful waif as you make.” Wanker. He told Harry in non-explicit terms how he’d ripped the man’s mind apart, preserving his memories in a Pensieve but tearing through his psyche to get to them. “The investigative team is convening this afternoon,” he said. “But you need to be in a meeting about Hogwarts.”

“Oh,” he said, surprised. “I didn’t know there was one. Yeah, I’ll be there. I couldn’t help them with anything.”

“No. You’ll be there on my behalf.”

“I _really_ can’t answer for… whatever you know of Hogwarts’s magic. Can’t they plan to meet when you could be there?”

Voldemort gave him a mildly pained look. “It’s not _when_ , it’s _who_. Severus will be there.”

A rush of emotions, fear and anger and that obligation he always felt to save everyone. “You said you wouldn’t kill him,” he accused.

“I _can’t_ kill him. He may want to kill me, but he wouldn’t today, at least. It’s exactly _that_ we won’t kill each other that makes the circumstances so dangerous. They are unpredictable.”

“ _You’re_ unpredictable,” Harry muttered, dropping a forkful of aloo gobi back onto Voldemort’s plate. “How am I supposed to feel about that?”

Leaning in, Voldemort took his hands. He looked as though he were going to divulge a secret. “Harry. Never, ever mistake me for one of your heroes.”

Right. In the past few days he’d lost sight of Voldemort’s antipathy for the world. And how much the world hated him in return. Today, this was crushing. “I know,” he said, if only to defuse this and move on. “What do you want me to tell them, then?”

“Nothing. Listen. Herzog will know what he’s talking about, and so will Minerva. The previous runes professor…?”

“Is dead,” Harry said, a bit reproachful. “Rowle killed her in Hogsmeade, last year.”

“Mm.” He did not seem guilty, or even interested. “Likewise, I’m responsible for having many fewer Defense scholars than Britain should have. How tragically appropriate.”

“Hogwarts isn’t _crumbling_ ,” Harry said, setting aside the implication that Voldemort would protect the school as fiercely as he protected Harry, and nobody and nothing else. “We’ll bring in experts if we’ve got to. I’ll ask the Horcruxes what they know.”

“Please do.” He drummed his nails against the table, thinking. “Maybe the wards were Dumbledore’s, and they’re decaying in his absence.”

It sounded plausible, but – “He wouldn’t put the school in danger like that.”

“Perhaps he didn’t intend to. Or perhaps it was a trade-off for some benefit. But he did, regardless, oversee the wards himself for decades.”

“You know that because he kept you out.”

“His presence did,” Voldemort agreed (an admission Harry thought he’d never have made if Dumbledore were still alive). “Not his wards. The castle is _mine_ ,” he said fiercely, “by birth and by blood. No wards could keep out a founder’s line. Which is not to say he didn’t try.”

Harry glared. “I’m not impressed,” he said. “And I’ll never hate Dumbledore.”

A quirk of Voldemort’s mouth. “I shouldn’t recognize you if you did,” he said lightly, as though it’d fix things. “But do bring back news of Hogwarts. I won’t see it threatened.”

 

Voldemort returned to the lab. Harry went to the meeting about the Hogwarts attack. Snape wouldn’t look at him, but Flitwick and McGonagall were in attendance, and seemed massively relieved to see him well. “Cursed?” McGonagall said, her dark eyebrows knitting together. “That’s what the Prophet said, but one can’t trust them these days.”

“Uh, yes, but I’m fine,” he said. It was honest enough. He was fine, as long as he kept a pygmy sprout tea at hand and baobab tablets in his pocket. And a vial of verve now that he’d begged from the healers, so he wouldn’t fall asleep in this meeting too. “The Unspeakables have looked at it.”

McGonagall’s look was skeptical but she didn’t press it. And then Herzog, the Auror who had headed the investigation so far, called the meeting to order, and they all slid into seats.

It was unfortunately not much more than Harry already knew: an explosion in the Great Hall, no foreign magic or suspects or really anything at all. It happened on the early side of dinner, when most students eating were Quidditch players before evening practice, “but they are all recovering admirably,” McGonagall said, “and it won’t significantly disrupt the season.” Harry grinned quietly.

There were three members of the governor’s board there, and they spoke of sending letters to parents, reviewing their best practices for security, looking into surveillance spells. (Really, Harry was surprised to not already have them in place, but he supposed there wouldn’t be, for all he’d gotten away with over the years.)

Finally, Herzog again, with a Ministry expert on wards by his side: “We’ve been working to reconstruct the magic of the scene. All of this is speculative. There are strands of wards, embedded with runes, running behind the head table,” he waved his wand and a transparent diagram appeared in midair, “over the great archway, and running through each of the house tables.” In the diagram, these veins and knots appeared in gold. “The wards are maintained by faculty – or, as necessary, Ministry experts – at the beginning of each term. They’re checked for reliability and, in the older cases, coherence, since runes evolve like a language. Only partial records are made of how the runes are set, since access to this knowledge would enable someone to… well, sabotage them.” He let that hang. “We haven’t found any discrepancies or cause for suspicion in the records yet. In the remains of the wards themselves….” He nodded to the Ministry expert.

“Only the wards embedded in the house tables were affected,” she said crisply. “There are centuries of magic there, but most of it is protective, establishing its targets as the students of their respective houses. The frequent contact by the students with the wards – at every meal, of course – imbues them with an ongoing protection. There are few offensive spells in the tables, and certainly nothing that was obviously intended as an _explosion_.”

She went on to demonstrate in the diagram the wards they’d reconstructed. She offered a few suggestions for how the wards might react explosively: if two of them reacted badly in proximity to one another; if there was outdated or incompatible syntax in an older rune; or if one of them had decayed into something more destructive. Harry took notes to the best of his abilities, in case much of it was significant to Voldemort. He didn’t even recognize most of the runes, but copied them anyway.

Robards was there; he and the junior Auror Samuels both took notes furiously. McGonagall explained the procedure by which faculty renewed the wards. She said she’d personally vouch for every one of them. (“Albus would, too. Have you spoken to his portrait?”) Snape sat, quiet and dour, except for the moments in which someone addressed him directly. Everyone variously expressed how resilient the staff was being in re-opening Hogwarts this year, and it would be a shame to send away these students who had already had a year of education taken from them in the war. Everyone was just stymied and sad, and it was a hideous atmosphere by the end.

When they were departing, however, Herzog approached Harry. “Mr. Potter.”

“Yeah? Yes, sir,” he amended. He was faintly surprised: Herzog went with them to Cornwall often enough, but he only really interacted with Voldemort. They fought about arcana and Harry wouldn’t have a part in it. But now, Herzog was pulling something from his robes.

“He’ll want this,” Herzog said, dropping a black evidence bag into Harry’s hand. “We don’t expect him to learn anything new, but his speculation might help. And he’s already made clear how he feels about being excluded from the Ministry’s work,” he said dryly.

The bag was full of little shards of something. Magic? He opened the top just enough to peer in. _Oh_. Wood, little more than splinters, from the house tables. Shit. He hadn’t _felt_ this loss previously. Still: “Uh, don’t you need these?”

“The wood’s all imbued with the same enchantments. It’s redundant by design. He knows how to be in contact; otherwise, we’ll see him at Cornwall this Sunday.”

_Cornwall_. In all the madness, he’d lost track. Right. “I’ll give this to him. Um, thank you.” Nobody else wanted anything from him. He left.

Back to the lab. This time he was allowed in, though only as far as the front room. “We’ve got the memories,” Tonks said in a low tone as she let him in. “We’re sorting them now. It looks… well, I dunno how much I can tell you. It looks complicated, and it looks tampered with. Mad Eye already accused Voldemort of extracting the memories wrong to hide something. It was awful.”

He winced. So was the meeting about Hogwarts, but not _that_ awful, surely. “Sorry.”

“Also, the Unspeakables want to see you in a bit. Both of you. So you’ve got to stop taking whatever you’re on.”

“ _Whatever I’m on_ ,” he echoed, equal parts amused and embarrassed. “Tonks, you’ve no idea how much calming draught I’ve downed today, it’d knock out a dragon.” For a reasonably boring day, adrenaline still surged inside him. It was becoming a tedious feeling, like how he expected mice or rabbits or other prey might feel all the time.

Tonks’s grin was lopsided. “Well done on your _stamina_ and _resilience_ , then,” she said, and she sounded just like Ginny in that moment and it was a warming sort of feeling. “The Unspeakables asked that you show up gutted, though.”

“Oh, I will.”

Tonks receded into the back room; Harry took a seat at the empty front desk. Pulling out the parchment from the legacy department, he spread it all before him. The family tree was minimal – date and location for birth and death – but he studied it closely anyway. He _came_ from somewhere. It was a nice feeling.

It also revealed how small their world was. Sirius had said that all the pureblood families were intermarried, and he saw that here. The Black family was interwoven with the Potters (would James and Sirius have considered one another cousins? Sirius _did_ move in at one point, he recalled faintly). So he was related to Molly and the Prewetts; he was related to Tonks through Andromeda. And there were other familiar names – a Longbottom five generations back, the Greengrass family by marriage, the Bones family. It was a very strange feeling, to go from being related to nobody to being related to everybody in the span of a day. He saw why Voldemort and Madam Bones both had concerns about wixen genetics.

The feeling was made all the stranger by not being able to share these revelations – or, well, he _could_ , but everyone else had had their entire lives to acclimate to their own intertwined family trees. Ron could recite five generations back without really thinking about it, and he’d said that made him a disgrace, that ‘real’ purebloods like Malfoy were expected to know theirs back to the medieval era, if not the Founders’ time. Ron had even suggested Harry could find his genealogy in the library. But this, this was much better.

The lab door swung open. Voldemort, half a dozen Aurors, and a few Obliviators exited. They all looked grim. Well, that was the theme for today anyway. “Good,” Voldemort said upon finding him there, as he put the papers away again. “And now we must go antagonize the Unspeakables.”

“Please don’t.” He looked back to the Aurors, even if Voldemort wasn’t. “Um, bye. Have a good weekend.”

“We’ll be by Sunday,” Moody told him.

“Oh – yeah – can I go to Cornwall?” He still worried about Voldemort’s ability to cast the shield himself. It was a _lot_ of magic.

His face gnarled in thought or perhaps disapproval. “If Voldemort wants you there.”

“Of course,” he said briskly. “Goodnight.”

When they were alone, Voldemort looked at him. Switching to Parseltongue: “You haven’t got to go. The Horcruces’ distance has… helped.”

“I’m not worried about you,” he lied. “I just want to go. I expected Moody to say no anyway, that it’d be dumb to be in public together.”

“Yes.” Voldemort clearly had thought the same. “The space is well-warded, anyway.” And then, his look growing darker: “Or so they tell me. They say I may not know all of their security measures there, because I will subvert them.”

Harry snorted. “Well.”

Voldemort sighed. “What did you learn of Hogwarts?” They got into a lift.

“A lot of guessing, is all.” He fished his notes from his bag. “I hope those are okay. Also, Herzog gave me – “ He extracted the evidence bag. “He says you’d want this. Even if you don’t find anything from it.”

Voldemort’s reaction at opening the bag and finding the splintered remains of the table was, charmingly, about the same as Harry’s: puzzlement and then dismay. “The house tables were _original_ ,” he hissed. “Do you know how few original pieces still reside in the castle?”

“No. But four less of them now.” He deserved the cuffing that got him. “I hate it, too. Maybe there’s still enough of them to be restored?”

Voldemort rolled the bag of splinters in his palm. “Doubtful.” Another sigh, more exasperated this time. “I should be there. I could tell them about the castle’s magic instinctively what forensics should take weeks to find.”

He knew viscerally but not intellectually that Voldemort couldn’t return to Hogwarts, Albus’s wards to keep him out or no. “They trust that you won’t murder the Minister but think you might murder students? Why, because we’re defenseless?” (He actually didn’t know if Voldemort was much for murdering children at all, aside from the obvious. It seemed an uncouth question now.)

“Mm. The Ministry is populated with – well, dolts, but also pragmatic sorts. They don’t _trust_ me a damn bit, nor should they, but they can see the value in my presence. Hogwarts – education, really, in general – is filled with idealists and ideologues. They have _ethics_ to uphold, and they certainly won’t compromise them for me.”

This brought Hermione to mind, and a corresponding stab in his chest. The baobab was wearing off, then. “The governors didn’t seem very idealistic,” he said doubtfully. “They seemed mostly worried about losing funding, if the state thinks we’re not worth the hassle. Oh, and getting Howlers from parents.”

He snorted. “Yes, well. Nevertheless, the governors want me in Hogwarts less than the faculty does. Perhaps you’re right, that they are only preserving their reputation. But circumstances must be much more dire before they’d even consider asking me.”

“I hope they’ve never got to, then.” They’d stopped short a couple corridors down from the Unspeakables’ lab. “Uh, you’re wondering if I’ve detoxed enough from the baobab?” he guessed.

“Precisely.”

“I… think so. Maybe. Say something terrible.”

Voldemort twitched to say something instinctively, and then closed his mouth. “Do it yourself.”

Voldemort, passing up an opportunity for venom and cruelty. Would wonders never cease. He thought of Hermione again, and Ron and Ginny. The castle must be chaos. Fearful chaos, and his absence couldn’t help, but his presence would be worse. His own ambiguous loyalties would add to the panic. It would be like the time he was suspected of being the heir of Slytherin, made thoroughly a pariah. _Potter’s the Dark Lord’s protégé, and goes missing the same time there’s an attack on Hogwarts_. Well, that would be unpleasant. He felt now-familiar anxiety was lodged in his chest. He couldn’t well defend himself either – he _was_ Voldemort’s protégé, he had _asked_ to be. Just without all the evil bits. But going back to Hogwarts after this weekend – it wasn’t only the destruction of the Great Hall he feared.

“Right,” he said, before he’d actually work himself into a lather. “Yes. Let’s go.”

The lab was as they’d left it yesterday morning, approximately, with polished stone covering its surface. Jafari ushered him in, while Wu carved runes into the stones’ surfaces with a glowing orange spell. “Sit down, Mr. Potter. We’re nearly finished.”

Approaching, he saw what she meant. Runes were carved into every surface. “You should be warned that the exact formulation is experimental. But the mechanism is well-known.”

Voldemort was studying the runes. Harry looked at the ones in the stony storm clouds of a curse above his head, but he could hardly make anything out. Some elementary runes for withdrawal (not destruction? Maybe they had to preserve it for, like, a magical biopsy). His name everywhere and, interestingly, Voldemort’s. A few runes for malice. He felt like a failure.

“Have you got any questions?” Jafari asked briskly, having watched him examine the runes. Clearly, he had far too much faith in Harry.

“Uh, only… what’s going to happen?”

He flashed a smile. “Yes. We’ll imbue the runes with magic. Voldemort may too, if you’d like?” He glanced back at him.

“Yes.”

“Excellent.” Returning to Harry: “Some of the runes may manifest on your skin. They’ll fade within the day. And the effects of the curse will linger… well, no longer than a week.”

He suppressed a sigh. Another week of feeling like he was being hunted. “Alright,” he tried saying in a neutral tone.

And then they were moving away, setting focusing crystals in the air with strategic levitation spells. None of them were even looking at Harry right now. He slumped on himself, with his hands braced on the edge of the exam table.

“Right,” Wu said at last, when she’d hung the final crystal above him. “Ah, you might want to lie down. You’ll probably faint.”

“Brilliant.” He conjured a pillow for himself and lay back, feeling exposed.

The incantation was a melodic, chanted one, delivered by Wu as she lifted her wand straight up. The etched runes began to glow above him, casting the room in warm light. On the far side of the room, Voldemort and Jafari raised their own wands to infuse their magic. Voldemort’s magic on his soul felt like it always did, magnetic and enchanting. The Fiendfyre was his, Harry thought faintly as the stone clouds above him seemed to undulate. How peculiar. He’d always thought of Voldemort as cold – cool to the touch, with an angular body carved from granite. But the Fiendfyre somehow suited him too. He was lost in the pulsing light of the runes, and then he slipped under.

\\\\\\\ ////

He woke up drowning. Literally. It was the most possibly disorienting way to wake up, sputtering on dittany-infused bathwater as he slipped beneath its surface. _Goddammit_ that was unnerving. He clawed his way from the tub, pulling on a bathrobe. And then he stormed downstairs.

They were back in the safehouse, of course. The house was dark but Voldemort hadn’t been in the bedroom. If their fake sky was still synced with the real one, it was quite late. “Tempus.” _1:38_ , the numbers glowed before him. Huh. He crossed the kitchen to enter the basement.

The basement glowed with the eerie light of a Pensieve. Voldemort wasn’t in it properly, but was stirring the surface with his wand. He knew Harry was there without looking, as they did these days. “You were meant to sleep through the night.”

“In the _bath_?” he asked, scandalized.

“I would have tossed your body on the bed at some point.” He set his wand aside as Harry approached. “The healing went well. It was fascinating magic. I do very much appreciate your getting cursed so that I might have witnessed it,” he added sweetly.

“Wanker. I nearly drowned, by the way, and then there wouldn’t have been any point in it.” He stood across from Voldemort, the Pensieve between them. The shimmer made Voldemort’s complexion look a little bit divine. He couldn’t even pretend to be exasperated with him.

“Disrupting an unconscious person’s breathing is the quickest way to wake them,” Voldemort informed him. “There’s no spell that would’ve kept your head above water, anyway. You should probably get back in if you’re still scarred.”

Harry peeled open the bathrobe. If he hadn’t known the marks would be there, he wouldn’t have noticed them. “No, I’m fine. And I’m… okay,” he evaluated his own emotional state. “I feel a little hungover, but sometimes I do when I’ve been exposed to a lot of magic.”

“Mm.”

“Thank you,” Harry said, meeting his gaze deliberately. “You did a lot for me. You didn’t have to.”

Voldemort shrugged this off because he was bad at such things. “I even convinced the Unspeakables – and the Aurors, in the end – to open the wards long enough to take a Portkey back from the lab directly. The public reaction if I’d levitated your body through the Ministry would have been, undoubtedly, a spectacle worth seeing. But we’ve avoided it this time.”

He tried not to smile at the idea. “I should tell the Unspeakables thanks as well,” he said. “I didn’t this afternoon.”

“Really, it’s their responsibility.” Stepping in, he nodded to the Pensieve. “Do you want to join me in his memories? Just a bit, before bed.”

“Uh, maybe? What’s in them?”

He twirled his wand over the surface, until an image of birds in shadow rose in the liquid mist. “This is the most relevant moment yet,” he said. “Somehow, most of his mind is filled with other people’s memories. It’s not….” He lifted his gaze to the ceiling. “People go mad when they put other people’s memories in their minds. You know that mixing memories in the Pensieve causes them to congeal. And yet,” he indicated the smooth liquid between them. “The memories… we couldn’t place them; they’re very brief, often a wix alone in a remote location. Nothing identifiable in the setting or their features.”

The more he learned of this group, the less human they seemed. “Tonks said the memories may have been tampered with.”

“Really, it’s not a perfect explanation, but it’s the nearest possibility so far.” He suddenly looked tired. “Are you coming? There will be more to discuss afterward.”

He nodded. They bent low over the Pensieve.

 

They fell into a dense forest. It was deep in the night, and pitch black. Voldemort cast a light but made a noise of frustration. “Lumos doesn’t work properly in memories,” he explained. “It’s like holding a candle to a television set.” Nevertheless, it illuminated something of the scene, and they moved forward.

The leaves underfoot were still green and soft. They couldn't properly tell how cold it would be in the memory, but it took place in the milder months, at least. At a rustle in the bushes, Harry whirled around, wand out. Beside him, Voldemort made a noise of amusement.

“The only thing that will hurt you here is yourself, when you put your eye out with your wand.”

“Just let me be paranoid.”

The same sound again. A rustle, and then the grinding of stone. Harry stepped back.

The grass at his feet was being torn apart by a fissure in the earth, slow but deliberate. Voldemort had fallen to his knees beside it, casting everything he could think of on the space, but nearly everything fizzled out in this memory space. Thin light poured out of the fissure, and then it was blocked by… something. A jagged stone carving – and it _was_ a carving, the shape was deliberate yet incomprehensible – rose from the hole with an awful grinding. It wasn’t the only one – a circle of them, six in all, were jutting from the ground where they stood, in perhaps a fifteen foot diameter. Voldemort had moved to casting spells into the center of the circle now, that would sparkle as they faded. His face was impossibly tense.

Harry was watching the dark sky for the crows. They swooped in after a time, as silently as owls. Dozens of them. His breath caught. Voldemort was watching too, his hand on his wand even if he could do nothing with it.

They flock landed with the circle, poised as if waiting for something. They didn’t act anything like ordinary birds. There was a pulse beneath their feet, as though the birds had invoked an earthquake, and they were all shaken awake. At once they transformed into humans, as the attackers had, warping bit by bit, hunched over so their faces couldn’t be seen, but it looked like agony. They _moved_ as though in agony. On unsteady limbs, they stood. Their eyes were on the sky, as though waiting for something else. Harry and Voldemort followed their unfocused gazes.

“Good,” said someone right behind them.

They both had their wands up, without thinking. A figure draped in loose black robes, a hood over their face. _Her_ face, perhaps, but he’d them to speak again to say for certain. Their presence reminded him of nothing so much as a Dementor, cold and consuming.

The figure raised a wand and the ground shook again. Petrification spread rapidly inward from the stone columns, until all of the wretched humans were standing on a sort of dais. They straightened, imbued with some sort of magic. “Get the boy.” Another crack of the figure’s wand and they were all shrinking back into a flock of crows. The figure followed, swooping the great folds of their robe to become wings. They were quickly lost against the black sky. And then the memory peeled away from them in swirls.

The Pensieve wasn’t wet, but Harry found he had to mop off his face as he stepped back. Voldemort’s lips were thinned, his eyes a blaze. “What – “ Harry tried to ask.

“I don’t know.” His tone was perfectly clipped. “I need to see the Aurors.”

“It’s two in the morning.” Though honestly, _he_ wanted to see the Aurors too. They shouldn’t have done this overnight; they’d now have to sit with these questions until daybreak.

“I haven’t got – “ Voldemort was looking at his bookshelves. “I haven’t studied any arcana that could account for _that_. Granted, little Western magic could. _I_ haven’t got resources, but the bloody Ministry probably doesn’t either. Do you remember the names of the Namibian scholars Minerva brought yesterday?”

He said this all in a string. He was overwhelmed, or panicked, or exhausted. “We really can’t do anything until morning,” Harry said. “Here. Accio calming draughts.” Two of them, from the healers’ cache they’d left for Voldemort, landed neatly in Harry’s hands. “Auror protocol,” he said firmly. “You’ll need to take notes on what you saw, anyway. It will be important.”

“Merlin help us that you’re the collected one right now,” Voldemort muttered, slightly chagrined. He tossed back the calming draught; so did Harry. “You’re right.”

“Um, have you eaten since you got home?” he tried asking tactfully. “Can I put on coffee, at least?”

“Yes, you should – well, you _should_ be asleep, really. But no, I haven’t. I haven’t even looked at the remnants of Hogwarts – “

“Don’t.” Taking him by the elbow, Harry pulled him upstairs to the kitchen. It was funny – for as connected as they were, only one of them could fall apart at a time. Voldemort _had_ spent the past two days being the reasonable one.

So Harry put on coffee and pulled out a frying pan as Voldemort summoned parchment. “Dinner? Breakfast?”

“I really – Whatever you’d like,” he revised his answer, conjuring a quill with a twist of his fingers. “It will also be important what _you_ saw, you know.”

He had no idea what he’d seen. “Was that a woman?” he asked, taking out sausage and tomatoes. (Breakfast would make the morning come faster, he’d decided.)

“Mm. That was my impression as well. Though spells to disguise voices are even simpler than the ones to disguise appearances. I couldn’t – “ He lifted his gaze skyward, still flummoxed and frantic.

“Write it down,” Harry said. “And then we can watch it again, for anything we missed the first time.”

Instead Voldemort got up. “I can’t,” he muttered, and when Harry stared, he clarified: “I can’t wait until morning. I’m bringing the Aurors in. They get hazard pay for this, anyway.” He paced out, throwing open the front door. Harry dropped a few more sausages into the pan and then ran to put on real clothes.

 

Moody, Herzog, Kingsley, and Scrimgeour all looked grim when they arrived. “Coffee?” Harry offered. “Breakfast?”

“Do you want to view the memory again?” Voldemort asked, bypassing his questions. He barely slowed his stride through the kitchen to the basement stairs.

“Oh. Uh, I wouldn’t want to get in the way.” And he _really_ had nothing to contribute, Voldemort’s words notwithstanding. They all moved past him. Harry put on eggs and paced anxiously at the top of the stairs, coffee undrunk in his hand.

He could tell the instant they withdrew from the Pensieve, not twenty minutes later, by the low intensity of voices at once, primarily Herzog’s, as the group’s arcanist. Voldemort answering something defensively. Moody’s low growl. They climbed the stairs.

Harry had set food and coffee on the table, and was sitting anxiously when they emerged. Voldemort had levitated the Pensieve up, and made space for it on the table with an elegant gesture of his wand. Taking in the spread: “Harry. They’ll begin to believe I’ve kept you as a _houseboy_.” It was the first time tonight his face had lost any of its tension.

Harry shrugged. “Can I stay?” he asked of approximately all of them, not knowing who’d give him permission.

“Yes.” Moody. “Say nothing to anyone. Don’t even tell them that you can’t tell them.”

“Yes, sir.”

There was no air left in the room. They all sat down to work.

Herzog led the conversation. “The stone columns and the dais might function similarly to wards, which can effect magic over a group at once. I didn’t recognize the material – something igneous, but it seemed to have veins of ore of some sort…” He stirred the Pensieve until the columns came into focus. “Copper perhaps, or gold, I can’t tell in that light.” He wore his hair in braids, which he’d tug back from his face as he thought. “We need an alchemist. If it’s gold, that could further account for the transfiguration magic – but that’s only hypothetical, as I don’t know anyone who works on such magic. It wouldn’t be the sort that a laywix could stumble upon, certainly.” He looked to Voldemort. “Do you know any alchemists who’d use gold in wards?”

A cold smile. “I might have, once. I killed all of the alchemists with whom I consulted on the philosopher’s stone. They couldn’t live.”

None of them even flinched at this, somehow. Harry barely spluttered on his coffee; Voldemort flicked an amused glance at him. “Mm,” Herzog said, lips tight, as he thought.

“Those looks…” Moody mused. “I’ve only ever seen them before on Kissed wixes, and Inferi. Have they bled? Have we seen them bleed?”

“Yeah,” Harry recalled, to everyone’s surprise. “When one of them tried to apparate me… he splinched too. There was blood everywhere.”

“And the Inferi could never wield wands,” Voldemort added. “They could be compelled to speak, or relay messages, with the right necromancy, if they were physically able. But magic….” He shook his head. “I did try. I consulted with necromancers from across the world. Unless someone had constructed a conduit of some sort, and a source. Offering their own magic would kill them.”

They’d all gone quiet. Harry had known Voldemort had used Inferi in the first war (of course he would, of course he’d weaponize death itself). Moody and Scrimgeour, at least, would have fought them. He couldn’t save this conversation from whatever it had become, anyway. Moody was tense, and furious. “You are….”

“Useful,” Voldemort said. “I am useful. Yes.”

“Who was the witch?” Scrimgeour asked. His glasses had slid very far down his nose as he bent his head, listening, and he didn’t push them up now. “Well. Woman. In any case?”

“Was it?” Moody asked, doubtful.

He and Herzog said it might not be a woman; Voldemort and Scrimgeour (and Harry, if his opinion counted) believed it was. For all the difference that made: most of the known radical and revolutionary witches were 1) indifferent to Britain’s politics, 2) sympathetic to Voldemort’s ideas if anything, and 3) already mostly accounted for. Her accent was the accent of someone who’d lived a great many places: English-speaking, and nuanced, but not identifiable.

More notes, more fighting. Near dawn, the Aurors departed with promises to look into this on their end and report. Voldemort seemed pleased.

Harry slumped on the table as Voldemort did some cursory cleaning up for now. “You _are_ useful,” Harry mused. “What’d you do with the Inferi?”

Voldemort fairly stared. “Cannon fodder,” he answered, “is all they’re good for. We haven’t got the population to send out disposable bodies otherwise. It is its own mystery that this group seems able to.”

“Did Moody lose somebody to them, or something?”

“No real wix would die of non-magical wounds,” he scoffed. “Which is all they’re able to inflict. Moody is...” he waved his hand to indicate, “the way he is, on principle, is all. As though most of his medals and titles and accolades weren’t earned in fighting me.”

“Yes, well done,” Harry said with utmost sarcasm. “I wonder why he’s not more grateful.” Then, going more serious: “D’you want me to say something next time? You know, diplomatic. I couldn’t think of anything.”

“You are precious,” Voldemort sighed. “We’ve done all this without you for a month now, you know.”

“I do, and I still don’t believe it.” He was taking them both up to bed, and even though Voldemort should’ve protected that there was more work to be done, he didn’t.

“They need me to answer for their more shadowy inclinations. As you saw. It’s only surprising that I’m the first dark wizard they’ve brought on. You understand how… _negligent_ that is.”

“Maybe,” Harry said. “The Order had – has, maybe, a criminal contact too. He’s a thief, not a murderer.”

Voldemort looked at Harry strangely. “The Order has Snape,” he reminded him.

Oh. “I guess,” he agreed. “But they’ve been useful – and since Moody’s seen Dumbledore’s strategy work – he should want to, er, recruit – “

“Purist,” Voldemort supplied the word. “He’s a purist who will stand on principles that aren’t useful. Yes.”

A glare, across the bed this time because they were in the bedroom by now. “Moody never trusted Snape,” he said. “If the Order survives, he won’t be a part of it. But then… why would Moody work with _you_? A lot.”

A cold smile. “He really doesn’t want to. Having Scrimgeour as my _benefactor_ ,” he enunciated the word, careful and prickly, “has helped. And Moody, like everyone else, is still determining what his world will be without Dumbledore in it.” Clothes were sloughed; they both curled under the blankets. “What he does know – what Dumbledore apparently instilled in as many people as possible before his death – is that you are valuable.”

“I won’t kill you.”

Voldemort’s face went tense. “Don’t deign to ignore the prophecy,” he said harshly. “You can ask him if that’s what he intends for you. It may not be. You need to stay in his good graces as much as he needs to stay in yours.”

“I know.”

He huddled deeper beneath the blankets, close to sleep. “I assume he had much introspection to do,” he said, slightly muffled against the bedclothes, “when a filthy Death Eater could flawlessly live his life for a year. Or perhaps we all soften in old age.”

Harry hadn’t thought of this before, and winced. “Do all the Aurors end up so… I don’t know, cynical, broken?”

“All the effective ones.”

Slipping into sleep, Harry felt some abstracted gratitude that he’d given up on that life after all.

 

_Saturday, September 19._ They rose late in the morning. Voldemort was in touch with the Aurors through the red diary he normally shared with Scrimgeour. They’d reverse-engineered a bit of the wards on the stone dais, but nothing that answered any questions. And then surprisingly, Voldemort assigned Harry to the Pensieve as he himself began to work on the shards from Hogwarts.

“You stir memories in a figure eight,” he said, demonstrating with his wand. “I don’t expect you’ll find anything, but it will be significant in itself if you don’t. Do you know why?”

Oh, he was in a didactic mood. Well. “Because it will show that their memories were tampered with?”

“And?”

He looked at Voldemort, exasperated. “That’s not it?”

“Here is a hint. Severus was only included in meetings about matters that I wanted Dumbledore to know.”

“Oh,” he said. “And you think that memory was a plant.”

“If there aren’t others.”

It made sense. They worked in the basement, levitating a teapot between them. Voldemort was pulling out all his texts on Old English runes. At one point he said, with ill grace, “Whatever went wrong, it predates Dumbledore.”

“ _Ha_ ,” Harry said, to be obnoxious because that really wasn’t much of a triumph.

Voldemort looked up from his notes to flash him an exasperated look. “The significance of this,” he said precisely, “is that we may turn our speculation to accident, not _attack_.”

“Oh. Yeah. Though,” he glared back, “ _your_ curse is like fifty years old now, and still ruining people’s lives.”

“Forty,” Voldemort said. “And yes, it is.”

“Can’t you just tell me – look, nobody even knows about it anymore. Dumbledore’s dead. You’d feel really stupid if your curse killed _me_.”

His eyes glittered. Not with malice, but amusement. “I couldn’t tell you.”

The playfulness threw him off. “What? Should I blow you in exchange? That might be hard to explain to everyone else, but….”

“That is very kind of you, Harry,” he said, still delighted, “if predictable. No, I can’t tell you where the curse is located because I discarded that memory.”

He was so distracted and surprised, giving a short laugh, that he let his wand slip into the Pensieve. “Oh, bugger all – _Accio_. You’re joking. You _discarded_ it?”

“It’s a useful technique,” Voldemort said, somewhat defensive. “And particularly relevant in the moment.” He raised his non-eyebrows at the Pensieve. “I’ve extracted memories from Death Eaters, in the event that they’re captured. Sometimes they’ll be returned, but sometimes it is simpler that they’d never know what had been taken from them.” (This was true; he’d mentioned before that Wormtail no longer remembered the extent to which he’d cared for Voldemort before his return.) “I never made this known to the Aurors, but now I think I should have. It would have made them less attractive targets, when their heads were empty.”

“But your own…. Did you think it’d make you any safer, not to know where the curse is?”

His mouth curved. “I can only guess that it was out of spite.”

Harry shuddered. Still – it was tragic, in a way. “If Dumbledore had known – “

“Don’t,” Voldemort said. “He would have done the same. He is very utilitarian. Not swayed by pathos, except perhaps yours.”

Harry shook off the reference to Dumbledore in the present tense. Voldemort was as prone to making that mistake as any of them; it meant nothing. “If you did this out of spite, maybe I’ll die out of spite, too.”

“There are only so many times you can threaten me with your death,” Voldemort said lightly. “You might ask the Horcruces how they would do it. It’s after their time, of course, but they might have thoughts. It would be present in a ward or a keystone, somewhere on the grounds.”

“And if it’s a ward…?”

“Not the one that exploded, since it didn’t put you in danger. I haven’t told the Aurors. I don’t believe it’s relevant. You may, if you’d like.”

One more item on his list to keep Voldemort and the world safe from one another. “Where would _you_ put it, then?”

He chewed his thin lips. “The question embedded in that is, would I have preferred prestige or security, at that time? If it’s the latter, then I embed the spell in any of the tens of thousands of flagstones. If it’s the former – Slytherin’s chamber, the room of requirement, one of the secret passages. You understand.”

“Yeah,” he said in a sigh. Then, with some hesitation because he didn’t know that it’d be appreciated: “Dumbledore described you as a magpie.”

“How?” His tone was abrupt and harsh.

“Uh. The Horcruxes. That they’re all… I dunno, significant.”

“Ah.” Voldemort softened. (What _had_ he thought that meant?) “I suppose I am, then. Granted, the Horcruces were created when I was younger. A youthful indiscretion,” he said, to watch Harry squirm. “It’s only September,” he said easily. “Put this a bit farther down on your list of hero’s quests.”

“Right,” Harry sighed, picking up his wand once more.

 

They worked in the quiet. Neither of them found anything else. That there were no similar memories in the Pensieve made Voldemort a grim sort of satisfied. He wrote very intense, insistent notes in his diary.

“You can’t go to Cornwall,” he said when they broke for dinner, taking fruit and cheese into their fake garden at Harry’ insistence because the basement had stifled him. He swore he’d go flying when he was back.

Anyway, he hated hearing this, expected as it was. “You don’t think it’s safe? With you, and as many Aurors as there are.” He popped the cork from a bottle of wine.

“The area is warded,” Voldemort conceded, “but so is the Ministry. Obviously. Whatever creature magic is involved seems to be able to bypass standard wards.”

He meant more that Voldemort would fight to save him, and he would win. It was an academic point by now, anyway. Depressed by this, he drank deeply as he thought. “If we shouldn’t be kept apart for this long, though – if Moody doesn’t actually want my soul to crack – “

“ _Crack_?” Voldemort said, amused.

“Piss off. With the Unspeakables, it looked like cracks all along the surface. _Anyway_ , if we can’t be together and we can’t be apart….”

“Yes.” Tipping his head back, he gazed into their fake sky. “Contact in sleep has probably helped.”

“He can’t know that.”

“Well, no.” He started over: “Cornwall would be a foolish option not just because we’d be in public together, but we’d be together at a designated, known time and location. If these people have _any_ strategy, they’ve probably already been monitoring the site – “

“Should _you_ be there?” Harry interrupted. “You should cast at a different anchor. One they don’t know about.”

His smile was a bit indulgent. “They won’t kill me,” he promised. “You _have_ articulated an interesting dilemma, however. We may not be together and we may not be apart. Could we ever?”

“I don’t need your poetics,” Harry said. “I just need…. “ Nothing came to mind. Nothing he could put words to, anyway.

 “Alastor doesn’t intend to let you fall apart,” Voldemort said. “And neither do I.”

It was not a lot for a promise, and yet somehow it meant everything to him. The tightness in his chest loosened the slightest bit.

 

_Sunday, September 20._ The following morning, Moody came with Herzog and Kingsley. There was no mention of him going to Cornwall with them, and he wondered if Voldemort had written to Moody that he’d already shut that idea down.  Voldemort had woken him with a blowjob, though, and pressed warm pliant magic into his soul afterward, so he could hold off his residual panic today.

The Aurors did not give them a moment alone before Harry left, because they just weren’t _that_ romantic or accommodating.  So when Harry took the Portkey from Moody and stepped outside to activate it, Voldemort followed. “You look _tragic_ ,” he pronounced (in English, unusual for them, but it was then for the witness of the Aurors still in earshot). “Nobody is dying. I will see you again within the month.”

“Will you?” Harry challenged. It went exactly against their vows that they should expect to see one another at all.

Voldemort sighed, infinitely put upon. Twitching the Portkey open with a twist of his fingers, he said (loudly, much too loudly), “This is why I no longer work with teenagers. So melodramatic.”

And when Harry was busy choking on embarrassment, Voldemort pulled him close. Their lips brushed but they weren’t kissing; he was murmuring in Parseltongue: “Ask the Horcruces what happened. It is imperative. You’re safe for the moment, but….” He stopped, started again. “I swear to you, we’ll both survive.” They were promising one another this more often these days.

Harry did kiss him then, because there was no time for words. And then the Portkey pulled him away.

\\\\\\\ ////

He landed breathless, before the Ministry’s Floos. On to Hogwarts. Tumbling out into the headmaster’s office because he would never be good at these things – He hit a solid mass of black fabric. Oh shit.

Snape was untangling their limbs, with fury and disgust. “You are a disgrace,” he hissed, pushing Harry a good distance away to get his bearings.

Had the Floo begun to recognize Snape’s office as “the headmaster’s office” now? Technically it was. But no – when he set his glasses right on his nose, they were in Dumbledore’s office. And Dumbledore himself was in a frame above the Floo, hence Snape’s unfortunate position. He watched all of this unfold with good humor.

“Good morning, Professor,” Harry said to Dumbledore. To Snape: “Uh, sorry. Pretend I was never here.”

“That I would be so fortunate.”

“Severus,” Dumbledore clucked. “Harry, I have a few matters that require your input. Would you be available this afternoon?”

His stomach twisted. “There are other people who know more than I do – “ he began to deflect.

“Oh, certainly. I am caught up on official matters, thanks to additional portraits in the Wizengamot and recent access to the papers.” He gestured to a small, fresh painting of a stack of newspapers, apparently charmed to actually contain each day’s edition. “I have rather small and more subjective issues for you.”

It probably wasn’t good news. He couldn’t say no. “Yes, sir. This afternoon…?”

“Any time that suits you,” he said serenely. “One of the unexpected pleasures of death is how much more free my schedule is now.”

He grinned. “Yes, sir.” He moved to go. He should’ve said something to Snape, but it seemed that they’d both prefer he didn’t.

Brightbone was waiting outside his corridor when he arrived. “Good,” she said, stepping aside so Abzu could admit him. “We haven’t decided upon the security measures you’ll need now. Don’t do anything rash, in the meantime.”

“Can I go flying?” he asked, with some desperation. Her expression indicated how unnecessarily frivolous this was. “I haven’t been outside since Wednesday,” he said, sincere because he couldn’t be strategic. “I feel like I can’t breathe when I’m confined underground. I grew up in a cupboard,” he reminded her, because _claustrophobia_ was such a large and clinical and unpleasant word, but this conveyed the same idea.

Oh. Apparently this wasn’t a reminder, but new information to her. “ _What_?”

“I’ll stay near the turrets,” he promised quickly, to divert her. “And I’ll summon you if anything goes wrong.”

“Go,” she said, at last. Her teeth might have been a little clenched. “But you don’t seem to respect how much your life is worth.”

He really, really didn’t. If he could waive the _security detail_ and just take his chance at dying, he would. “Thanks, ma’am.” He ran to his suite.

This did take on the feeling of being the most critical thing. Panic still welled in his chest, it would all week, but he didn’t want to summon the Horcruxes yet for their magic. He needed to clear his head first.

Glorious, glorious flying. It made him feel like himself in a way nothing else did. He did stay by the turrets for awhile, but when flying loops around them grew old, he drifted over to the pitch.

Familiar red and gold uniforms. He grinned, and flew over.

Ginny was running practice with brisk efficiency, currently demonstrating how a slight roll at the end of a burst of flying gave them just a bit more power – “Potter will show you,” she said cheerfully when she saw him hovering at the edge of the pitch. It was not a great idea generally to surprise students on broomsticks, and a few of them twisted alarmingly on their brooms to see that he’d really joined them. “Singh,” Ginny snapped at a fourth year boy, “I told you, if you can’t put your legs properly, I’m going to cast a sticking spell – ! Here, Harry,” she said in the midst of this, pulling a snitch from her pocket. “If you don’t mind?”

“No, of course not.” He was elated. It was a maneuver he’d done a hundred times before, anyway. Ginny flung the snitch into the air and Harry sped after it.

This consumed their practice, as the rest of the team drilled on the last twist at the end of their sprints, with Harry and Ginny circling to correct them. In an uneventful moment, she drifted close to him. “Our Seeker’s still not cleared for flying,” she said, quite casual. “We hadn’t lined up a reserve. If I convince McGonagall to just have you on for the friendly this week…?”

“Yes. God, yes.” His heart swelled. “I mean, I’d rather the seeker recovers of course – who is it?” he asked with guilt. He hadn’t been properly briefed on the explosion at Hogwarts yet.

“Sixth year. Juniper Ellis?” He shook his head; she wasn’t in advanced DADA, anyway. “Lavender says they’ll all be fine,” Ginny said, seeing that she was the first to deliver this news. “It affected the players the most, we were all holding practice that night…. Most everyone will be out by tomorrow,” she said. “But Lav said no _excitement_ for another week.”

“Did you see anything…?”

“That night, I was already out here, setting up. I’ve heard _you_ know something,” she said, raising her fiery eyebrows.

“Maybe,” he said, doubtful. “I was at the Ministry to keep Voldemort from killing anyone and to keep them from killing him. I wasn’t there for, like, expertise.”

Her face had gone dark. “Hermione’s really angry with you.”

“She’s right, as always. But,” he made a useless gesture. “It’s not just personal. All of his vows are sworn on me. Everything would fall apart if…. I know it’s sick,” he added, at her expression. “But he can’t swear on his own life, directly.”

After a moment Ginny shook this off. “Don’t tell me,” she said. “Tell _her_.” And she inclined her chin toward the stands.

“ _Oh_.” He hadn’t looked that far down. Ron, Hermione, Luna, Hagrid. A few others he couldn’t make out. “I will, yeah,” he promised. “But for now…?”” He looked back to the Quidditch team, who’d mostly gotten bored with the sprinting drill.

Ginny grimaced. Projecting her voice: “Look, I know it always feels a bit sad to kick Hufflepuff’s arse,” she addressed the team. “But if you think that’s reason not to practice….”

On it went, until they broke for lunch. Before going to the locker room, Harry flew into the stands, landing neatly beside Ron and Hermione. “Hi,” he said, tugging his goggles into his hair. His glasses fogged instantly with sweat when he dropped them on his face, and he grimaced. “Ugh, you don’t want to touch me right now,” he said. Unnecessary because Hermione hardly looked like she was about to hug him. “I got back this morning – we should talk – “

“What did he do to you?” Her tone was low and angry.

It took him a moment to process this question. “Nothing. I mean… what? Why?” He’d take her accusations but he didn’t understand them yet.

“The papers said you were with healers for days. That photo – and the way he dragged you out of the Ministry that day – you looked _cursed_ ,” Hermione said fiercely.

It was wrong to laugh, but he did, shortly. Hermione’s nostrils flared and Ron’s eyes went wide at Harry’s apparent recklessness. “I _was_ cursed,” he informed them. “The papers didn’t really deserve an explanation. But you do. But unless you’d want to hear me out in the showers…..” It was still very warm out, and he felt as though he could wring sweat from his uniform. “Meet you in the great hall for lunch?”

“Yeah,” Ron said, before Hermione could. He wasn’t practiced at mediating between them, and looked nervous at the prospect now. “Mate, we’ve been worried, is all.”

“That is not _all_ ,” Hermione said. The look Ron gave her was one he’d recognize on himself, when Voldemort was irascible. What a terrible comparison. He went to shower.

He arrived to lunch late-ish, but not so late that he missed the students entirely. News of his return was heralded with a low buzz as he took his seat at the head table. Brilliant.

Actually, he was so nervous that he hadn’t properly taken in the great hall – _God_. The ruined tables had been cleared away. ( _Originals_ , Voldemort had said, as though it pained his deadened heart.) In their place were dozens of round tables, with students imperfectly sitting where each of the house tables once stood. “We were taking meals in the common rooms,” Ron said, taking a seat beside him. “But everyone thought it was depressing. After the Aurors had cleared out the, er, debris by last night, there was no reason not to eat here again. These tables were in storage,” he said. “Spiro’s looking into commissioning new house tables.”

“They were original,” Harry said, as though Voldemort’s grief were his own.

Hermione, taking a seat on the other side of Ron, faintly jerked at this. “You’re joking.”

“I wish I were.” He looked out over the students. “This isn’t bad, though,” he said tentatively. “They don’t mind?”

Ron and Hermione considered how to phrase it. “Everyone’s a bit distracted by… everything else,” Ron said. “They’re not scared any longer, so they’re starting to get angry. But – “ pulling a dish toward himself, he nodded to Harry. “Tell us what you’ve heard, and we’ll tell you what you’ve missed.”

Incredible diplomacy. He loved Ron in that moment. He draped a silencing charm around them (to his friends’ mild surprise. He realized after that he’d done it wandlessly, as suited him recently). So, beginning with the attack on the Ministry – “I was cursed,” he said again. “A soul curse. It only showed up later that night. The Aurors still haven’t said _why_ – everything else they threw was physical, Hermione knows that – but this was a psychological attack. It caused, um, panic attacks, and paranoia, and depression.” It shouldn’t be embarrassing to say all of this. It was. “Voldemort would be at the Ministry anyway, so he brought me to the Unspeakables to have it removed. It was just… awful,” he said bluntly, because those feelings would still dwell too close to his heart. Depression was just going to be a frequent visitor this year. “I wouldn’t have known what to do without him. I wouldn’t have even recognized a soul curse on my own. I thought it was just – the way things were going to feel. His magic helped too, a lot. So that – what you saw,” he said, trying not to sound defensive either on his own behalf or on Voldemort’s, “I fell asleep in a meeting because I’d had about six calming draughts that day. We were sitting together to let his magic diffuse into mine. I was,” he shook his head, “maybe I still am, a disaster.” He’d take baobab upon waking up now, not just before bed as he’d done before. The healers said he could, as long as it helped.

Ron was concerned. Hermione was a tangle of unhappy emotions. “He looked like he was dragging your _corpse_ around,” she said, and her tone would have been harsh if it hadn’t cracked in the middle.

Without thinking, because he could really be quite awful sometimes, he said, “That’s quite funny then, because I wanted to die.”

They both reacted with appropriate horror. “Harry…” Ron said, reaching for him and then pulling back.

He _was_ defensive about Voldemort, not in general but in this moment, that he’d be accused of hurting Harry in exactly the circumstances he’d saved him. It was the first time Harry didn’t want to split the difference, to keep peace with everyone and not particularly defend them to one another. “He was brilliant,” he went on, because it could hardly make this worse. “He was so good to me. Just… smart, and calm, and patient. It would be ungrateful to not say that. He gave me his magic,” he reiterated. “Do you know how generous that is?”

Grief, skepticism, doubt on both their faces. “You give him magic all the time,” Hermione pointed out quietly.

“When he needs it. But I’m, y’know, me.”

She was extremely uncharmed by this. “How _kind_ of him, to do a fraction for you what you’ve done for him. Are your expectations _so_ low?”

“Yours are.”

“Well, _yes_.” Her voice was acid. Ron was shrinking backwards as though they might start flinging hexes. “He wants you for something. He’ll turn on you when he needs to. You know what Dumbledore said.”

“The prophecy made us equals,” Harry said fiercely. He nearly added, _and he loves me_ , but it felt like far too much to offer them right now, that he wouldn’t hold out their heart and soul to be attacked in this moment. He tried instead: “And he’s done more for me than anyone, that I should become….” _Myself_. He didn’t have an elegant way to say it. The nearest thing he might say was, Voldemort shaped and guided him in the way other people might take for granted that their parents would. A coming of age. He hardly needed to hear Hermione’s response to _that_. “He’s not… _human_ ,” he conceded in a sigh, “and he’s quite broken, but he does….”

“He doesn’t love you,” Hermione said flatly, picking up all the strands of his poorly-expressed defense. “He doesn’t, Harry. He never will. He’s not able to.”

This hurt more than anything. Maybe he still sincerely feared it, maybe the paranoia still seized upon the possibility too fiercely. His chest hurt and his vision seemed to narrow, so his friends’ expressions were all he could see. “How do you prove something like that?” he asked with some desperation, because his defenses were useless. “Should he die for me, would you believe me then?” He took some satisfaction in the way they both reacted to that. “Because everything he’s already given up – it’s everything but his life. Dementors affect him now, in Azkaban, since our souls have grown together. We’ve both got soul damage from being apart.”

“Wasn’t that his decision?”

“Yes. For our safety.” Nevermind the Horcruxes at this moment.

She raised her eyebrows. “So he makes a vow that he knows will weaken you, and you think he’s done it out of _love_?”

He felt sick, and sad, and defeated. “You’ll never believe me,” he said, his voice rough, seeing no end to this conflict. “Everybody needs an inhuman figure to fear, and he’s Britain’s.” Voldemort had said it himself at one point. Harry had clung to it, for some reason. “I wish you trusted me about this, that _I’m_ not too broken to recognize love – Which is it, then?” he challenged her. “Am I needy or just stupid?”

It was a vicious question, he knew it was, but by the look on Hermione’s face, she thought something closer to the premise than he would’ve liked. “He built a regime on manipulating people,” she said. “More experienced people than you.” (Harry had a sudden recollection of Dumbledore’s words to Ginny in his second year: “Older and wiser wizards have been hoodwinked by Lord Voldemort.”) “And you’re more vulnerable to him than they ever were.”

“He’s more vulnerable to _me_ ,” Harry said, even though it felt like a secret that wasn’t his to share.

“No, he’s not.”

He was empty, and very alone. When had it become easier to keep peace with Voldemort than anyone else in his life. “Alright,” he said, deliberately as flat as her. “Then I sacrifice myself to save the world from him. You weren’t so angry when you thought I’d only have to die.”

“That’s a terrible thing to say,” she said in a near-whisper.

“Isn’t it,” he agreed. “What do you _want_ , Hermione. We’ve always been tied together by fate. We always will be. And,” he took a breath here, breaking his veneer of indifference for just a moment, “the prophecy still exists. He can swear on my life as his own because it _is_. I’m using our shared fate for good, and so is he.”

She made a noise of disgust. “You’re complicit in something terrible.”

He hadn’t said a word of Voldemort’s politics. He’d never defend them. He didn’t point this out, though. “I wish you’d trust me,” he said again. “But it doesn’t matter that you don’t.” He’d be the one to walk away this time. He had to attend to both the Horcruxes and Dumbledore this afternoon, anyway. Conjuring wax paper, he wrapped up some sandwiches. “You can find a way to live with this,” he said, “or you can not. I’m not leaving him. It’d tear our entire world apart. It would be reckless.” She didn’t answer him; he stood. “Ron, stay with Hermione. She’d be more alone than I’ll be.” He did not reiterate what he’d written – that partners support one another. It hung in the air anyway.

“Harry….” Ron’s voice was strangled. He felt he’d failed as a mediator, but he’d never had to be one before. “We can’t lose you.”

He bit back a hollow laugh because it was what he’d been insisting; it was what everyone around him was insisting for him. “That’s not what I want either,” he said. “Come find me when you want me back.” The silencing spell around them stretched and then snapped as he stood. He left, grateful that the great hall had cleared out enough that there were only a handful of students left to stare at him.

He barely made it to the dungeon corridor before he was fishing inside his robes for a calming draught. God, he still felt miserable. And there was little chance of getting the Horcruxes’ magic; they’d be annoying at having been locked away all week. The calming draught filled him with cheap, artificial feelings, but they were feelings nonetheless.

Once inside his suite, he cast the fire and made the Horcruxes manifest – diadem first, locket second. As expected, they were both restless and angry. “What did you _do_?” the locket asked as soon as he’d stepped from the fire. “Your soul is a wreck.”

“Oh. Yeah, it is. Um, I’ll trade you. I can tell you what happened at the Ministry, if you’ll tell me what happened at Hogwarts.”

“How would we know what happened here?” the diadem said, testy.

Oh god, he’d been relying on them to explain it. “The wards in the great hall exploded,” he said, moving to get a jar of kaval. He’d prefer to get drunk, but he had to get through the day slightly more functional than that. “Not behind the head table, though. Beneath – or maybe inside? – the house tables. If you don’t already know, Voldemort sent instructions for diagnosing the magic. The Ministry’s working on it, of course, but if you’re so connected to the castle, we thought….”

“Ah.” The diadem considered this. “The same day you left, then. Is that why you couldn’t return?”

“No. Kind of. Here.” He gestured them to the sofas, bringing the food and kaval with him. “I need to tell you about the Ministry.”

He did. He was too morose to eat, so he sipped kaval as he explained everything that had happened this past week. He should’ve been telling all of this to Ron and Hermione, but they hadn’t even gotten that far. He told them of the soul curse, and of all the Unspeakables’ work. He told them of the dead Death Eaters and the undead… whatever they were. Anonymous Animagi, congregating somewhere on the continent. He told them that the explosion at Hogwarts may well have been coordinated, except there were no unknown wixes to set it off, and Voldemort thought that trigger was older even than Dumbledore’s time as Headmaster. Both Horcruxes listened silently, strategically. At one point the diadem took a seat beside him to hand off magic, surprising him very much. He wondered what he’d be asked for in exchange for this luxury.

“So Voldemort wrote out instructions for searching the wards,” he concluded, summoning his bookbag to find that bit of parchment. “They’ve cleared away the tables, but he thought there’d still be traces, along the walls or the floor…. I’ve got to see Dumbledore later, and he’ll ask why I thought the wards were wrong to begin with. What do I tell him?”

The locket frowned. “Dumbledore?”

“His portrait,” Harry said, before he had to speak of his death. “It – He – is still around for, you know, guidance. A lot.” In some ways, Dumbledore was still Headmaster. He wondered if Snape wished the same.

“You need to take us along,” diadem-Riddle said, intense and serious. “We’ve got to know what he says.”

“Uhh….”

Eyeroll, anticipating his stupidity. “Take the artifacts,” he said. “It all amounts to the same.”

“If I do,” Harry said, in a moment of brilliance, “I need something in return.”

Riddle wasn’t amused. “Something more than saving your beloved castle?”

“It’s _your_ beloved castle even more than it’s mine,” Harry countered. Stony expressions. “And yes. While you’re looking at the wards – can you look for the one that cursed the Defense post? He, ah, discarded all his memories about it, otherwise he would’ve told me where it was.” Slightly overstating it, but no matter.

The diadem smiled faintly but charmingly. “Of course.”

“I bloody mean it.” Charm was only ever duplicity on Riddle. “If _I_ die because of this curse….”

“A tragedy, yes.” The diadem flashed his teeth, sardonic and predatory now, but somehow a more authentic expression on him. “You’re asking for quite unlikely speculation. At the time of my creation, I’d only barely begun to consider how runes or keystones could hold such magic. The locket,” he looked over at him, “might have more interesting ideas on the gestures of vengeance generally, having so recently been denied the post.”

“Idle daydreams,” the locket didn’t reassure him. “Perhaps we _should_ accompany you manifest, to examine the wards in Dumbledore’s office.”

He felt a bit sick at the idea. “No,” he said. “I’ve seen, um, the memory. Of the second time he wouldn’t give you the post. There was no time to plant anything.” _Was there_? Dumbledore had turned his back on Voldemort to pour wine, he thought he recalled. He’d watched his actions rather microscopically in the memory, however. “I wouldn’t care, I just don’t know – if the portraits see like we do. Or if they could see through disillusionment spells or the cloak.” He’d at one time been relieved that the portrait couldn’t use Legilimency like the man himself could, but even doubts about that had fomented.

The locket didn’t feel strongly about this, and shrugged. “Take the artifacts, then,” he agreed.

Harry didn’t realize until he was pulling them from the fire how deftly they’d ‘compromised’ into exactly what they’d wanted anyway. Wankers.

There was no reason to put off the meeting. If he went now, it’d displace all his anxiety and paranoia for a bit. It’d give him a larger block of time to be anxious and paranoid this afternoon instead. His smile was rueful.

Snape was gone by the time Harry arrived, thank god. Albus had shaken out one of the painted newspapers and was perched in the corner of his frame. “Good afternoon, sir,” Harry said. He took the seat behind his desk, as he always had. He wished desperately for the real Dumbledore to be seated on the other side.

“Quite an eventful week,” Dumbledore said, tucking the paper behind the frame. “Particularly, it seems, for you.”

He offered a wan smile. “I wouldn’t believe it if I _weren’t_ caught up in everything,” he said.

“Oh, not _everything_ , no.” Pause. “Were you aware that I’ve also got portraits hung in the Ministry?” he asked. “There is one in the Wizengamot, and another for accolades in the Magical Artifacts department.”

He hadn’t specifically known, but – “That makes sense.”

“Good. I’d ask you, then, to disregard the possibility of anything I might have overheard, and tell me rather exhaustively of your tribulations since Wednesday.”

It sounded, well, exhausting. He’d told the Aurors, he’d told – bits, at least – to Ron and Hermione. “I wish you could just Legilimency it from me,” he admitted.

“Stories are as significant as facts,” Dumbledore said. “ _I_ regret far more that I couldn’t summon you tea and biscuits while you regaled me with yours. Would you do me the favor of fetching them yourself? Just tap your wand twice at the desk’s corner; the elves are quite good about it.”

Charmed, he did. He’d walked away from lunch, anyway, so this was welcome. “Right,” he said, picking up a ladyfinger. “So Wednesday – “

His story was exhaustive but for the sex scenes. He didn’t even know if Dumbledore had intended that he recount the bits that didn’t take place in the Ministry, but – Well. He found it important to name how _good_ Voldemort had been to him, in the midst of crisis. Anyway, Dumbledore, like Hermione, would have seen the photo of Harry asleep on Voldemort’s shoulder, and also like Hermione, would probably have drawn a great many conclusions from it.

Well, that was the other thing he left out, his fight with Hermione. No need to trouble Dumbledore with his personal problems. He assumed the hardships of an eighteen year old sounded small enough to him already. Instead he concluded with: “And when I left, he said I’d see him again within the month. Now… I haven’t had a chance to look at the wards again in the great hall. But I suppose it’s too late for that, anyway.”

Dumbledore’s glasses slipped up his face as he tilted his head back to think. “You haven’t mentioned his thoughts on Hogwarts,” he said. “As you know, he’s of founder’s blood. The castle always reacted differently to him, even when he was a student. If I’d realized the implications earlier….” At last, he raised his withered hand (why had that been painted in? It had killed him. Harry was suddenly angry), saying serenely, “No matter now. I assume he has got theories. Whether he’s shared them with you.”

“He said the affected wards were old,” Harry said, getting a grip on himself. “Older than you. Or, er, when you’d begun doing the wards yourself. He’s told the Aurors that he thinks it’s nearer to a… a mistake than an attack.”

“A mistake,” Dumbledore mused. “Certainly. If that is credible, it must have come as an immense relief to everyone.”

“It might have been, but nobody really believed it.”

“Believed _him_?” he suggested gently.

Harry shrugged. “Maybe,” he said. “They all – including Voldemort – find it unlikely that it was only a coincidence.”

“Hm.” His hum was neither in agreement or disagreement.

A silence elapsed. Finally Harry asked, tentatively, “Did you ever see anything wrong in the wards? Or… feel it, I guess.”

A faint smile. “Dear boy. This is not your burden. As many… mysteries as you’ve solved, let this not be another.”

“Oh, no, I don’t think I can solve it,” he said honestly. “But for Voldemort, you know. He might. And if I’ve got to pass messages between you – I can.”

“Indeed?” Albus’s eyebrows disappeared beneath his hair. ( _A good Occlumens only displays the emotion you were meant to see_ , Voldemort’s voice rang in the back of his mind.) “Surely that would be impeded by the vow, with all your contact regulated – and apparently in most cases, forbidden entirely – by the Order?”

A deceptively innocent question. He could say he’d forgotten. He’d never entrust Dumbledore with his secrets, the Horcruxes or the way his mind was entangled with Voldemort’s, by now. “Moody was, um, angry that I didn’t tell him how much it hurt, being apart.” He didn’t believe he could disarm Dumbledore with earnestness like some people, but he did want to share this. “It’s caused soul damage. Not permanently. So, he… he and Voldemort fought, and they’ll decide something else, I think. It was important to Moody that I didn’t think he was being _cruel_.”

This was a successful redirection, that intrigued Dumbledore apparently. “Alastor is good,” he said, “even as often as we disagreed on what that entailed.”

“I know,” Harry said, faintly surprised he’d be compelled to defend him.

Dumbledore didn’t offer further justification; he really didn’t need to. “Voldemort and I are both present in the Ministry often that we could certainly arrange a rendezvous directly. Your care and diligence, however, do not go unnoticed.”

He shrugged. “I don’t think I can keep everyone safe from one another forever,” he said. “But, you know, I’d try.”

Dumbledore offered him another smile. “That is a tremendously disproportionate responsibility for one so young as yourself,” he said gently. His smile faded. “A great many people have accused me of robbing you of your childhood,” he said, softer. “I’m afraid I can’t fully defend against this accusation. Harry – the moment has passed, and you are fully embroiled in a number of matters meant for much older wixes already, but – do not be overly eager to shed the vestiges of childhood. Whatever you find worthwhile, that is.”

His breath caught. “Sir?”

“It seems, to me, tragic how extraneous some people find the value of friendship and less… structured relationships than romantic ones. The aspirations of marriage, cohabitation, and family are both noble and entirely non-compulsory.”

He marveled, as usual, at what Dumbledore knew. “He asked me to marry him so I could keep his body when they kill them.” It had nearly stopped hurting to think of this.

“I am aware,” Dumbledore said. ( _Was he_?) “That was not, however, where I am gesturing. We live extraordinarily long lives, and it always seemed such a shame how many wixes believed that such things as friendship and frivolity are child’s play, to be left behind in the corridors of Hogwarts.”

Oh. “If this is about Hermione – “

“It is,” Dumbledore said, beaming at him as though he’d figured out a tricky puzzle.

“ _She’s_ giving up on _me_. There’s nothing I can say – we’ve already fought twice,” he said, and it felt like a supremely embarrassing admission, “and anything I say, she just twists it against me. I don’t even – I don’t defend him, you know, his politics. And I never wanted to choose between them. I thought I could avoid it – I had for _such_ a long time.” The Order had known about their relationship since January. They’d mostly only insisted that they couldn’t _lose_ Harry. It was generous. “But _he_ doesn’t make ultimatums. All I want… well, is to belong to everyone.”

He let a respectful moment of silence pass. Then: “That is quite astute.”

( _Astute?_ he wondered. It was his own sodding head. No particularly difficult insights there.) He shook it off. “If you want to say anything, sir – and really, you haven’t got to – but you should be saying it to her.”

“Ah, Harry, when have I ever attempted to mediate your relationships?”

“Professor Snape,” Harry answered promptly.

A quiver of his mustache. “Extraordinary circumstances,” he assured him. “Ms. Granger arrived back here from St. Mungo’s significantly distressed, and asked that I should have a word with you. As we were overdue for quite a few words anyway….”

He shoved his frustration deep down. “We….” He shook his head, embarrassed though _he_ hadn’t been the one to ask Dumbledore to intervene in this. “You deserve to spend your time working on… not this,” he muttered. “You would’ve gone mad as headmaster if you’d gotten bogged in students’ relationships.”

“Indeed,” he said, with great amusement. “But then we are at odds, are we not? I thought we should dedicate our time to the circumstances you might be most able to affect. Yet you draw our attention toward the larger and more nebulous ones, that lie beyond your influence or responsibility.

“Can’t you just tell me what to do?” he asked. “Voldemort did. He had ideas for, mm, diagnosing the wards. I’ll look at them soon.”

A searching look. “You know that you are distracting yourself.”

“Yes,” he said, massively relieved. “That’s exactly it.” From Voldemort and the Ministry’s treatment of him; from his friends; from the seeming impossibility of both attacks.

“I expect the Horcruces are also eager to ascertain the problem.”

His eyes snapped up. “Uh, sir?” If he was caught…. The Horcruxes burned bright on his skin, not with any emotions he recognized.

Dumbledore clucked. “There was no point at all in Occlumency lessons if your countenance does _that_ , dear boy. I lived with a Horcrux as well, you may recall.” Raising his withered hand, he twisted the signet ring around his middle finger. (Painting the Horcrux into his portrait was more gruesome than painting in in his cursed hand, Harry thought fiercely.) “I have at least some sense of how lively they may be. I would fully believe that his Horcrux – that is, _your_ Horcrux – led you to some intuitions about the castle’s wards, and the additional assistance of the diadem and locket may well clarify them. It remains, however, the Aurors’ responsibility to investigate, and not yours,” he added firmly.

“Yes, sir.” He spun the shrunken diadem on his middle finger, where he also wore it. It raised a question he’d never been able to ask before: “Why did you let it kill you?”

“Is that what you believe?” Dumbledore asked carefully. He wasn’t angry or offended, though Harry had assumed it was an offensive question.

“It’s what _he_ believes,” Harry said. “I asked once – he said that you would’ve expected the sort of curses he’d put on it, and the build-up of stray magic on its surface.” He swallowed. “He said you shouldn’t have died.”

“This doesn’t reflect his personal wishes, I’m sure.”

“We don’t talk about you,” Harry said. “Or about Snape, now. It is easiest.”

Dumbledore’s hands were out of the frame by now, concealing the signet ring. “There is an answer to your question,” he said. “One that you will both find intriguing, and perhaps even satisfying.”

“You want him to know, too?”

“There will come a time, I believe, when I can offer this explanation to you jointly. It would be the proper manner in which to receive it. It seems quite a ways off, however.”

If it were another matter, Harry would’ve insisted that Dumbledore tell him just one thing plainly, in his entire life. But it seemed churlish to demand details of his death. He sighed minutely. “We’re all still sort of… directionless, you know.”

“You are not,” Dumbledore admonished. “The strides made in the past year – it’s more than some wixes see elapse in a lifetime.”

“Well. Maybe. But…” He didn’t want to sound as though he were complaining. “The Order’s going to be different because Moody’s not you, sir. He’s brilliant,” he added hastily, “but he… hasn’t got so many fingers in so many pies?” He said it in a rush, because nothing more appropriate came to mind.

Dumbledore was _delighted_ by this, luckily. With a chortle, “Many times I felt as though I were facing the dilemma of having far more pies than fingers. The Order is still involved in a great many things, I assure you. Of course its focus shall shift with the new political circumstances. And there are any number of reasons why you aren’t involved in some plans; foremost being because nobody is involved in every one.”

Dumbledore did him the favor of not calling him _compromised,_ though obviously he was. “He said he’d take it on full time when – _if_ , I guess – Voldemort becomes Minister. Now – I dunno, it just seems quieter than it should. Same with Hogwarts, that… Snape isn’t you, either. It,” he took a breath, “it feels like the castle is all still grieving. It – we _should_ ,” he said fiercely, “but it feels like we’ll all be caught wrong-footed if something’s gone wrong. And now something has.”

“Harry, Harry.” His tone was soft and sad. He’d never spoken to Dumbledore like this before, as… not quite a colleague, but as someone who took his thoughts into consideration. Voldemort’s attention had made him bold, he thought. “The castle _is_ grieving. Severus most of all, perhaps. This would have always been a year of transition, and everyone’s commitment to the minimal disruption of students’ education is commendable. I am very proud of how much has already been accomplished. But then,” he added lightly, “the school will be at its healthiest when my approval is entirely irrelevant once more.”

Harry suddenly recalled, in a rather unlikely moment, the evening of telling Ron why the parents always died in fairy tales. “Yes, sir.” He was looking at his hands now, his uneven nails where he’d chewed them down in anxiety. “What I mean to say is, we all miss you. A lot.” And if Dumbledore had _chosen_ to die, for reasons he couldn’t even fathom…. He halted this train of thought, wanting to bash it straight from his head.

Dumbledore saw straight through this sentimentality, not answering in kind but instead: “My death served a great many purposes. You will, I hope, find at least a few of them admirable or compelling, when you learn of them.”

Harry _really_ needed to double-check that portraits couldn’t perform Legilimency. “Yes, sir,” he said again.

Dumbledore offered him a small, sad smile. “I _do_ apologize for taking your childhood,” he said. “And putting in its place this premature sense of responsibility for the very world.”

Harry looked up, ready to deny this – but that wasn’t right. “Voldemort did first,” he said. “Really, the _prophecy_ did first.”

“Yes,” Dumbledore said, looking faintly surprised Harry had reached this conclusion himself. “Do you put faith in such things, then? It would be extraordinarily simpler if you chose not to believe the prophecy.” He was sincerely curious now, not pedagogical.

“We’ve… got to, I think.” Here he was definitively stuck between his mentors: Dumbledore thought (or at least thought _he_ should think) of the prophecy as choice; Voldemort insisted on its truth, greater than human desire. “It will come true in an unlikely way, he said.”

“Hm.” His mouth went thin for a moment, but he didn’t pursue this. “I _have_ found a particular consolation in your prophecy recently. Have you?”

“Err…. That nothing _else_ can kill us but one another?”

Dumbledore was amused. “That the prophecy marks you as equals,” he said gently. “I have… as many other misgivings about your relationship as you might anticipate. But it is a relief, to me and much of the Order, that the prophecy ensures you’re not being exploited.” He said the word in an exhalation. “And if you don’t mind my saying so – I hope you are grateful for this as well. It is a mercy not found in any other relationship.”

He hardly needed to name Grindelwald to make his point. “I would, sir,” he said, “but I’ve never doubted it. We spend a lot of time in each other’s minds and souls,” he said, by way of explanation. “But… if it helps other people, then I’m glad of it.”

“Indeed.” Steady but saddened, he said, “I wish I could tell you that your piece in our confrontation were over. You’ve done so much, with such grace. If it were still my world, Harry, I would do everything to take these burdens from you. Now, I can merely hope that those around you feel similarly.”

Voldemort had sworn this as well, that he would relieve Harry of every responsibility that was killing him. He’d said it during sex, rather un-metaphorically, when Harry was tied up and falling apart, but of course he’d meant it more expansively. He was certain. But… if Dumbledore had meant Voldemort, he would have simply said it. In any case, he didn’t have any more words than he’d already used to explain that he wanted this place in their political realm. “Sir, I really don’t mind….”

“Ah, Harry,” Dumbledore said, speaking over him a bit, “imagine what a life we’d lead if we were born with all the wisdom and hindsight that we would ever accumulate.”

He was too young for this, was the implication. Harry cast his gaze to the arched ceiling for a moment, imploring the heavens he wasn’t making a mistake. “You haven’t got to _trust_ Voldemort’s mentorship,” he said. “But at least you should trust your own.”

This, too, was never how he’d spoken to Dumbledore. It transgressed everything their relationship had ever been. But after studying him for an extraordinary length of time: “I am so proud of you.”

Voldemort had also said this to him. It was also during sex. _We are all so proud of you_. It made his insides twist, but not in a bad way. “Thanks,” he said, his voice stickier than he’d like. He cleared his throat. “I swear I’m alright. It’s – He’s – It’s made me belong, in a way I haven’t before.”

“How fortuitous to end where we began,” Dumbledore said. “I would tell you only that certain types of belonging are not to be _grown out of_ , or replaced. And also that… I am happy for you, that you’ve reached this conclusion for yourself.” His voice had gone softer. He did seem sincere for a moment, not clever.

Harry’s response was a duck of his head, wondering when they’d become so candid and so sentimental with each other. Dumbledore was rising from his painted chair, striding through paintings as though to walk him out. He complied, going slowly so the portrait could keep up with him.

“Give him my best,” he said gravely before Harry reached the door.

He snorted. “He wouldn’t believe me.”

“Give the Horcruces my best, too.”

Did he know? He couldn’t know, the Horcruxes were only summoned with an arcane spell not published anywhere he’d seen. As Moody had said, though, temperamental objects weren’t unknown in this world. Loose and still candid, he pulled the locket from under his shirt. “And the diadem,” he said, holding up his hand on which it glittered. “They – it won’t be me to find disruptions in the castle’s magic.”

“Ah,” he said. “I thought the chain at your neck was not quite your aesthetic.”

“We’re all that keep him alive,” he said, struck by this for a moment. Dumbledore might not know of the fates of the other Horcruxes. “And only just.” Spinning the locket: “I think we’re donating them to Hogwarts after he reclaims, y’know, the soul bits.”

“We?” He understated the pronunciation.

“He. I dunno. We share a life now.” He was sharing this, he decided, because Dumbledore was the only person who wouldn’t be interrupting to _fight_ with him about it. He only observed and absorbed, for later deployment.

“Do you intend to make _him_ belong, too?” His question was quiet and sharp.

This stopped him short. “ _Intend_ to?” he mused. “No. It just… has happened that way, so far.” He didn’t know how to feel about the question.

“As I’ve said, it is imperative that you not be isolated.” (Oh. Harry needed him to clarify his vague, floaty suggestions more often. He’d have never gotten that on his own.) “He has never been anything but isolated, however, and….” He lifted his gaze, past the view in the frame, and finally shook his head. “You have indulged enough of my idle thoughts for the moment. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”

Nobody else quoted strange ( _Muggle_?) things at him like they both did. He didn’t mind them, and offered Dumbledore a fond look. “Yes, sir.” He let himself out.

He was swallowing a calming draught halfway down the revolving staircase. He was pulling off the Horcruxes when he reached the sloped hallway to the dungeon. They were… restless? Anxious? Something.

“Hithgalach,” he cast into the hearth as soon as he was alone. He dropped the Horcruxes in, stepping back so they could climb out. They were both alert, brisk, and uninterested in him.

“We’ve got to get back in,” the diadem said. “There was something – some corrupted magic – “ He looked to the locket, who gave a tiny nod.

“You – Really?” Harry asked, feelings stuck in his throat.

The diadem was cruelly amused at his reaction. “Are you a savior to the portraits now as well?” He was striding to Harry’s trunk, where he kept his cloak, as if Riddle himself owned it.

“That _portrait_ ,” Harry said testily, “has made my life better than you ever will. It’s also probably more alive than you are.” But he summoned his bookbag. “Here, Voldemort wrote out – You’ll need books,” he said, shaking out the parchment on arcana and runes. The locket was closer; he held it out.

Locket-Riddle didn’t take it. “Do you always find it so charming when he patronizes you?”

Harry glared. “You only know up through NEWTs-level runes,” he said decisively. “You want the same thing, anyway.”

Riddle took it without looking at it. “And we’ll be obligated to report back, then?” he asked in crisp disdain.

“Uh, unless you can fix it without him. Us.” He was passing him the cypress wand, and the Marauders’ Map.

“To have that work go unrecognized…” the locket clucked. “What a terrible indignity.”

“Just….” Harry gestured, too impatiently. “You need to go to the library. I need… not this,” he concluded, tired and sad and helpless.

The Horcruxes, adjacent to his soul as they were, felt all his feelings at least as acutely as Voldemort did. Unlike Voldemort, they did not feel particularly invested in keeping him from feeling too broken. The diadem flicked him a wry glance. “Should we get you off before going?”

“No,” he muttered.

Also being parts of his soul, they could tell his unvoiced desires. That this suggestion was not wholly unwelcome. Diadem-Riddle approached, pushing Harry onto the bed with reasonable gentleness. “Shall I croon all the infantilizing promises you adore?” he asked. “It’s alright, honey, we’ll make it _all_ better.” He took Harry’s wand long enough to spell his clothes off, leaving him in dark blue shorts. “What was it you liked – let us take _all_ your burdens from your huddled, broken form, dear Atlas.” Another flick of his wand, and Harry’s wrists were bound behind his back by glowing chains, the same Voldemort preferred to use on him. He was mildly impressed, even if this was still a mocking, antagonistic encounter.

“Stay out of my relationship with Dumbledore, too.” But he brought his ankles together, allowing Riddle to tie them and then draw them backwards, tilting him sideways to put him in a hogtie. The tension in his shoulders and across his chest, the corresponding tension in his thighs – all of it went right to his cock. And then Riddle bent low, pressing his tongue flat against one nipple, using the tip to flick one end of the barbell. Harry gasped.

“You stay here and don’t _overstimulate_ yourself.” He pronounced the word, careful and perfect. A magically-darkened cloth over his eyes, a soother in his mouth. He felt his wand dropped on the bed behind him, within reach if he needed it. The Horcruxes left.

He _was_ overstimulated. Not sexually – not yet – but in every other way. The relative sensory deprivation made his brain fuzzy, made his body perfectly sensitive. He could feel Voldemort’s magic pulsing alongside his own. It was a constant within him by now. It felt strong and safe. He relaxed into his bonds.

 

He couldn’t tell time, but it was some time later – his limbs were stiff from being held like this, and he was empty as though hungry. The buzz of the wards at his door, and then it opened. Since only the Horcruxes could get in – the wards were keyed to his magic, and it was all the same really – and since he didn’t hear a reaction of horror at finding him bound and blindfolded – it had to be them. He shifted to indicate he was near enough to awake.

The Horcruxes didn’t have footfalls unless they wanted to. They didn’t _breathe_ unless they wanted to. He tried spitting out the soother to speak, but Riddle had put a sticking spell or something similar on it. There was a weight (again, intentional, when they willed their bodies to be particularly solid) at the edge of the bed. “I’m alone.”

The locket. It wasn’t so much that their voices were different than their tones were. The locket was nearer to Harry’s age. He still spoke as though he were head boy. Respectable. Harry caught anti-social queerness, unrespectability, in the diadem’s tone occasionally. Certainly Voldemort had long since dropped the affectation of being – what? Upper class. Pureblood. A beacon to good society. And yet there he was, about to govern them all.

“He stayed out.” The locket sat near to him without actually touching him. “The fissures we felt are… extensive. Not critical. Not isolated to the headmaster’s office. They might be a product of – well, you know why wards would fail. Approximately.”

Harry cleared his throat in an impatient way, to indicate that he was still gagged.

Riddle pulled the soother from his mouth without comment. “But we also considered…. It’s an internal feeling, you see. It’s at least as located within the castle as in ourselves. So we thought these disruptions might be his. Or might be yours.”

“Let me up,” Harry muttered. It was absurd to just lie here, bound and nearly naked, as Riddle discussed the wards.

“Actually, I came to get you off. If you’d like.”

He said it in the same crisp and perfect tone. If not charming, at least solicitous. The helpful head boy, offering assistance. Borgin’s acquisitions boy, bringing Hepzibah flowers.

“I…. Why?”

“The process of elimination,” Riddle said. Harry snorted, and he could _feel_ the flush of – anger? in Riddle. God, he was becoming thoroughly enmeshed with Voldemort’s body and mind. “It will hold off some additional soul damage,” he went on. “We need you _functional_ this year.”

It would mean nothing. The diadem got him off sometimes, in early morning anxiety. But the locket was young, and a virgin. Harry spelled off the ropes himself, pulling the darkened cloth from his eyes. Sitting up, he looked seriously at Riddle. “I don’t want to be your first.”

Riddle’s face was impassive if not indifferent. “Fine,” he said, moving so Harry could kick out his cramped legs. “I’ll be going, then. You should be seen at dinner.”

He sighed, knowing he was right. “Yeah,” he agreed. “Uh, do you need…?” He didn’t know enough to even know what to offer.

Riddle saw how lost he was, too; his smile was not kind. “Your wand?” he suggested.

“Oh. Um, I guess.” All he needed to do tonight was prepare for class tomorrow. He handed it off.

“Thank you.” Quiet, serious, intense. Riddle spun on his heel as though he had somewhere very important to be.

 

Harry sat with Hagrid and Spiraea, the Herbology professor, at dinner. They merrily discussed the pumpkin patch, and didn’t expect Harry to chip in much. Hermione and Ron didn’t come to dinner at all.

The Horcruxes didn’t return until a scant few minutes before curfew, making Harry twitchy. He set the wards himself, so the Aurors would only have to close the last loop of them when they came by. Then: “Well?”

The locket was clearing off space on his coffee table to put a very large stack of books down; the diadem had just re-placed the cloak in his trunk. Moving quickly, the diadem pointed the cypress wand at Harry, not giving him time to grab his own. “Legilimens!”

He’d forgotten how it _hurt_ , when done without subtlety or consent. Riddle pulled forth every memory of themselves, of the wards, of letting the Horcruxes roam the castle, of getting away with it all because nobody else understood what a Horcrux _was_. “That was pathetic,” he pronounced, withdrawing from his mind. “And I’ve only just begun to learn Legilimency.”

The wrenching around of his mind gave him vertigo. He had to sit down rather hard on his bed before he hit the floor. “I can tell,” he said, though it was weaker than he’d like.

Riddle fixed him with an unamused look. “The more you know, the more you will be held accountable for knowing. And with the Aurors sniffing around you _anyway_ ….”

“If they were in my head much, you’d already be fucked. So would I.”

“Reckless,” Riddle said, not angry but just dismissive. “You’ve got enough problems to solve, haven’t you?”

Really, he did. But – “If you were in my position, would _you_ just allow yourself full run of the castle?”

“What an unnecessary question,” Riddle said, turning away from him. Harry shook his head, defeated. Wankers. But he had to prepare for class tomorrow, so he let it alone.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Allusions for Chapter 17:
> 
> “The scapegoat, then. Heap your sins on me, and I’ll carry them into the desert to die for you.” – A ritual in Leviticus 16, in which a community is cleansed of its sins when a priest ritualistically transfers them to a goat and releases it. Voldemort means here that he’s doing the dirty work the Ministry wants done but can’t legally do itself.
> 
> “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof” – Matthew 6:34.


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two Slytherins go missing, Hermione is still not speaking to Harry, and then an emergency at Malfoy Manor.

_Monday, September 21._ Classes the next day were strange and subdued. Charms in the morning, Potions after. Slughorn wouldn’t make eye contact with Harry. Lisa Turpin worked up the courage to ask Harry if he fought on “the Dark Lord’s” side now. (Technically yes, but not in the way she meant.) Phaedrus Quick asked if whatever malady afflicted him was contagious. (No, but wouldn't that be a feat of magic, a contagion that corrupted souls.) Luna, upon hearing he’d been treated by the Unspeakables, had a thousand Luna-esque questions.

“Is it true that they keep Fwoopers in the department?” she asked, her eyes bright. “Just for brainstorming. Dad says every brilliant idea is at least a bit mad.”

Harry found he didn’t particularly disagree. “Um, not in the office I saw. But – “ He was certain Luna would adore learning of the soul visualization process. He recounted it in a low tone as they brewed an invisibility potion together.

“You’re so lucky,” Luna sighed when he’d told her everything.

“Er… yeah,” he agreed.

“The Unspeakables are all Ravenclaws. Well, mostly. Perhaps that’s surprising.” (It wasn’t, at all.) “I’ve considered it, but… Dad needs me on the Quibbler very much right now. It’s an important time for journalism.” Before Harry could whole-heartedly agree – he’d taken to dropping his _Prophet_ in the great hall’s hearth after looking at it each morning – Luna added, “You know, with the vampire unrest recently.”

“The…. Right,” he said. Taking a leap of faith that this would go well, he offered: “Voldemort reads the Quibbler. The inter-world and quasi-human politics. He says it’s well-done.”

“It’s so nice to hear from readers,” she beamed. “We’d be happy to run a piece from him, if it passes editorial muster.”

“Maybe,” he agreed. “I actually wondered, though, have you got press credentials for the Ministry? We might be able….” The Quibbler was the only paper he hadn’t seen in the gaggle of journos last week, and it was at least printing less harmful rubbish than the Prophet.

But Luna’s expression had gone a bit dark. “Not anymore,” she said grimly. “Dad tried to get an interview with Scrimgeour about the Rotfang Conspiracy for _ages_. Finally Scrimgeour came to the house, after we’d run a front page story. Stormed right in, and told Dad he was banned for months. He said he didn’t have time for this. It was _crucial_ journalism, Harry,” she said, deadly serious.

Christ. It might be beyond him to get Luna a press pass, then. “So, uh, do you still think he’s a vampire?” he asked, aiming a little lighter.

She looked at him incredulously. “No, of course not,” she said with uncharacteristic impatience. “Aren’t you listening? We didn’t even invite him in. So we had _that_ to report the next week, at least.”

Luna was wonderful. “The next time I see Voldemort, I’ll tell him to write something for you,” he promised.

“Do you think he’d do an interview?”

He noted, feeling a bit in a fever dream, that Voldemort and Luna had now expressed mutual interest in meeting. “Maybe,” he said. Luna beamed at him.

 

He taught in the afternoon, the fifth years. They were quiet, unusually so, when he entered. It had been how everyone was today: subdued, nervous to be back in classes. Some of them were nervous around Harry in particular, which was fine. But this – well, he recognized the problem as soon as he took roll. “Archuleta?” He looked for Uli’s dark blonde bob. Missing. He hadn’t heard from her, and she wasn’t on the roster of injured students. “Avery,” (a fellow Slytherin, apparent friend of Uli’s as they often sat together) “do you know where Archuleta is?”

Edgar Avery was a pale, pointy boy who actually reminded him a bit of Riddle. The likeness set him on edge. Avery’s expression was closed and careful. “No, sir.”

_Oh_. Oh, shit. He _had_ heard the name Archuleta this past week. From Voldemort, who had told the Aurors that the last of the Death Eaters, Dunlop and Archuleta, had been among those killed in the attack. He had a Slytherin named Dunlop too, a second year girl. Shit.

There was nothing to be done with this information at the moment, or perhaps at all. He taught as though he were unmoved; but the Slytherins sat low in their seats.

 

_Thursday, September 24._ The week ground on. In his second year class on Thursday, Flavia Dunlop was missing as expected. Harry went to McGonagall that afternoon. “Why isn’t anyone _worried_ about them?” he demanded.

She looked over her glasses, in a way that she did only when very aggravated with him. “Of course we are.” Her tone was low and serious. “The Headmaster is involved. The Aurors are involved. The governors are involved. _You_ , Mr. Potter, need not be involved.”

He shrank. He was technically Minerva’s colleague now, but he’d never feel like it. “Are the Slytherins okay, though?”

“Clearly not.”

“I….” He dropped his gaze. “This is awful.”

“Yes,” she agreed, her voice losing just an infinitesimal amount of edge. “It is also out of your hands.”

“Yes, ma’am.” But already he knew he needed to get the Horcruxes out again.

So after dinner, he manifested the locket – the diadem was already out, with the wards. “Hi,” he said, rather unenthusiastically. “Um, Slytherins are going missing.”

Riddle arched his eyebrows. “Are you accusing me?” He seemed very unconcerned that Harry might be.

“No. You massive git.” Somehow he always found the locket more trying than the diadem. Maybe he had it in for Head Boys. “I was going to ask if you could do anything for them?”

“Hm.” He stepped around Harry. “Who’s gone missing?”

“Two girls. Fifth year and second. The daughters of – or, well, related to, I dunno how – two Death Eaters who got killed last week.”

“And you want them back?” He sounded very doubtful. “This isn’t the safest place for them, Harry. Just because Hogwarts has always been _your_ sanctuary….”

“That’s….” He sighed. “They can’t have just _disappeared._ All the entrances are watched. Including all the secret passages. And the Aurors wouldn’t be, like, smuggling them out.”

“What have you imagined their fate to be, then?”

“I don’t know,” he said, frustrated. “Just… if they’re in trouble, or in danger, I can’t….”

“How do the other houses react to the Slytherins now?” Riddle asked, apropos of nothing.

“I’m not accusing the other houses either,” Harry snapped. Riddle remained silent; Harry sighed. “I only see them all in class, really.” (He’d been skipping meals in the great hall because he and Hermione still hadn’t spoken, and he didn’t want to be so visibly alone.) “They’re just… quiet. But that might be about me, too.” His stomach twisted. “You think another house did this?” He recalled, rather unpleasantly, Fred and George trapping Montague in a cupboard for – what? Hours, days? The faculty hadn’t been overly concerned then, either.

“The diadem is out?” Riddle asked instead.

Harry made a noise of frustration, but he did answer. “Yeah. With the wards. He’s got the wand, but the cloak and map are….” Harry gestured to the chest where Riddle already stood.

He was pulling them out, his brow furrowed in thought. “Uh,” Harry said. “Where _are_ you going, exactly?”

“Either you accept my help or you don’t.”

This was aggravating, and he was already unsettled inside, so he reacted stronger than he might have otherwise. “I’ve given you so much freedom already, and I _really_ haven’t got to. I only want to know what you’re doing. For everyone’s safety.” He was pulling the invisibility cloak from Riddle’s hands now, angry and defensive.

Riddle’s look was bitterly cold. “You’ll find out when the time is right.”

He’d already heard that recently, from Dumbledore, who he liked a great deal more than Riddle anyway. He was bored of it. “Nevermind,” he muttered, moving toward the fireplace.

“Potter. Don’t.”

A hand on his shoulder, tight and painful. And then a deep, _stabbing_ pain in his core. He cried out, whipping around to shove Riddle off him, anything – It felt as though his soul had iced over, as though he couldn’t breathe. Riddle’s hands weren’t on his throat but they might as well have been. His eyes stung with tears, too badly to keep them open. “Don’t, don’t – “ Through a watery gaze he slammed his hands into Riddle’s chest. He was not corporeal enough for it to be very effective.

The pain and despair felt as though a Dementor was drawing out his soul. Riddle was pulling him down, letting him fall to his knees. The cloak was once more taken from him. He couldn’t stop the strangled cries in the back of his throat. They drowned out the sound of Riddle leaving.

If he were quick or capable, he would’ve dashed right after the shit. He wasn’t; he didn’t. He felt paralyzed for a very long time, making gasping and shuddering attempts to get a grip.

When he climbed to his feet, his first inclination was to yank the locket from the fire. But he couldn’t – _fuck_ the locket, but he had his cloak and map, that could be dropped anywhere in the castle (or beyond it? He _couldn’t_ have gotten out. He hoped) if he vanished. He was still shaky and unsteady on his feet. His fringe stuck to his forehead.

“ _Bastard_ ,” he swore through clenched teeth. He could… wait? There had to be better options. His evening need for kaval tugged at him, and he opened a new jar of it to settle his soul while he thought.

He had followed the connection of Voldemort’s soul before. Certainly there was a similar magnetism to the Horcruxes. He couldn’t think too long about it – as he was still charged with adrenaline and itching to strangle Riddle, he left.

Adrenaline went very poorly with subtle intuition. After striding from his own corridor, he had to dither. He paced in the direction of the Slytherin common room…. Maybe. He really couldn’t say. His plan was going very badly.

It got easier upon reaching the ground floor. Some pressure on his soul, leading him across the floor.

Oh. To the great hall. Dammit. The diadem, probably. His soul was tied to an anchor with a patch of disillusionment and notice-me-not charms. Sighing, he approached anyway.

The wards before him pulsed in geometric knots, held themselves in protected shells. It was the far corner of the hall, nearest to where the Slytherin table stood and nowhere near the head table. “Was it sabotaged to kill students?” Harry asked, horrified, as he sat.

The atmosphere before him shifted; Riddle dispelled the disillusionment charm. He was really quite good at it. “Why are you here?” He drew new charms over them both, collecting them in a core of invisibility and silence.

“Where’s the locket?”

His mouth quirked fractionally. “We don’t speak more than necessary. Would you like to…?” He gestured to a ward before Harry, that needed to be pulled apart.

“Fine.” Wedging his fingers in between the cords, he snapped them too hard. They sparked.

As the diadem was not an idiot, he recognized that Harry wasn’t here to help. “What happened?”

He recounted the Slytherins’ disappearance onward. At some point, Riddle slid in, pressing their shoulders together so he might share residual magic. He had to remember that the associated feelings were false – that _Riddle_ had never made him feel warm or safe or whole. He took the magic anyway, with reservations.

“He’s got my dad’s cloak, and map,” he concluded, not quite miserable. “They’d be lost if I just… vanished him.”

“They would be,” Riddle agreed. “There wasn’t reason to tell you this before, but – we really cannot be separated from the artifacts for very long. It becomes uncomfortable.”

“I didn’t think he was _lost_ ,” Harry said, faintly disgusted at the idea of being worried for the Horcruxes’ welfare. “I think he’s a cock.”

Riddle expressed amusement in some more subdued ways even than Voldemort. His eyelashes fluttered. “Yes,” he said. “Is that it, then?”

“You’ve got to know how to find him. You’ve got to know just what he’s _doing_.”

“Nothing that harms Hogwarts or her residents. That is self-evident.” He glanced up. “What do you believe he’s doing?”

“I don’t _know_.” There was no reason to share his suspicions with the diadem: that they could be planning escape, they could be smuggling sensitive information to outside forces, they could be… if not directly sabotaging the wards, contribute to their malfunction in some way. He looked rather warily at the string of magic, dotted with wards like a pearl necklace, in Riddle’s long fingers.

Of course, he didn’t have to say anything, because the Horcruxes inhabited his soul. “We are not overly concerned about upsetting or disappointing you,” he said dryly, “but you shouldn’t be.”

“Upset? Or disappointed?”

He flashed his teeth. “Yes.”

Harry pulled out another ward with too much force. It wasn’t worth it, he thought. The Horcruxes were clever and powerful, but just utterly trying. He could never trust them, and he could never control them. Too much of his life was out of his control already. “Could you…. This is done,” he said, anticipating that Legilimency would substitute for proper communication. “I was wrong, relying on you for anything.” He drew his wand to re-seal the wards before himself, if not to take the diadem back to his suite at wandpoint.

Riddle’s eyebrows went up. “He went without a wand.”

“What? – Oh. Yeah, I guess. It can’t keep him out of trouble,” Harry said, unimpressed. “You’re too clever for that. Anyway, maybe he pickpockets wands if he needs one.” (He had gotten too many lectures from Moody about keeping his wand in his back pocket, exploded buttocks or otherwise, to not consider this.)

“Mm.” Riddle was doubtful. He had a diary out, leaning over Harry to copy any runes of interest before they were concealed again. “There’s quite a bit of Old English among them,” he said conversationally. “You can tell by the syntax or even the flourishes in the characters. Nobody has disrupted these in centuries.”

He spoke with reverence. Harry was slightly less impressed with very old things than he ought to be. “Is there anything unusual?”

“I found one of the wards that ensures every door with a password will also open to Parseltongue.”

He groaned. “He could be _anywhere_. Fuck.”

Riddle stared for a moment. “You have no sense of history,” he said. “The most likely author of that ward is Slytherin himself.”

“Oh. Great.” He still couldn't be impressed. “Slytherins have only ever caused trouble for me,” he shrugged it off, attempting charm.

“There are others – residual bits of how the castle once was. Did you know there was once a grotto to convene with the lake’s mermaids? Or that – if I’m reading the protective spells right – in a time in the middle ages, the entrance was guarded by a dragon?”

Under other circumstances, Riddle and Hermione would be an indomitable duo. “Have you read _Hogwarts: A History_?” Harry asked.

Riddle sneered. “Propaganda.” A moment’s pause and a dubious look. “Have _you_ read it?”

“No,” he said. “But I’ve had it all told to me.” He was sealing up the wards now, finished for the night. “Um, are you doing this for… fun, then?”

Another flash of his teeth. “No,” he said. “I haven’t got enough to pass on to Voldemort, however.”

“Or the Aurors. Or the faculty.” He really didn’t want Voldemort to have primary responsibility for this.

“Well, yes.” Finishing up, he re-cast the disillusionment charm to better move with them as they walked. After a time in silence: “He is greatly concerned for the Slytherin students. We all are.”

“Nobody’s _panicking_ ,” Harry said, a bit bitterly. “In my classes, they all act like their missing classmate is just… fine. There aren’t more Aurors than usual. McGonagall just dismissed me.” He shrugged off the disillusionment before his corridor, so Abzu could let him in.

“You know that they were looking to get out.”

“I also know that people want Death Eaters dead on every side.”

Riddle’s intake of breath was too sharp to be deliberate. “Yes.” He was pressing Harry to the sofa, taking a seat beside him to share magic. “I won’t tell you they are safe. I will tell you… Slytherins are cunning, and have expected persecution now for decades. There is a loyalty among us – not the stupid kind, like the Hufflepuffs,” he said with disdain, and Harry had to smile because it was just _so_ inappropriate. “But a particular sort of loyalty, borne out of a need to insulate ourselves from the wider world.”

It made him feel pity and grief, even in the midst of his magically-induced warmth. “That sounds like an awful way to live.”

“Perhaps,” Riddle said non-committally. He was pulling out his notebook of runes again, a library book before him.

“Can you change the wards?” Harry asked with some trepidation.

His gaze flicked up, amused. “I wouldn’t admit it if I could.”

“I’m not accusing you,” he said, exasperated. “I wondered if it’d help. Adding in security to keep the Slytherins safer. Or, well, all the students. Or to keep students from leaving the grounds. Something.”

Riddle considered him long enough that he thought it was a possibility. Then: “Only current faculty are able to add or amend wards. Some of them, important ones, can only be altered by the headmaster, or the chair of governors.”

“Oh.” That was discouraging. He didn’t get up to get his texts for tomorrow’s class, but summoned them. Riddle pushed magic between his shoulderblades.

 

And then he fell asleep on the sofa, far too used to being lulled to sleep by the diadem’s magic to resist it. Scrubbing the bleariness from his eyes: both the diadem and locket sat on the mantel. The fire was out. The invisibility cloak and marauders’ map each sat, neatly folded, on the coffee table. Thank god.

He resisted the urge to throw the locket into the fire and demand an explanation. He also resisted the urge to chuck it in the lake. Cursing liberally, he moved to get ready.

\\\\\\\ ////

Without the burden of friends or a social life this past week, he got a ton of things done. He was nearly not behind in history or runes. He caught up on some newspapers and some recent legislation – he desperately needed someone to explain more to him, Voldemort or anyone else, but Hogwarts tragically did not have a civics class. He wrote to Ede, a woman from the itinerant Parselmouths they’d stayed with last autumn, to get a Panopticon made like Voldemort’s. He wrote to the Ministry barristers that Holland had recommended, to inquire about the Slytherin estate. (The diadem looked over his shoulder for that one. He pled that he not spoil the surprise, however unlikely this all was to work out anyway. He didn’t know how to write confident, professional correspondence. Whatever thoughts or feelings Riddle had on the prospect of claiming the estate, he obscured.) On Friday evening he flew as Gryffindor’s seeker, and won – only a friendly, as some of the real teams were still convalescing, but _god_ , he’d missed Quidditch. Hermione had come to the match but skipped the party in the Gryffindor common room afterward. He and Ron took nips of firewhiskey out of a fake ink bottle until they could assure each other that this was fine, that she’d come around. That night, he tried drunkenly to suck off the diadem, who politely refused and poured him into bed alone. They’d say nothing of it again.

 

_Saturday, October 17._ By the first Hogsmeade weekend in October, his peer group had sort of coalesced. Nobody wanted to come between him and Hermione, for one. Maybe nobody wanted to approach Harry about Voldemort at all, really. But within those parameters: Ron would join him at dinner sometimes, if Hermione had other company. Ginny and Luna shared classes with him, and it felt natural to go from Potions class to lunch to an afternoon at the lake with them. Tonks would shoot them sympathetic looks, though professional distance kept her from getting involved. If nothing else, the teacher’s lounge was quiet and public enough to not make people worry, so he’d find Remus or Hagrid in there sometimes, to ensure he was seen socializing occasionally.

This weekend, he’d come to Hogsmeade with Hagrid to chaperone the younger students. Most of the eighth years had come along as well, and he’d meet them for drinks at some point. But when the third years were delivered to Zonko’s and Hagrid had an acquaintance to meet at the Hog’s Head, Luna swooped in as though choreographed. “Harry! Ginny and Tonks are in the athletics shop. The owner doesn’t see how much better Quidditch would be if you all rode hippogriffs instead. We thought you might settle this.”

He had a very hard time disagreeing with the premise.

The sports shop was at the edge of the village; he and Luna had a few minutes to themselves. He’d braced for a Luna-esque encouragement to apologize to Hermione (if _apologize_ was even the right word), but instead Luna said cheerily, “The Slytherins aren’t actually disappearing, you know.”

“What?” he said, profoundly startled. He’d heard nothing more of Archuleta or Dunlop, such that it had almost passed since their disappearance nearly two weeks ago.

“In the great hall at meals, don’t you wonder why there seem to be so few Slytherins? But they’re still here. They’ve just stopped wearing house colors, some of them. They’ll wear the Hogwarts crest tie, or the purebloods wear family colors if they can. Not having house tables already makes them much less visible.”

He deflated. Not about the missing children, after all. Still: “Are the other houses…?”

Luna waited patiently for him to finish his statement. She said she would never want to assume, when some sentences took such interesting twists in the middle. Harry sighed.

“Are the other houses bullying the Slytherins?” he asked. “I’ll give them detention, I swear.”

“Children can be quite clever, and quite cruel,” Luna said. “So can adults.” She gave him a faint smile. “Salamanders change color to match the heat of the fire, you know.” Perhaps it was a wixie aphorism; perhaps it was just Luna being Luna.

 

He brought his concerns to Tonks, since she was already out with them. “We can’t fix what we don’t see,” she said, herself weary and sad. “Summon us if you see something. Tell your students to come to us. We’ve already got… well, more security and surveillance than the castle’s ever had in peacetime before.” She hesitated slightly before adding: “But really, Harry, I’m with Mad Eye on this. As… involved as you’ve been in the past,” (she said this lightly) “this shouldn’t be your responsibility. It _can’t_ be, for liability reasons.”

He hated this. He sighed through his nose, composing his thoughts. “It makes them hateful, being neglected.”

Her eyebrows, a slightly darker teal than her hair today, arched dubiously. “Some of the Aurors’ most significant work is in learning and disrupting the process of extremism. How terrorists are made. Your understanding is….” She was trying not to be hurtful. She left it.

He didn’t want to do this either. “Right.” He let Ginny pull him away to look at brooms.

 

Ginny and Tonks went for a drink. Luna walked Harry to Honeydukes. He was alone for the moment, looking at a display of exploding truffles, when he heard Hermione’s voice on the far side of the shop. He wasn’t near enough that he could make out her words, but the tone was unmistakable. It was the same one he’d heard from the other side of the breakfast table this morning. (McGonagall had pulled them both aside separately, to say that their absence at meals was unprofessional.) Voldemort had published an article in _Wix Policy Weekly_ this morning, justifying a measure he’d proposed that would put early-identified Muggleborns in some sort of foster care or dual guardianship program. Hermione had fumed earlier as she read it, and she was apparently still annoyed now. Harry didn’t want to defend Voldemort’s policy. He didn’t want to defend anything. His heart sinking, he looked to get out inconspicuously.

The passage. They’d blocked it off during the war at Hogwarts, but Ginny may have mentioned re-opening it this summer, to skirt curfew rules. (“Death Eaters nearly drowned me in the lake last year and you think I should have a _bedtime_?” she’d demanded of McGonagall.) He didn’t have his cloak and didn’t bother with disillusionment. But he slipped into the back room, and then into the cool space of the passage.

He paused. Ron’s voice now, low and relatively calmer. Hermione, hissing a retort. Then a deep grumble. _Moody_. Shit. He inched deeper into the passage, but his curiosity was piqued.

The three of them seemed to have drawn into a nearby corner of the shop. Hermione and Ron talking over one another, and then Moody’s deep and creaky voice. Feeling guilty but not so guilty to stop himself, Harry leaned in.

“You’re isolating him,” Moody growled. “You know we’ve agreed on this, you can’t – “

“You think _I’m_ disloyal?” Hermione was furious. Harry had never anyone speak to Moody that way, and it made him cringe. “While he – “

“There’s no time for _purity_ , Granger.”

An angry snort, and he knew why. Moody was more ideological than any of them. Then again, Moody had also set aside all of this to work with Voldemort for months now. Voldemort’s presence, and his talent, was making everyone utilitarian.

Ron’s voice: “He’s not _alone_. Anyway, you don’t let him see….” He’d never be able to say Voldemort’s name.

“There’s no discussion.” Moody was annoyed. “ _Fix this_.”

Murmurs from both Hermione and Ron, in various tones of reluctance. They moved away. Harry let his head fall against the natural stone of the passage.

Of course the Order has having meetings about him, without him. He’d hated it in fifth year and he hated it now. But… Well, when he’d told Dumbledore how worried he’d been about the Order’s inactivity, he hadn’t realized that so much of the time was being spent on _him_. Together, he and Voldemort likely made a full-time job for Moody. He really did deserve better.

He was so taken by this, he almost didn’t notice how the ambient sound changed. Moody’s uneven git entered the backroom. As he pulled open the secret passage, his bright blue eye met Harry’s gaze first. Harry gaped as he let himself in.

“Sorry, sir, I was….” He didn’t even know.

“The acoustics down here can be funny,” Moody said, as though casual. He was casting defensive spells into the darkness beyond them, waiting for each to fizzle out. “Surprising what you might hear.”

“I only meant to leave, I didn’t want to listen in – “

Moody shushed him with an impatient gesture. “I’m not Albus,” he said. “I don’t care to meddle in the lives of children.”

It took him a moment to parse this. “He didn’t – “

“He did,” Moody said firmly. “And I am loyal to him. It was his dying conviction that we can’t lose you. The portraits say you’ve been alone a lot.”

“Ugh,” he said, scrubbing his face. “This entire world – it’s the feeling of being watched all the time. How does everyone keep from going mad?”

“I watch them back,” Moody said, infinitely dry. “Now, you need to fix this thing with Granger.”

He wasn’t going to complain about Hermione to Moody. Moody had fought alongside her, he knew the person she was. He didn’t want to be disloyal, anyway. Still, he muttered, “It’s really not my choice.”

Even in the darkness of the passage, he saw Moody’s face gnarl in… there was no other word. Disgust. Moody was disgusted with him. “You’ve never been defeatist,” he growled. “Nor so cowardly.” He raised his chin to indicate the passage.

Anger flared inside Harry. “I’m not.” He struggled not to snarl the words. “I’m going.”

“Good lad.”

As the space between them was still so tense and angry, Harry shot an incredulous look over his shoulder at the – what, baiting? Encouragement? An encouraging sort of goading. He didn’t understand, so he left.

Ron and Hermione were gone by now, and he was so relieved. _Coward_ , the worst part of himself sneered in the back of his mind.

He’d see them at the eighth year happy hour, at the Hog’s Head. He bought a large bag of fizzing whizbees to share, popping one in his mouth on the way as though it’d clear his thoughts.

He arrived, however, at the same time Malfoy approached from the other direction. Biting back a groan, he stopped with his hand on the door. “I didn’t know you’d be coming.”

Malfoy had stopped a wary distance away. “As you don’t coordinate my schedule, you are forgiven.”

“Are the rest of the Slytherins coming?” Harry asked, fascinated. Who had invited them? Justin was the only Hufflepuff among them, and the Hufflepuffs cared more about including everyone than the Gryffindors or Ravenclaws did.

Malfoy’s look had gone from wary to annoyed. “That really doesn’t matter to you.”

“Uh… I guess I’ll find out inside?” At the very least, Hermione was only going to be the second-least pleasant person to him. Pushing open the door: “Let me get the first round, though.”

Malfoy fully stopped, holding the door as though he might backpedal. “Potter, what are you _doing_? We don’t want you.”

Harry realized his mistake then. “ _Oh_.” He nearly laughed. “Parvati and Padma asked all the eighth years for drinks. We’re meeting here. But you…?”

“I didn’t get an illustrious invitation, no. We’ll go elsewhere.” He was turning to leave.

“Wait – stay,” he said impulsively. “You haven’t even got to drink with us. But don’t let – The Slytherins are being displaced a lot these days.”

Malfoy’s lip curled in a sneer. “The best thing you can do for us is to forget we exist. It seems that getting any closer is being put in the line of fire. Or perhaps you have _that_ many people willing to die for you.”

Harry bristled. His wand, pressed into his hip, suddenly felt so prominent. “You’re an arse,” he snapped. “Go somewhere else, then.”

Malfoy turned to go, and stopped short. Harry, inside the pub fully, couldn’t tell –

“Get out of here,” Ron’s voice said in disgust. “What, did you think we’d get together to gab about you?”

“I don’t want to be in any pub _you’re_ allowed in, Weasley.” Malfoy shoved past him. Ron and Hermione entered, but Harry took a step toward the door to watch Malfoy go. He walked briskly, shoulders back. Partway down the hill, he cast a Patronus, a galloping stallion, to deliver the message. Huh. Snape must have taught him that.

They were all standing, equally awkward, at the entrance. Harry gestured them in properly. “Moody told me to fix this,” he said, going for near-honesty, but for the eavesdropping.

“Let’s get a drink,” Ron said in a rush, as Hermione’s mouth went thin.

They got nowhere they hadn’t been before: Harry was complicit in genocide; their soul bond was actually the very thing keeping peace; Voldemort was incapable of real relationships or altruism or decency by his nature; the prophecy existed regardless and Harry could only dictate _how_ their lives would be knitted together, not _whether_ they would be. Aberforth kept his distance but quietly summoned new drinks to their table as needed. They were the only ones in the pub.

Ron jumped in occasionally, with ineffectual mollifying statements. “Mate, we’re just worried – all the time you’ve had with him, your perspective may be a bit, er, off.”

“I’m never going dark,” he said flatly. “I’ve never defended his politics. I may never.”

Ron looked a touched relieved. Hermione, as usual, seized on this for her next objection. “You’re campaigning for him, whether you know it or not,” she said. “You make him seem more palatable than he is.”

“Now he treats me too _well_?”

She glared. “You’re being manipulated.”

He didn’t point out that she had significantly fewer problems when they found the extent to which Dumbledore had manipulated him. (Then, would he ever really understand the extent?) “I’m not,” he said firmly, losing his patience. “I’m not you, but I’m not stupid.” He let the word hang in the air, uncomfortable.

Her mouth went tight. Before she could say anything, Ron jumped in – “Of course you’re not – “

“You are,” Hermione interrupted coldly, “if you don’t see that all of this is a prelude to fascism and genocide.”

This felt like being stabbed, all of it. For having never thought of himself as particularly smart, being called stupid was more painful than he expected. He was good at de-escalation these days, but… he didn’t really want to. He shouldn’t have to. “I won’t leave him,” he said, the cold edge in his voice surprising even himself. “There’s too much at stake. And I don’t _want_ to,” he added, in case she mistakenly heard reluctance and seized on it. “I am so happy with him. So….” He made a vague gesture in her direction. _Do what you will with that._

Her fingernails were white from how tightly she gripped her glass. “I can’t,” she said at last, her voice small but firm.

“Alright,” he agreed, sounding tired. “Then, what?”

“I don’t know.”

Ron looked between them, quiet and crushed, but said nothing. They sat in oppressive silence for a long stretch.

A jumble of voices approaching the door, and then it swung open. “Bugger,” Tonks said, taking in the scene.

Ron and Hermione were facing away from the door, but Harry was looking toward it, and so saw the sandy hair behind Ginny first. “Neville!” His spirits were lifted.

The four of them – Luna was also in tow, drifting in behind them – took decisive seats around the table, flanking them as though to banish the horrible feelings that had developed. Everyone was now determinedly functional. “I’m just back for the day,” Neville said, lifting a butterbeer to his lips. “We had a few extra specimens that Spiraea said you could use here, and I needed some books that the Academy hasn’t got….”

War had been good for Neville, as perverse as that was. He’d become collected and brave in the stake-outs, in the medical tents, in duels with Jugson and Nott. His hands shook now from nerve damage when he left them untreated, but his gaze was steady. He seemed happy.

The four of them delicately engaged with Hermione and Harry separately. Neville was telling Hermione about the research he wanted to do; Luna was telling Harry about the new bakery that had just opened up down the way. (“Their butterfly scones can fly; they were having a very hard time keeping them in the display case….”) Parvati and Padma arrived, with most of the seventh and eighth years in tow. Things became simpler.

But when Neville said he should head back to the castle before the library closed (as though Remus wouldn’t let him in at any hour), Harry volunteered to go with him. Everyone was treating him… not even badly, but distantly. He didn’t belong here, and it was a disappointment and a relief. He’d thought ever since first year that he’d be lost as soon as he could no longer live at Hogwarts. This was no longer true.

He and Neville walked back in companionable quiet, with Neville stepping off the path once to pick dark, shiny blackberries from a bush. “Here.” He tipped half into Harry’s palm.

“Cheers.” The berries were warm from the last wisps of sun.

“It could have been me,” Neville said, thoughtful, as they walked on. Harry had told him of the prophecy, one late night in a battlefield tent. He deserved to know. “I think that every time you’re in the papers. I couldn’t have….” He shook his head. He wore his hair longer these days, and it swung with the motion. “No offense, but I’m glad it’s you.”

He laughed softly. “No offense, but I’m glad it’s me, too.”

“Yeah.”

That thing he’d said to Voldemort over the summer, that he hadn’t been able to share with anyone else – “Everything he took from me, I’ve gotten back,” he confessed. Neville was quiet. “With him, I’ve got a home and… family.” He choked on the word, still unfamiliar to him. “I want to give everyone else everything back, too.”

Neville was looking very hard at the leaf-strewn path. “ _Back_?” he asked.

“Well. No.” As though anything he returned would just be continuation of what had been lost. As though he and Neville could ever be anything but orphans. “But whatever is missing….”

Neville shook his head again, a faint smile at his lips. “He doesn’t deserve that.” He didn’t sound angry. “He doesn’t deserve _you_.”

Harry shrugged. They walked on in silence. He wanted to apologize, but – some things really couldn’t be apologized for. Especially not by him.

“Hermione’s right,” Neville said, after a time. “But you may not be wrong.”

He grinned. “Very diplomatic,” he teased. “I know she’s right in a lot of ways. But….”

“I think you’ve got a better chance at… what you’re doing, than anyone,” he said. “You’re lucky.”

If it were anyone else, he would’ve taken umbrage. But he knew exactly what Neville meant. “Yeah.”

They’d spent a lot of time together in the battles of Hogwarts. Moody said their intuitions worked well together. Unlike his relationship with Ron, he and Neville had never envied one another. They didn’t now, least of all.

He dropped Neville off at the greenhouses just as the sun was setting. “Do you want to feed the mandrakes with me?” Neville offered.

“Uhh….”

He flashed a smile, relieving Harry of duty. “Come visit Winterthur sometime, Harry. It’s really nice.”

“I might,” he said, honestly. “It was good seeing you.”

“You too.” He was pulling earmuffs from his bag. Harry got out.

 

_Saturday, October 31._ He and Hermione got no better. He ate lunch with Ron regularly now, and he’d usually time dinner so he’d miss them both. Ron was sad and resigned too.

This changed at Halloween.

He’d been out flying with Ginny and Ron that afternoon, throwing around a Quaffle and showing off dives. But when he’d just gotten out of the locker room, a falcon Patronus swooped before him. Moody’s voice: “Meet at the front entrance. Bring your cloak.”

Shit. He sprinted back to his suite to drop off his gear. But he didn’t _have_ his cloak. The Horcruxes did. They were both out for the day; they hadn’t told Harry where. Feeling sick, he hoped against hope they had returned by now.

His stomach clenched when the door swung open. The room was empty. Bollocks. Dropping his Quidditch gear in a corner with a sigh, he considered. There was no time. He’d have to go without. Half-running through the dungeon corridor, he went to find Moody.

He was before the great entrance, talking to Snape. They both looked miserable: Moody’s hand was tight on his staff, and Snape’s arms were crossed over his chest as though he were a petulant teenager. It was a bad look for him. Harry approached cautiously.

“Potter,” Moody greeted him, keeping his magical eye on Snape. “I’ll tell you on the way.”

“Oh. Sure.” He was suffocating on the tension, without even knowing what had caused it.

He thought Snape was joining them, and was bracing himself for the company, but Snape was turning to go. “If I’m needed – “

“Yes,” Moody said, tone clipped. “You’ll get a Patronus later.”

“Excellent.” He sounded anything but gratified.

When he and Moody were on the grounds, Moody said, “I warned you weeks ago that you shouldn’t meddle heroically in politics.”

He gaped faintly. “I haven’t.” He’d been bogged down in teaching and studying, thoroughly. If Hermione were speaking to him, even she would be impressed. And even on the days he slipped into Voldemort’s mind, it was to trade magic and sex more often than it was to discuss politics. Voldemort was working on economics these days, not anything Harry generally had opinions about anyway.

But Moody was waving him off. “Tonight, ignore that,” he said decisively. “But you’re coming only to give Voldemort magic. Don’t throw yourself into battle, if there is one.”

“Yes, sir.” He was nearly biting his tongue off, to refrain from demanding an actual explanation.

They reached the edge of the grounds. Moody looked over. “Have you been to Malfoy Manor before?”

“No – oh god, no,” he breathed, as his brain caught up.

Moody said nothing, but offered his arm.

 

The manor was beautiful in the thick honeyed light of late afternoon, but Harry was too anxious to resent it. Nothing seemed wrong from the outside, but for the crowd of DMLE wixes gathered at the gate. This was now the site of the house arrest of some Death Eaters, and the presence of law enforcement here just didn’t bode well. They approached.

Voldemort wasn’t here. He could feel the absence. Harry kept toward the edge of the crowd, extraneous for the moment.

Robards saw them approach, though, and nodded them over. “The wards haven’t been breached,” he said, “but the portraits have been destroyed.”

“A trap,” Moody said.

“Yes.”

“When did you last hear from them?”

“Savage spoke to Lucius on Wednesday. If anything’s gone wrong since, the portraits didn’t convey it.”

“Mm.” Moody’s face looked even more wretched and angular in the severe light. “And Voldemort?”

“Rufus and Kingsley went,” Robards responded. “I asked them to apparate from the boat, when they were far enough out, but… Rufus thought Voldemort wouldn’t have the magic.”

“He wouldn’t have enough magic to _apparate_?” Harry blurted.

Moody dropped a mollifying hand on Harry’s shoulder to silence him, and it was a profoundly humiliating gesture. He stepped back, glaring ineffectually since neither of them were looking at him.

“You know what I think of this,” Robards told Moody, his gaze dark. “Uniting him with Malfoy – with Lestrange – “

“Yes,” Moody ground out. “But if he’s not drawing magic from them….”

Robards glanced back at the gate, where a group of codebreakers were still untangling the wards. “I’m not so confident about what’s inside.”

A dark smile curled Moody’s mouth. “We’ll run it like every other raid on the manor. I’ll meet with the field team.” He swung his wooden leg around heavily. “Come along, Potter.”

Oh. He raised his eyebrows, not expecting to be included in battle strategy, if in fact this was. He skipped to catch up.

“Why haven’t you got your cloak,” Moody said flatly, when they were a bit apart from everyone.

He made his face perfectly blank. “I couldn’t find it, sir. And I didn’t want to keep you waiting.”

The piercing look of Moody’s magical eye was horrible. “You’re here for magic, not battle. Voldemort probably wouldn’t ask otherwise, but if he does….”

Harry shook his head with a faint smile. “He wants me alive more than _I_ want me alive. But,” he hesitated, “the spell that blocks dark magic – could you take it off? Just for now. I tried casting Sectumsempra at the Ministry, and I couldn’t. It turned out alright anyway, but….”

“Yes,” Moody said, unconcerned somehow. “Ask Shacklebolt before you enter.”

“Thank you.”

Kingsley took the restrictions off with a funny motion like yanking a fishing line, that left Harry’s soul feeling a bit raw. Moody gathered the Aurors. Everyone was familiar with the manor – apparently the Malfoys were raided for dark artifacts even when they were on the Ministry’s good side. The wards for unauthorized wixes hadn’t been triggered, nor any for escape attempts. But the portraits had been destroyed. “If this is some _childish_ – “ Moody growled, and then stopped himself.

But he hadn’t been there, Proudfoot objected, when the corresponding portraits in the office had been destroyed as well. Some caught fire; some disintegrated into ash. It felt like old, dark magic.

Minutes later, the pop of apparition behind them, made louder by the stillness of the surroundings. Scrimgeour, Shacklebolt, and Voldemort. He looked pale and drawn, more than usual. They nearly hit the ground running, striding up to the group of Aurors. As he was worried that Voldemort looked about to faint, Harry ran up to his side.

Upon touching him, though, he hissed. The void of magic was cold and consuming. “What the _fuck_ have they done to you?” Harry demanded, pressing magic furiously into his clammy skin. It hurt them both, but Voldemort didn’t pull away. “Why the fuck would you let them – “

“Harry,” he interrupted, switching to English, though Harry hadn’t known he’d been yelling Parseltongue to begin with. “Not now.” But he pulled Harry along with him, over to Robards and Moody, to be briefed.

The codebreakers had hoped that Voldemort had a way in through the wards that held the gates closed. “At one time,” he said, gazing up at the matrix of wards, “they changed it every fortnight. The Ministry didn’t create these to keep them _in_?” he added with a frown.

“The wards of custody are on the manor, not the grounds.” A severe woman, who reminded Harry of Minerva, was the expert here. “Do they change the interior wards as frequently?”

“No.”

Eyebrows up at his certainty, and then she nodded. “Good.”

Voldemort filled Harry in on what he’d already told the Aurors – that some of his magic was derived from the Marked Death Eaters, and something had gone abruptly wrong with the connection earlier. “If anything, I am being drained.” He pronounced the word terribly. “It shouldn’t be possible.”

Harry was distracted and, frankly, disgusted by the idea that Voldemort’s connection with the Death Eaters was so similar to their own. “Neither Moody or Robards seemed to actually want you here.”

“They don’t,” Voldemort agreed lightly. “Nobody believes they’ll be properly loyal any longer. But I am still able to impel them through the Mark, loyalty or otherwise.”

“Oh.” His voice came out too small. Voldemort glanced over, bemused somehow that Harry would take this badly, but he said nothing.

The wards on the gates took minutes that felt like hours. And when they were finally admitted to the grounds, they found cold, foreign magic had settled over the estate. “They _can’t_ be alone,” Proudfoot muttered, “regardless of the wards.”

They’d enter through the front door. Moody and Brightbone first, to confront Lucius. If anything seemed wrong, they’d split into pairs to bring all six current prisoners back to Azkaban. “They want trial sooner, they can have it,” Moody said, irritated. _Hominem Revelio_ revealed there were still people in the manor, they hadn’t escaped. He and Brightbone entered. The quiet in their absence was nauseating.

Everyone’s breath caught when Moody’s falcon Patronus soared from an open window, swooping before them. It carried no message, and that was even more ominous. Scrimgeour moved into action. “Bragg and Squire, Rodolphus in the east wing. Shacklebolt and Rye, Narcissa in the brass hall. Robards and Willoughby, Rabastan in…?”

“The northern corridor,” Robards supplied. “Yes, sir. Rookwood’s in the blue suite, and Bellatrix is in the southern corridor’s upper floors.”

Scrimgeour turned to Voldemort. “Find Bellatrix,” he said, intense and commanding. Robards made a strangled noise behind him. “If she struggles, I don’t need her taken alive.”

“Fine.” He was utterly indifferent. It was perverse. He moved to go, Harry at his side.

“You know the manor?” Robards asked, dubious.

“Yes. Of course.”

“How many bloody times did they shelter you,” he asked flatly. Voldemort hummed in non-committal amusement, pulling Harry inside.

The interior was dark, with few of the lamps lit. Every shadow looked like a threat. Their magic was still delicate, and Harry was quietly doubtful that Voldemort could duel with his usual bloodlust if it came to it, weakened as he was. He pressed magic into his skin too fast, too forcefully. “Why would he give you Bellatrix?” he asked quietly, in Parseltongue, as they wound through silent corridors.

“I taught her to duel. She’s killed more Aurors than anyone – even with the disadvantage of spending years in Azkaban. And… she became vicious in there, more than she’d ever been. She duels now as though she doesn’t care for her own survival.” His tone was low and even, not anxious but deliberate. The magic between them was unsettled. They walked on briskly.

The southern corridor was accessible only by narrow passages, and a few hidden doors. Voldemort _had_ spent time in the manor, given the ease with which he traversed the space. Harry thought he might understand a bit more about Draco now, seeing that he’d grown up in what felt to him like an opulent museum.

Voldemort was casting Hominem Revelio before them, into each room and passage they entered. It was so quiet. The manor was spread out enough, and likely warded enough, that they weren’t able to hear anything from any of the Aurors. Finally they reached a glowing plane of magic across a set of brass double doors. The boundary of her prison cell, as it were. Voldemort peeled it open.

It was a full suite of rooms, and they couldn’t see the extent of them from the sitting room where they now stood. Voldemort cast Hominem Revelio in the doorway, frowning when it came back empty. “She can’t….” He shook it off.

He’d said he didn’t think the summoning charm in the Dark Mark would work properly inside the wards, but it was hardly necessary. They moved forward cautiously. Nothing in the sitting room seemed out of place. It seemed scarcely lived in at all. The Death Eaters had been imprisoned here since May – five months. Maybe Bella had just come to prefer more spartan living spaces in Azkaban.

Harry would’ve called for her, but Voldemort was quiet, moving through the sitting room into a miniature study. The books on the shelf were gilded and unread. (Harry wanted to pick them up to see whether it wasn’t just display covers. But that would be gauche.) A door to their left and right, both closed. A swirl of Voldemort’s wand, and he moved to the right. It was all so quiet.

A bedroom, done in mahogany and dark blues. Wall sconces were lit, but unevenly, leaving deep smudges of shadow in the vast room’s corners. So Harry nearly jumped when Bellatrix melted out of the darkness on the far side of the room.

“My Lord,” she breathed. She was dressed in a lacy shift dress, her hair loose around her shoulders. Her makeup was heavy, and Harry wondered why, unless she’d anticipated they’d be coming. She looked very pale – but then, she hadn’t seen the sun properly in months. “Have you come for me, then?”

She approached lightly, barefoot on the deep plush rugs, and dropped to her knees before him. Harry went unacknowledged.

“Bellatrix,” he greeted her with something like warmth, something that made Harry go hot with unwarranted jealousy. He stepped farther into the room. “How did you destroy the portraits?” There were two frames on the wall, both a mess of scrubbed-off paint. It wasn’t a spell Harry recognized.

She flashed her teeth. “Turpentine. A Muggle chemical. They charmed the paintings against every spell, so….” She waved her hand in a swirl. Her nails, still, were the same deep red she’d painted her lips. “They said I’d regret it if I didn’t let myself be watched. But I am so very tired of being watched. They don’t deserve it.”

Voldemort by now was pacing behind Bella. She didn’t rise, didn’t even turn to watch him, but kept her gaze down, demure.

“And the others?” Voldemort asked.

“Others, my Lord?”

He frowned, not clarifying. His hand was on his wand, even as he studied the wards laced over the windowpane. “You broke the wards, but you haven’t escaped. Why not?”

She did glance back then, her lips curving. “I was very curious who would arrive to chastise me,” she said. “And I was very lucky, it seems.” She watched him now, drinking in the sight of him while his back was turned. Harry felt those terrible feelings stir within him.

“Are you loyal to me, Bella?”

“Always, my Lord.” He looked back at her; she dropped her gaze.

He looked at her more intently, his wand twitching in his hand, as he circled back. And then to Harry. “Your Patronus,” he said in low Parseltongue.

He’d looked away from Bella for just a moment, but it was a moment too long. Leaping up, she had a wand pointed at his face in a blur, casting something that he only just avoided in a dodge. A mirror behind him shattered, some shards nicking him.

“Cast a bloody Patronus,” he shouted at Harry. “ _They’re_ – _not – real_.” Each word was punctuated by a vicious spell, something that made the air nauseating with malice. The windows all popped.

His Patronus was flickering but it didn’t have far to travel. Voldemort, seeing it awaiting a message, shouted himself over his shoulder, “They’re possessed!” _Crack._ Bella’s spell caught the bedpost, not by accident but to throw the jagged shard at Voldemort’s torso. He moved, lighting it in midair as he hurled it back at Bella. “The rebels – they broke in – a lure – “

But then a spell of thorns came at him from every side. Throwing himself to the floor, he rolled. Harry barely released the Patronus before moving in, throwing spells at Bella to stop her, stun her, break her concentration. Her footwork was beautiful, lithe and simple as she dodged.

Voldemort was up again, furious now. “Crucio!” he roared. It hit, and Bella staggered, but didn’t stop. He cast it again, and again she shook it off. “Who _are_ you?” he snarled.

The scaffolding of Bella’s face looked nothing like her then. Of course another being inhabited her body. How could they not have seen it. The glamours around her fell, and it was clear that she was little more than an animate corpse, recently killed. “We came to find the one she spoke of.” Explosions, hitting the paneled walls behind them. One hit a pipe and water sprayed in an arc. Harry still cast spells of impediment, trying to hold her still as Voldemort cast vicious psychological spells. “The Kukudh. They said you were a better duelist than this, though,” she taunted.

Somehow, this got a flicker of a smile from him, and the tension in his posture melted into graceful ease. He pivoted to avoid a crackling white light, and hurled a volley of violet orbs in return. “Harry, stay back,” he instructed without sparing a glance.

“But – “

But with his divided attention, a vicious spell caught Voldemort in the knee then, twisting his lower leg ninety degrees. Hissing in pain, he cast Mobilicorpus to hold himself up, but it would ruin the elegance of his footwork. “You know that you can’t kill me,” he said through gritted teeth. Finally he threw a shield up, just long enough to cast a splint on his leg. “Or didn’t they tell you that?”

“The Dëshmitar’s gone missing,” the impostor said in a harsh tone. “Her final message was that you must be neutralized. You’re too dangerous otherwise.”

“I know nothing.”

“It seemed prudent nonetheless,” she said, flashing her teeth in nothing like a smile. “You’re very powerful these days.”

They still circled one another – as uneven as Voldemort’s gait was, he never stopped. Harry didn’t dare interfere now, not in a proper duel, as interference into a duel’s magic would hurt them both. But if he could just hand off magic….

Voldemort felt the thought, and spread his off hand by his side in a gesture to halt. To the impostor he said, “I’ve always been powerful. But we have no part in one another’s politics by now.”

The impostor clicked Bella’s tongue. “I can’t make those agreements with you, _kyrie_. I’m but a messenger.”

“Then take this message back with you,” he said. “The British Ministry would like me dead more than you would. That I _protect_ them is all the reason they’ve kept me alive this long. You’d be better served in withdrawing.”

Again she clicked her tongue. “Some of them admired you once, you know. Before… this.” She waved a hand vaguely at him. 

“Leave me her body,” Voldemort requested, rather than responding properly. “Bellatrix was my last, best lieutenant.”

The impostor’s face contorted in amusement, mocking, even fondness. “That’s what she said, too.” They were moving toward the shattered windows – Voldemort was throwing volleys of blockades and cages to keep the impostor from going, but each was rebuffed. “Perhaps her corpse will be a better lure than your snake was.”

Furious, Voldemort flung Crucio at the impostor, again and again. They skimmed off her. She was laughing as she leapt into the window frame, launching herself outwards. Harry gasped, but a moment later a crow swooped into the dark sky. Voldemort ran to the window, throwing a stream of curses at it until his magic faltered. When he sagged, Harry was there to catch him.

“We can’t – “ A shuddering breath. “Normally we’d be able to apparate throughout the manor, but the current wards preclude it. We’ll have to go on foot.”

“Is your leg broken?” Harry asked with trepidation. Voldemort had leaned all of his weight on Harry. It didn’t bode well.

“Shattered,” he said grimly. “I haven’t got the magic to fix it, and there’s no time….” He was a mess, furious and frustrated.

“Here.” He dropped Voldemort onto the bed, pressing magic into his drained soul. Carefully Voldemort propped up his broken leg. “The Aurors are capable,” he said, oddly charmed that Voldemort would feel so compelled to save them, if only out of self-preservation.

But he caught the thought and shook his head. “I’d rather they capture the vampires. They won’t be able to kill them, if they don’t know….”

“I couldn’t cast another Patronus right now,” Harry said softly.

Voldemort let his head fall back, his eyes fluttering closed. “I should have seen it,” he said. “I haven’t thought of the Humnerë in decades, but clearly….”

Harry shushed him, pushing warm magic into his skin until they were both sluggish with it. But his eyes kept sliding back to the wreckage of the room. “Are they dead, then?” he asked quietly.

“These vampires feed on souls more readily than blood. The spare bodies, for as long as they’re preserved, may be taken on as temporary hosts. Wherever you locate _death_ within that….”

“That is awful.” His voice was thick. Voldemort was slumped against him, and he rubbed at the tense spots along his shoulders.

His laughter was silent, a motion instead of a sound. “How could someone who carries my soul be as empathetic as you are,” he marveled. And then he had his wand out and he was pulling his robes apart. Harry flinched at the sight – even under his trousers, his right leg beneath the knee was full of strange, jutting angles. “I need your magic,” Voldemort said, calmer than either of them felt, “and I need your Occlumency properly in place.”

He winced. “Yes.” He was out of practice.

Voldemort was pushing his trouser leg up, pinning it with a spell. He vanished the first splint, and pulled enough magic from Harry that he went cold for a moment. A deep breath, and he snapped his tibia back together – literally a snap, the most sickening sound Harry had ever heard. “The kneecap is beyond my repair,” Voldemort said, casting analgesic spells and then a sturdier brace and splint down the length of his leg. “A healer will fix it.”

“Will they?” Harry challenged. “If they’re withholding magic now….”

Voldemort was weary, and in pain, and not particularly patient. “Harry – “

He realized how horrible he sounded. “Sorry,” he muttered. “It’s not you, sorry.” Voldemort was shifting to get up; Harry offered himself as a prop. “Should we…. It feels like going in blind,” he said even as they moved toward the door. The silence was now unnerving.

“There are too many wards to reveal much through them,” Voldemort said, picking up his incoherent fear. “This is, after all, a prison.”

“Right.” But they both had their wands gripped tightly as they loped back down the stairways and corridors.

They were at a far corner of the ground floor when they finally heard footsteps. They all stopped abruptly.

“Potter?” Moody’s voice called. Thank fuck.

“Yeah. Both of us,” he called back. They drew together cautiously, into a gold tea room.

Moody and Brightbone both, moving delicately as though hiding injury. “What’s your favorite class?” Moody asked Harry before anything else.

“Potions,” he said promptly. He _felt_ Voldemort’s incredulity, and looked up with a faint smile. “Nobody who was impersonating me would ever think to answer that.” Back to the Aurors. “Is everyone…?”

His stomach clenched at their looks. “Proudfoot is dead,” Brightbone said, too blunt. “Everyone else… they lived. Is there anything that should be acted on immediately, or is there time to summon healers?” She looked to Voldemort.

“Summon the healers,” he said. “I secured the southern wing on the way out.”

“Good.”

They were both… what? Angry with him. Whatever they understood about this group, they felt Voldemort had brought it on them. It wasn’t even wrong. They walked ahead, in trained Auror stance with their wands at their hips.

The debriefing room was reminiscent of the attack on the Ministry – they secured a sitting room, taking chairs and sofa. Harry pulled Voldemort onto a chaise longue. Even without counting, it was apparent that everyone was back except Proudfoot. Foul magic clung to them all, curses and hexes that lingered. Scrimgeour, who’d gone in with Proudfoot to confront Rookwood, was very quiet and still. He wore a heavy cloak around his shoulders. It might have been Moody’s.

They’d summoned healers; but enough Aurors carried calming draught as best practices that they could hand them out while waiting. Voldemort was watching Moody, for indication that he should explain. Moody didn’t look at him, but cast security spells upon the room over and over. His face was snarled and brutal.

The healers arrived. Other DMLE employees descended on the manor, to do forensics on the space and bodies. When Kingsley said that grimly, Voldemort looked up in surprise. “Bodies?”

“Of the Death Eaters. None of the reactionaries….” He shook his head. “I wish we’d killed them, but we didn’t. Did you?” It was not quite a challenge.

And Voldemort’s laugh wasn’t quite a laugh. “No. They took Bella’s body with them. They will, no doubt, find it useful.”

“What – “ Moody’s voice was thick, too filled with hatred to speak.

“You were nearly correct about the Inferi,” he said, meeting Moody’s vicious gaze. “They do need cannon fodder. However, being vampires, they have a greater command of the undead than most.”

He spoke dispassionately. Harry had heard of the Kukudh once before, what the impostor had called Voldemort – Riddle had named it, speaking of his early work in Albania, fighting off the local werewolves at the behest of the vampires, in exchange for tutelage in dueling and immortality. “They prey on souls more often than bodies. As you saw, those bodies can become temporary hosts. Perhaps even that was unnecessary – they can shapeshift easily, though generally into simpler animals. It’s creature magic, not human magic, so they were never beholden to the transfiguration laws we know. Nor,” he said with an exhalation, “are they hindered by security that only explicitly keeps wixes out.”

They all went still at the implications of this. _Everything_ was only written to keep wixes out. Nobody considered that the quasi-humans would want in. “We’ll have to develop new spells,” Robards murmured. “If the generic non-aggression spells won’t hold….”

“They won’t,” Voldemort said. “I must warn you what I warned Dawlish, after Diagon Alley. Don’t alienate the quasi-humans.”

Moody snarled wordlessly. It did seem hideously prim and patronizing, in the moment. Voldemort raised his non-eyebrows. “I don’t speak ideologically,” he promised Moody, wry in spite of everyone’s cold fury. “Lugétër can rarely be killed. The only potential fatality, of which I am aware, is by wolves. Including werewolves.”

He paused for emphasis. Rye made a quiet sound, drawing an unhewn wand from her robes. “We barely managed to take this,” she said. “But Narcissa…. She fought before we arrived. She was in bad condition. We thought it looked like the others. And….” She turned it upside down, to hear the rattle in the handle. “Werewolf teeth.” The attackers at Diagon Alley had carried the same.

“It was stupid,” Voldemort said in disgust, “that I assumed from that that they _were_ werewolves. Or adherents, in any case. Those teeth are trophies.”

Rye set the wand on a tea table before her, not wanting it back on her person.

“Why now?” Scrimgeour spoke for the first time. “If this was decades ago….”

“My own recent prominence?” He pronounced the word precisely and ironically. “And more significantly, the coven’s leader has just disappeared. The final thing she said to them was that I’ve become too powerful.”

Harry didn’t know what reaction he’d expected from this – but he’d expected _some_ reaction. Instead there was only stifling silence.

Scrimgeour lifted his glasses from his nose to scrub at his face. “If their vampires are like ours, they are fully, legally autonomous. Albania’s own government wouldn’t be able to do much. Certainly, we couldn’t.”

“No,” Voldemort agreed. “But the Humnerë – the revolutionaries – wouldn’t act anyway, without the coven’s leader. They are themselves being manipulated into action, whether they know it or not.”

Scrimgeour was so drained. Robards stepped in. “We haven’t got informants there. Do you?” He sounded hopeful and suspicious all at once.

“I would go myself.”

“You’re not free to go,” Robards said, and it was a harsh statement but also… protective. Harry and Voldemort shared surprise in their Legilimency. “We’ll find someone.”

Voldemort raised one shoulder in a shrug, and didn’t argue. The conversation moved on.

Each of the impostors had been waiting in a similar way – having killed a Death Eater by taking their soul, they slipped into the persona themselves. The soul still warm in their mouths, they’d have some access to the person’s thoughts and memories. The lugat only knew Bellatrix well enough to impersonate her for a few minutes – but, well, it was long enough to have drawn them in. Lucius’s impostor was proud and indignant; Narcissa’s was proud but wounded. Rookwood’s was clever and engaging, asking Scrimgeour and Proudfoot of the details of the case as though they were all still colleagues. They’d all fought, if not properly _dueled_ as Voldemort had done. And Harry saw now that the duel wasn’t only out of pride, but also to keep Harry himself away from the violence. No place for a third in a duel.

They spoke of how their magic hadn’t worked as expected on the lugétër. Curses had skimmed off; stunning spells had had little effect. They were strong to an inhuman degree. They didn’t tire. They were… formidable, and targeting them. It made Harry ill.

Eventually, the Aurors needed to peel off to report to the other DMLE employees, corroborating their forensics. At the end, they were left alone with Scrimgeour, and their respective healers. Voldemort had dropped his head on Harry’s shoulder as the healer sorted out his crushed patella, but he sat up now to look at the Minister. “I am sorry.”

Scrimgeour was weary and angry and a little amused underneath it all. “Don’t. It is unnerving.”

“I need to go to Albania myself. The Aurors….” He shook his head. “They’re outmatched. Robards doesn’t understand what he’d send them into.”

“No.” He said it with surprising finality. “I have to answer for how we let six people in Ministry custody get killed. I won’t answer for you, as well.”

Voldemort inclined his head. But then, raising his gaze with some mischief, “I told the lugat that if they’d like me dead, they’ve only got to have the patience to let the Ministry do it.”

“Don’t,” Scrimgeour said again. “I can’t….” He broke off, shaking his head so the sway of his tawny hair caught the candlelight. Cracking open a final vial handed to him by the healer, he moved to get up. “Did Rookwood have family?” he asked Voldemort. “I must contact them.”

“His wife left him at the conviction. There were no children.”

“Good.” A pause, and then: “I’ll give a statement to the press tomorrow morning. You both will attend.”

Harry kept his confusion off his face. “Of course,” Voldemort said smoothly. Scrimgeour left in silence.

They were alone. The forensics analyst dispatched to Bella’s suite had made clear that she wouldn’t be left with Voldemort, so they would just… wait. Harry pressed magic into his skin to hasten the healing of his broken leg. “Why?” he asked in Parseltongue, when everyone was out of earshot. “Everyone’s going to feel awful, seeing you there.”

“Perhaps,” Voldemort agreed. “It might look like bipartisanship. It might look like… do Muggles still hold circuses?”

Harry blinked at him. “I think so, yeah?”

“Then it might look like the feat of the lion tamer. Forgive the Gryffindor metaphor,” he said, charmingly. “It might serve as a promise, that the Death Eaters are dissolved – as if there were ever any doubt – to depict me at the Ministry’s side instead of working in retaliation.” He made a vague gesture. “Whatever it represents, it is not harmful. Unless you’d rather not?”

“No. I’ll be there.” He didn’t bother to say that he’d spent all of sixth year rebuffing Scrimgeour’s attempts to make him into a mascot. This wasn’t important, now.

They weren’t needed but they also weren’t free to go. It was late by now, and so they went to the kitchen. Harry thought briefly of the Halloween feast he’d missed.

Voldemort was _very_ familiar with the manor, labyrinthian as it seemed, and halfway down a copper-hued hall, Harry asked, “Have you, uh, lived here?”

He flashed his teeth. “Not since Abraxas,” he said. “But I have since been a frequent guest, at times. There are more ways into and out of the manor than the Aurors know of. It was useful for throwing off trails.”

“Oh.” He didn’t have it in him to be horrified.

The kitchens were bigger than the entirety of the Dursleys’ house. It was disgusting. And while Harry had expected elves, it all seemed to be automated with charms, pans clattering above the kitchen fires constantly. They’d sat at an island counter with a pot of tea between them, and a few minutes later a cast iron pan dropped two toasted cheese sandwiches before them. “Oh, cheers,” Harry said, before realizing he was talking to the cookware. Voldemort made a dry noise at the back of his throat.

The most they could do was wait and listen. Voldemort had pulled apart some of the wards between the kitchen and the entry way, so they could hear a bit more. Still, when there were footsteps outside the kitchen, they both stopped eating.

Kingsley and Squire, apparently also both in some process of waiting. Kingsley took in the sight of them for a moment. “Good,” he said in a sigh, moving to pour himself and Squire both coffee. “Voldemort,” he said slowly a moment later, propping himself against the counter. Voldemort raised his gaze in near-invitation. “Which of them were Marked?”

“Why?”

“Because they’re not any longer.”

He dabbed his fingers on a napkin as he thought, unhurried. “It is soul magic. Without their souls….” He waved a hand. “I assume the same is true of the ones who have been Kissed.”

“It’s not.”

“Ah.” Interested, at last. “You think the bodies are decoys? That would be a terrible thing to explain to the families arriving shortly.”

“We have no theories. Not yet.” Kingsley was patient, but he never returned Voldemort’s cruel, wry tone in kind. “But we thought….”

Voldemort was pushing his plate away. “May I see them?”

“You would have to ask our forensics team. Nothing that would contaminate the magic.”

He took this, clearly, as permission. “And may Harry see them?”

Kingsley and Squire shared a look. She spoke first. “Potter can decide for himself. But the bodies…. When the glamours fell off, they all were shown to be in very bad condition. The spells obscured the extent of the damage, at first. Maybe they only took Madam Lestrange’s because hers was the only… worthwhile one.”

Oh, god. Still, he looked to Voldemort. “I’ll go if you need me to.”

“Please.”

Neither of the Aurors felt equipped to defy Voldemort. “The bodies are in the west hall,” Squire said. “Stay the hell away from Proudfoot’s,” she added, suddenly fierce.

His eyebrows went up. He dipped his head as though he’d fall into a minute bow. It was nearly not sardonic.

They didn’t make it that far. Back across the manor – but then there were voices before them, in the entry way. Aurors, very low and deliberate. Voldemort’s forehead creased. He strode on.

In a small sitting room across from the door, the crowd of Aurors spilled out. Harry caught sight of Tonks’s tall, lean frame deeper into the room. Voldemort slide into an empty spot at the doorway. So did Harry. His stomach curdled.

Draco’s platinum hair, dulled in the room’s faint lighting. Andromeda and Tonks flanked him, perhaps not intentionally. Scrimgeour was nearest, explaining what he was able to explain, apologizing for what he was able to apologize for. “There was no justice in this,” he was saying lowly. They all looked very pale.

When Scrimgeour concluded and drew back, Malfoy looked up. He was only just taking in the crowd of Aurors and DMLE employees now. It would be horrible, Harry thought, to get the worst news of his life surrounded by strangers. And then Malfoy’s gaze slid back farther, and met Harry’s. “Get out,” he said with cold fury. “Get the hell out, what do you think – “

Harry was scrabbling backwards. The Aurors had drawn away at this outburst, looking back at him. Malfoy wasn’t able to explode at any of them, and certainly not Voldemort, so of course – well, he was right to be furious, anyway. “Sorry, you’re right, I’ll go – “ He was reaching for the portkey he no longer had, anything to get him out.

A soothing babble of voices from Tonks and Andromeda and several Aurors. But really, Malfoy was _so_ alone. Harry couldn’t say whether Voldemort felt his pity and grief on Malfoy’s behalf – but he did step in, in any case. “Come with me, Draco.”

“Don’t.” Moody’s tone was blistering.

“I want to,” Malfoy muttered to him. Voldemort led him out by the shoulder, into a small adjacent room, shutting the door decisively behind them. From the curve of Malfoy’s shoulders and the way his head was bowed, it was clear he was collapsing from the inside out.

Moody had followed and then stopped, and now stood beside Harry, seething. Harry looked up at him. “Get me out,” he said. “I shouldn’t be here.”

Wordlessly, he was reaching into his robes, charming a portkey, passing it over. Harry gave one last look to Tonks, who was holding her mother as Brightbone now spoke to them. He got out.

 

He spent that awful night in the safehouse pacing and chewing his fingernails to nubs. With every hour that Voldemort didn’t return, his imagination became more vivid, that the rebels had attacked the manor once more to finish what they’d begun, now that everyone was grieving and off-guard. There was still a batch of kaval among their potions, thank god, and he took far too much, until he was floaty and artificially calm. The Occlumency between them was completely closed off, moreso after he got himself high. He fell into an uneasy sleep on the sofa, the sort where he’d wake up every hour to find Voldemort still hadn’t returned.

Finally the click of the front door. The sky was gray in the pre-dawn. Harry was instantly awake. He’d slept with his wand in his hand, just in case, and he held it steady now.

Voldemort, only faintly surprised to find him in the sitting room. “You look wretched.”

“So do you,” Harry replied, though he was only just restraining himself from running into Voldemort’s arms. Of course he was alive, of course he was fine.

Voldemort turned toward the kitchen, pulling out whiskey and a lowball glass. “Would you like one?”

“I’d rather sleep.”

“This is to sleep.” He brought them upstairs, so Harry could drop into bed. “The press will convene at noon. Scrimgeour thought it should be earlier, but everyone else needed to sleep first as well. Shacklebolt had to beg Moody, that they’d be useless as security otherwise.”

Harry was kicking off his clothes, letting them fall to the floor in a heap. “Robards said the Ministry needed new wards.”

“They won’t be in place today, in any case.” Voldemort’s tone was dark. “And they said I’d have no part in the new wards. Even though I’ve studied far more non-human magic than any of them.”

“Well.” He cast perfunctory cleaning charms on his mouth and face, sliding deep into bed. “Are _you_ human enough for the wards to keep you out?” he asked curiously, uncouth in his fatigue.

Voldemort was only amused. “Tragically, yes.” The ice rattled in his glass. “I told them that Dementors would be better security than Aurors. Not being human either.”

“I hate Dementors,” Harry muttered against his pillow. “Is that why you used them?”

“Because you hate them?”

He slapped Voldemort’s thigh, the nearest part of him in reach. “To get past the human security.”

“Sometimes,” Voldemort agreed. “Not consciously, as such, just with a general awareness that they were less hindered than the humans. But Harry – most of the Ministry couldn’t stomach using the outcasts, the quasi-humans, the disreputable parts of society. Their standards were… homogeneous. And they were so _respectable_.” He said the word in a sigh. “The Aurors’ use of Unforgivables was only authorized years in, at the end. They still prosecuted some of their own afterward, for using dark magic. They would have lost,” he said, low and dangerous, “if I hadn’t been killed. It was nearer than they’ll tell you now.”

Sighing, Harry sat up. Nevermind sleep now. “It’s not worth it,” he said. It was the conversation they’d had on Hogwarts grounds last year, incapacitating Death Eaters. “Not for me, anyway. I wouldn’t trust that I could still say what was right or wrong, if we were the same as you.” A faint smile. “I was a holdout, though. Moody brought most everyone at Hogwarts around. Even in just those months. He told me I was naïve.”

“You might be,” Voldemort agreed easily. He’d had the Panopticon open without really reading it; he finally set it aside. “You are, in any case, unrelentingly good.”

He smiled wider. “Yeah.” The only thing Voldemort and Moody ever agreed on, he realized, was _him_. It was reassuring in a sense. He rearranged the blankets so that Voldemort could slip in beside him, to steal a few hours of sleep. With the lights doused, he asked in a quieter tone, “Do you regret that they’re dead? Or do you….” He didn’t even know what emotions should accompany their deaths. He let the elapsed silence ask for him.

“You haven’t got to.”

“That’s not what I meant, though.”

The bed shifted minutely as Voldemort shrugged. “Their loyalty was all conditional. Everyone is a mercenary for the right price.”

Harry looked over. “That’s not true,” he said softly. “It can’t be.” He saw why Voldemort was the way he was, paranoid and isolated, if he believed that.

“Everyone’s a mercenary but you, then,” Voldemort amended.

It wasn’t what he had meant, but no matter. “Even you?” he asked, posing it mostly as an obnoxious question.

But Voldemort paused. “Apparently,” he agreed at last.

 

_Sunday, November 1._ A few hours later, they were departing for the Ministry, flanked by Brightbone and Rye. “This portkey doesn’t go to the atrium,” Brightbone said, extending the medallion. “If you don’t feel secure on the premises, you’ll return with the same. Use it somewhere inconspicuous, where you can’t be followed.” Her mouth was very tight, and she bore a hole into Voldemort’s forehead rather than looking at him properly. “Don’t give statements to the press. Ideally, don’t speak to anyone at all.”

Voldemort was quietly amused by her aggravation, because he could be an arsehole. “Yes, ma’am,” Harry murmured, pliant and pleasant. She didn’t even look at him.

Surprisingly, they were left alone when they reached the staged setting for the conference. They’d be in the front row of the audience, near the exit as a precaution. Harry tugged at the collar of the robe Voldemort had given him – he’d worn an old student’s robe to go flying yesterday, which Voldemort pronounced not only unprofessional but _grotesque_. Wanker. The press was still sequestered outside, so only Wizengamot and DMLE members waited in the room, restless.

“Did they find anything else last night?” Harry asked quietly, in Parseltongue.

“No. What is there to find?” Voldemort gave him an odd look. “We know who they were and why they were there.”

“I dunno. Like, why aren’t they Marked anymore?”

“Oh. _That_.” He was unhappy. “It’s not magic that anyone else should be able to use. If I had access to any Death Eaters, I’d know if they were all removed, but I haven’t.” He shook his head. “The Aurors are less interested.”

“And,” he sucked his teeth, “is Malfoy okay?” He asked it very quietly, feeling unentitled to hear the answer.

“I very much doubt it.” A pause, and he added less flippantly: “No. He will be. He should remain at Hogwarts, but… if he wants out, I’ll get him out.”

“You will?” he asked, faintly doubtful.

Voldemort softened infinitesimally. “His parents were quite useful to me. His _grandparents_ were quite useful. It seems like a fitting reward for such loyalty.”

“I… guess,” he agreed. He had no reason to feel invested in Malfoy’s well-being. And yet. “It’s just so shite.”

“Yes,” Voldemort agreed. And then a Ministry handler gestured for everyone to be seated, and the press flooded the room.

Scrimgeour spoke briefly. He led with Proudfoot’s death – “a diligent and compassionate Auror and a personal friend for thirty years.” He spoke of the Death Eaters unflinchingly – not naming them as _Death Eaters_ , not naming Voldemort at all, but that their incarceration was temporary Ministry custody as they awaited trial. Harry heard some reaction from the crowd behind them, as Scrimgeour named them, all six of them. They’d been separated for being prominent, wealthy, and well-connected. What a kicker, that if they’d been a little less influential, they would’ve been in Azkaban and they would’ve been alive.

Scrimgeour didn’t name the culprits directly. “An investigation has been opened,” he said pre-emptively, “but now is not the moment to point fingers. Preliminary information indicates that this was carried out by a foreign organization of political extremists. We condemn their violence, and such blatant interference in British affairs. We’ll pursue them to the fullest legal extent.”

The press’ questions were to be expected – Can you tell us more about the perpetrators? Are you _sure_ you can’t tell us more about the perpetrators? Or there were questions about the events of the manor. (“Our forensics team is top notch. They’ll release information when they’re able.”) Questions about whether the other Death Eaters’ trials would proceed. (“Under such trying circumstances, it’s imperative to demonstrate _justice_ in all its forms.”) Finally, with last condolences extended to the families, he stepped away from the podium.

Immediately the press jumped up. Harry had expected them to be ushered out as they’d been ushered in, but no, they were free to stay in this room packed with powerful people. They flooded the space, thrusting out microphones and recorders.

“Stay,” Voldemort muttered, ducking into a discreet exit along with a handful of Aurors.

“What – “ Harry said, but he was already gone.

Immediately a witch with bright red hair in a bun seized him – nearly literally. “Bernice Copper, with Wix Policy Weekly, Mr. Potter,” she said brightly. “Is it true that you were at Malfoy Manor when it was attacked?”

“No – I mean, no comment.” He backed up, but was stopped by another hand on his shoulder. The reporter with the handlebar mustache, who’d tracked them down at Cornwall once, beamed at him. “Your proximity with the Dark Lord – I bet you know much more interesting things than anyone else here.” He spoke as though they were friends.

“I don’t,” he said firmly. “And I can’t talk to you.”

“Oh, does _he_ forbid it?”

“ _No_ ,” Harry said, horrified. The exit that had been at his side a moment ago had melted away. Goddammit.

A third wix – no. He groaned when he looked up. Rita, not as polished as her heyday, but clearly back in journalism. “You’re interfering with _my_ source,” she glowered at the other two. And he looked at her in disbelief, just before she continued, “He’s clearly not up for an _interrogation_ , anyway. What a terrible experience. Let’s have a walk and a coffee, Harry, dear.”

It was a good gambit. He was a bit of a mess. He was nearly grateful. Nearly. “No,” he said, looking to duck out of the circle around him. “Excuse me, I’ve really got to – “

“Harry?” _Luna_ , drifting up to him as though he weren’t being mobbed.

Rita glared. “You’re banned, Lovegood.”

“Dad is,” she agreed. “Harry, you’re free to talk to any paper you’d like, but I thought we had enough rapport that I’d be invited to your own press conference.”

“Oh for – “ He was inching toward Luna anyway. And funnily, the other reporters were inching _away_ , as she was apparently kryptonite to actual journalism by their standards. “I don’t have anything to tell you. I _can’t_ , anyway. I need to go.” He was pushing past them, dodging Rita’s jeweled grasp that was her last attempt.

Luna, at once competent and intuitive, pulled him to an exit, until he could shut out the stimulation of the press room entirely. “It’s invigorating,” she said happily, “getting an interview, especially one so high profile as yours. They’re only doing their jobs, but they’re not very kind about it.”

“I really can’t give you a statement,” Harry said, apologetic. “The Aurors… well, they don’t _own_ me exactly, but….”

“All too common,” she said sadly. ( _Was it_?) “Is your paramour under the same restrictions?”

Luna was the only person in the world who would use that word unironically. “Uh. I’m not sure.” Hesitation, and then the best or worst thing he’d ever say: “Do you want to meet him? He, uh, said he’d want to meet you. To talk about the paper, you know.”

Luna beamed. “I’d love to,” she said, fishing a quill from where it’d been stuck in her hair. “I do have so many questions.”

So did he. Re-entering the hall after the journos had dissipated, he picked his way through the journos.

Voldemort had returned, and was speaking with a Wizengamot member Harry didn’t recognize. But when he looked up, the witch followed his gaze, saw Harry, and made an apologetic gesture. He raised his eyebrows. Apparently she found speaking with Voldemort tolerable, but Harry and Voldemort together would be too much.

Luna repelled the other journalists, and it was _brilliant_. Harry came to Voldemort’s side, and then realized he didn’t know how to do this. “Er, Vol – “

“Ms. Lovegood.” Voldemort extended a bony hand, not even reacting to the lifelike gecko rings that were skittering across Luna’s fingers. “A pleasure to finally meet you.”

( _Finally_? Harry blinked. But Voldemort had published open letters in the major papers, Quibbler included. They’d probably had editorial contact before now.)

“I’m quite sorry to meet you under such horrid circumstances,” Luna said.

“Harry.” Voldemort looked back to him for a moment. Switching to Parseltongue: “Severus is here. You need to ask him if his Mark is still visible.”

Harry gaped. “He’ll never – he’ll _eviscerate_ me.”

A flash of his teeth as though he thought this were a joke. “Be that as it may. Tell him that it is a mercy _you_ are asking, not me. I’ll see to it directly if I must, of course.”

“I really don’t want to threaten anyone for you.” Voldemort’s gaze was steady; Harry sighed. “This will go badly, you know.”

Voldemort hummed, a strange sound among the sibilants of Parseltongue. “Thank you, darling.”

He didn’t think he’d said anything that might count as agreement. With a look of loving exasperation, he turned. Behind him, Luna was ecstatic. “Have you ever spoken with a Runespoor?” she asked Voldemort. “I’ve read that they’re wonderful conversationalists. Philosophers, you know.”

He desperately wanted to stay back, not as a mediator but just as an observer. Luna would have a better time with Voldemort than he was about to have with Snape, in any case.

He didn’t consider _why_ Snape was there until he stepped into the adjoining hall where much of the crowd had now moved. But he was there, clustered with three Hogwarts governors Harry didn’t know, and Malfoy. Snape and Malfoy both looked like shit.

He committed to doing this badly, because he’d never be able to do it well. Edging up to the group – “Your parents were a light to the community,” one woman was telling Malfoy. “So stalwart, so dedicated. Anything we can do for that legacy….”

“Thank you, Madam.”

There wasn’t a good way to get to Snape without ruining it all. He sighed, squaring his shoulders. Approaching: “I’m sorry,” he said to Malfoy, and he was.

Malfoy was more composed than he’d been at the manor, but no more willing to listen to him. “Potter, please leave.” He said it nearly through his teeth.

“Um, I need Professor Snape.” _Gryffindor bravery_ , he was chanting in the back of his mind, to stop from cringing.

“That is _Headmaster_ , and you do not.” Snape was stiff and affronted.

“I’m only passing along a message. One that should be, uh, private.”

Snape did pull him away then, not for an audience but only to berate him. “Must you be the center of attention in _every_ crisis?” he hissed. “Have some respect for the living and the dead, you arrogant child.” He swirled his robes, turning to go.

“What – it’s not about _me_.”

“Of course it is,” Snape snarled.

He hated Snape desperately in this moment. Shoving his hands in his pocket to withstand the urge to strangle him, he blurted, “Have you still got the Dark Mark?”

He didn’t think Snape could get any more furious, but he did. He shoved Harry into a corner, jamming his wand right into his chest to cast a stinging hex inconspicuously. Harry didn’t cry out, but he was breathing hard, withholding magic of his own. “You careless – cruel – “

“I’m _not_.” He half-shoved Snape back, to a look of very unpleasant surprise. “Listen.” Dropping a silencing spell around them – “Voldemort needed me to ask, if you’ve still got the Mark. That’s it.”

“ _That’s it_ ,” Snape mocked. “Will he Crucio me himself for not heeding his call promptly yesterday? Or has he sent you to do that as well? Did he ever _need_ a reason to? I’m finished with him, Potter, and it is sick that you think you’re facilitating this abuse in the name of – what – _peace_?”

Harry gaped. “That’s not it at all – “

“The _kindest_ thing you could do is never speak my name in his presence again, nor his name in mine.”

He’d never grow up. As far as he’d come with everyone else in his life, Harry would never be anything but a lost eleven year old in Snape’s presence, thrust into bitterness and conflict he didn’t understand. Snape still had him braced against the wall, clutching his robes as though he’d prefer Harry’s throat. Feeling very brave and very stupid, he reached up, yanking back his sleeve.

The Dark Mark, as expected. The bit he saw was a little darker than usual, as it would be if it’d been active recently.

A flurry of furious motion from Snape, and a hex that felt like his stomach was being ripped out through his mouth. “How dare you – Are you trying to get me killed here and now?” He spoke in anger, but he was also terrified. Even as Harry gagged on the hex, his insides convulsed with pity.

“No, I – Bloody _stop_ this,” he choked. “ _Finite_.” Snape let him remove the hex, at least. Harry’s voice was rough, his breathing hard, as he collected himself: “That’s all he wanted to know. He doesn’t want to see you, either. It’s why he sent me.” He was massaging his throat, which felt lacerated by the curse. “Even when I said that it’d go like… well, _this_.”  
  
Snape’s gaze bore into him. “That is not _all he wanted_ , you fool. He only didn’t see fit to tell you his true intentions. The Mark can hardly be _amputated_. Even you know this, though apparently it didn’t give you pause.”

“The bodies yesterday weren’t Marked.” He didn’t know if he was allowed to divulge this. It felt like valuable intelligence. “And he thought – that maybe they were all gone.”

“Don’t – “ His mouth had gone thin. “Then the bodies were counterfeit. Clearly.”

“He didn’t think so,” Harry said. “But – I’ll tell him.”

“There must be other ways to learn that than summoning us,” Snape said. He was shaken by this, clearly. He’d thought his days of being summoned to Voldemort’s side were over.

“I don’t know,” Harry said, apologetic. “He doesn’t – He wants to be finished with you, too. I can’t imagine why he’d….”

Snape was skeptical, and bitter, and fearful. “If he wants to be rid of us, he hasn’t got to wait very long. The Ministry and the rebels will exterminate us soon enough.”

“I’m sorry,” Harry said. It was true, and it was devastating. “I can keep him away from you. But I don’t know what to do about the rest of them.”

Another angry snort. “Why did Albus ever mistake you for the savior,” Snape muttered.

He moved to go before the force of that even hit Harry. A deep breath, and he walked unthinkingly in the opposite direction.

For all the difference it made – the floor of the Ministry went in a loop, but at least he’d excised some of those feelings when he came back around. And at least Malfoy and Snape had both departed. The conference hall was quiet, in large part. Luna and Voldemort were in a corner, still quite companionable. Feeling a bit drunk at the sight, he went to join them.

Luna had a page of notes before her, cramped writing with doodles and arrows and diagrams all over it. “Hi, Harry,” she said as he dropped into a chair beside her. “We were just discussing the art and culture exchange bill. It needs a better name, though,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “It can be something like… Media Unification to Sustain and Enrich. Or Educate, I can’t decide.” One margin was filled with this brainstorming. “To Sustain Equality?” she asked, jotting it down. “Anyway, I’ll go now. You look terrible,” she told him, concerned. “I often find a face peel of demiguise petals to be wonderfully restorative.”

“I didn’t know a demiguise _had_ petals,” Harry said faintly.

She laughed as though he’d made a joke. “Thanks very much. I don’t expect I’ll see you in class tomorrow?”

_Class_ , christ. He really didn’t even feel like a student these days, much less a good one. “I hope you will, but….” He made an indistinct gesture.

“And Lord Voldemort, it was very nice to meet you. You’re kinder than people say.”

He looked only mildly taken aback. “I promise you, I am not.”

She laughed, as though that were a joke either. And with a sort of absent-minded curtsy, she went, pushing her quill back into the snarl of her hair.

“Did she give you a radish necklace?” Harry asked in low Parseltongue, feeling a bit hysterical.

“Am I _wearing_ a radish necklace?”

He looked over, grinning. “Shame. They’re supposed to ward off… wrackspurts, I think? Or maybe nargles.” Going a bit more sober: “Thank you. That was really, uh, good of you.”

“It wasn’t _charity_.”

Harry shushed him with a smile. “I can tell you about Snape, though.”

“Mm. Have you got a portkey back to the safehouse?”

“Yeah?” It was under his robes, at his throat. “Don’t you?”

“Yes. The Aurors are all occupied, but they expect that we’ll wait at the safehouse until they deliver an all-clear.”

“Uh-huh. And instead…?”

“Let me show you London.”

He unexpectedly loved the idea. Even as infrequently as they were together these days, he’d gotten somewhat bored of their routine of fucking and cooking and fucking. “Moody will be furious,” he protested anyway.

Voldemort was up, looking around to be sure nobody significant was watching. “I’ll answer to Moody,” he said. “But Harry, we are very alone for the day.”

He couldn’t keep the smile off his face. It was stupid, it was reckless. He wanted to do it desperately. “Alright.” Voldemort pulled him away, discreet.

To the top floor of the Ministry, where there were street level exits. Voldemort pulled his wand out, and stopped to consider. “Do you have a preference for the glamours?”

“I’d rather look at you,” he said, overly honest. Touching someone who didn’t look like Voldemort would feel like cheating. He didn’t want to, anyway.

Voldemort hummed, shifting his wand. “There is such a spell. It might itch.”

He was right; an abrasive tingling washed over him, and he sneezed thrice. But when it settled, the sensation was rather like being under an invisibility cloak together, though of course they were still visible. “Thanks,” he said.

The street exit seemed unnervingly unguarded. They stepped out into Muggle London.

Voldemort, in spite of everything, seemed surprisingly at ease in Muggle spaces. They were only going within walking distance, so they didn’t have to navigate taxis or the tube, but still. Walking through St. James and eating steamed buns in the quiet autumn day was perfect.

On a quiet slope by the lake, Voldemort looked over. “What did Severus say?”

Harry sighed. “It went… well, as badly as it should’ve. But, um, he’s still Marked.”

“Mm.” His mouth had gone thin as he thought.

“Why would you summon him, though? You can’t have thought….”

He went a bit still. “I didn’t. I wouldn’t. He didn’t follow it, by any chance?”

“Oh, shit,” Harry muttered. “No, he didn’t. But….”

Voldemort ran a hand over his face. “It is _not_ magic that should be accessible to anyone else. But perhaps I, too, only protected against humans.”

“They, what, hijacked the magic?”

“Apparently.” He was very unhappy, but unable to do much about it now.

And Harry felt immense, inappropriate relief that he hadn’t been fucking with Snape. Whoever _was_ , though…. Well. “Can I tell him anything else?”

“I must assume that he’d like to see you as much as he’d like to see me.”

“Well, yeah, but….”

He shook his head. “I want nothing to do with him,” he said softly. A promise. “He would have to convince the Ministry that they should invest more resources in his safety. And they really… won’t.” He said the word in a sigh. “That is all.”

Harry tossed the rest of his bun to a duck. “Right,” he said, pressing himself to Voldemort’s side. Their magic crackled. It struck him as grossly unfair that this couldn’t be every day.

Maybe Voldemort’s Legilimency touched his mind; maybe it was just as obvious as usual what he was thinking. “We weren’t meant to be separated for this long,” he said. “But I was unable to convince Moody – he said the portraits report you are well-adjusted enough, these days.”

Harry shrugged. “Am I supposed to act mad, then?”

“Clearly you’ve never seen Hamlet.”

“I haven’t,” he confessed. “Also, have the portraits always been _surveillance_?”

“Yes. Of course. What did you believe they were for, atmosphere?”

He shuddered again.

 

He didn’t know why he assumed they’d Portkey back from the Ministry. Still, he was surprised when they exited the other side of the park. Voldemort moved as though he had purpose, in any case.

“It’s weird that you know Muggle things better than I do,” Harry muttered, skipping to keep up as they crossed a road.

“Mm. It’s more significant now than it’s ever been, with the time I spend with them on the Unification.”

“What, like keeping up with Muggle culture?”

“Yes. Imagine that they mentioned something common, and I’d never heard of it.”

“Yeah, imagine _not knowing something_ ,” Harry agreed in mock horror. “You might even need to _ask_ them.”

With a wry look, Voldemort reached over, tugging a lock of his hair in faux-chastisement. He grinned back.

They drew before a church, an imposing gothic one. “St. Dismas,” Voldemort said by way of introduction. “We’ve missed Mass, but now they hold confession.”

Harry had a hard time not staring. “Uhh….”

“Come in. I won’t be long.”

Harry followed him in, incredulous. He’d only been in a church a handful of times, and even then it was only the bland and squat one at the edge of the Dursleys’ neighborhood, to escape Dudley and his gang. It was nothing like this. There was just enough light in the sky to turn all the stained glass windows into decadent jewel tones. The wooden benches and the high ceiling felt a bit like the Great Hall.

Voldemort left Harry on one of the furthest pews. “Stay.”

But… what are you _doing_?”

“I’d very much like to know how the church feels about the recent revelations of magic in their world.” He took in Harry’s dubious expression. “It will become an impediment soon, if it’s not already. And none of the purebloods have even considered it.”

“Oh.” He could see where the problem might lie. “But then… shouldn’t you be meeting with an archbishop, or someone?”

A flash of his teeth. “I would really rather know what knowledge has already reached the commoners. Humor me,” he purred, and then he crossed the church, slipping into a very old-looking wooden booth.

Harry fidgeted. There were only a couple other people in the church, two very old women with their hair covered. He picked up a bible from the back of a pew, flipping through it. He wondered why wixes didn’t have such religion – that they could swear on Merlin and Morgana, but they didn’t _pray_ to them or anything. Maybe the Muggles needed some promise of wonder in the world that magic already unambiguously provided. Maybe wixes were already so powerful, there was no need for belief in a _higher power_. They could change life and its fabric on a whim, already. He found the bible’s apocalypse – at the end, naturally – and leafed through it as he waited.

It was perhaps fifteen minutes until he heard the church door open – and then a familiar gait. He turned, flinching, and moved to plead… something. Not ignorance. Boredom? Restlessness?

Moody’s gaze barely passed over him. “Where is he?” he muttered, lifting his staff. “And what the _devil_ are you doing here?”

Harry summoned his Gryffindor courage. “We went… out, is all. I’m sorry.”

Moody swatted him off like a gnat, apparently actually uninterested in listening to him. “He’ll answer for this.” And, raising his staff high –

There was a crack, and then the space froze. It had been idle before, but the elderly women and the few priests froze in place. A clock stopped ticking. Even smoke from the candles hung in mid-air, no longer dissipating. Harry gaped.

A moment later, Voldemort was ducking out of the confessional, expressionless. “Haven’t you got better things to do with your time?” he asked, raising his non-eyebrows.

“Yes,” Moody ground out. “We do.” He was stalking across the flagstones. The wooden peg caused a deep echo through the space. “If you’d _like_ to get slaughtered in public like your Death Eaters, just say so and we won’t expend resources on protecting you anymore.” He said it all in a hiss. His eye spun more when he was angry; it whirled wildly now.

Before Voldemort could respond, Harry was shoving his way between the two wizards. “I need your wands,” he said, with more confidence than he felt.

Moody was annoyed with him, but Voldemort was… indulgent, maybe. He offered his wand easily. “Of course.” And then Moody slapped his own wand, popped from its inlay in his staff, into Harry’s grasp as well. “Thank you.” He backed away.

“I could do with less protection,” Voldemort said. “As you know. _Please_ put your Aurors elsewhere.”

“And don’t involve Potter in your suicide bid.”

“I wanted to – I’m sorry – “

“Harry, quiet.” Voldemort was calmer than he ought to be. “The Ministry shouldn’t re-open until its wards have been corrected. That you didn’t launch an investigation into their failure in _September_ , as anyone would have done – “

“Of course we bloody did.”

Voldemort hummed, non-committal. “I recommend Dementors as a stop-gap measure. I was reflecting that Azkaban might be the safest place these days, and I thought I should see the sun once more first.”

Harry would have been devastated by this, but it wasn’t addressed to him. “I don’t want your fucking sentimentality,” Moody said, profoundly unimpressed.

A shrug. “It’s all I have to offer. It should make my abjection all the sweeter.” But then his posture went minutely more relaxed. “It wasn’t strategic, Alastor. I wish I could tell you it was.”

Harry could see Moody’s jaw working. Voldemort would drop his voice to soft, reasonable-seeming tones sometimes; it seemed to rile Moody, and he’d never respond in kind but always became that much angrier. “We’ve made every concession for you,” he snarled – Scrimgeour’s decisions, not the Aurors’, and Harry saw now this internal conflict was part of Voldemort’s strategy. “I should have never allowed Rufus to let you out. You’ll be _quite_ safe in Azkaban, from now on.”

“Will I?” Voldemort said blandly. Moody’s jaw got tighter, and when he didn’t answer, Voldemort went on: “And what of _your_ safety, when I’m in Azkaban?”

“My Aurors are very good.”

“Ah.”

Harry hated this. He was edging farther back from them both, unhappy and unimpressed. His motion was subtle, not that they were looking at him anyway – slipping a hand beneath the collar of his robe, he flipped the portkey on its ribbon. It warmed and then – with a ripping of the suspended time around them –

He landed lightly in the garden of the safehouse. He was alone. The peace was exquisite. He hadn’t intended to take Moody’s and Voldemort’s wands – he only realized when his hand grew sore from clutching them both that he still had them. Well. They were talented magicians; they’d devise something. Hilariously, they might even have to collaborate on it. He went inside, humming a bit.

 

He'd expected to be followed. He wasn’t. He felt much less clever when the sky had gone dark and Voldemort still hadn’t returned. Maybe he just… wouldn’t. Maybe Moody had meant to hand him back to Azkaban right then. But – no – their Legilimency barely touched, but it was steady and uninteresting. Sometimes in Azkaban he could swear he could feel the Dementors through the connection, even while he was awake. There was no trauma pressing on his soul yet.

So for the second night in a row, he fell asleep tentatively, on the sofa. This time, though, he barred the door with a sticking spell first. Voldemort could beg for forgiveness if he wanted back in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here’s a little glossary of the terms used here, related to our Big Bad:
> 
> Humnerë – A political group based in Albania. Vampire-led (with some human and werewolf followers) and mostly interested in the concerns of vampires and other quasi-humans. This is the group Voldemort lived with and learned from when he was traveling in his 20s. Humnerë is Albanian for ‘abyss.’
> 
> Dëshmitar – The leader of the Humnerë and the associated vampire coven. She mentored Voldemort personally; and is currently missing. Dëshmitar is Albanian for ‘witness.’
> 
> Lugat sg/Lugétër pl – The specific breed of vampire. They do not feed so much off blood as souls, being more psychological vampires than physical. They can shapeshift, and in one version of the myth they can only be killed by wolves (which is why Voldemort says he was a bounty hunter to keep the wolves off their land when he was young). Most of this comes from real Albanian myth and it’s great, I love it, I was so excited to find such vibrant myths to work with.
> 
> Kukudh – What the vampires call Voldemort. ‘The deathless one,’ an undead creature who will not settle in the grave.
> 
> When they address him as kyrie, that is Greek for Lord or Sir.
> 
>  
> 
> Allusions for Chapter 18:
> 
> “Am I supposed to act mad, then?” -- “Clearly you’ve never seen Hamlet.” – When Hamlet is plotting against his uncle early in the play, he acts mad to throw suspicion off himself.
> 
> Church of St. Dismas – In Catholic tradition, St. Dismas was the ‘good thief’ crucified beside Jesus, who repents before he dies.


	19. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the aftermath of the Halloween massacre, Harry is summoned to Grimmauld Place, for good news and bad.
> 
> (Warning: conversation/confrontation about child abuse. Also, depression. Sorry, Harry.)

It was very dark and very late when he was awoken by a knock on the door. His mouth felt dry and tacky. He pulled his robes into place.

Voldemort could undo the sticking spell even without a wand, of course, but he didn’t. He had the gall to find it _funny_ , even, when Harry cracked open the door, just enough to peer at him. “You can be such a cock,” Harry muttered.

“Yes,” he agreed. “This can’t be a surprise.” When Harry didn’t move to let him in, he frowned. “Would you like an apology?” He said the word incredulously.

“Only for Moody.”

“Ah.” He straightened, less playful and more serious now. “He revised our vows. They are not all predicated on you any longer. He didn’t entirely trust that I wouldn’t put you in peril, and he certainly didn’t believe I’d choose your safety over anything else. It was making him… twitchy. As you saw.”

“Then… what are the vows now?” His grip on the door had loosened. Voldemort had a hand over his on the doorframe, stepping in closer. Their magic burned with familiarity.

“Nothing to do with you, any longer.”

“But what….” Snaking his fingers between Voldemort’s, he pulled him inside. His reluctance was making Harry anxious.

“I swore the armistice on my magic, instead.”

His stomach twisted. “Oh.”

Voldemort shook off his touch with a wry look. “If you could refrain from looking so tragic,” he requested. “It’s fine.”

“Should I have stayed?” He was trailing after Voldemort, through the kitchen and into the basement.

“No, honestly. We could be much less, mm, delicate without you.” He was picking through bottles now, until he found baobab tablets. He threw back a handful without comment.

“Uh, that’s not how I’d describe you. Either of you.”

He flashed his teeth. “Nevertheless.” His fingers played over the other vials on the lab table. “May we fuck tonight?” he asked charmingly.

“God. Yes. But not until you’ve told me everything else.”

“Mm.” Slipping vials into his robes, he motioned Harry out. “But we’ve divested ourselves of you. It all amounts to the same, really,” he said in a sigh. “Without you or without magic, I would be… well, near enough to death, anyway.”

It unexpectedly hurt. “I _want_ to be involved, you know,” he said. “It made sense. Even if Moody… well, I think he believed I’m much more important than I am.”

“He wants to see you tomorrow,” Voldemort said, off-handed. “At your house, over breakfast.”

“ _My house_ ,” Harry sighed. “Right. Cheers. D’you know how to deed the Order the house, by any chance?”

“You really haven’t got much longer at school,” Voldemort said, reasonably. “You might want the property then.”

“Like hell. There’s heads of house elves mounted on the walls.”

Unexpectedly, this drew a fond smile from Voldemort. “They were all mad,” he said in an approving tone. “There was ingenuity in it. It’s why Bella was the best duelist I’ve ever known, her unpredictability. She might have bested me, if she hadn’t loved me so much.”

“You do believe in loyalty, then,” Harry accused, circling back to their earlier conversation.

He didn’t take the bait. “Only for the two of you,” he said lightly. “You must be mad, too.”

“Yeah,” Harry agreed in a sigh.

 

Over wine, before the hearth, he dragged the rest of the night with Moody from Voldemort. Truces to keep Hogwarts safe, and the Aurors, and the Minister, all sworn on Voldemort’s magic and applicable through his trial and… whatever its outcome would be.

“And the Horcruxes?” Harry asked hesitantly. It was the Horcruxes that were keeping them apart. Trading the safety of some bits of Voldemort’s soul for others.

“That’s nothing to do with me,” he answered loftily. “It should be your decision, whether to keep them.”

“ _Your_ vow and _your_ soul are _my_ decision?” he said in disbelief.

“They are more involved in your life than mine, presently.”

“I’d rather see you,” Harry said instantly. It wasn’t even a question. The Horcruxes were useful, and their magic helped, but it was only a stopgap measure. “I mean, if Moody even lets me outside ever again.” He bit his lip. “ _Was_ he angry, about today? I know it was reckless.”

“You have as many protection spells on you as either of us can think of. And you really should be immune to his ire by now.”

He grinned. “I should be, yeah.” He sat back, serious for a moment. “Will you be alright?”

“Yes. Of course.”

“Will they give you back your fucking magic now?”

An indulgent smile. “Perhaps.” He held one of Harry’s hands in both of his, scrubbing the tendons in a massage. “It should have never been your concern. Everyone – including me – was too invested in your career as the savior. You shouldn’t… _mean_ that much, to anyone.”

“I don’t mind,” he muttered.

“You should.”

He shook his head and, at a loss for an argument, instead leaned in to kiss him. His mouth was warm and stained with wine.

“Would you top tonight?” Voldemort asked, sweetly.

“Yeah. Absolutely.” It felt like a distraction, but… well, they both needed one. Voldemort more than him, even if he wouldn’t name it. Even if, perhaps, he didn’t even recognize it himself. “Can I tie you up?”

“Yes.”

“And would you piss for me?”

A wry glance. “Fetishist,” he chided. “Yes.”

A shot of Amortentia and a shot of Verve for each of them, and then up to the bedroom.

“I need your clothes off.” Harry was moving to pull out their sex toys, thinking as he went. “And I need your Legilimency, of course.”

They’d reflexively shared Legilimency at a distance, in sleep and even waking, for so long that the nearness of this actually hurt. Voldemort dropped his Occlumency without question, and inside he was just… complicated. Full of love and fear and bitter nostalgia. He heard Harry’s intake of breath. “Don’t,” he said. “Just hurt me tonight.”

“Yes, sir.” He tossed a flogger in the direction of the bed. Voldemort hummed in appreciation.

But he was decadent in the way he touched Voldemort, anyway. Taking a seat behind him in bed, he put his mouth to Voldemort’s throat, beneath his ear, sucking hard. “Can I bite you?” he mumbled, as the marble-cool skin warmed under his tongue.

“Yes.”

He did, lightly at first. Voldemort’s skin was thin – he bruised easily, and he’d probably bleed easily. He pressed his incisors in harder, and Voldemort arched backwards into his touch. And then Harry was taking his elbows, bringing them together before him, twisting enchanted ropes from his wrists up the lengths of his forearms. Ducking forward, he swiped his tongue along his throat until he found his pulse. He bit, just until the faintest bit of blood tinged his mouth.

“Could you stay on your knees?” he asked while sitting back, trying to decide what to do with Voldemort. Hurting him didn’t come naturally. All he wanted was to hold him and mouth him and fingerfuck him. Soon.

A pause. “Not for very long.”

He could feel in the Legilimency that his shattered knee was still healing, more than he’d admit. “Mm, nevermind. I need you on your stomach.” Taking a couple heavy pillows, he maneuvered, them both. The pillows went beneath Voldemort’s hips, leaving his arse high in the air. His torso was twisted enough that he could breathe. His wrists were pinned to the headboard. It was an ignominious position.

Their flogger was soft and pliant from use; he smiled with familiarity as he picked it up. “What did the Muggles do for you?” He was arranging Voldemort, pulling his cock and balls toward his stomach to keep them out of the way, pressing his knees together so he could mark continuous stripes across his thighs. “What did you do for them?”

Voldemort had only mentioned once before that his hookups had mostly been with Muggles, though he hadn’t seemed reluctant to divulge this. “Whatever they wanted.” His voice was a bit thin from the way his chest was compressed against the mattress. “They were all older than me. Many of them were prominent people – doctors, scholars. Politicians, a few of them. Artists, when I needed a change of pace. If we forged any sort of rapport, they’d give me money or a place to stay, when I’d tell them I couldn’t afford to come around again otherwise. It was… useful,” he said carefully. “Not just financially.” He twisted to pull his face up, his chest up, to breathe. “As Borgin and Burkes introduced me to a great many influential wixes very early, the London intellectual setting introduced me to influential Muggles early on. It never came naturally to me, upper class life, so it was… observation. Better to make a faux pas like a wealthy Muggle than a poor wizard, in most pureblood circles.”

Harry hadn’t meant to stop to listen, but he had. He dipped to press a kiss to his shoulder in response. Then: “I’m giving you a suggestion charm, to piss.”

“Right.”

He did, several of them, until he felt full and desperate himself. Voldemort _shoved_ the sensation back at Harry, who only laughed. “Hold it,” he said. “I want to see you squirm.”

He admired the motion in Voldemort’s back as he sighed, not unpleasantly. “Yes, darling.”

They’d brought the Amortentia upstairs with them. Harry tipped some into his palm now, agitating it so it became slick. He smeared this over Voldemort’s puckered hole and down a buttplug. “And recently?”

He clicked his tongue. “I haven’t fucked Muggles recently. You can account for where I’ve been for most of this past year.”

(This was true. Harry had been abducted from the Hogwarts battlefield last November and just never left.) “We should celebrate our anniversary,” he said, wry but not entirely insincere. “I dunno what day it was.”

“That is sick,” Voldemort said, but he was also amused. And then Harry was pressing the slick buttplug inside him, twisting and stretching. He arched with a hiss. But then, composing himself, he took the buttplug in slowly, methodically, so Harry could watch each slick bead disappear inside of him.

“Good, love, you’re very good,” Harry cooed, dabbing a last bit of Amortentia just above the base before he pushed it in. He felt the echo of pleasant, heavy fullness – the buttplug and the desperate weight of his bladder – through Legilimency. He loved it. “Tell me about your important Muggles.”

He didn’t really care, but Voldemort had a delightful habit of talking – _lecturing_ – during sex, and it was endearing. One of the last times they’d been together Voldemort had delivered a lecture on Greek pederasty while actually inside him, because he was just endlessly pretentious. Harry loved it.

But Voldemort’s mind was elsewhere tonight. Even if Harry couldn’t see deep enough into the Legilimency to say where. “They were useful,” he repeated, as Harry slapped the bony angle of his arse, just enough to warm his skin. “I’m quite sure the thrill for most of them was their feeling of _slumming it_.” (And Harry nearly laughed at this; he wouldn’t have guessed Voldemort had known the phrase.) “That as poised and brilliant and beautiful as the boy they smuggled home was, I was still poor and still an orphan. I didn’t move with particular ease through their world, however long I stayed. I still don’t.” He tried unsuccessfully to look back. “Flog me,” he requested. “If you’re methodical about it, I won’t even lose my train of thought.”

He grinned guiltily, feeling caught at something perverse. “It’s just fascinating.”

“Mm.”

And then, picking up the flogger, he swung it into his thighs, just hard enough. _Crack_ , went the dozens of leather tails in his thin skin. A perfect tensing of Voldemort’s back, between his shoulder blades, and then a perfect, conscious relief. Beautiful.

 _Crack, crack, crack_. He went slow and even, admiring the stripes that developed along Voldemort’s pale thighs. Voldemort preferred it methodical. Harry preferred – or _needed_ , perhaps – more erratic spankings and paddlings and floggings. He needed to be taken by surprise. But this, the sensation that was passed on through Legilimency was nice. They could both embrace the inevitability of the pain, anyway.

Voldemort moved awkwardly. His breathing was thin. Harry did stop long enough to push a pillow beneath his chest and chin. “There you go, love.”

“You used to be full of fury,” Voldemort mused. “There were _years_ ….”

This was true; Harry had been made soft, somehow, between the war and Voldemort. Gentle, generous, patient. It was very strange, to think of Voldemort watching him grow up this way. He decided to ignore it, for the moment. “Tonight is about you, though. Why aren’t you telling me what the Muggles did to you?” _Smack, smack, smack._

“What I did to them, really. I – “ He said it as an inhalation, when the inflammation of the flogger had begun to burn in earnest. Harry felt it too, and felt Voldemort compose himself. “None of them were public. Otherwise I too would have had the charge of _catamite_ leveled at me. Just as well. Sodomy was still criminalized then.” _Crack. Crack._ He was breathing deliberately through his non-nose, as though he were a runner in the middle of a race. “I’d top, generally. They wanted to be held down, they wanted my weight on top of them. I’d hit them, too. Being posh sorts, they actually kept crops for their bloody _horses_.” He said it in a dry laugh. _Crack. Crack_. A jolt as Harry hit the underside of his arse in the delicate crease. Harry burned as badly as he did. He didn’t stop. _Smack, smack, smack_. “I’d piss in their mouths. I’d tell the men to put on their wives’ clothing, to leave on a pair of knickers or garters all night, so that they might be caught. I left one of them once, when he refused to get himself off beneath his coat as we walked by the river.” He said it with fond nostalgia in his voice. “The neuroses they carried… they were bland, honestly, but this all meant so much to them. _Ah_ ,” he gasped, barely, as the flogger’s tails hit the same spot too many times in a row. Switching hands, Harry repositioned.

 _Smack. Smack_. He breathed evenly. “I learned much about power in those days. I learned all of the correct words and correct gestures to convince them to concede their power. Moreover, I learned how very much they _wanted_ to.” He said it in a breathless laugh, even as he jerked against a stinging blow. “Like you, they longed for me to whisper in their ears as I fucked them, to tell them I’d take care of _everything_.”

 _Smack_. The flogger came down much too hard across his back; the headboard rattled as Voldemort pulled at his cords. And then he growled, “ _Finally_ ,” with some perverse satisfaction.

Hot and flustered, Harry threw the flogger on the bed beside him. “Finally?” he echoed.

“For all your investment in fidelity, you are certainly not jealous.”

Oh. Shaking his head, he retrieved the flogger. “I was, once,” he muttered. “Maybe you absorbed _that_ from my mind, too. And,” he hesitated on this, “I belong now. And _you_ belong to _me_. That’s all.” The Muggles could never compare. Even if Voldemort told him about his wixen encounters – and he shouldn’t, their world was just too small – it wouldn’t be the same. He knew nothing so firmly as he knew that they belonged to each other.

Voldemort moved to prop himself on his elbows; Harry held him down. “Nevertheless,” Voldemort said carefully, “I would rather be in your mind than my own, tonight. Your feelings are simple, and pure.”

His insides convulsed with pity. The Manor had affected him more than he’d ever admit. “Voldemort….”

“Harry, just fucking hit me.”

“I didn’t realize,” he said, but it was as much of an apology as he offered. “Just, quiet. I’ve got you, love.”

He ran his hand up the expanse of his back first. He’d worked his way up, so his thighs and arse were crimson, while his back was yet unmarred. He weighted the flogger, and then – _crack_. Long satisfying stripes burned red against his pale skin. Harry groaned at the corresponding pain in his own flesh. _Crack, crack, crack_. Their breathing was hard but steady.

Catharsis. Voldemort was right, Harry wouldn’t last this if he weren’t angry, weren’t self-destructive, weren’t purging himself as well. _Smack, smack_. He held his back arched in pain. Voldemort, by contrast, was steady and relaxed. If anything, he embraced it. There was a self-loathing perfection in it that Harry hadn’t seen or felt before, but now was so central in their Legilimency, it was nearly embarrassing to gaze upon directly. Pity – and then a flare of anger in response – They were the same soul, propping each other up as necessary. Voldemort didn’t ask much of him – Voldemort didn’t ask much of _anyone_ , proud and brittle and brilliant as he was – but Harry could give him this. _Smack, smack, smack._ His back had gone very red, and they luxuriated in the pain. _Smack, smack, smack._

The burn spread like tendrils, rushing own their hamstrings and up to the base of their skull. They could feel everything. It was arousal that didn’t all pool between their legs but diffused over their skin, sinking deep. Harry’s strokes were methodical, meditative. Voldemort was detaching from himself, he could feel, and it’s all Harry wanted for him, for the moment. “There you go,” he murmured, too softly to distract him.

 _Smack, smack, smack_. He’d worked his way all the way up, flogging between Voldemort’s angular shoulder blades. He dropped the flogger without decorum. They both screamed with endorphins, with pain and satisfaction and lust. “Alright?” Harry ghosted his fingers along Voldemort’s back, over the curve of his arse, down his thighs. He hadn’t broken skin, but the entirety of his back was so inflamed, he could’ve been feverish. Unthinking, he cast a cooling charm on the very tips of his fingers, and stroked parallel to the flogging marks. Voldemort groaned.

He said something then, needy and guttural, but he’d pressed his face into a pillow to steady himself. “What?” Harry asked.

Voldemort lifted his upper body with some difficulty. “Choke me,” he rasped.

“Mm. Yeah. But I want to watch you faint.” He was dissolving the chains on the headboard, moving to pull Voldemort over and semi-seated. It was only a moment before he complied, but he clearly steeled himself first. It was endearing.

Harry slid between him and the headboard. Even when Voldemort was looking at him, his gaze still seemed helplessly far away. “You’ve done so good,” Harry murmured with affection, catching his lips in a kiss, and then skimming his mouth down to nip at his neck, his collarbone, his nipples. “I love you so much.”

Voldemort’s look was one he didn’t recognize. “Harry….”

“Let me take it all away from you,” he said. His hands lingered on Voldemort’s shoulders now, a promise. “I’ll take care of everything.”

A faint smile. Shaking his head: “The savior,” he said. “It’s not at all the same. I’m not so elegant or refined, and you were not born of the slums. I’d never find sex with you to be degrading, anyway.”

Voldemort always grew melancholy and introspective when Harry topped. Or perhaps he only wanted to bottom when he was melancholy already. Whichever way it went. Sliding in, Harry pulled Voldemort into a hug, working his cool fingers over the prominent vertebrae. “Tell me how much it disgusts you to be pitied,” he mumbled into his shoulder, teeth scraping the skin in a mischievous smile. It was only a distraction, but _god_ how he needed it.

“It does,” Voldemort said evenly. His posture had gone a bit tense.

“Just… let me.” Harry couldn’t even put into words what he was asking for, exactly, at first. “I want to watch you faint. I want to watch you _cry_. I’d strip you in public, lead you around in only a collar or a pair of knickers. I’d make you kneel at my feet wherever I sat, waiting for me. I’d pin your arms to your sides and then feed you by hand. I wouldn’t let you hold your own cock when you pissed. I wouldn’t let you touch yourself at all.” He was still smiling, fond and teasing. His hands had dipped low, between Voldemort’s legs, to stroke his erection, stiff against his thigh. “I couldn’t make anyone _pity_ you, necessarily, but I could make you feel helpless.” He didn’t say _broken_. It hung between them anyway. “Would you like that?”

Voldemort shuddered in his touch. But both of them were aroused by the things that disgusted them, anyway. “Just choke me, now,” he said. “I’ll gladly wear your bruises tomorrow.”

“Mm,” he said in appreciation. Slipping a hand to his cool, narrow throat, he hesitated. “How do I…?” He really wasn’t good at hurting anyone.

“For fuck’s sake.”

He went slow at first, wrapping his fingers around his throat, feeling his pulse flutter beneath his palm. His gaze must have been as wild as Voldemort’s, but he was as careful and deliberate as he’d been all night, tightening his grip and pushing Voldemort gently backwards. Voldemort’s own hands were tangled in the bedclothes, bracing himself. He passed every sensation on to Harry, perfectly, so he swooned with light-headedness and euphoric panic just as well. He squeezed harder.

Voldemort’s posture lost its crisp perfection, as he slumped. So close, he was so close. Harry was holding him up with his off hand, around his back. He gripped harder, so it felt like Voldemort’s pulse now hammered against this palm. Their vision went gray, then black. Voldemort wilted, slumping to Harry’s shoulder. When he let go, they were both gasping for breath.

Harry didn’t pull far enough back this time to actually meet Voldemort’s gaze, but held him close, their chests heaving against one another’s. “There you go,” he said, rubbing circles into Voldemort’s back. “Again?”

Surprisingly, Voldemort took Harry’s shoulders in response, tipping them backwards onto the bed. “I want you on top of me.” His voice was deep and raspy. It was incredibly erotic. “And I want your hand over my mouth.”

Grinning, Harry clambered over Voldemort’s legs, sitting back enough that he could stroke his erection against his stomach. “Yes, sir.”

One hand on his throat, another on his mouth and nose – well, nostrils. It helped, actually, that Harry’s hand fit better over his flat face. Pressing all his weight forward, he felt Voldemort’s breath hitch. “That’s it,” he murmured, as Voldemort struggled and failed to draw breath. The panic in their chest was delicious – the proximity to death was delicious – the way he went slack against his will, wilting into the bed, agitating the inflamed stripes all down his back. When Harry’s own body went a bit slack with residual suffocation, he pulled back.

The way Voldemort sucked in his first breath was the purest relief he’d ever felt. Again. Again. Each time he went far enough that Voldemort felt the thrill of mortality; each time he’d pull back in time to watch his slack body go tense as he drew himself back to life.

His throat became red, then purple. His lips grew dark. A couple times, Harry ducked to kiss him, sucking the breath from his mouth, depriving him for a little longer. At this, Voldemort’s look was fond and flustered and exasperated, but speech was beyond him at the moment.

His erection curved along his stomach. Harry’s strained against the pants he still wore. He moved to stroke Voldemort off, a lazy hand jerking the first couple inches, because to not touch themselves was torturous. He curled his fingers against Voldemort’s throat, to watch his mouth fall open, dark lips gaping. And them, with a convulsion, he felt a hot spurt of piss roll over his fingers. He shuddered himself, in lust and anticipation. Voldemort had never been able to piss with an erection – Harry, deviant that he was, _had_ asked – but they were both so desperate right now.

“It’s alright, love,” he murmured, easing his touch just enough that Voldemort would be conscious enough to listen. “It’s alright if you can’t hold it.”

Even in the midst of gasping, Voldemort flushed at the childish turn of phrase. Pushing Harry’s hands away long enough to compose himself: “Get me off, and I will.”

“Oh?” he said innocently. Of course his arousal was the only thing holding the flood back.

“Please.”

Harry rubbed the dribbles of piss and pre-come into his belly, which was warm and distended with need. “Like this?” He was lifting Voldemort’s legs, one at a time, around his waist.

Voldemort winced as his lower stomach was folded in two. He’d piss himself if he could. It was humiliating. “However you’d like,” he said. His voice was broken, and his back burned where it pressed into the sheets, but they were both too high off pain and suffocation to care.

Harry twisted the buttplug inside him. The Amortentia had all diffused inside him by now. He was loose, slick, ready. Harry tipped the buttplug toward Voldemort’s belly, into his bladder, to watch him squirm once more. “Very good,” he cooed, before popping it out. A groan. He plunged his fingers inside, as though they were a placeholder, as he conjured lube in his other hand. He smeared it on them both – messily, as he was unable to wait any longer. Voldemort convulsed around his fingers, yearning for fullness.

Harry’s gripping his thighs as he presses himself forward, and his cock is enveloped inch by inch inside Voldemort. “There you go,” he breathes. “Beautiful.” And then, with two fingers, he presses hard on his adam’s apple. A gasp, a flutter of his eyelids, and a surrender of his body to Harry.

Harry keeps his hand at Voldemort’s mouth or his throat, even pressing down for leverage. He adores it, adores watching Voldemort go slack, his expression open and blissful as he suffocates: it’s the only time he ever looks so peaceful. Slowing his thrusting for just a moment, he bends low, pressing a kiss to his gasping mouth. “I wish you’d told me earlier,” he says, a bit chiding and a bit rueful. “I’d do anything for you.”

Voldemort’s eye had been closed, he’d been lost in thought very far away, but he opens them now. In a shattered tone: “You know now.” How much it thrills him to be so proximate to death. His obsession really is devoted, even for an obsession.

Harry lifts his legs higher, to his shoulders, so Voldemort is nearly bent double. Voldemort had done it to him before, and it had made him feel bottomless. This way, he could bury his length in Voldemort’s narrow arse. This way, his lover is pressed so compact, he feels like he could cover all of Voldemort’s body with his own. His other hand is on Voldemort’s cock again, strands of pre-come webbing his fingers, and he strokes opposite his thrusts. Voldemort had done _that_ to him before as well, and it is maddening for them both. They slide against one another, slick with fluids. Voldemort’s sculpted-marble body only ever feels warm during sex. And Harry only ever thinks of him as _fragile_ in these moments either, his spindly, skeletal frame seemingly on the verge of collapse. He pounds hard, reckless. He wants to protect and own Voldemort. Those feel like the same thing.

Voldemort is guiding Harry’s hand to his throat again. “I’m so close,” he murmurs. “I want to pass out when I come. Can you do that for me?”

He loves the idea. Voldemort, so aroused and overcome that Harry had made him faint. “Of course, love.” He fits his hand around his throat again, squeezing rhythmically, teasing, in time with his thrusting. Voldemort’s breath hitches in anticipation. His cock throbs, smearing thick pre-come into Harry’s fingers.

They still know each other’s bodies so well, despite being apart. Honestly, the sex they share in sleep had probably made them more attuned to each other, their motion and stimuli and thoughts all distilled into the pureness of their shared soul. He recognizes the way Voldemort’s calves tense, the way his mouth curves and puckers, the way his chest goes tight. Harry leans in, pressing all his weight onto his milky throat. Their soul is coiled in panic, and it is exquisite.

He thrusts and thrusts, so close himself. Another byproduct of the dream sex; while sharing a body, they’d grown used to coming together. His belly is very tight and his extremities are tingling.

He takes on more of the panic and suffocation from their connection, dabbling in it, letting himself go lightheaded as well. All his blood is in his cock. His fingers twitch around Voldemort’s throat, and he has to focus even as his own vision grays. “I could kill you,” he hears himself saying, but in such a loving tone – His hand contracts very hard against their throat – Groaning, Voldemort arches –

He comes up his chest, violently. Harry shoots come deep inside him, filling him, Voldemort’s body tightening around his length and then – He slumps onto the blankets, near unconsciousness. The aftershocks of their orgasm feel like reflexes, like a wet dream, and it is so goddamn erotic to watch the last of his come spurt from his still form.

Harry withdraws his hand. Voldemort begins breathing again, creaky and shallow. He tries a few times to speak, swallowing hard and finally giving up. “You’re perfect,” Harry murmurs, unable to take his eyes off the pearlescent spatters up his chest. “I hope that was what you needed.”

“Yes.” His voice is impossibly soft. But he is lucid enough. “Thank you.”

It was late, and they were both about to drop off. But when Harry reached to douse the lights, Voldemort had the presence of mind to look up in faint alarm. “Harry – “

“Mm?” He couldn't entirely keep a smile off his lips.

“I won’t wait until morning,” he said, and before Harry could play dumb any longer, he asked, “Where would you like me to piss?”

“Ah.” He was sitting back now, to admire Voldemort’s tense posture. “I think you can wait,” he said, even as he watched the way he pressed his legs together.

“Should I wet the bed? Accio pants,” he said, waving vaguely toward the bit of floor where they’d been dropped.

“No. Stay here.” As Harry ducked into the toilet, Voldemort shoved every feeling of panic and desperation through their Legilimency. He laughed.

When he returned to the bedroom, Voldemort was on his side precariously, mostly asleep. Running a finger down his back, Harry clucked. “Can I put something on this?”

“I’ve had worse done to me.”

“I fucking know. Not murtlap or dittany….” Those were for abrasions. He was only inflamed. But _god_ , heat poured from his flogged skin like a bad sunburn.

“Sunflower cream,” he said without looking. “Accio….” A tub soared from the bath; Harry caught it in mid-air.

“Cheers.” But first, he stretched a nappy beside Voldemort’s hip. He really was very close to sleep, and didn’t look. Gently, Harry pulled him onto his stomach.

At that, Voldemort did realize. Slapping one hand to the open nappy beneath himself – “I can’t – “ He stopped. A deliberate sigh. “Harry. Really. I can’t.”

He pressed a kiss to one shoulder, easy and playful. “Just sleep in it, then. Just in case.” Stepping around the bed, he sank onto his knees on the sheets, unscrewing the sunflower balm.

Voldemort was filled with complicated feelings, not all of them positive. He was averse and apprehensive and so, so humiliated. Harry drank it in. Pressing another kiss to his shoulder, he murmured, “Safe word?” A reminder. He was very bad at making people feel miserable, anyway.

“No.”

The swipe of his tongue upon the back of Voldemort’s neck, dabbing at the sensitive spots of the base of his skull. He smeared sunflower cream down his tense, inflamed back.

The snarl of apprehension eased as Harry rubbed his back. The room was dark and cool, steadying them both. He could feel the residual healing of the balm in his own flesh. It was nice.

“I wish you’d told me earlier,” Harry said quietly. It made sense now – that when Voldemort would choke Harry, to hold him in place or to watch him piss as he fainted – he always drank in those feelings greedily. “I loved it. You looked so….” Peaceful. Happy. “Perfect.”

“Perfect,” Voldemort echoed, amused. “I’ve hardly been dissatisfied with our sex life, anyway.”

“I know. But you’ve given me everything.”

Voldemort hummed but didn’t properly respond, sinking deeper into the blankets. The stripes down his back faded, and so did the tension coiled there.

Balm along his arse, down his thighs. They’d both be sore tomorrow, but at least not (very) bruised. Harry played a finger at Voldemort’s arsehole, still warm and loose. “I’ll want to fuck you again when you wake up wet,” he said, slightly apologetic. “Should you sleep in a buttplug?”

“No. Unless you’d like me to. I will be ready for you.”

An affectionate brush of his fingers along his narrow arse. “Alright.” Setting the sunflower cream aside as a deliberate motion, he reached for the nappy. “Ready?”

“Yes.” There was just no dignity in this. Voldemort was too close to sleep to be truly apprehensive anymore, though.

He was on his stomach. Harry swept a hand beneath him, positioning his cock, before pulling up each of the sides. Safety pins, magical ones that fastened tighter than Muggle ones could. They both burned with – fear? No, just anticipation. And more mundane feelings as well, the throbbing fullness of his bladder, the shocks of desperation that threatened to spill over. “I’ll be casting my own suggestion charms from now on,” Voldemort said, his voice muffled as he buried his face in his crossed arms. “Yours are sadistic.”

 _Voldemort_ thought _he_ was a sadist. He grinned. “I love you so much,” he said easily, tugging rubber pants up his long legs. He lifted his pelvis just enough to pull it up, groaning at the motion. Harry fell in bed beside him, delighted.

Voldemort’s body was angular, but the nappy was soft. Harry couldn’t stop touching him, stroking and rubbing and fingering. “Fetishist,” Voldemort said wryly.

“Mmhm. Are you waiting, then?”

A shift, experimental. As desperate as he was, he couldn’t let go yet. “Yes.”

“’Lright.” He curled up beside Voldemort. “Do you want me to tie you up, anything?”

“No. Go to bed.”

He kissed the back of his neck, letting their magic mingle.

 

They both slept lightly, so Harry was already mostly awake when Voldemort kicked his legs apart, sliding a knee between them. “I can’t wait,” he said lowly.

“You haven’t got to, love.” He tried to say it easily, but he was already getting hard. Dipping a hand between Voldemort’s legs: “Are you wet already?”

“No.” His humiliation burned in their Legilimency. His thighs were pressed very closely together.

“Would you go in my lap?”

“May I?”

Eyebrows up. Bringing himself seated, he pulled Voldemort across his legs, facing away from him. It wasn’t unusual for Harry to wet himself like this. It was safe, it was quiet. Like the rest of the night, he wanted to experience the other half of it all. “You can just let go,” he said, gentle. With his mouth at Voldemort’s throat, he felt the words more than he heard them.

Harry had his presence in their shared Legilimency. It also wasn’t unusual for Voldemort to piss for him when they shared dreams, and _that_ would actually make a mess. But the humiliation and hesitation that prickled now – “Why is this different?” he asked, delighted even as Voldemort squirmed in his lap.

“It is.” His entire lower half throbbed by now. He couldn’t let go. “It feels so… resigned.”

“Mm, yeah,” he said appreciatively. Voldemort was nothing like a child, but holding him in his lap, rubbing his back – something of him was softer, at least. The cloth of the nappy interrupted the severe lines of his body. The word _sweet_ came to mind.

Voldemort hissed air through his teeth as he shifted. It _hurt_ , it hurt both of them now. “I can’t,” he muttered, kicking his legs out. “I’d like to, but – “

Harry’s hand slipped from his back, over his throat and up his face. “Lean back,” he instructed. Voldemort’s head fell to his shoulder. Harry pressed his hand over his nose and mouth. He exhaled hard, emptying his lungs, and let Harry smother him.

It helped. His chest spasmed a couple times, their vision went gray – After a long moment and an empty hiccup, Voldemort slumped minutely. Panic and pain and disgust and _thrill_ , all layered atop one another. His control slipped for a long moment, and a stream of piss hit the cotton.

Harry let up, so his own vision cleared, and Voldemort stirred in his lap. “There you go,” Harry said, pressing the damp fabric against him. “You need to finish now.”

Voldemort’s hand slipped over his, touching the nappy too. “This is perverse,” he said, but he was a little more at ease now. “Again.” He cradled his head in Harry’s shoulder. Harry grinned, letting his fingers flit over his face in affection first. He smothered him.

Again, the stillness and the surrender. First there were long dribbles, and then a flood. When Harry let him breathe, his hands went immediately to the nappy. “Oh my god,” he said beneath his breath. He couldn’t stop, as he soaked the nappy, puddles growing in the taxed fabric. Harry had a hand there too, to feel the fabric expand. His own lap was very hot, the nappy heavy on his legs. He was very hard, shuddering with involuntary thrusts into the backs of Voldemort’s legs.

When the fabric became saturated, his stream fell in a hiss, spraying off the wet inside. Voldemort was good and focused enough, too, to pass on all the sensations – but it was Voldemort’s feelings Harry wanted most of all, the disgust and relief and humiliation that warred within him. He didn’t _feel_ things so strongly as this, and certainly not anything so… accepted. Hearing this – feeling this – Harry pulled his hands away from their cocks, to hold Voldemort instead. Voldemort would take him by the hips sometimes, or one hand to steady him at his shoulders if he was sideways. Harry chose both hands wrapped along his shoulders, pulling him to recline a bit. The nappy sloshed at the motion; Voldemort winced.

“You’re amazing,” Harry purred. “You’ve been so good and so strong for me. You haven’t got to hold on anymore.” It was nonsense, a distraction. It was also, he thought, sentiments that Voldemort had spoken to him in one way or another, a great many times. “Surrender to me, love.”

Voldemort lifted his head infinitesimally. “There’s more magic in those words than you know,” he said, his voice low and ragged.

“I will take such good care of you.” He was smiling, teasing. His earlier comments of dominating Voldemort lingered with them both. In Harry it was playful; in Voldemort it was… something more. Nothing humans had a name for. “And in return, you’d listen, and you’d obey, just because I said so. I don’t think you’ve been obedient a single moment of your life,” he said lightly. “It’d probably be worse for you than pissing on yourself.”

Voldemort shuddered at the stark words. But he was nearly finished, the last of the wetting slipping down his cock, beneath his balls, tickling his arsehole. For a moment, overcome by the sensation, he didn’t have words. Harry held him. He finished, drawing a deep breath to steady himself. He prickled everywhere with disgust, as though he wanted to crawl out of his skin.

Harry lapped up these feelings. The nappy was heavy and hot on his legs. To have Voldemort, wet and patient and disgusted, sitting here, awaiting his word – He was so very hard. His hips bucked on their own. Voldemort snorted. “You won’t last long enough to fuck me.”

He squeezed his eyes shut, burning. “I won’t,” he admitted. Already his insides were coiled, spring-loaded. With a knee he nudged Voldemort’s legs apart. The nappy sloshed again; they both groaned.

He was thrusting between Voldemort’s legs now, his erection pressing the bit of the nappy at his balls and behind his cock. The rubber pants were warm and pliant; Voldemort was generous enough to conjure lube so Harry could better hump him. His cock slipped against the wet nappy. He was so happy, so grateful, so in love. Voldemort closed his thighs tighter around his erection, so he was thrusting into the warm and narrow space. His hands were rough on Voldemort’s hips, driving himself upward. He passed along every sensation.

When he was very close, Voldemort arched back into him – pressing his body close, grinding his arse into Harry’s lap, catching his gasping mouth in a kiss. God, he was so happy. With a stifled cry, he slammed his hips upward, fucking the nappy between them. He came hard, emptying himself across Voldemort’s legs and his own lap. When he slumped back, his ears were ringing.

Voldemort picked himself out of Harry’s lap, moving gingerly, because he was a right mess. “Shall I…?” He was reaching for his wand.

Harry’s words wouldn’t come for a long time. Then: “Clean off your legs. Leave the nappy. D’you want to get off?”

“Not now.” He vanished the slick stickiness from them both. “Yours was enough.”

He gave him a lazy smile, running a hand over the front of the nappy. It was swollen, still warm. “Would you sleep in it?” he requested hopefully.

“You are the least imposing top I have ever known.”

“Ugh. Fine.” He couldn’t be frustrated, he couldn’t feel anything but this glow. “You will sleep in it. Better hope I let you out of it in the morning.”

Voldemort slid back toward the blankets, shifting to find a position that the nappy minimally pressed against him. “You are too easy to satisfy.”

“Mmhm,” he agreed, his hands still on Voldemort. He wondered if he could wank to this while Voldemort slept. “Slytherins should know better, that force and intimidation aren’t the only way to get what you want.”

“’Who overcomes by force, hath overcome but half his foe.’ Very good, Harry.”

He lifted his head from the pillow just enough that his eyeroll did not go unnoticed. “You are a pretentious bugger.”

“Yes,” he agreed, quite readily.

 

 _Monday, November 2._ He was awake again in the thin, pre-dawn light. His cock was hard, pressed into the weight of the nappy at Voldemort’s back. He felt ridiculous. He was consumed by this sight. He reached to get himself off.

Partway through, Voldemort stirred. Harry paused, feeling guilty for maybe having woken him. But Voldemort went still again – very still, the muscles in his back becoming prominent. He rolled over, to meet Harry’s gaze. They were mutually startled that the other was awake for a moment, before Harry grinned, kissing him off-center. “Sorry. I couldn’t….” _Wait_. He couldn’t wait. His cock was still stiff and insistent in his grasp.

“Piss down the back,” Voldemort requested bluntly.

Harry’s cock twitched, but still his eyebrows shot up. “Are you sure?” It was something Voldemort would do to him sometimes – to tease or arouse or humiliate. And sometimes, just so they didn’t have to draw apart, late at night and mostly asleep. But this….

“I’d like to know how it feels for you.”

“Oh.” He let go of his cock for a moment. Reaching up, he crafted glowing ropes around Voldemort’s wrists, binding them as if in prayer. Pulling his ankles crossed, he wrapped the same ropes up his legs. Voldemort was still and patient. “You’ll hate it, though.”

“I expect I will,” he agreed evenly. “Get off first.”

Harry blushed. He still felt like such a teenager sometimes, getting hard at the slightest provocation. “Let me touch you,” he requested.

“I could hardly deny you, like this.”

Harry touched him decadently, pressing the wet nappy against him. It was thick enough that he couldn’t properly tell if Voldemort was at all aroused too. It was thick enough that it was pressing his thighs apart. “I can’t stop looking at you like this,” he confessed, as his one hand cupped the nappy’s swollen arse and the other rubbed his length furiously. “You look… sweet.”

Voldemort’s incredulous look indicated that this was the very first time the word had ever been offered to him. “I do not.”

“Mmhm.” Ducking his head, he sucked a bruise onto Voldemort’s collarbone. It was so satisfying to warm his cool flesh. It was satisfying to mark him reciprocally. He pressed their pelvises together, humping at the mass of warm fabric. Voldemort would have held him, if he’d been able. Instead he watched, and his gaze was piquant and humiliating. Harry adored it.

He also adored the idea of pissing down Voldemort’s back, the nappy pressing the liquid to him without escape. The anticipation was making him throb. In a daze, he muttered, “I’m gonna mark you like a werewolf.”

In their Legilimency – equal parts amusement and arousal. “Are you the possessive sort, then?” Voldemort asked, his mouth curving. “You wear my marks already. I should wear yours.”

His head swam; his breath hitched. Voldemort, in public with his bruises. In public, Harry’s piss clinging to his skin. If they couldn’t fuck in public as he fantasized, at least –

“Yes.” Voldemort intercepted his thought. “Whatever you’d like.”

He couldn’t – A wave of heat and humiliation and love, their emotions irreparably entangled – It all crashed deep inside him. He came hard, _again_ , across Voldemort’s legs. “Ugh – _god_ – “ His hips pounded and pounded, orgasm shattering him. He could feel nothing but the weight of their Legilimency, and it was… purifying. He fell onto the sheets in a daze.

Long moments or minutes later, he stirred. With a kiss, he pushed Voldemort over on his side. “Maybe I should wait until you’re asleep,” he mused.

“Please piss on me.” His voice was honeyed, incongruous with the stark words. If he weren’t so satiated, Harry would’ve been hard again.

He slid in close, pulling the back of the nappy away from Voldemort’s body. Voldemort had tensed minutely, the muscles in his back becoming prominent. His feet, with his long toes, were arched with the force of his feelings – disgust and anticipation boiling inside of him. They hadn’t even _done_ anything yet. Harry smiled, amused. “It is really not so bad,” he promised.

“ _Please_ – just – go.”

He touched Voldemort like a lover, even now. His other hand was across his narrow chest, rubbing in circles. He pressed sucking kisses to his neck and shoulders. Putting his cock at the base of Voldemort’s spine, he let go.

A sharp inhalation from Voldemort as the stream coursed down his arse, becoming absorbed in the dry parts and pooling in the already-saturated bits. He yanked at the restraints of his ankles and wrists, wanting to clamber off the bed, wanting to shred his own skin. He didn’t safe word. He strained against his own feelings instead, consuming the ambivalence of it.

Harry pissed slow, to keep it neater and to extend the sensation as long as possible. He’d moved his free hand to press against the nappy, to feel it swell, growing warm and soft again. “Thank you, love,” he murmured. “You’re being very good, offering yourself up like this. So trusting, so obedient.”

Voldemort had his face half-pressed into a pillow, to hide himself but also simply to focus on the sensation. Their Legilimency was bare as a lightbulb, and Harry stole Voldemort’s emotions as though stealing kisses. Why should humiliation be so erotic? And why should it make him – both of them, really – feel so safe?

There were goosebumps along Voldemort’s limbs. He breathed as he did last night, deliberate and detached. He hated this too, in a way, but found it compelling nonetheless. Harry breathed a happy sigh as he emptied the last of his urine, and the last drops slid below the nappy’s waistline. Voldemort felt the residual relief, among everything else. He remained quiet. “Well?” Harry prompted, still delighted with this unusual slave at his service.

“This is hideous.” His voice was muffled in his pillow. His face was burning. It was a good thing he didn’t shame easily, because when he did, his complexion absolutely lit up. It was wonderful. Harry spent a long moment just marveling at the novel pinkness of his face and throat; he looked up. “What?”

“Nothing.” Harry couldn’t stop smiling. “You aren’t too horrified to get off?”

“No.”

He pulled the nappy out in front, snaking his hand inside. Sensory charms kept the fabric a little less clammy than it’d be otherwise, but it was still heavy and sodden. Spooning him decadently, putting a knee to his groin to press his own piss against his hole, he ran a hand down his cock. It was gratifying. “Are you _sure_ you hate this?”

“You know perfectly how I feel,” he said crisply. Harry twisted his wrist in just the right way then, though, to make Voldemort gasp.

He wanked him easily, steadily, appreciating each gasp and shudder. They were both brimming with every feeling. Their magic and souls coiled around each other, indistinguishable. They made each other more whole than whole.

There wasn’t much room inside the nappy, so he was stroking it against his stomach. Everything steamed and stuck. He could feel how heavy it fell on Voldemort’s hips, how prominent it felt on his narrow body. He cherished these feelings, and each buck and shudder in Voldemort’s back that was absorbed by Harry’s torso. He stroked harder. An acute arch. Voldemort made a half-hearted attempt to push his hand away, to be alone for the shame of orgasm, at least, but Harry stroked him hard, held him close –

He came into the front of the nappy, pounding against Harry’s hand and the heavy fabric. Had he always found surrender so intoxicating? He couldn’t remember. Harry held him close, stilling the wild jolts and then the aftershocks. “There you go,” Harry murmured, lapsing to the same soothing nonsense he’d say to Voldemort and loved himself. “You’re very good, you did very well.” He wiped his hand off on a clean part of the nappy before withdrawing it. “You should get a little more sleep now.”

“You’ll leave me in this.” His tone was flat, but he was too satiated to especially sound aggrieved.

“Yeah,” Harry agreed. He wasn’t pulling off the bonds either. Voldemort would just be his tressed, compact sub, sleeping beside him for security. He liked the idea.

Voldemort caught at least a bit of that thought. Ambivalence, but intrigue. “I’ve never….” He shook the thought off. _Been helpless before_. The wet nappy around him was making him shudder, glorious full body shudders that Harry absorbed greedily. The way his insides twisted and his skin prickled, it felt like the aftershocks of an orgasm all over.

They probably wouldn’t sleep after this. Harry would hold him down, anyway, letting him linger in how amazing this disgust felt.

Even still, when they had to get out of bed little more than an hour later, after Harry dissolved the bonds holding Voldemort’s limbs, he was nearly bolting from bed, before he deliberately stopped himself. “May I shower?” he said through nearly-gritted teeth.

Harry was still smiling. He was so in love. “Mm.” His hands skittered down his narrow torso, vanishing the nappy and casting cleaning spells. Perfect. “Go,” he said anyway, because he needed a minute.

When Voldemort was in the bath, Harry dug through the pockets of his robes. Since Moody had taken him from Quidditch, he hadn’t been carrying much – but he found two sickles at the corner of one pocket. There.

Transfiguration spells shouldn’t work on money, if the Ministry or Gringotts or the wixie mint were doing its job. Maybe there were spells on cash registers. But somehow, now, it worked fine. He fiddled a bit with the spell, and when he was satisfied, he entered the bath.

Voldemort had only lit one wall sconce, and he was still under the spray. Upon hearing the door, he half-turned. “Don’t look,” Harry instructed, coming up behind him. He stepped into the shower as well, fingering the bruises and bites that ran along Voldemort’s shoulders. “You said you’d keep my marks.”

“I will.”

“There’s one more.”

“Mm?”

Putting an arm around him, Harry took his bony hand, slipping on a silver ring. “It’s not real,” he said, putting on the other himself as Voldemort turned to face him fully now. “They’re just sickles. I’ll get real ones later. And you’ve told me before that rings are a Muggle custom, I don’t give a shit. You’ll wear it, and I will too, so everyone knows we’ll be married.”

All of this was the least romantic statement one human had ever made to another. “I mean,” he fumbled, with a self-effacing smile, “I love you. I want to spend forever with you.”

Voldemort ducked his head, pressing his face into Harry’s hair, pressing a kiss to his forehead. “I love you, too,” he said, without lifting his lips – it was always easier for him like that, his mouth obscured so the words may barely slip out. Still there was a tug of – fear, anxiety, embarrassment? – on their soul. It was… normal, at least for him, and Harry ignored it until Voldemort shook himself. “Apologies,” he said, pulling back to be more deliberate about it. “I’ve never known anything so good to last. I want to spend forever with you, as well.”

“A promise, then.” He brought Voldemort’s hand to his face, kissing his cool knuckles before letting it fall again to his side.

 

His hair was still wet when he left for Grimmauld Place (well, technically a portkey to the Ministry, then Apparition onwards), they’d had so little time that morning. Harry had triple-checked that he’d had Moody’s wand that he’d taken still safely in his inner robes. “D’you know what he wants?” he mused. “Apart from his wand, of course. He’s just not usually one for, uh, apologies.”

“I don’t know,” Voldemort said. “Whatever it is, tell him I compelled you to do it.”

A grin. “You’re ridiculous. Are you sure _you’re_ not the martyr these days?”

“Really, I’m not.”

A last kiss. The portkey took him.

\\\\\\\ ////

Grimmauld Place was as miserable as ever. He made his way to the kitchen, usually the least depressing part of the house. He’d hoped other Order members would be present – in his mind, they always were, meeting and plotting and recruiting here, as a sort of makeshift household to which he could always come back. But the house was quiet this morning.

But the kitchen smelled like warm vanilla, swirling around him as he pulled open the door. “Morning, Harry,” Remus said cheerily, putting a pan over the fire. “How are you?” The question was inflected with sincerity, in a way nobody else would say it.

“I’m good.” He would’ve gone on more than that, but he thought it’d be disrespectful, in political circumstances. “Uh, Moody…?”

“Said he’s running late. He asked me to stay, if that’s alright. He hasn’t said why.” Remus was gentle without actually allowing for dissent. “Pancakes?” he offered, whisking a batter.

They did eat pancakes. Partway through, the front door banged open. Remus scarcely lifted an eyebrow. “The Ministry’s a mess, since Saturday,” he said, by way of apology. “A lot of paperwork, you know.”

Moody had been quite open that he made the underlings do all the Aurors’ paperwork, so Harry didn’t particularly think this was it. He was fiddling with Moody’s wand, that he’d already placed on the table. (“He’s got a spare,” Remus had assured him. “Lord, he’s probably got several.”) The kitchen door banged open.

 _Gryffindor courage, Gryffindor courage_ , Harry chanted. His back was to the door, so he twisted in his seat. “Hi. I’m sorry,” he said promptly, holding out Moody’s wand as though passing a knife, explosive end down.

Moody took it even as his magical eye gave Harry a once-over. Then: “Did he _choke_ you?” He was both furious and incredulous, moving as though he had half a mind to go kill Voldemort right then and there.

Harry looked at him in horror. “No – why would – “ Reaching up, he touched his neck, beneath his collar. It felt no different. “I choked _him_ ,” he said with terrible honesty. “We wanted to. Uh…?”

Wordlessly Moody cast a silvery mirror charm in mid-air, leaving Harry to this humiliating examination as he stumped through the kitchen. He carried his own coffee in a thermos, but he would at least drink from a mug in company.

Harry tugged his collar down, lifting his head. There _were_ bruises – or marks that would become bruises. They were so recent that they were still mostly red, not yet purple or black. “That’s new,” he muttered, embarrassed at being outed like this. “Uh, sharing bruises, that is.” Choking was new too, and more’s the pity, but he’d keep that quiet. Poking at it: “It doesn’t hurt. It might just be…. We’re not used to practicing Occlumency at close range anymore,” he improvised because he really had no fucking idea. “You would know if we shared injuries,” he said, a bit pointed. Still, he cast Episkey to remove the shadow of a bruise.

Moody saw this as a provocation, and decided to make the circumstances worse for Harry in turn. “And the others?”

The bruises that would stripe his back, his arse, his legs. “They don’t hurt either,” Harry said evenly. “And I’m not getting rid of them. They’re all properly on him, anyway. We wanted to,” he repeated, looking back at Moody even as his insides withered.

Moody’s gaze fell to his hand, where the silver band glittered. That, he had no comment for. Shaking his head in something like disgust: “He makes you reckless.”

“Oh, no, I’ve always been like this,” he said before he could stop himself. Glare from Moody. Remus might have snorted into his tea.

“We haven’t got time for this,” Moody muttered at last, taking a seat across from Harry. He kicked his wooden leg out deliberately, making it resound on the stones. Remus, beside him, was now also watching curiously.

“A few concerns,” Moody said, fishing in the pockets of his robe, “to get through.”

“Yes, sir.” He vanished his plate, appetite gone.

“I expect you know that we revised the vows,” Moody began. He’d put two envelopes on the table before him, but wasn’t touching them. “The vow to protect Hogwarts, and some parts of the armistice, are sworn now on his magic instead of your life.”

“He said you were – what was it – _divesting_ of me.”

“Precisely.”

 _Gryffindor bravery_. “Sir, the vow for the Horcruxes – that keeps us apart – I’d really rather give them back instead. He said that wasn’t a vow he’d change himself, without me – but if you want me to be a less politically important person – “

Moody was unimpressed. “Just because you swore the Horcruxes for your separation, doesn’t mean they’re of equal value to us. I’d keep you apart regardless.”

“That’s not fair.” (He sounded like a child. But he _felt_ like a child, stripped of autonomy under an oppressive roof.)

 _Slam_. Moody’s palm hit the table. The cutlery shuddered. “People want to _kill you_ ,” he enunciated. “Just because you’ve grown numb to this reality doesn’t mean the Ministry and the Order both aren’t still _responsible_ for you.”

He wasn’t wrong about any of it, and that was the most galling part. “When we _are_ together, we’re locked in a house that’s buried a mile below ground. Is that not safe enough?”

“As we found out yesterday, you can’t even appreciate that _generous_ concession.”

He did feel bad about London. “It was so nice, pretending to be normal for a bit,” he admitted, picking at his nails so he could drop his gaze for a moment. “I know we’re not. I know that was stupid.”

“It was,” Moody agreed, more evenly. “And the question of where to keep Voldemort is different from the question of what to do with you, anyway. Until our security’s revised – well, you heard him. He can’t and won’t leave Azkaban.”

Harry bit back the offer to visit him there. He hadn’t come to argue, he reminded himself. “Yes, sir.”

“We’ll take the Horcruxes, if they’re causing trouble.”

“Oh, no,” he said quickly. “I just like Voldemort more.”

Moody hummed in a doubtful way. “ _He’s_ plotting something, he always is. Whether you’re in on those plans or a pawn to them….” His look was accusatory. Harry’s was deeply confused. He shoved the first envelope across the table.

The letterhead was from the office of Basil Epps, Esq. – one of the Ministry’s lawyers he’d written to about the Slytherin estate. Feeling pressured for time, he read quickly – but the gist of the letter was, they might be willing to privatize the edifice (“such as it is,” Epps wrote in an aside. Not a great sign) but would absolutely retain the ley lines under the land and unquestioned access to them. There was no money for restoration, but they’d name it to mark his sponsorship if he did pay for it. Harry would assume all personal risk when he stepped on to the property; and additionally he’d be liable for any construction or restoration experts he brought on. It was all a shitty offer, intended to dissuade Harry, but none of it actually said _no_. He found himself smiling a bit.

“Well?”

He passed the letter to Remus, to keep him involved. “That’s my idea. Voldemort doesn’t know. It won’t matter until – until after his trial. We’ll live together, then. I’ll have to figure out where to go after school, anyway. And he’s never had a home before.”

Moody had enough to process with everything Harry said, he forgot to be angry for a bit. “You’ve got this,” he said, waving a hand around. “It’s served well as HQ, but you’ll need a place to live, so – “

“Please take it,” Harry interrupted him, again. “I hate this house. Sirius hated this house. It’s suited for the Order. Nobody should live here full-time, it’d make them mad. Can I deed it to you?”

Moody squinted suspiciously at his unexpected enthusiasm. “You need to think about this more.”

“I swear, I have.” Grimmauld Place didn’t feel like a home, much less _his_ home. There might be magic to it – if houses’ magic normally conformed to their owners, then centuries of the Black family magic would be straining against possession by a half-blood non-heir. It might be that the house elves mounted to the walls did nothing for the atmosphere.

“Gringotts would have the deed, in one of the Black vaults, unless they’ve already sent it on to you,” Moody said. “But you’ll need to talk to an executor. You might be too young, yet.”

That was galling. “I’m not living here, is the point. I want to restore Slytherin’s estate, for us both. I asked around in the Legacy Department, and nobody could remember the last time it was restored, much less lived in. Nobody said no.”

“There will be powerful protection spells for Slytherin’s blood on the land. You’d have built him a _fortress_ ,” he said the word with distaste, “even if you don’t intend to.”

Bypassing the obvious question of what sort of protection Moody had on _his_ home – “If he were to run, he wouldn’t shelter in the country. And I think he’s done running, anyway,” he said softly.

Quiet, for a long time. Remus held his tea close to his chest, undrunk. “Write Gringotts about this as well,” Moody said at last. “Your parents were wealthy, but not _that_ wealthy. The restoration could bankrupt you, if it’s in as bad a disrepair as I’ve heard. And again, you might be too young to commit to such expenditures.”

Somehow, this entire process was everyone telling him this was a bad idea without actually telling him no. “Thanks,” he said, for the non-denial. “I want to do parts of it myself. He said that homes are stronger when they’re infused with the owners’ magic.” He wanted to fill every stone with love, with belonging. It’d be a new feeling for them both.

Moody’s eyebrows raised incrementally. “Assuming you know nothing of structural magic yet….”

“I’ll learn.”

“Again, people want to _kill_ you. Should we just leave you in the arse-end of that swampland, exposed and alone?”

He knew it’d be a problem, but he hadn’t thought through the solution. “What about the wards at Cornwall? I would cast them again around the estate. They keep about everything out.”

“That is Ministry-regulated magic.”

“Then… can the Ministry do it?”

“No.”

Harry threw up his hands. “Fine. You could’ve just said no, then.” He pushed the letter, which Remus had laid back at his elbow, away from himself. “Then we’ll get a flat somewhere. It really doesn’t matter.”

They both looked unexpectedly concerned. Remus spoke for the first time. “Harry, you shouldn’t anticipate that he’ll, well, _live_.”

“I bloody know,” he said, because it felt like they couldn’t go a _day_ without confronting this. “But if he dies, I die, and then it doesn’t matter, does it? I’ll leave you this awful house in my will. I’ll ask him who he wants to inherit the estate when we’re both dead.”

Remus really didn’t deserve this. He reached toward Harry, then dropped his hand. “I wish so much for you,” he said sadly, “that your life weren’t so yoked to his.”

“I’ve chosen him,” Harry said, fierce but not angry. “It’s exactly what I want.” He looked back to Moody. “What’s the other one?”

Moody had wanted to linger on the point of Voldemort’s death as well, it was apparent, but he decided against it. Sliding the envelope before him: “It was addressed to Dumbledore. Took awhile to find its way to the Ministry. We only got it last week.”

“Why am I reading Dumbledore’s post,” Harry murmured even as he shook out the letter. It was Muggle paper, but he didn’t make the connection until he saw Petunia’s neat handwriting. His stomach clenched.

Petunia had written to Dumbledore in September – of course she didn’t know he’d died, why would she – to tell him that Harry had sicced Voldemort (‘that horrible monster that killed my sister’ as though she gave a shit about Lily) upon them both. He’d inflicted ‘hideous lies and nightmares’ about Harry upon both Petunia and Vernon, when he put Harry’s memories in their minds. _You might think that the boy is a hero, but he is not_ , she’d written. _He has always had a criminal element about him._

He wasn’t even angry – it was just so unnecessary to inflict this on himself. Still, it was for the best that he kept reading, because in the final paragraph: _Vernon finally succumbed to shock and grief last week. If you tell Potter at all, tell him that the funeral has already passed and he will never be welcome in our home again. He may not contact us. He has ruined our lives._

He stared at the letter for longer than necessary, to collect his thoughts. He found that he felt… well, a little lighter. He’d been frustrated at Voldemort for chasing down his aunt and uncle behind his back, but now – he was grateful.

But when he looked up, he nearly gagged with shock and anxiety. Moody had produced a brimming jar, filled with his childhood memories. The parts of his life he’d extracted months ago, the parts he lived so happily without. He didn’t want to touch it. He passed Petunia’s letter to Remus as well, and then looked, challenging, at Moody.

“Out with it.” Incredibly unimpressed.

“With what?”

Moody’s scarred face snarled. “Why the _hell_ would Voldemort have anything to do with your family? If you circumvented the blood wards….”

“No, we didn’t,” he said. He was very confused, because Scrimgeour knew at least of that day, the same day Voldemort had rescued Nagini’s body from Germany. He must not have pursued it. Tired of being on the defensive, Harry lifted his chin toward the smoky jar. “You’ve gone through my memories, then?”

“Yes.”

“Remus?”

“Yes.” As usual, he was trying to absorb the room’s tension. “Harry, we were so concerned. We _are_ , really. Do you know what he took from you?”

Oh for fuck’s sake. Moody was pushing the jar toward him, as though he didn’t know what it contained. He took it anyway. “I do. All the worst parts of growing up _alone_ and in that house, that were making me miserable. And I did it myself. He was there, with just enough Legilimency to be sure I didn’t _lobotomize_ myself.”

The jar was cool. He held it tightly. Voldemort had thrown his own childhood in an Albanian stream, but Harry had nothing so romantic at hand. Maybe he’d pour it down the toilet. He waited for them to tell him he had to put the memories back. The thought made his chest feel tight and painful.

“We had the memories first,” Moody said. “But no context for them until your aunt’s letter arrived.”

He wasn’t sure they _did_ have context, but didn’t say this. Well, Moody couldn’t hate Voldemort more. “He went without my knowing. Uh, he found them away from home. He apparated into their car.” (Across from him, Remus squeezed his eyes shut for a moment.) “And gave them copies of all this. He said the effects would fade with remorse.”

(Vernon would literally rather die than regret his own shittiness. This thought brought him a moment of inappropriate joy.)

Moody snorted. “He wouldn’t understand remorse well enough to craft magic around it.”

“Uh, apparently he did. They’re just…. You’ve met them.” He didn’t want to do this. He would not last through this conversation.

“He can’t just – “ Moody’s eye spun. “This is all wildly illegal,” he ground out, “beginning with performing mind magic on yourself. Did you _ask_ him how to remove memories? It’s not magic you’d know, because it’s not _allowed_ anywhere but in the trauma ward of St. Mungo’s.”

Oh. It had felt very natural. It was so close to putting memories into a pensieve, he’d never considered that they might be legally or ethically distinct. The tightening in his chest that accompanied the suspicion he’d be forced to take these memories back had grown worse. He wondered if he could just vanish the entire jar now. “Fine,” he said with what felt like very obvious false bravado. “Arrest me, then. And… fuck, just put it on Voldemort’s ledger,” he said with a very dry laugh. “It was one of the best, kindest things anyone’s ever done for me.” He cherished that time, perversely. He cherished the night Voldemort had sat with him in a closet, with Harry huddled and crying, wounded by those same memories. The delicacy and coolness with which he’d let Harry pull his own mind apart, to bring himself somewhere closer to _happy_ , had been perfectly helpful.

“He is not your savior,” Moody hissed, scandalized. “The problems you keep running to him with – he’s _caused_ most of them to begin with. He’d bloody _love_ for you to be so emotionally dependent on him, which you will be if you keep alienating everyone else in your life for his sake.”

He reeled at this inside, but much cooler than he felt, he said, “Right, I’ll come have a cry on your shoulder next time, then.”

An exasperated look. “Potter, I wish you would.”

“ _He_ wants me emotionally dependent,” Harry scoffed, furious. Fury was good and safe, drowning out the rather wetter feelings in his chest. In an increasingly loud, confrontational tone: “Everybody already knew how shitty it all was. You _met_ them. Arabella Figg was planted there to report back how neglected I was, to the entire Order, for my entire childhood. Fred and George pulled _bars_ from my window one year. If Ron and Hermione hadn’t sent food, I would’ve _starved_ over the summers. My Hogwarts letter was addressed to _The Cupboard Under the Stairs_ ,” he pronounced the words with utmost sarcasm. When he slapped his palm to the table, the sting barely registered. In a broken tone: “Where _were_ you?”

It was meant to stop them cold. It didn’t. “Do you even know what goes into protecting you?” Moody demanded. “The entire rest of the world! Albus made you his _first_ priority, from the moment of the prophecy until his death. He knew the magic that had to work, he knew the circumstances. If you’re so invested in _fate_ these days – so was he. We _all_ made sacrifices. It had to be that way.”

He wanted to hit Moody. For a moment, he forgot about magic altogether; he just wanted to take his own fucking staff and smash it into his face. Remus was looking on in quiet horror. “Alastor – “

“I tell you how shitty my childhood was, and you’re _angry_ at me for it,” Harry said in wretched disbelief. His voice cracked. Goddammit.

With great frustration – “I’m not angry _at_ you, I’m angry _for_ you. If you’d just – “

But Moody was reaching for the jar then, and Harry was up like a shot. “No!”

A wild surge of magic sprung a wall of fire between them, neatly bisecting the kitchen. Harry was out the door, sprinting for the upstairs bath. He needed to get rid of these, he couldn’t –

He slammed the door behind himself and immediately regretted it, since it would announce his location. Spells on the door to bar it awhile longer. His heart hammered.

He had to clutch the jar to his chest to open it. The surface shone like a liquid, and he could see bits of his erstwhile memories reflected in it. No time to watch. No emotional fortitude to, either. He tipped the jar over the toilet.

The memories went immediately light and gaseous, floating toward the upturned bottom of the jar. “Fuck me,” he muttered, repositioning it. Same thing.

His movements became more frantic. They must have dispelled the fire by now, they’d find him in here. He had cornered himself, in this narrow loo. Fuck again. Or – he’d apparate. It didn’t really matter where. Ideally, to the Ministry and on to the safehouse. He wanted Voldemort. He wanted Voldemort _here_ , to answer for himself and deflect the worst from Harry, as he’d always done.

He was devastated. And the bloody memories would scarcely wisp out of the jar, before sinking back into it. He was listening for footsteps –

Maybe it took the vessel being destroyed. In a cathartic fit, he threw the jar into the bath. Glass sprayed everywhere. He twisted on the taps, to wash the mess of memories down the drain. They were liquid again, but they were untouched by the water, sitting in heavy pools on the tile. With a growl, Harry reached into the heap of glass, shoving it all toward the drain. It stung badly and he _adored_ the feeling, clear and pure as it was. It was the pain he should be feeling now, not this dirty and wild anger, marred by panic and shame. Blood ran over his fingers as he scooped at the memories. They moved like mercury, too heavy to mingle with other liquids. It felt like the universe was conspiring against him.

Infinitely angry and disgusted with himself, he reached for his wand, clutching it hard in spite of the ribbons that were his hands. He twisted to apparate, and – nothing. Again. He was going to splinch himself but he didn’t give a fuck. Again. Nothing.

He made a horrible sound in the back of his throat. It had to have been the first thing either Moody or Remus had done, since obviously he’d apparated in earlier. They’d expected him to run, he realized with a sick feeling. It was the second time in as many days that he’d run from Moody. The third this month, with Hogsmeade. In that moment, he hated himself.

Uneven footsteps on the stairs. Moody, of course – and he marveled at this, because it was nearly Remus’s _job_ to defuse everyone else. He turned back to the bath, to rid it of the memories before they could be shoved back into his head. They were dense enough to block the drain, however, and now the bathtub was filling with pinkish water, glittering with glass. He shot a blasting curse at the drain; it spat back a torrent of bloodied water.

A knock at the door. “Potter. Harry.” Moody sounded no better than Harry felt. Harry stayed quiet, trying more vanishing and evaporation and transfiguration spells on the stubborn, terrible quicksilver. A long pause. “Are you hurt?” Moody asked through the door.

“No.”

“There is blood everywhere.”

The constant surveillance would drive him mad. “Oh my god,” he said, whirling toward the door, slamming his fists at Moody’s eye level. “I _hate_ you.”

“Good,” Moody replied. “Hate me, then. Maybe in a few months’ time we’ll start fucking, and then you’ll talk.”

He was furious and exhausted, so with a final blasting curse at the tub, he moved to wrench open the door. “What are you _doing_ ,” he demanded desperately. “Just… what the fuck are you doing.”

Moody didn’t answer immediately, instead taking in the scene. There was blood along the walls and countertops. The tub was half-filled with pink water and jagged glass. The last spell had knocked the tap off the wall, so water now gushed from the hole. “What – “

“If you force those memories back on me, I swear I will rip them out of my head again, I don’t care.”

Both of Moody’s eyes focused on him. “Potter. No. I’m not forcing your memories back on you. But we will need them.”

“Don’t you have enough of my bloody memories?” He stood as though his slight frame could fill the doorway, but it didn’t matter because Moody came no closer. “Will you pass these around the Ministry, too? You’ve already passed them around the Order.”

His facial scars snarled in a different pattern now – not anger, something else. “I need to apologize to you,” he said slowly. “And explain some things. Not until this is set to rights, though.” He was looking over Harry’s shoulder. “Out.” He limped very far back, to offer Harry an exit. “I’m not so stupid as to corner you inside.”

So he was unpredictable. Good. He edged out of the bath.

“And stay,” Moody said, as though reading his mind. He entered the disaster of a room. Harry was left to bleed on the rugs. His heart was still jackhammering. He wondered where Remus was, or if they were alone.

When Moody emerged, he had the jar, whole again, under his arm. His memories swirled inside, free of water and blood. Harry felt strangely betrayed by them. “You are bleeding everywhere.”

“It’s my house.”

Moody found this _funny_ , goddamn him. “Hold out your hands.”

He did so reluctantly. They were sticky as he unclenched his fists. Moody healed them with a cold tingle, mopping up the blood afterward. “You need a minute?” he asked, when they only stood looking at each other now.

“No.”

He nodded them to a bedroom down the corridor, one of the larger ones. “Come.” Harry reluctantly fell in step. He realized partway down the hallway that they walked side by side because Moody wouldn’t put his back to him, nor would Harry do the same. God. They were so broken.

There were two twin beds in the room; Moody gestured him onto one. It would feel strange and informal and infantilizing, fighting from a bed. Perhaps that was the intention. Crossing his legs under him, he desperately wanted to curl in on himself. He wished his hands were still shredded, because having some sort of physical pain stabilized him. He bit the inside of his cheek hard. There.

Moody was quiet, so they both had a moment to collect themselves. And now he was patting down his pockets. At last he found what he’d been in search of – extracting two vials of calming draught from a pocket much too small for them, he held one out to Harry. “Piss off,” Harry said in disbelief. “Last time, you gave me Veritaserum.”

If nothing else, Moody would never call anyone else paranoid. “Yeah,” he agreed. “But I don’t even need you to talk, if you don’t want. I need you to listen. It’ll be a hard conversation regardless.” Harry took a vial warily. Moody swallowed the other one himself.

And then the memories, which he’d set on a sideboard and now picked up again. “You say what happens to these.” He placed the jar in Harry’s hands, and lowered himself to the bed opposite. “They’d normally dissolve in running water, you were right. These ’ve got some powerful protections on them, though.”

Voldemort didn’t want his memories destroyed. For that, too, he felt betrayed. _Why_ – Voldemort had sworn there was nothing redemptive in them. This felt awful. He remained silent.

“Here’s what I should’ve led with,” Moody said briskly. “We didn’t know your home was so bad as that. We should’ve been listening to you and asking more questions. Harry, I am sorry.” He held his gaze deliberately. “It’s a shameful oversight. Aurors don’t specialize in child welfare – it’s got its own department – but we’re trained to recognize it.” ( _It_.) Sighing, he tipped his head back to collect his words. “Albus always said you were surviving if not properly thriving. We trusted him – I still trust him,” he said forcefully, because obviously they’d hit the heart of culpability here. “But we shouldn’t have accepted that.”

Dumbledore had loved Harry deeply. Dumbledore had also kept him just alive enough, and long enough to die at an appropriate time. He’d never reconcile the two.

Moody had paused for Harry to say anything, but he only shook his head. He could only listen. His chest and throat and nose all felt quite wet, already. God, he hated himself sometimes.

“If these aren’t the only memories you’ve removed – I’m not accusing you, settle down, I don’t even want to know,” Moody interjected at Harry’s look, “Brown or the new therapist should find you a mind healer. It can be harmful. And it can be addictive. You understand why.”

He had been euphoric after removing his memories. He could see pulling out other troubling memories, to escape his feelings. But no, he already had other addictive ways to escape. “Yes, sir. But this was the only time.” He found his voice ragged.

“Good. If there were others you might have needed to take some back, put your brain back together. With just these,” his magical eye flicked to the jar, “you likely won’t need them.”

“You said I had to keep them, though,” he accused.

A distasteful twitch of Moody’s mouth. “That wasn’t for _moralizing’s_ sake. I’ve told you, there’s no virtue in suffering.” Harry stayed quiet, prompting his explanation. “They’d need to be kept – not necessarily with you – as evidence, if you wanted to prosecute them – well, _her_ , for neglect and abuse.”

There it was. He’d avoided the word up to this point, but now it sat stark and icy in the space between them.

He had a hand pressed to his mouth, holding back the stupid impulsive words as he thought. Moody, something like uncomfortable for the first time, went on – “Might be a bit unusual for a case. Child Welfare specializes in removing children, which isn’t to say they wouldn’t work with a case after the fact. And of course, moving between wix and Muggle courts….” He waved a twisted hand. “If you’re unsure…. You might look through them in a pensieve,” he suggested gently. “You don’t properly know what they’d be prosecuted _for_ , without it.”

“Oh.” He tipped the jar in his lap. Faint memories swirled – something with Petunia in the garden, something with Vernon in Dudley’s room. “Is it bad, then?”

“Yes.”

He’d survived his childhood. He might not survive revisiting it. He still felt small and powerless, whenever he was back there. But the anger was new, looking back as an adult, knowing that how he’d grown up wasn’t normal. _Abuse_. The word would never settle in his soul.

“I just…. It’s not worth it,” he muttered, still mostly speaking around his fist. “I’ve never got to see them again. I never want to. And I don’t want all of it, uh, scrutinized. By the courts or the papers, or anyone really.”

“Fine, lad.” Moody kept his voice soft and steady. Informatively, he added, “Rye went through them, to judge if they’d been faked, tampered with, or planted.”

( _Planted_. He hadn’t even thought of this, even knowing how effectively Voldemort could craft memories wholesale. Thank fuck Moody hadn’t accused them of _that_ , he would’ve spat in his face.)

Moody went on, “And Remus and Minerva saw them as well, to consider if Hogwarts had resources for you. Or if,” he sucked air between his teeth, “they had liabilities.”

Oh. That made sense. He wondered if they’d prosecute Dumbledore instead. But that would achieve the opposite of avoiding scrutiny. Finally he just said, “Okay.”

Neither of them cared much for forgiveness, and it wasn’t what Moody had been after now. He gave Harry’s dismissal a moment, then: “What’ll you have done with them, then?”

He ran his fingers along the glass, somehow still cold despite being held between his legs the entire time. “Give it to Voldemort,” he said. It was how it was meant to be – Voldemort knew where and what they were, and Harry didn’t, and that was the safest option. “Since he tried so hard to protect them, anyway,” he said dryly.

Moody didn’t like or respect this decision. “Voldemort….” He clearly swallowed everything he wanted to say. “I shouldn’t’ve made you answer for him earlier,” he said instead. “You never should have to absorb the ire he deserves. Don’t get between us.”

He could gag on this. “I don’t want either of you…. He and Snape both want to stay apart, and nobody’s died. It can’t quite be the same, but….”

“The world doesn’t rest on your shoulders,” Moody said sternly. “We won’t _let_ you mediate between us. It’s hurting you.”

Was it? He didn’t feel as though he’d absorbed any of their hatred or tension, because there was still so much left. “Dumbledore said I was a peacemaker.”

The scars of Moody’s face twisted as he frowned. Harry must’ve shrunk back incrementally. “I’m not angry _at_ you, I’m angry _for_ you,” he re-iterated, attempting to neutralize his expression. “And Albus only had your best interests at heart insofar as they served the greater good.” He over-pronounced the phrase, wry and skeptical. Pause, then quieter: “He sacrificed more than your life.”

Unexpectedly, Harry choked. He’d thought they were past the most emotionally devastating parts, but no. He slammed his fist to his mouth, holding back the silent sob that would otherwise escape him. It was how he’d learned to cry in the cupboard, after all. Without comment, Moody conjured a box of tissues beside him. At this, he fell apart – his throat was spasming with sobs that he wouldn’t let come, and he bent double to hide his face and to crush these stupid hideous feelings inside himself. Stinging tears spilled over, the sort that stung too much to keep his eyes open. He grabbed a handful of tissues, shoving them to his face.

He heard Moody get up, and wondered for a panic-inducing moment if he was going to hug him. But no, Moody’s footsteps mercifully receded.

He had been betrayed, and it was completely impersonal. None of it was about trust or love at all. And yet – god, it hurt. It hurt worse than if he’d been hurt as a personal matter. Then, at least, he might have done something to deserve it. He’d yelled at Dumbledore before, for failing Tom Riddle, but _that_ had been voluntary and personal and apolitical.

He felt himself ground in the cogs of the universe.

Long minutes later, Moody returned, pressing a water glass into his hands. (Of course it wasn’t about water. He appreciated the gesture all the same.) “You want to talk about it?” Moody dropped onto the bed opposite once more. “I can summon – or take you to – about anyone. I’d prefer not Voldemort,” he said with civility that clearly hurt him.

He could nearly smile at this. “He and I don’t talk about Dumbledore.”

“Good. Remus is with him now, anyway. He needed to hear – well, everything, from a more dispassionate source.”

Remus and Voldemort alone together. It made him twitchy. “Sir, I don’t think – “

“ _Sit_.”

Harry hadn’t realized he’d been moving to get up. But of course – Remus was gentle and sincere, and Voldemort was vicious, and –

He exhaled deliberately. Voldemort had now sworn all of his non-aggression vows on his magic. He’d also promised Harry that he’d keep everyone he loved safe. National peace was a strategic decision anyway. One of those had to mean something. He sank onto the sheets.

“It’d be easier if Dumbledore had hurt me because he hated me,” Harry admitted. Like how Dumbledore had treated Riddle. Moody was quiet; even his blue eye was still. “My relatives only hurt me because they hated me. But to hurt me because he _loved_ me – god.” Words dried on his tongue.

“He’ll have his apologists,” Moody said slowly. “Naturally the Order’s brimming with them. And most of us are indebted to him one way or another.”

“I know.” It wasn’t a threat, but a warning, that the Order was not a support network without complications. Getting the sense that Moody wouldn’t release him until he was something like emotionally functional – “I’ll be fine. I just need to be alone for awhile.”

“Don’t tell me what I want to hear.”

Harry’s brain short-circuited. “I – okay.” He had nothing left to say to Moody right now. They’d gotten on in the past couple years, sharing quiet and intense conversations in the dark during the war of Hogwarts. But they’d been allies then, and they were somewhat inevitable antagonists now. “I want to go, anyway,” he muttered. “There’s nothing – nothing can be _changed_ about any of this. It’s how – it’s what I’ve told Voldemort, too,” he said, offering up his name because the quicker Moody had felt he’d penetrated and disarmed their relationship, the sooner Harry could go. “It’s not the same as forgiveness. But – those feelings could kill me, or they could not. With Voldemort – well, I don’t even know who I’d _be_ if I weren’t an orphan. Maybe all this is the same.” Dumbledore and Voldemort and the Dursleys made him who he was, and _that_ was a strange and uncomfortable category.

“Ah.” Moody’s brows knitted together. “You’ll not resolve this today. You’ll hurt something trying. Only… _can_ you be alone?” He asked it as if skeptical. “I’ll need to join Lupin soon, but if you stay here, we could bring someone around…. Hagrid hasn’t got classes on Mondays,” he offered.

“Oh.” Harry slapped a hand to his face, wishing it hurt. “Yeah, he does. He’s in _my_ Defense class this afternoon. What time is it?” The Black family had been obsessed with clocks; he looked to one of the three in this bedroom. He would miss his own morning classes, already.

“An Auror will cover. Squire and Tonks are on the grounds now. I’ll send word.”

“I still – I don’t need a _minder_.” Moody was burning through his nascent good will quickly. “I’ll go back to Hogwarts, just… collect my thoughts. Have a nap.”

“You are reckless when you’re upset. Don’t bullshit me.”

This was true, and he bloody hated when Moody’s brusque indifference was also completely correct. This was another of the intense conversations they’d had after dark on the battlefield – when they’d lost people, Moody’s wards had caught Harry moving in to avenge them more than once. He would’ve thrown himself into a pit of Death Eaters for revenge, if Moody hadn’t dragged him back to safety by his scruff, hissing harsh truths in his ear. He seemed about to do the same now.

“You think I’ll kill myself?” Harry scoffed, though, returning to his own rough façade.

“If you want to sleep, surely you can sleep here.”

Fuck. He wanted to go back to Hogwarts to go flying, and then drink as much kaval as he could swallow, and then find Voldemort in sleep. He was even hoping to make good with the Horcruxes, in exchange for their magic. “What’s at Hogwarts that you’d keep from me?”

Moody’s face softened incrementally. “Albus’s portrait,” he admitted. “It won’t help.”

“Oh.” He wasn’t sure he had anything to say to him. It. Shaking his head: “That’s not…. I won’t.”

“Say it proper.”

Moody never stood on ceremony, but sometimes he didn’t accept Harry’s fumbling as real promises. “I won’t talk to the portrait.”

“Good lad.”

Harry moved to get up. “Will you take this to Voldemort?”

“Yes.” He took the jar by its neck, setting it aside for the moment. “What else do you need?”

“Uh. Nothing, I think. For you to take the anti-apparition wards off the house.” He nearly didn’t glare.

Moody gave him a curious look. “You _run_ more than you used to, these days.”

Harry bristled. “Well – “

He held up a hand. “Didn’t say it was a bad thing. Or that you shouldn’t.”

It still felt awful, and embarrassing. He’d been a true Gryffindor once. He might not be anymore. “Voldemort and I are both working on subtlety, then,” he deflected, because he was all out of fight. Moody snorted.

Harry had to apparate from Grimmauld Place to the Ministry’s atrium, and then Floo onwards to Hogwarts. Stumbling into the headmaster’s office, he braced himself. The sconces flared to life. Keeping his head down, he moved toward the door.

“Harry?” Dumbledore’s portrait had been present. He – it – had probably been awaiting news since Saturday.

His stomach curdled. He scarcely turned back, because he’d lose his resolve if he did. “I can’t today, sir.”

The silence behind him was deafening. He scrambled out.

 

Students were still in mid-morning classes when he crossed the castle, toward the dungeon. And Moody worked fast: when Harry had run into Tonks, she’d said rather firmly that she was teaching his class today, without him asking. (Was _she_ okay, he wondered faintly, looking to her dark and demure bobbed hair today. The Malfoys and Blacks were her family too. Sort of. He couldn’t ask.) Ron and Hermione would be teaching Muggle Studies now, and nobody else lived in their hall. It was nearly as good as the invisibility cloak.

Speaking of. He’d nearly forgotten that the Horcruxes had been manifest when he’d left in Saturday’s chaos. The flames still glowed in the hearth; both artifacts still sat within them. Neither of them was present.

 _Days_ , they’d been loose and alone in the castle for days. He hadn’t known that was possible. He’d figure it out later. For now – he dropped a jar of kaval in his pocket and scooped up his Quidditch gear. Then, to the owlery.

Hedwig was irritated with him at first, which really felt very unfair. “You’ve got no idea,” he said, feeding her owl treats until he was allowed to pet her, under her chin where she liked it. “I haven’t got letters, I just thought you’d want to go flying?”

They hadn’t done this before. He couldn’t think why not. It was a bit tricky, kicking off from the owlery’s window, but as soon as he did, Hedwig soared after him, making graceful circles.

He rode far from the castle, farther than he’d had reason to fly before. Beyond the Forbidden Forest there was a field of what looked oddly like tumuli. (He’d ask Hermione if _Hogwarts: A History_ had anything to say about this, he thought, and then remembered sadly that they weren’t speaking anymore.) When he came upon a mountain range that he hadn’t known was there – how could he not have noticed an entire _mountain range_? – he turned back around. He must be so far out of bounds of the wards.

For the ride back, Hedwig perched at the front of his broom, alongside his fingers. “Hey, pretty girl.” He stroked her as she rested, unused to being out at this hour. It was galling that Moody had been right, he shouldn’t be alone right now. It was all he wanted, and yet… well, it wouldn’t make him feel any emptier than he already felt, anyway.

Letting his broom drift in lazy loops, he twisted the lid off his jar of kaval. Drinking at midday was unusual for him, but the familiar herbal taste now felt like a promise that the worst of his feelings would be scrubbed clean soon.

He leaned back, looking into the sky. Sunlight filtered through the clouds. There might normally be birds at this height, if not for Hedwig. Casting a few sticking spells and barriers around himself – though the broom’s spells were already strongly magnetic, making it very difficult to fall – he reclined completely, letting his legs dangle.

This was perfect. His mind was stiller like this, with only the monotony of the clouds. He could take solace in being alone. Really, wasn’t everyone alone, ultimately? He’d lived with purpose, he lived for survival at times, he’d lived in desperate search of claiming some sort of belonging. It wouldn’t even be useful to ask who he’d be without those things – as he’d said, he couldn’t imagine himself as anything but an orphan, as someone crafted by fate – but at least he could choose from here on out the circumstances and people with which to encircle himself.

He very much wanted not to be a student anymore. Something like adulthood had settled in on him neatly. Voldemort had been good for shaking off his Boy-Who-Lived connotations, his child-savior expectations. But… he’d intended as much for Harry. Perhaps Dumbledore would characterize his childhood, and Voldemort his adulthood.

Dumbledore had warned him, not to be too quick to discard his childhood. But… he might have to. For mental health’s sake. _Dumbledore sacrificed more than your life_. He had to believe Dumbledore had sacrificed at least as much, himself. He wouldn’t expect anyone to take on more than he would himself. He’d killed himself on purpose, Harry was certain, but he couldn’t say how. He looked to the shifting clouds for ideas.

But the kaval had slowed his heartbeat and the breeze on his face was serene, and the vast nothingness that stretched before his vision was hypnotic. His mind drifted into sleep.

It was a relief initially, this deliverance from the emotional turmoil of his waking life. But then – voices. Everything was distorted as though he were listening from underwater. He’d fallen into Voldemort’s consciousness, as usual. He pressed himself into the back of his mind, to spy just long enough to see whether this would be reassuring or devastating.

But no, Voldemort’s Occlumency was like very dark, still water. He could see in his thoughts that Moody was there. And Remus? No more than them, though.

He could only hear tones instead of words, at first. Moody, low and deliberate. Voldemort, interrupting. Moody’s slightly raised voice now. He could see nothing, but they had to still be in the safehouse, wouldn’t they? He pushed forward.

Smears of color and light. Voldemort wasn’t looking at Moody; he couldn’t even guess what was before him. Then, the first words, Moody’s – “You _can’t_ – “ It slipped back into something indistinct.

A stretch of silence, so he nearly thought Voldemort had shut him out. Then his voice, quite low – “You swore he wouldn’t – “

“ _Suffer_?” Moody interrupted the accusation, scornful.

“ _Yes_.”

Harry’s emotions were boiling again and he pulled back, just as he heard Moody: “Fate Herself couldn’t swear it.”

Right. Why had he thought of himself, for just a moment, as free. As self-determined, full of infinite possibility. The prophecy strangled his hopes, if he thought of it too much.

Voldemort must have recognized Harry’s presence then – his thoughts stilled, as though prey were suddenly in a predator’s sight. (What an uncomfortable metaphor to be on the other end of, Harry thought.) Suddenly, he _sliced_ at Harry’s fragile hold on his psyche, as though amputating him. But he was tangled – they were so tangled. That had strangely hurt, and Harry was thrashing as if desperately caught in a net.

Voldemort didn’t have enough magic to get him out properly, Harry realized, horrified. But Moody – fuck. He’d blamed the frequent dispelling of Voldemort’s magic on the Wizengamot and guards at Azkaban. Moody, though – His heart hurt. He needed to trust Moody. He needed to trust _someone_.

Voldemort stood abruptly, stalking toward the kitchen. “Tea?” he asked perfunctorily, because Moody would never accept. He didn’t even slow enough to anticipate an answer.

On the far side of the kitchen, slamming a kettle onto the range, he turned his frustration on Harry. “You’ve got to leave,” he hissed. Somehow he was unsurprised at what an emotional mess Harry was now, when only a few hours prior he’d been so light and easy. They must be deep enough into Moody’s confrontation that he understood. He was weak – even his silencing charm was shaky around them. “You can’t mediate. We don’t _want_ you to.”

 _Just because you weren’t fighting,_ Harry thought viciously _, doesn’t mean that’s not violent of him, taking your magic_.

Voldemort exhaled deeply. “It is temporary. It is safe. It’s done with a spell and not fucking _bleeding out_. I’ll tell you everything later, but now – _please – go_.”

At these words, he wrenched magic from Harry, a gesture he’d never done deliberately against Harry’s wishes before. But being forced out didn’t feel like a push – it felt like being _drowned_.

He awoke still adrift in the sky, making the illusion complete. He _was_ drowning. His head was being held underwater, and he was thrashing uselessly. This was… _awful_. He circled back toward the castle, so he might sleep off the rest of this hideous day.

But on the way down, Minerva McGonagall strode up to him in the center of the great hall (just cleared from lunch, platters still everywhere and occasionally he even saw a house elf pop in and out). “Hi, Professor.” He slowed, shifting his Quidditch bag behind him. “Uh, sorry, I should’ve told someone I’d come back….”

“We knew,” she said. “Come with me, Potter.”

A steady grip on his shoulder made him anxious. “I will, I will,” he said, equal parts irritable and panicked. “Just… I can’t be touched right now.” He ducked out of her grasp. Her look was surprised and pitying, and he didn’t like it at all.

He followed her to the hospital wing, he recognized the way soon enough. Minerva had gone through his memories too, he thought as he trailed after her. Had she looked at him differently in the past few weeks? Had Remus? But Remus always had an air of tragedy about him. Who’d ever know.

Lavender looked up from measuring out potions as they entered. “Harry. Hi.” _She_ looked concerned for him. He felt like the whole world could see this bit of himself – but no, everyone must have put together that he’d been involved at the manor. Perhaps they thought he was still in shock. Perhaps he was, really. Everything he felt seemed to expand and contract rapidly, these days.

But Lavender was stepping aside for them. “She says she’s free all afternoon.”

 _Oh_. He’d skived off on the therapy he was supposed to get this year. Shit. With minimal resistance, he followed McGonagall into a corner office.

An Indian woman, with a choppy bob that made her look quite young and fashionable, had a newspaper in her lap. There was a desk in the corner, but most of the room was ceded to a few sofas arranged around the hearth. She rose when they entered. “Hello,” she said, extending a hand. “I’m Sabita. Nurse Brown brought me on as the Hogwarts counselor this year. It is so good to meet you.”

“I’m Harry. Uh, I was supposed to come earlier this term, but….” He registered as McGonagall vanished his Quidditch gear to his room for him, and then let herself out. Harry drifted to one of the sofas.

Lavender and Hermione had uniquely bonded over the summer, over their shared conviction that this would be a year of grief and healing for them all, and they needed a proper therapist on staff for it. Sabita was a Squib but she’d had three brothers in Hogwarts, and she’d been a therapist in the Muggle world before now. It was near-ideal.

Past the introductions, Harry kicked his feet, scoffing at the rug. “So… what do you already know?” he asked reluctantly. He couldn’t tell if she’d particularly known who he was already. She was not overwhelmed by his presence like some new people, and thank god for that, but –

“What do you mean?”

He stopped a groan in his throat. He hated putting words to all of this. “Nothing. You’ve got the papers.”

She gave him a small smile that wasn’t at all cruel or sarcastic. “Tell me what you want me to know,” she said, “and that’s what I’ll know. And we’ve only got to start at the beginning if you want to.”

But where could they ever start but the beginning.

It took him an hour and a half to tell her, in excruciating fashion, just about everything to do with Voldemort. From the prophecy, Harry’s parents’ death, all the various attempts on Harry’s life, his rebirth, to a bit of the battles of Hogwarts last year, to Harry’s abduction, which he never really left. The mess that had been keeping their relationship secret from the Order and everyone, and how badly he’d done at that. Captivity by the Muggles, then the treaties, then the cessation of the statute of secrecy. Now… he and Voldemort were allied against the world, more or less. “I don’t care if it sounds dysfunctional,” he concluded in a rush. “We’re really happy. We understand each other like nobody else does.” He braced himself for critique and resistance, as usual.

Sabita saw this gesture. “I should have explained,” she said, brisk and cheerful, “that I don’t make judgments about any of this. I work to empower you to do what you want for yourself. Whatever that is. That’s all.”

“Oh.” He softened. “Thanks. Um. I don’t know all that I want. Yet, anyway.”

“Then we’ll work on that, too.”

He scoffed his trainer against the rug again. “And… there’s other things,” he said. “Most of them have got something to do with him, but – “ He stopped, sighing. It was impossible to explain, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to disclose some of it to a perfect stranger. “Can I make you a list?” he asked wryly.

To his surprise, she nodded. “That sounds useful.”

A list of the ways his life was a disaster. Well. “Sure,” he said. They might be finished for now. He didn’t feel like he’d solved anything. But he let Sabita write him in for later this week, after class on Wednesday. And then he was free. Now completely emotionally exhausted, he went to go take a nap.

 

It was utterly disorienting to wake in inky darkness (as the Horcruxes’ fire didn’t really throw light) hours later, to frantic pounding on his door. _Ugh_. He didn’t usually drink enough kaval to get a hangover from it, a strange sort that made him a bit slow and achy, but one had set in now. He lit the sconces, pulled on a robe, and went to get the door.

Hermione stood before him, ashen and worn down. Her hair was a fierce cloud around her head, indicating how anxiously she’d been tugging at it. “You just _left_ ,” she accused, without preamble. “Nobody knew where you were, and then we heard there was a _massacre_.” She hissed the word. “We didn’t know if you were dead until last night, _finally_. Why have we got to find these things out through the papers?”

Oh how desperately he wanted to close the door and go back to bed. Not to be rude, but he just had no more feelings to feel today, certainly not enough to also comfort anyone else. Hermione was stronger than him, anyway; she’d be fine. He ended up looking at her for a long time in silence, until finally – “Moody took me. Of course people knew where I was.”

“Well, Ron didn’t. I didn’t.”

More staring. “I didn’t think we were speaking?” He was backing up, in preparation to close the door.

Hermione recognized the gesture. Obviously gritting her teeth: “I’m sorry. Of course I still want you in my life. Even if that comes with… him.” Her gaze darted to the ring on his left hand. “May I come in?”

Even if she wouldn’t recognize the Horcruxes’ fire, even if she probably couldn’t research it in their library, he had the feeling she wouldn’t stop until she knew what it was. “Sorry,” he said, “you can’t. I’ve got….”

“If you’re brewing more recreational potions, Harry, I don’t care.”

“What about your suite?”

Her eyebrows were inching up with curiosity. “Alright.” She stepped back.

Into their suite. “Ron’s watching Ginny’s practice,” she said. “You’ve missed dinner.”

It was a small mercy, he thought, that when he wasn’t at dinner, the Aurors hadn’t done a wellness check themselves.

“Is Malfoy here?” Harry asked, struck with the thought that he only had the right to be the second-most fucked-up person on faculty right now.

“I’ve heard he’s here,” Hermione said slowly. “I haven’t seen him. It’s awful, what happened.” She seemed to mean it.

“Yeah.” They both seemed to be waiting for the other to say something. Harry wanted to go back to bed.

“What – “ Hermione wanted answers, but didn’t want to scare him off. “Moody took you. For… his magic?”

“Voldemort. Yes.” She didn’t flinch at his name, at least. “The surveillance on the manor, they knew something was wrong. And… as long as the Death Eaters are Marked, he’s got some amount of control over them.”

“The Ministry thought he wouldn’t compel them to attack?” She seemed horrified.

Huh. The possibility had never come up. “No. Not that they said, anyway. Voldemort’s… done with the Death Eaters, he’s said.” _He’d kill them himself, he’s offered._ But that wouldn’t help now.

Again Hermione gritted her teeth, about to tell him how stupid he was being. She swallowed it. Instead: “The press conference didn’t really explain what happened,” she said carefully. “It sounded horrible.”

A lot of it was probably classified. Scrimgeour had gone competent but very vague in his address, and Harry assumed that was how it was supposed to be. “You can’t tell,” he began.

She gave him a frustrated look. “We kept secret everything Dumbledore told you about Voldemort, didn’t we?”

“Yeah. You did.” They’d been his release valve then, his confidants when he was sorting through Voldemort’s memories. Now… well, he and Voldemort could slip into one another’s minds, so any other sharing felt a bit inadequate comparatively. “There’s a political group that wants to make Voldemort powerless. Not a British group, somewhere on the continent. They killed the Death Eaters so he’d be alone. And to lure him there, I guess. They know they can’t kill him.”

She pressed a fist to her mouth. “Then you’re in danger.” Before Harry could say _no shit_ , she surged ahead. “You should practice your Disillusionment, unless you carry your cloak everywhere. And there are shield charms that are more form-fitting, so you can shoot around them instead of through them, they’re really strong. You’ve got a portkey?” Her eyes swept his form, looking for the medal.

“Yeah.” He lifted it from the neck of his robes briefly. Twisting it to the right would take him to the Ministry, and to the left would take him to the safehouse. Brightbone had cast it for him, among Sunday’s chaos.

“You should probably cycle among different safehouses….”

“Maybe. The Aurors will, if they’re worried.”

“What are you doing about the Horcruxes?”

“What?” he asked, startled.

A curious look. “They must want to destroy them. They’re still with you?”

“Yeah.” It was for the best that he hadn’t returned them to Moody, he decided. They must be safest here. Even though he _really_ needed to find where they’d been going. “I don’t wear them around, usually. They’re in my suite.”

“Is that… secure, really?”

“If I need to, I can hide them with Parselmagic.”

Her eyes went wide. “Harry… no, you can’t. He teaches you things that – “

“I know it’s illegal. I don’t use it now. But I could.”

She bit her lip. “Could I see it?”

At first Harry thought she meant the concealment spell for the Horcrux. But no, any Parselmagic. Picking up a quill from the end table, “ _Wingardium Leviosa_ ,” he hissed. (Or was it still Latin if it was in Parseltongue? Was he saying the Parseltongue for whatever it’d also be in English? It was very confusing.) The quill hovered about their heads. “Try to dispel it.”

Frowning, she did – just wordlessly, then a precise “Finite Incantatum!” The quill didn’t move. Hermione was about to try again when the door swung open.

“Blimey.” Ron was half-pulling a muddied shirt off. “I should probably just shower in my clothes, they need a rinse…. Oh, hi, Harry,” he said, dropping his shirt hem again. “Didn’t know you’d be by.” He moved through the suite as though this weren’t a huge deal.

“How do you get so _dirty_ at Quidditch practice?” Hermione demanded, recoiling at his trainers tracking mud on the floor. “It’s played in mid-air!”

“You’d think that, yeah.” He was shaking out a set of pajamas. “But _after_ Quidditch, Ginny and I bet on racing to test whether an underhanded or overhanded grip is faster on long distances – nevermind – and I sort of crashed beside the lake.”

Hermione’s mouth twitched. “Did you win?”

“’Course.”

“Will Ginny corroborate that when I ask her tomorrow?”

“Nope,” he said cheerily. “Let me shower, then I’ll come look at… levitation spells,” he said slowly, looking to the quill, “with you.” He ducked into the bath. Hermione’s smile after him was brief but indulgent.

“ _Finite_ ,” Harry hissed, letting the quill fall into his hand. “Hermione, Parselmagic is going to keep me alive one day.”

“Yeah,” she agreed faintly.

Ron emerged in a loose shirt and shorts soon thereafter; Harry recounted what he could of the weekend. He couldn’t bring himself to say anything about Moody, or Dumbledore, or his childhood memories, even though those all weighed more heavily on him. To the extent that Saturday’s attack still upset him, he thought it was only the spillover of Voldemort’s own feelings. Voldemort was grieving them more than he even knew.

Both Ron and Hermione kept prodding at the question of who the attackers were – Scrimgeour had been vague, and now Harry was being vague too. Harry felt some of the irritation that Moody must feel with him when he wouldn’t let things alone. “Look, it will be our advantage if it’s a secret,” he said. He did _not_ say that the entire wixen world was compromised because their security didn’t properly account for non-humans. “Just about all the Aurors are on this. Probably other departments, too.”

Hermione just… blinked at him. “How many times have we accomplished something that the Ministry bungled? That the authorities overlooked or underestimated? Can you even _count_?”

She was right, but – “This isn’t your responsibility,” he said. “It’s not _my_ responsibility either, really. Um, Voldemort and Moody have spent a bloody lot of time together to negotiate my place. That I’m not a lynchpin of the political world anymore.”

Twin frowns on them both. “But… you’ve got to be.” Ron sounded nervous. “Harry, you’re the only thing keeping him from….” He fell silent, not willing to finish the statement. _From killing them? From ruling as an immortal tyrant? From enslaving all Muggleborns_?

“Everyone’s still safe. He’s still got a lot of vows. And he still…. We don’t hurt each other,” he said. He hoped they understood. They’d both grown up when their own relationship had gotten serious – granted, theirs had been on the battlefield, when they decided they needed more love in their lives and not more strife. “Our feelings are just too entangled. Our _lives_ are too entangled. He said he’d keep all of Britain safe for me. Because we’re both in danger if he lets war break out, anyway.”

Ron looked uncomfortable. Hermione gazed down at her hands, carefully considering. “Okay,” she said at last.

A smile flickered at his mouth. “I wasn’t asking permission.”

She looked up, and he was surprised to see her – almost smiling herself, though still so sad. “What happened to you? You wanted to be everything to everyone, once.”

He had, really. He wasn’t _conflict avoidant_ by a long shot – but he’d more been reluctant to disappoint or alienate anyone he loved. In their first year, he couldn’t have been either Neville confronting the trio, or Hermione stunning him. In that way, he hadn’t been brave. “I belong now,” he said, softly.

A wince. “You’ve always belonged with us,” she said. “I hope you’ve never felt….” Her hands were tight in her lap.

“No, I did,” he agreed. Taking a breath. “But now I belong _to_ someone. And he belongs to me. It’s different.”

Sucking silence. They misunderstood him. Hermione was going to launch a campaign to save him from himself. It would be awful.

“I wish it had anyone else,” she said in a measured way. “But if the principle of the thing is that I can’t bear to see you get hurt,” she sighed, “then I’d also best not be the one hurting you.”

It was a thoroughly Hermione way in which to come around. He felt a little warmer.

After a time he had to go – he needed to get dinner from the kitchens, and then (obviously the part he didn’t tell them) he had to go out in search of the bloody Horcruxes. Without a lot of time left before curfew, and with a sandwich in each hand, he walked in circles around the ground floor.

The diadem would sometimes be looking at the wards in the great hall, but even walking the perimeter, he didn’t see or feel anything out of place. He couldn’t imagine them spending that much time in the Slytherin common room. The library? Nobody would believe Harry in the library at this hour. The Room of Requirement was actually a bit far; he didn’t know if they could get all the way to the sixth story since they could only stray so far from the artifacts. And he would’ve guessed Slytherin’s chamber if he didn’t know it was caved in. He wondered if there was a spell by which to tether the Horcruxes to him; like those people who put their kids on leads in public. Without any more refined magic to find them, he turned back toward the dungeons.

He was nearly back to his corridor when he felt a brush on his shoulder. “Lost?” a voice murmured in Parseltongue.

“Oh my god.” They were alone, ostensibly, so he grabbed at the Horcrux until he had a handful of robes. “You come with me. Where _were_ you?” He couldn’t tell which of them it was, but he – it – was concealed with Disillusionment instead of the cloak. That was frustrating. He dragged the Horcrux through Abzu’s doorway and into his suite. “ _Finite_ ,” he hissed, and the Disillusionment spell fell.

He and the diadem stood staring at each other for a long moment. “What have you been doing?” Harry asked again. “You had days alone – I didn’t mean to leave you manifest. Actually,” he said, squaring his shoulders, “bugger it, I’m not apologizing. Where _were_ you, and where’s the locket?”

“I’d ask here _you_ were in turn, but I’m already aware,” Riddle said. He looked… tired, or dispirited, much less the smarmy prat he usually was. “We’ve done what we could for the Slytherins since. Protective spells, mostly.”

“Is that, uh, inconspicuous?”

He clicked. “You’d rather hear about it if it weren’t. Even after you tried to bargain us away.”

“Oh, piss off.” He wasn’t even a little bit abashed. “You might put more protection spells on yourself, too. You know about the attack, then?”

Riddle raised an eyebrow. “Yes, and you should be begging me for everything I know about the Humnerë. As I was living with them.”

“It’s… I mean, it might be the same group, but it’s got to be different than in your time. Also, if you want to say anything, you’ll have to tell Voldemort or the Aurors. They’re trying to untangle me from, ah, everything.”

“I see.” His expression went blank at that.

“How do you know what happened? I mean, I know you know a lot through me. Is that it?” When Riddle only hummed, Harry sighed. “Nevermind. I really… I haven’t got any goodwill left for you today. Where’s the locket?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do,” Harry accused. “ _I_ can nearly feel you in the castle, and my magic isn’t nearly so close as yours.”

“The library?” Riddle shrugged, making it even look like an elegant gesture. “The Room of Requirement? You’d summon him back if you pulled the artifact from the fire, but he’s got the cloak.” Before Harry could ask, he pulled the map and the cypress wand from his robes. “I’ve got the rest.”

“Right.” Harry took them. “Cheers. I’m going to shower.”

By the time he was out, curfew was almost up and the locket still wasn’t back. He’d _know_ Harry was here; they knew everything about his movements, it seemed. The diadem had already disappeared, setting his own artifact upon the mantel. With a deep sigh in the back of his throat, Harry left the locket in the fire. Maybe he was doing something important, anyway. But he’d better have a good reason when Harry did find him.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I offer an apology that throughout this fic, Voldemort and Harry conflate dom/sub with top/bottom. Harry doesn’t know any better, as new to all this sex as he is; but Voldemort probably should. But they don’t have a formal bdsm agreement and they’re kind of improvising all of this, so top/bottom feels like a little less pressure for them.
> 
> Allusions for Chapter 19: 
> 
> “Who overcomes by force, hath overcome but half his foe.” – John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book 1. Beelzebub suggests to Satan that the devils should not wage another war but defeat God in a more cunning way.


	20. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> November is a month of funerals, prison sentences, an estate, and an unlikely anniversary.

_Tuesday, November 3._ And in fact, on Tuesday morning, when Harry was barely awake, his door swung open. The locket barely let it swing closed before the cloak slipped from his shoulders. “You are a disaster,” he pronounced, before Harry could say anything. “I spent your entire absence feeling as though I’d _cry_. What is wrong with you?”

“That’s really sweet of you,” Harry snapped, rubbing the bleariness from his vision. “And you already know. Where were you?”

“The library,” he said. “I want to craft a spell of blood protection for all the Slytherins.”

Harry blinked. “Have you _got_ blood?”

“If I wanted to,” he said, a confusing and unnerving answer.

“The diary bled ink.”

“How dramatic.” He strode to the fire. “Do you mind?” he asked, very politely. “Being corporeal for so long was a challenge.”

“I really didn’t mean to. I never will again,” he promised. The locket dropped his cloak over the back of the sofa before reaching into the fire. His flickering form lasted just long enough to place the locket on the mantel. Harry breathed deeply when he was once again alone.

Malfoy wasn’t at breakfast. Harry taught in the morning, and then had his own Transfiguration lesson. “Professor,” he said, sliding up to McGonagall’s desk after class, “is Malfoy around? I mean – I’ve got Runes tonight.”

“Unfortunately,” she said crisply, “Professor Malfoy has to attend to family business. He’ll return to class next week.”

Harry blinked, and decided that was her standard, official answer. “Right,” he said, “thank you.” He wondered if he should be at the funerals. He wondered if _Voldemort_ should be at the funerals. The foreign emotions that still smouldered at the back of his mind were harsh and complicated and just… sad.

He’d missed them at breakfast, and so when he saw Ron and Hermione at lunch, he did a double take. With her teacher’s robes, Hermione wore a student tie, in Slytherin colors. “Why?” he said, nodding to it.

“Solidarity.”

The students were still gathered around the interim round tables, with the house tables gone. Luna had told Harry before that the Slytherins were wearing house colors less these days, to avoid being targets. Looking out into the crowd, that seemed right. There wasn’t even a significant section of green among them anymore – where the Slytherin table was meant to be, some of them wore the black Hogwarts’s crest tie instead; some wore their family tartans or crests. Harry’s heart hurt.

Squinting into the crowd: “Are there… fewer of them?” They didn’t have full class sizes this year anyway, so it was a bit difficult to tell, but….

“We teach Muggle Studies,” Ron said with a wry smile. “You know more of them than we do, mate.”

“They can’t just _disappear_.”

“Seems like they can.”

Harry found out very shortly thereafter. Gotlinde Rowle, the tearful blonde girl he’d seen with the locket in Slytherin’s common room months prior, was absent from his third year class. Bernthal and Huxley, her cohort, either couldn’t or wouldn’t say where she’d gone. After class, Harry, feeling very sick, fished out his old student ties and charmed one of them in Slytherin colors. It wasn’t enough.

 

 _Sunday, November 8._ The Horcruxes were manifest on most days. The diadem would sleep beside Harry some nights, while the locket stayed out until morning. As many times as Harry insisted he should know what they were doing and why, he only got infuriating non-answers. At least, however, they were aware already of the weakness of the Ministry’s standard security, as it didn’t take into account non-human threats. “Hogwarts is much older,” the diadem assured him that Sunday evening. “Built before the species were so segregated. There are more interesting wards on the castle than on the Ministry.”

“More interesting,” he echoed in doubt. “Does that mean _safe_?”

“Happily, it does.”

“Hm,” he said, frowning at Riddle.

A glare, in response. “I care about the castle,” he said crisply, as if he’d prefer not to admit such emotional weakness. “If not its inhabitants, particularly. Your safety is incidental.”

“Well, thanks,” Harry said, only half-sarcastic. Still, he handed off his invisibility cloak as Riddle tucked several books on structural magic under his arm, striding out.

When Harry fell asleep while preparing for class later that evening, he fell into Voldemort’s mind – the first time they’d been together since Monday’s conflict. It was a slow slip past his Occlumency, and he was in darkness for a long time before the walls of Azkaban resolved themselves in his vision. Voldemort held the Panopticon in his lap, but he was gazing up in thought at the moment.

He was exhausted, Harry could feel. He was _drained_. Harry pushed magic toward him before Voldemort had even acknowledged him.

Voldemort straightens, bringing his back flat against the cold stone wall. “Harry,” he says gently. “You shouldn’t be here. There are Dementors just beyond the door.”

 _I hadn’t noticed,_ he thinks. _And I don’t care. I miss you._

Voldemort sighs, rubbing feeling into his hands again as magic flooded him like warmth. At Harry’s righteous fury, he winces, pushing him away so the anger doesn’t also hurt him. “Don’t,” he says. “The Wizengamot will be here later tonight. I don’t understand _why_ they feel safe enough to come, an hour exposed to attacks in the middle of the sea. But my magic will be restored afterward.”

Harry has to fight very hard not to also be furious, thinking of this. Of Bowersock and Bright and all the tacit approval by the rest of them, as Voldemort will be beaten or fucked. Then again, Moody is scarcely better, if he also wrenches away Voldemort’s magic on a whim.

Voldemort shuts his eyes for a long moment. “It seems as though the only way to placate your feelings would be to excuse the Ministry or minimize their violence,” he says in a measured way. “Harry, _please_ don’t necessitate that I do either.”

And so Harry has to rearrange his feelings rapidly, to keep the worst of his hatred out of Voldemort’s mind. _I’m angry for you because you can’t be angry for yourself._

A flick of a smile at his lips. “That is very kind of you.” He sets the Panopticon on his pillow, dispelling the text that filled it. “But on Monday – The Aurors should have never gotten your memories. The security charms on the safehouse apparently only activate when we’re staying there; otherwise they may enter. I should’ve thought of it – I should have properly protected your memories. I am so sorry.”

Voldemort was very seldom sorry, and Harry could feel why – it was a cold, deep feeling within him, like plunging into an icy lake. _My uncle died_ , he thinks, _and it made me so happy._

“Good.” He has enough magic now to cast heating spells around the perimeter of the cell, so the wall against his back became cool instead of frigid. “And while you are very talented at… softening my presence under most circumstances, Alastor and I just can’t have you around when we need to strategize or negotiate. We are both too invested in your wellbeing.”

Harry doesn’t think in words at this, but his bewilderment needs none. Voldemort snorts. “Just because he’s inured to the world – I don’t understand his commitment to you, but it has been unshakeable. Probably a promise to Dumbledore, like everyone else.”

 _Tell him it hurts me when he takes your magic_. And it is sardonic at first but then Harry is thinking about showing up at Grimmauld Place with the corresponding bruises. They _could_ hurt each other, he is sure, even if that in particular hadn’t.

“Occlumency,” Voldemort murmurs. “I’ve always got enough of it to keep injury separate, even as we share magic and mind and sex.”

Harry wonders if he could demonstrate this.

With a twist of his hand he’s pulled out a knife from alongside his forearm. Harry marvels. _You carry a knife_?

“You should,” Voldemort says firmly. “They’ll take your wand and your magic. Nobody will look for a Muggle weapon.” Matter-of-fact, he slices a cut into the back of his hand, just enough to bleed. Another flourish, and the knife is gone. “There. You’ll have it as well. I bled when Nagini died,” he reminds Harry. “This isn’t magic unfamiliar to you.”

Harry thinks fiercely that he’ll take on every injury, so maybe it would all _end_.

“No.” He says it without room for argument. “You are my strength right now. I’d never allow it.”

Harry’s thoughts circle back to Moody, apparently wrenching Voldemort’s magic from him. Harry _needs_ to like and trust Moody, and he nearly did.

“It is a spell,” Voldemort says, quiet now because he’s certainly not without regret and suppressed resentment himself. “Not so different from withdrawing memories. I cast it on myself. _Please_ – I don’t want to excuse or minimize this either,” he says in an exhalation. “It is only a matter of survival.”

Harry grieves for him. Voldemort must shake these feelings off. “You also should have a working relationship with Moody. _Trust_ him, if you’d like.” He says the word as if it tastes bad. “Your life will be much more difficult if you don’t.”

 _But Dumbledore_ …. His thoughts are inexact. He tries to pull him back as soon as he’s thought them. Voldemort sees a peripheral thought, of Harry telling Moody that they could speak of everyone _but_ Dumbledore. This is true. This is not a conversation best had in sleep, but this would be done now or never. Voldemort sees the memory of Moody saying that Albus has got his apologists. He nearly smiles.

“He does,” he says. “And his detractors. More of them were interested in your welfare – _yours_ , specifically – than you know. He kept the politics of your survival out of your sight. They all did.” He’s drawing his legs up, leaning back, to think. “Perhaps he’s beloved by everyone who surrounds you, but he was a controversial political figure himself.

Harry thinks of the Ministry listing Dumbledore as whatever the nomenclature was. A political threat? A rebel? A terrorist? He thinks also of the Ministry’s repeated offers to install him as Minister. It is very confusing.

“A hero need only be their state’s second-worst threat,” Voldemort reminds him with a dry smile. “The Ministry, being what it is, gravitates toward power more often than ideology. As present circumstances also reveal.”

 _Right_. Harry is amused and exasperated. His thoughts churn. He does not want to be politically aligned with Voldemort, they both know this, and yet that’s where he will find himself if he’s distanced from Albus. And Albus…. Harry might have already forgiven worse, really.

 _I haven’t_. Harry catches this thought. He pushes forward the betrayal of Monday afternoon – that it would have been better if Dumbledore had acted out of hatred, or antipathy. That he left Harry in such negligent circumstances out of _love_ … it is unconscionable to him. Harry can accept and forgive (to an extent) Voldemort’s attempt on his life. He can embrace even Dumbledore’s plan for him to die. But the neglect, unhappiness for its own sake (Harry’s mind keeps slipping toward the word _abuse_ , and flinching away again as though touching a hot stove) – he can’t bring himself to rationalize or forgive this.

They both know approximately the reason – mother’s love, only blood relative of hers, and so on – but it is such unnecessary suffering. It is unforgiveable, Harry decides fiercely in that moment. If those circumstances were anything to do with love – he would denounce it.

Voldemort’s thoughts are not organized, everything about Dumbledore’s philosophy of love. _He_ will not be Albus’s apologist, in any case. But then Harry is pawing through his thoughts, curious and a bit desperate to be given… direction. Structure. Reassurance.

“What did he tell you?”

_That love is the most powerful magic. That it saved me._

“You wouldn’t mistake _powerful_ for _good_.” He leaves this in the air between them, letting Harry work through it.

Harry shoves forward their memory with a skeptical air – _There’s no good or evil, just power and those too weak to seek it_. Seeing it from Harry’s perspective for the first time, Voldemort is struck by how young and small and ill-equipped the boy was then. “That shouldn’t have been you,” he says, without really meaning to, as it is a digression from his point. “It should have been Dumbledore. He sent you, I suppose, as the only one pure enough to protect the stone.”

Harry is not upset on behalf of his younger self to the extent that he should be. Instead, his anger is displaced by dry entertainment. _You resent him because you would have killed me?_

His lips curl. “Yes.” Shaking his head: “As I said, love is powerful, it is not _good_. It was the most destructive force in Dumbledore’s own life. It would kill him. He would kill for it. The prison that he crafted for Grindelwald was crafted with love.”

Harry resists this too, surprising him. _Power may be zero sum_. He thinks the words carefully and discretely, to make his meaning clear. It is important. _But love isn’t._

Voldemort considers. Whatever Harry knows of love – and what _does_ he really, but certainly he’s the expert between them – has only a tangential relation to its manifestation in magic. Still, this may not be untrue. “Would you like book titles?”

 _No_. He is forceful and amused and exasperated once more. It has exhausted him, being a politician and a scholar this year.

Voldemort kisses his own knuckles, passing the sensation along so it’s almost as though he’s kissed Harry’s. “To say Albus knew the power of love doesn’t mean he believed in its goodness. Only that….” His eyes search the craggy ceiling as he forms his thought. “Love is powerful. Sacrifice is powerful. They can as easily be put toward immoral ends as moral ones. It was not without consideration that I left the branch of magic behind. I might have done great things with it.” His followers love him – _loved_ him – in a sense, and that already held power, as dysfunctional as it was. The love Harry had for him – the love he had for Harry, he thought with rather more difficulty – already created a power more than the sum of its parts. It was intoxicating. He felt on the precipice of something great once more, something he hadn’t felt since the days of first recreating himself with arcane magic.

Of all this, he collects his thoughts, neither revealing nor withholding any of it. He says, “Dumbledore didn’t choose you because you were good, but because you were powerful. I suppose _I_ didn’t choose you because you were good but because you were powerful. It was only to both of our advantages” (he doesn’t pair himself with Dumbledore lightly, Harry thinks) “that you _are_ good, anyway. Better than we could have anticipated.”

Harry’s drowning in his thoughts, so Voldemort only offers him one more. “If you feel ambivalent about him… he was an ambivalent figure. He would say the same. It’s not… betrayal.”

Harry thinks of his own role as figurehead, Chosen One, peacemaker. How demoralizing it would be if he distanced himself from Dumbledore. “Mm,” Voldemort murmurs, because it is a thoughtful objection. “At some point – not now – you will be near enough to a private citizen that it won’t incite panic.”

Harry’s reaction is wordlessly droll. More churning of his thoughts. He would be lost if he were no longer Dumbledore’s man, he thinks.

Voldemort raises his non-brows. The phrase is distinct among Harry’s otherwise wordless thoughts.

 _Oh_. Harry pushes forward another memory, Scrimgeour unsuccessfully luring Harry to the Ministry’s side in his sixth year. His bitter accusation when Harry rejected him. _He got what he wanted, in the end,_ Harry thinks.

Voldemort can also think of no more appropriate label for Harry. “Don’t fall apart,” he says lowly, holding back all of his own thoughts on Dumbledore because they’ll only make Harry sad or defensive. “Feel anything, but your martyrdom would be quite useless.”

Harry is unexpectedly _entertained_ by this, at Voldemort’s cool pragmatism. He thinks that he has been shedding his past like snake skins – all of it as it relates to Voldemort, that he can’t long for his parents or Sirius or Cedric, that even _forgiving_ Voldemort won’t restore his life in any meaningful way. He hasn’t yet fully dealt with Dumbledore’s death. He hadn’t had to forgive anyone dead before. It was all… complicated.

Voldemort listens – in a manner of speaking. He is careful with Harry’s thoughts and his own. He is certain it would wreck Harry, to become too cynical toward Dumbledore. Perhaps if he were alive, but… the portrait would never suffice. Harry’s memories alone would never suffice. And Voldemort has never forgiven anyone in his life; he’s not certain what all it entails.

So he seizes upon what he does know. “If you’ll shed your past like a snake skin – “ It was an arresting metaphor, for Harry. “Snakes were once thought to have the secret to immortality. Muggle myth says this. So does ancient sorcery. Parselmouths might have arisen out of the magic of Horcruces, or other bids for immortality that draw upon serpentine charms.”

Harry had known none of this. _I don’t deserve to be a Parselmouth_ , he thinks wryly.

Voldemort shakes his head in affectionate exasperation. Then: “I’d never…. I couldn't tell you how to feel about Albus. But you should discard the parts of your life that are killing you. There’s no reason to keep them on.”

He is pleased when Harry pushes forward a memory – no, multiple memories – of Moody telling him there’s no virtue in suffering. But then – _It’s such a Slytherin thing to say_ , Harry thinks, approximately. He’s rather disgusted with himself.

Voldemort sighs, not unaffected by Harry’s internal conflict. “You haven’t _run_ from a dead man.”

Harry’s first startled and then amused by his bluntness. _I think I have, though._

But he’s not so devastated as he was. Voldemort certainly had Moody’s accusation bellowed at him as well – that he’d prefer Harry devastated so that he may come to his rescue. Moody doesn’t understand the extent to which they’re entangled, that Harry’s turmoil also hurts him. Hell, _Harry_ doesn’t understand it fully – his Occlumency is good enough, not perfect. Voldemort marvels at the range and depth of emotions, anyway. It is like seeing color for the first time. It mimics empathy. He wouldn’t relinquish this connection if he could.

And now Harry is guilty and apologetic for avoiding him this past week – for a relative sense of _avoiding_ , since he’s not free to slip into Voldemort’s mind whenever he’d like. He is persistently, aggressively optimistic that they will be together someday, that they could have a life together someday. Harry’s told his friends (oh, he’s speaking to Granger again, Voldemort notes faintly) that they belong together, that they belong _to_ each other. If anything, it is an understatement. And Voldemort, like Remus, regrets having yoked this good, full life of Harry’s to his own wretched husk of a soul. “I’d do it differently, if I could do it again,” he murmurs. While the pity they feel is undoubtedly Harry’s, the remorse could belong to either of them.

Harry is something near satisfied. _I wish I could kiss you_ , he thinks. Voldemort can’t even guess when they might see each other again – that even if the Ministry is rather more indifferent toward keeping them apart, they are both now _targets_ as much as they’ve ever been. As numb as they both are to people plotting to kill them, Voldemort thinks wryly, the Ministry is not.

He would offer to get them off now, but they hear footsteps. Harry is shoving as much magic into Voldemort’s broken soul as he can, stopping a pain that hadn’t previously registered. Again, Voldemort brings his hand to his mouth, the improvised ring cool on his lips. “I love you,” he says, simpler when he’s muttering it behind his hand like a coward. “Could you get out on your own?”

He hasn’t before. It’s not so different from Occlumency. The problem is that Harry doesn’t _want_ to go, and the hesitation is weakening his magic. Before the footsteps reach the door, Voldemort untangles their minds once more, depositing Harry back into his own world.

The door swings open, and Voldemort can’t tell who has come for him, through the dark clouds of the Dementors. And then they part, and he is looking into the light eyes of Bowersock. Voldemort says nothing as he rises.

\\\\\\\ ////

Harry was shaken awake by the diadem sometime later. Unsticking his face from the textbook on which he fell asleep, he looked up. “What?”

“You can’t just _abdicate_ your magic like that,” Riddle hissed. He was quite like a cat when he was angry, Harry thought.

“I didn’t abdicate it,” (he was only mostly sure what that word meant) “I gave it to Voldemort. They take his all the time, now.”

Riddle only slackened a bit. “They can’t do that,” he muttered, still angry but with a different target. “And _you_ know that. That Dumbledore filed an amicus curiae for Grindelwald, against taking magic as a punitive measure. The Wizengamot sided with him, in the end.”

He had forgotten that, but it didn’t matter. With a dry laugh: “The Ministry keeps him around to perform the magic they can’t do, legally. He takes his own magic.”

Riddle’s mouth went thin. “That’s abhorrent, that he’d acquiesce.”

Harry shrugged. “We all survive.”

“Yes,” Riddle said darkly. He didn’t restore Harry’s magic that night.

 

 _Tuesday, November 24._ November was a cold, somber month. The Malfoy, Black, and Rookwood funerals all proceeded with a great deal of suppressed anxiety, as the Ministry had its suspicions that they’d be new targets. The world had a mild furor when Voldemort attended. Harry would have, he asked one night in their dreams if Voldemort wanted him there. Voldemort gave a shuddering breath, then: “No,” he said at last. “You’re not safe.”

 _I’m sorry_ , Harry thought. His grief was just so… prominent, whether he recognized it as such or not. Bellatrix had been his last, best lieutenant.

The Death Eater trials slowed at this time, out of respect or so not to incite too much more social panic. Gibbon, Jugson, and Rowle had prolonged sentences in Azkaban. Macnair had been Kissed, a quiet affair that the Quibbler only picked up days afterward – which was its _own_ scandal and headache for the Ministry. Selwyn, Dolohov, Avery, and the families of the Flints and Yaxleys still awaited trial. When Harry expressed – well, quite a lot of feelings about this slow and steady massacre, Voldemort only said dully, “They knew. They knew we’d never get out alive.” Harry’s heart was wrenched from his chest.

Malfoy and Snape moved through the castle in various states of anger, shock, and grief – expressed in Slytherin indifference, naturally. Daphne Greengrass was still at school, but her younger sister Astoria had disappeared. And as many faculty and Aurors interrogated the Slytherins, they wouldn’t say where the missing students had gone.

November was also a month of post. After Riddle’s reminder, Harry fished out Dumbledore’s amicus curiae about taking magic from criminals out of his papers, and mailed a copy to Moody without comment. No answer. He wrote to Gringotts about the deed to Grimmauld Place, and got back the anticipated response that persons under twenty-five could not buy or sell ancestral property. A copy of that, too, went to Moody. And then he wrote to a jeweler in Diagon Alley about matching rings (cringing all the while, because while he didn’t _say_ they were wedding rings, it was all blindingly obvious, and the wider world didn’t entirely know he was meant to marry Voldemort yet).

The two packages came on the same day, an average Tuesday late in November. Ron and Hermione had both made it to lunch before him, and they were both rigid with anticipation at the packages at his place. (He never got his post at breakfast anymore, as the Aurors went through it all.) There was a large cream envelope, like the Ministry used, and a golden rectangular package beneath it. “Hm,” Harry frowned, pouring pumpkin juice before reaching for them. He hadn’t been expecting anything.

The envelope was not just heavy but unevenly weighted, as though there were many different things inside. As it turned out, there were. His breath stuck in his throat when he recognized two of them, a Muggle envelope and a Ministry scroll. The letters he’d left behind in Grimmauld Place weeks ago, when he’s practically dashed out so that he could fall apart in private. He didn’t know why Moody would think he’d want either Petunia’s letter or his aborted attempt at procuring the Slytherin estate, but there were perhaps no better recipients for them. But then there was a third item – an envelope that seemed to hold a Ministry portkey. He pulled it out; Ron and Hermione leaned in. “Wait,” he said, trying not to sound irritated because they’d all been very polite to one another recently, but surely they knew this was nothing to do with them.

A silver medallion, crafted with the magic of a portkey. Harry shook out the note inside.

Moody had written, with customary brevity, that the Aurors had secured the square mile around the Slytherin estate. (‘The property extends farther, but you’ll have enough to do on the structure alone.’) The portkey would take him to the front entrance, ‘inasmuch as there is an entrance,’ and a twist in the other direction would return him to Dumbledore’s office. There was more to be done legally regarding inheritance law and the ley lines, but – Moody wrote – he should see the property first, to decide whether he _actually_ wanted to restore a ruin. If so, he’d also need to bring on preservationists, ‘and they don’t work cheap.’

He was smiling by the end. Moody had warned against telling anyone that he’d be isolated in ‘the arse end of that swamp,’ that phrase once more. He dithered about whether Ron and Hermione constituted _anyone_. “I’m restoring a house,” he hedged. “I wanted to do it myself, and I didn’t think they’d let me.”

They both frowned. “Grimmauld Place is shadowy and old and probably evil,” Ron said, “but it’s, y’know, structurally sound. Will you be redecorating, then? We’ll help.”

“Not Grimmauld Place. _That_ I’m giving to the Order when I can.”

“You’re buying a house, then.” Ron was perhaps even more concerned at this. “I thought – Of course you could afford it, I thought we’d just live in shitty first flats near each other. Where is it, then?” A curious look. “And when did you have time? It took Bill and Fleur months. Charlie was lucky to get a job with lodging. Most wixen homes get passed along directly, and they don’t give out many permits to convert Muggle homes anymore, so…?” He trailed off in a question. He blanched slightly. “You haven’t bought any of the Death Eaters’ homes, have you?”

Harry shuddered at this. “No. But I can’t say. It still might not work out. I need to see the property.”

Hermione’s frown was not like Ron’s; she was thoughtful instead of confused. “Godric’s Hollow was made into a memorial years ago…” she began slowly.

“You knew that?”

Surprise. “You didn’t? I thought you would’ve heard it from Hagrid or Dumbledore. Or seen it in a book….”

(He would never, _never_ read books about himself. It had made finding DADA texts a bit difficult, assigning ones that omitted his own _mythology_.)

“Did your grandparents have a home?” Hermione pressed. “Your parents bought that one, they didn’t inherit it.”

“I really can’t say.” As with Voldemort, he at least wanted to keep this secret until it would actually come through.

She narrowed her eyes. “It’s not his father’s property, is it?” she asked. “You can’t live there. It would be grotesque. And it’s in a Muggle area, anyway.”

Harry clicked his tongue, amused. “That’s where he brought me, last year.” Somehow he’d never told them that before. “It was… normal. No blood stains on the carpet.”

“Of course there weren’t; the killing curse doesn’t bleed people to death,” Hermione hissed. “You can’t…. You’re not moving in there?”

It was a good question. Wrong, but good. Voldemort had kept his father’s house as a refuge, after a fashion. (“I’ve paid _taxes_ on it,” he’d said once, as though that bit of law-abiding was extraordinary for him.) Harry didn’t expect he’d want to live there permanently. “It’s not that,” he said. “I’ll tell you when… when it’s farther along. Alright?” He shouldn’t be annoyed with their expectations that he’d share the entirety of his life with them, since he _had_ shared his life with them up until now. Anyway. It didn’t dampen his happiness, at least. He’d build a home for Voldemort. The first anyone had ever made for him. He loved the idea.

So when Voldemort’s magic pulsed under his fingertips as he took up the second package, he grinned.

The wrapping was impossibly delicate, crafted only in magic. Inside was a diary, as they’d shared earlier in the year. He must have convinced Moody that their separation was… whatever it was. Counter-productive. Harmful.

Flipping open the inside: the first page had only a few lines of Parselscript along the top. _November 24. Happy anniversary, Harry. I apologize for sending such a selfish trifle as this._

He was smiling widely, fishing through his bag for a quill.

“Oh.” Ron was closer, and didn’t quite recoil when he saw the Parselscript.

“It’s our anniversary.”

“Since… oh my god.” Hermione got it first. The anniversary since his kidnapping, which really had turned out well in the end. Harry hummed happily.

 ** _I love you and I miss you and I love you_** , he wrote back in decisive strokes. It had been one of the most significant changes of this past year, how effusive and forthcoming he was with emotionality generally and love particularly now. Voldemort needed to hear it. He didn’t do well with subtlety – neither of them did, really. Most of all, he wanted to normalize it. He didn’t begrudge the stabbing panic that echoed in him when he told Voldemort he loved him, and most of all when Voldemort said it back, but someday they’d get beyond it. They had to.

 He had to mumble the Parseltongue to himself to get the lettering right. He was out of practice. **_I wish I had something for you._**

 _Would you accept an invitation to the Ministry’s Yule Ball?_ Voldemort wrote back immediately. It was intoxicating to watch his words form on the page, as Harry imagined every motion of his fingers.

**_Yes. If it’s okay with them._ **

_You’ll receive an invitation shortly, but I wanted the pleasure of asking first._

**_I love you_** , Harry wrote back once more, because he was glowing, too happy to think of anything more coherent. He wanted very desperately to touch him, hold him, fuck him. **_Tonight_** , he wrote, underscoring it, and the flutter of magic he felt was a perfect confirmation.

His friends had left him in his reverie for the moment. Harry found that he had his off hand pressed against his mouth to conceal his smile. It didn’t entirely work. Dropping the diary into his bag, he looked up properly. “I deserve to be happy,” he reminded them, mostly Hermione, unapologetically.

She gritted her teeth, but Ron spoke. “You do. But it’s…. We thought we’d be trading off Friday night dinners, you know. With you and Ginny.” He said it hesitantly, even though he and Ginny have never expressed anything but complete over-each-otherness. “We thought – after a while – we’d be raising our kids as best friends.”

“You could come over. He’s really not stupid, he knows how people react to him.” He didn’t add that he particularly knew how _Hermione_ reacted to him, curt and angry as she had been at the Ministry.

“It’s just a lot,” Ron said, still reluctant. “Not that we could understand your… relationship anyway. All of it,” he said with a wave of his hand. “But we’ve tried really hard, since we’ve been together, to not be….” His ears were red, and he was losing track of his words.

It didn’t matter; Harry saw what he meant, that Ron and Hermione hadn’t abandoned him for each other and he couldn’t abandon them in turn. “I’ve never felt alone,” he said. “I know. Thank you. I won’t get lost in this.”

And he and Voldemort couldn’t see each other’s circumstances while they were awake, but they could share emotions, with some concentration. And apparently Harry’s sadness and nostalgia were pronounced enough for Voldemort to recognize, because when Harry next opened the diary, there was a new line written at the bottom of the page. _You can’t step in the same river twice._ Even Harry knew that one.

 

That night, after Runes (such as it was; it was always just Malfoy casting a coil of wards for Harry to dismantle on his own), was a rare night when both the Horcruxes were in his suite with him. Neither would tell him what they’d been doing, only that the castle and Slytherins were safer than they’d been. Since Harry hadn’t dropped dead of the vow, he could only assume this was true. Anyway, with the locket beside him on the sofa and the diadem perched at the end of his bed, he cleared his throat. “D’you want to go to Slytherin’s estate this weekend?” he offered. “I want to restore it. I don’t know what I’ll find.”

“Ruins,” the diadem said darkly. “It hasn’t been touched in a century.”

“Do you know why?”

“Generations of distrust of government, I’d imagine.”

“Yeah, that was my guess, too.” He caught the books that the diadem levitated-slash-threw in his direction. They were the same books he’d been using himself, to work on the castle’s wards. _Stone by Stone: An Introduction to Edificial Charms. Boundaries, Barriers, Blunders. Charms of Dominion_. None of it looked anything like magic he’d done before, save the wards.

“He’ll be quite powerful, living on ancestral land,” the locket said with a frown. “And quite protected. He doesn’t expect it’s a trap of some sort? Ministry surveillance, or antagonistic magic woven into the ley lines?”

“He doesn’t know. Don’t ruin it.”

The locket blinked at him; the diadem snorted. “That is quite _romantic_.” He pronounced the word as though it were toxic. “And unnecessarily difficult.”

“I… yeah,” he sighed. “But it’d be horrid to tell him, and then it didn’t work out after all.”

The diadem looked unconvinced. Nevertheless, he said, “We’ll join you.” Harry gave him a brilliant smile.

He pulled the Horcruxes from the fire before bed, because even being fucked by Voldemort in his sleep seemed too intimate to share.

 _Leave your Legilimency open,_ Voldemort wrote. _I want control of your body. It shouldn’t hurt._

Possession, not even purposeful but just erotic. He strangely liked the idea.

Voldemort would intercept his mind right between wakefulness and sleep. It was tricky – the vow he still held required he couldn’t consciously skip dreamless sleep, or else he’d be inflicted with nightmares. _I would wake you if you fell too far into sleep_ , Voldemort wrote, as Harry doused the lights. His heart was fluttering. He slid into bed, letting his breathing go even and shallow.

It was easier than perhaps it should have been. He was in Voldemort’s mind again – he also lay in the dark, not that there was anything to see but the walls of Azkaban. “There you are,” Voldemort murmurs. “Happy anniversary.”

Harry thinks how funny and massively fucked up this is. He passes along the memory of his friends’ horror at lunch when they heard the same.

Voldemort is testing the extent to which he can elicit sensation from Harry’s body – and then the extent to which he can move it. He brings their fingers to their mouth, sucking until they’re wet, and drags them down their chest, teasing the barbells at his nipples. They feel Harry’s body shudder.

Voldemort seizes control of his body directly then. “Lie back,” he says. “It will hurt if you resist. I’ll pull out if you do.” Harry presses a flutter of magic and affirmation between them.

His hands explore his body as if for the first time: back up the jut of his collarbone, the column of his neck. His lips are still wet from sucking his fingers. He runs his hands through his hair, until it gives Harry goosebumps. It hurts his soul to be touched like this, both so near and so far, and he can feel himself getting upset at the thought. _I’d hold you down and suck you off until you were a quivering mess_ , he thinks, and Voldemort gets the sentiment if not the precise words. He loves it.

“Could you conjure lube?” he murmurs into the dark, dabbing at the magic in Harry’s reach. “Could I?” They’d done magic together before, casting _Vulnera Sanentur_ in Harry’s body to save Voldemort from Sectumsempra, but they’d been physically together then. Harry’s wand is on the bedside table – actually, they both are, his holly wand and the new cypress wand that the Horcruxes use now – but Voldemort is even more interested in the way magic swirls around Harry like a storm. He tests it, its strength and elasticity and depth. He conjures slick lube.

Harry had gone to bed in shorts, and Voldemort takes enough control of his body to kick them down his legs. “Shall I make you fingerfuck yourself?” he offers. His hand is smearing lube down Harry’s cock – of course, he’s already getting hard, and then his hips tilt up so he might press a finger to his entrance. Voldemort goes no further, now.

“What shall it be tonight?” Voldemort muses. Harry’s liminal state offers up a greater palette of fantasy than they’d even had before.

_I wish you’d fuck me in your lap. That you’d let me lower myself onto your cock, and fuck myself if I wanted – and I need to, I’m desperate to – but you’re busy with something important._

With this new possession, he can pick Harry’s thoughts out with greater clarity than ever. “Very good, Harry,” he murmurs. He can focus well enough on magic as he also reaches to stroke himself. “What important business are you disrupting?”

 _I don’t know_. He’s squirming in his sleep, trying to fuck his fingers, but Voldemort pulls them out of his reach. It is delightfully infuriating.

Harry considers and then quickly discards a Death Eater meeting. He doesn’t quite know what one would look like, aside from the night of Voldemort’s rebirth, and anyway it is strangely… painful? Yes, _painful_ to consider. He moves on. Harry was captivated by his general competence at the Ministry, September’s meeting about education. And Harry loves the fantasy of Voldemort as a professor, a mentor, a disciplinarian.

_I want to fuck you as the Minister._

He loses the pace of his wank at this. It’s… charming really. “Surprisingly, the Minister hasn’t got an appointed cabin boy,” he says, though already considering the fantasy.

_I don’t care._

He twists the magic between them so Harry may stroke himself too. He wants to be penetrated, if only by his fingers, but for now his arse will twitch and clench with his need. It feels as though they stroke each other off, when they dip deeper into the sensation. It is wonderful.

“It would be… shameless to appoint you to my own office,” Voldemort says, on the cusp of fantasy. “Nobody would ever take you seriously.”

 _Under you_? Harry offers sweetly. He is clever, if predictable.

“Well, not this time, anyway.” His cock is stiff against his stomach. “Perhaps, on a slow day, a day you’re not meant to be in anyway, I usher you into my office before anyone else arrives. I don’t put you on my lap though, not at first. I will cast a cushioning charm for you as you kneel beneath my desk.”

 _Oh, god_. Harry goes hot at this. Nevermind how cliché it is, he adores it.

“I think much better when I’m being sucked off,” Voldemort murmurs. He conjures the feelings of pressing Harry to his knees before him, letting Harry’s fingers undo the bottom buttons of his robes. The trousers, then pants, because Harry likes having an excess of fabric in the way, so it might get wet or stained, perfect witness to his shame. “You must be quiet while you blow me, and I’ll be discreet when I come.”

Harry loves the idea – a hitch of breath or a flutter of his eyelids, little more, even as hot ribbons of come would course down his throat.

“We’ll both take Amortentia before arriving. You also get a buttplug coated in it,” he says with a predatory smile. Harry feels his teeth click together. “You burn and quiver, but I won’t touch you yet. Perhaps later.”

He uses enough magic to lift Harry’s free hand to his mouth, letting his thumb fall between his lips. It isn’t the same, physically or emotionally, as sucking cock, and yet the sweetness of it lies adjacent to sex in Harry’s mind. He controls his own body enough to suck voraciously, to swirl his tongue as a tease. His mouth gets very wet.

Harry can picture his office as Minister as easily as he could see his office at Hogwarts. Harry thinks of him as having a very delicate aesthetic, surprisingly – gauzy curtains, everything in glass or crystal, with delicate gold filigree. _Or would you prefer silver_ , Harry thinks, and then his imagination transforms it to silver. The walls once more are hidden by bookshelves, overflowing with arcana. Harry thinks wryly that he might have given Voldemort a glass desk before, a modern sort, but obviously that wouldn’t work for daytime blowjobs. His desk, then, is a delicate and shiny light wood, with intricate carvings around the edges.

Harry thinks cheekily that he’ll carve his own initials there too, along the underside, so everyone who found it would know he’d been there.

But for now he wants to fill his mouth with Voldemort’s cock. They typically go slow – Harry’s gag reflex hasn’t entirely gone yet, and anyway it gives him a chance to complain that Voldemort needn’t have crafted this body with _such_ a massive cock. (“Flattery, flattery,” Voldemort always chides.) But this time they imagine the scene unfolding with urgency, Harry gulping in inches at a time. Voldemort will fist his hair while he can, while they’re alone together. His legs are splayed, knees pressed to either side of Harry. The dark confinement might be upsetting in real life, but in his fantasy… Harry lets his eyes flutter closed, lets every sense fill with only Voldemort’s body.

“And when someone walks in?” Voldemort prompts. Harry wonders who; Voldemort clucks. “You’re hardly in a position to tell.”

So Harry will slow, leaving his mouth deep on Voldemort’s cock but sucking more than thrusting now, as though he’s got an ice lolly –

“In Circe’s name,” Voldemort mutters, amused and disgusted at the comparison, and Harry grins around his thumb.

He’s sucking without bobbing, so there might be fewer wet, slurping sounds. But he can taste bitter pre-come by now. Voldemort would be unfazed as he answered for whatever legislation he’d be working on, even as he restrained himself from fucking Harry’s mouth. They’d both have to last, for awhile longer. And Harry could tease, then – flicking his tongue along the underside as he liked, a hand reaching beneath him to fondle his tightening balls. _Wait_ , he thinks exactly, and Voldemort drops his hand from his cock in real life because otherwise he wouldn’t be able to.

Harry loves the idea of bringing him to the edge without getting him off, at least in this fantasy. To imagine Voldemort choking back every reaction, his face flushed and eyes bright. He had decided Voldemort must _like_ testing his own composure, anyway, as often as he’s lectured Harry while fucking him before. It is a fair point.

Harry imagines the Minister’s day to be very busy. Voldemort is a perfectionist, particularly. But he can’t stand or move from his desk. He can’t rise to shake anyone’s hand or see them to the door.

 _You should_ , Harry thinks. _What the hell would they do, say anything_? In return, Voldemort fantasizes about pressing his hips upward, hitting the back of Harry’s throat.

 _You deserve better_ , Harry goads him. _The most powerful man in Britain_. They are both so stiff, already tight with lust.

So Voldemort scoops Harry into his lap. In the fantasy, he’s wet enough from being sucked that Harry slips onto his length. In real life, he pulls Harry’s hand off his cock, to press two slick fingers up his arse. Harry _whines_ , his cock aching to be touched. They’d drive each other mad. Voldemort probes his arse, the mirrored sensation of being penetrator and penetrated delightful. Harry quivers at his own touch.

They both love the idea of public sex, and a secret blowjob has turned out to be a bit tame. “Are you dressed?” Voldemort murmurs. Harry doesn’t know. “Good. You’re not now. You’ll wear just your pants as I walk you down the Ministry’s corridors. Would you like a lead and a collar?”

Harry considers. _Yes_. It would be a kindness.

So Voldemort also pulls his hand from his cock, even as it leaks pre-come on his stomach. In their fantasy he’s shoving himself into his pants, not doing his trouser fly up because he’ll be pulling his cock out again soon enough. Harry’s got a collar in mind before Voldemort can ask – a rather brutal and utilitarian choke chain, so he’s got to skip to keep in bounds. Voldemort loves the idea. He offers just enough chain to separate them.

Stepping into a public space like this – naked and unambiguously owned – gives Harry the same sort of mortification as visceral disgust does. They’re off to a meeting, a very large one with very important people. Harry’s got the education meeting in mind, watching Voldemort control a group like that – so fine, he’ll captain a meeting with Harry on his cock.

“Everyone is looking at you,” Voldemort says. “They’re not even _attempting_ not to stare. You invite it, don’t you?”

Harry flushes at this. He thinks offhandedly that he still wears nipple rings, that he’s never taken them out. They make him more… aware, if not self-conscious, about getting undressed than anything does.

“They should match your collar, then.” They’re the last to enter the conference room, so that all eyes snap to Harry at once. He could die of shame.

Voldemort snorts. “I’m quite sure you’re still hard.”

Harry thinks. He is. There is a wet drop of pre-come where his erection is pressed. The entire room wonders why this flushed, ragged boy, clearly halfway through a fuck, has been brought before them.

Voldemort drops into a seat, regal in his indifference. “Finish what you’ve started,” he says. “If you beg hard enough, I might pass you off to the others afterward.”

Harry acutely imagines being bent over the conference table, fingered and fucked anonymously. His breath catches in his throat.

In real life, Voldemort exchanges another handful of magic for another handful of lube. Harry has shifted in his sleep, to better reach inside himself. It seems criminally unfair that he’s not actually being fucked by Voldemort right now, but then Voldemort seizes his hand and pushes three fingers in to start, pressing and curling until he’s ghosting past his prostate, at least, and then he can’t think of much of anything.

Voldemort takes over, then: “I grab your hips, pulling you into my lap. Faced away, so you can look at everyone else. How embarrassed they are for you, and how intrigued. I tell you to apologize to the room, for being so shameless and obscene.”

Harry thinks, burning red, _I’m sorry. But I need you inside me right now_.

“You were cursed. A terrible affliction, only staved off in brief spells with orgasm. Really, it’s unprofessional that you should beg to be fucked _now_ , but I’ll do what I can.”

They haven’t fucked like this in real life, between a table and a chair, but Harry imagines that it creates some wonderful leverage. He imagines himself bent double, hands grabbing at the table and elbows planted. Voldemort would only hold him enough for stability, letting Harry exert himself. But Harry would feel how close he was to coming – the strength of his grip, or the way his breath would hit the back of Harry’s neck. Harry is fingerfucking himself wildly now, scissoring his fingers to stretch himself, an amazing sort of ache deep inside him.

Voldemort would run the meeting as he did in September: somewhere between competent and cutting. This backdrop doesn’t matter a bit. “Do you look at them?” Voldemort asks, as Harry pounds against his lap. “Do you look them in the eyes?”

Harry considers. The prospect is terrible and thrilling. _Yes_ , he decides. He takes a moment – the Aurors are there, mostly. Scrimgeour. Bits of the groups from Hogwarts – maybe he doesn’t want to fuck them, but they matter very much to him and it is a piquant feeling to humiliate himself before them. It is filthy and _reckless_ , really.

He loves the idea that anyone could be so powerful and confident as to fuck in a room full of people, and they’d just look on. They would all be so professional, well-dressed and stony-faced. _Potter can’t help himself, he is insatiable when he’s like this_. Harry half-thinks of werewolves in mating season and most of what he believes is wrong but it doesn’t matter. “You were quite taken with marking last time,” Voldemort says, amused, even if his voice is breathless. “Now heats? You can fuck Lupin if you’d like.”

Harry’s unconscious seizes this – it’d be Lupin and Snape _both_ , bitter and sweet as they fucked him – _No, no, no_. He stops himself abruptly. Voldemort wants to laugh. He doesn’t. Harry thinks rather defensively that Snape will never deserve him, anyway.

“Mating season, then,” Voldemort returns. “You’re quite _wet_ for me. It was practically spilling out of you when you came to beg me this morning. Maybe some of the people in this room are the sympathetic sort. Maybe some of them know how all-consuming a heat is. Even if they’ve never seen one so bad as this, whimpering and moaning as you are.” In their fantasy he slips a hand over Harry’s mouth to quiet him; in real life Harry holds his breath until they’re both lighthearted. The burn in his chest brings him so close.

“Do not come across the table,” Voldemort mutters, because Harry’s so close, too. “It would be unprofessional.”

_Oh my god._

Harry cycles through options of where to come, the best of them being in stripes down Voldemort’s robes. Voldemort at last narrates: “I feel you clenching harder around me, shivers reaching deep within you. Your thighs shake as they always do. I say, ‘Excuse me’ to the rest of the room, shaking out a handkerchief – “

And then they both come at this, explosively. Voldemort wishes he were flooding Harry up to his stomach, instead of shooting a rope up his own narrow chest. Harry’s fingers plunge inside himself, scraping his prostate, wringing orgasm from him. Their lips buck and pump and roll in the aftershocks. They go still.

“Don’t fall asleep,” Voldemort says lowly, an absurd statement really but Harry knows what he means. Harry is thinking now of a different day at the Ministry, when he’d been devastated by panic attacks and had fallen asleep propped on Voldemort’s shoulder. Well, why not.

“I can expand the chair into a bench, certainly. What shall we do with all the wetness leaking out of you, though? You’d let it all spill back into my lap?”

Harry offers a mental shrug. _They’ve just watched you fuck_.

“Mm. Should I let them touch you now?”

 _No_. Harry can get very affectionate-slash-possessive after orgasm. Already he’s fighting off devastation that they’re not really together right now; he won’t waste their time fantasizing about other people.

 _Let your come run out of me_ , Harry thinks decisively. _I’d watch it roll down my legs._

Voldemort groans in appreciation of this. “That’s very shameless, Harry.”

 _Lick it_. When Voldemort hesitates, just out of some shock, he thinks more fiercely, _I’ve probably swallowed gallons by now. It’s your own._

So Voldemort fantasizes, strangely erotic, about smearing his own hand through the creamy trails down Harry’s thighs, popping each of his fingers in his mouth in turn. “There,” he hisses, and somehow his belly coils in arousal again.

Harry slips beside him, quiet and satiated for the moment. In real life, Voldemort is still dabbing his fingers of him, so his arousal never really ebbs. His own hand is still around the base of his cock.

 _I swear to you, we’ll live together so I can fuck you whenever I want_. The feelings that churn inside Harry are much more complex than his post-sex thoughts usually are.

Voldemort’s mouth curves. “Yes,” he agrees.

_I’d run away with you, if I had to._

He fully believes it. Still – “I’m not running.”

There’s… affection in this. Admiration. He’s very bewildered by all the things Harry feels at this. And then it all falls away and Harry is sad. He doesn’t want to get off again, he just wants to spend time together. Lighting a wall sconce and casting a cleaning spell, Voldemort sits up.

 _What if I want to have friends over_? Harry asks, irrelevantly, but Voldemort knows his head anyway.

Voldemort clicks his tongue. “As I assume by _live together_ , you did not mean _imprison_ ….”

Harry pushes a memory forward: lunch, earlier that day, planning for the future with Weasley and Granger. “Have them over. Have them over every night. I don’t make ultimata.”

 _But I don’t want you to be separate from the rest of my life_ , Harry thinks. _They want that, but_ \-- A flurry of feelings without words.  _Join us for dinner_.

This is absurd, a triviality in the infinitely distant future. “I will,” he says, because it’s equally insignificant either way.

Harry feels the lack of conviction behind it. _No_ , he thinks. _They’ll be shitty. You can’t…._

“Be shitty in return,” he finishes the thought. “No. Harry. I’ll turn the world upside-down for you. You do know that.”

Harry goes pleasantly warm at this. He has one more thing, one he begins to formulate and then withdraws, something from that same memory….

Voldemort prods, very gently. Oh. Children. Harry wants children someday. He’d mostly discarded his more normative aspirations without a backwards glance – his relationship to Ginevra, marrying into the Weasley horde, becoming an Auror – but marriage and children have both stuck.

“I’ll give you a family, if you’d like,” Voldemort says easily. He does mean it. “I’ll get you pregnant, if you’d like. I’d almost certainly be incapable of carrying them myself. There are charms to prepare for pregnancy – for everyone – to be performed by a healer.”

Harry’s reaction indicates that he sort-of knew that wizards could get pregnant, but the idea isn’t yet normal to him. He supposes it takes time to adapt to the idea. Harry considers himself pregnant. Then: _There must be wixen adoption._

It would be… saccharine of them to adopt. It’d open them up to some very predictable journalism, about how they each wish to redeem their childhoods. ( _Tom Riddle_ is not yet widely known but it could only be a matter of time.)

Then, delightfully, Harry adds, _I want to adopt Parselmouths. If there are entire communities that speak it…._

“Yes.” Voldemort likes the idea too, surprisingly. “The highest proportion is in the Indian subcontinent. We’ll go there. And… you should travel first, anyway. Or do _anything_. We live for so long, it is obscene for anyone to settle before they’re at least forty.”

Somehow, Harry is happier with this conversation than he was with the facsimile of sex. _Come with me._

“Write out everywhere you want to go. I’ll take you.”

Harry feels about bursting with love. And Voldemort… well, he’s always had a desperate desire to live, but it seems rather novel that this feeling is no longer fueled simply by a fear of death. “We’ll make it that long,” he murmurs, his head falling back against the wall. He’d turn the world upside down for Harry, but then he’d put it right way up again for him, too.

 

 _Friday, November 27._ On Friday, the deathly silence over dinner indicated something awful had happened. Harry’s special evening edition of the Prophet was already in Ron’s hands. “What?” Harry murmured as he sat down. All the Slytherins were missing from the head table.

Ron passed him the paper. The Yaxley family, a Death Eater couple, had just had a rapid trial. “It’s only started a few days ago,” he said furiously. “What are they _doing_?”

Ron shrugged. “They won’t be Kissed,” he said.

No, they wouldn’t be. Ten years in Azkaban each. He felt sick. He looked toward the quorum of Slytherins at the far end of the great hall, already knowing he wouldn’t find their daughter Beatrice there. The entire quarter of the hall looked rather sparse. The Horcruxes weren’t manifest today, but he had a feeling they should be. Whatever they’d done to _protect_ the Slytherins wasn’t working, if they were still disappearing.

So after a quick and dire dinner, Harry decided to do it himself. Whatever _it_ was. He shook out his invisibility cloak, and went alone.

He could have gotten in so much more trouble over the years if he’d known Salazar Slytherin had made Parseltongue into the castle’s universal password. The other founders couldn’t have known. Granted, he could probably brute-force his way into the Slytherin common room – the password was always _pureblood_ or _genocide_ or _inbreeding_ , some shite like that. “ _Open_ ,” he hissed instead, pressing himself against the wall to listen for reactions in the common room. It seemed to be empty. He entered.

He expected – well, near chaos inside. Instead, nothing. The common room was neat, nothing left lying around like Gryffindor’s, which was perpetually full of textbooks and forgotten scarves and spare Quidditch gear. He slipped up the half-flight of stairs, to the bedrooms. He didn’t hear voices, but he _did_ feel magic around one of the doors. A silencing charm, done with wards. It was too easy now to pull them apart.

He realized partway through that these runes were also written in Malfoy’s hand.

He should have stopped. The last time he’d snuck into the Slytherin dorms, he just ended up filled with guilt and pity. But – he wanted to help. They wouldn’t let him directly. He peeled off the rest of the wards, unusually rushed and rigid for Malfoy’s work, and pressed his ear to the door.

“ – don’t be in touch at all actually. Next year, we’ll send for you. You’re leaving your wand?” Malfoy’s voice, low and urgent.

“No.” Another boy’s voice, very cold. “None of the others work for me, I won’t fight with a stolen wand – “

A murmured objection from Malfoy. A defensive tone from the boy. The shuffle of a trunk inside, and the creak of a bed. Footsteps.

Harry scrambled out of the way. But of course – he was an idiot – of course Malfoy would see his wards had been tampered with. With a snarl, he cast a strange and twisting spell, one that seemed to seek Harry out even though he wasn’t in its path. Stunned quite painfully, he crumpled to the ground.

He had enough consciousness to feel the cloak pulled off him, but not enough to fight back or even look up. “Oh. Potter. Good.”

He must already be dreaming. Maybe he’d sustained brain damage. He had felt his head smack the flagstones rather hard. And then he was floating, and that might be real or might be a concussion setting in.

“Should we take it?” The voice sounded very far away.

“Is he stupid enough to not put a tracking charm on something so valuable?” Malfoy must have seen Harry struggling toward consciousness still. “Stupefy,” he hissed, and the last bit of fight was taken from him.

 

He woke up on his bed with hideous vertigo, disoriented as fuck. He remembered… nothing, really. Dinner, something to do with a Death Eater. The grim, sick feeling that still lingered. Had he come back here to grieve? The feeling in his throat wasn’t much different from a kaval-induced hangover. Looking to his potions supply at the far side of the room made him want to vomit. He couldn’t fall back asleep. His head hurt – had he been in a _fight_? – and he thought faintly that people with concussions shouldn’t be allowed to sleep. He didn’t know why. He wondered if he could drag himself over to Ron and Hermione’s.

Oh, no – casting Tempus before his eyes, he found that it was midnight, and he was locked inside for the night. “Ugh,” he groaned to the room at large. Going through his pockets to put together what might have happened, he found nothing unusual. His invisibility cloak shimmered over the back of the sofa, but the Horcruxes took it out often enough, they might have left it there….

The Horcruxes. They might tell him. They _could_ , it was merely a matter of whether they _would_. Well. At least his magic was unimpeded, and his wand was in reach. He cast the manifestation spell in the hearth and levitated the Horcruxes in.

Wait – what. The diadem emerged, somehow elegant despite crawling out a fireplace. The locket didn’t follow. Harry assumed he’d missed, casting from across the room. “Accio locket.”

The diadem glanced behind him. “No,” he said, too indifferent.

“ _No_?” Alarmed, Harry sat up – and then with a crash and groan, fell back into bed. He really might have a concussion.

“No, the locket isn’t here. Could you….” He waved a hand at Harry’s prone form. “Could you attempt something like Occlumency? This is an obnoxious feeling to share.”

“What _happened_?”

Eyebrows up. “What _did_ happen?” he returned.

Glaring, Harry summoned the nearest analgesic. “You should be able to tell.”

Riddle hummed, approaching him at last. “Someone’s been in your memories, clearly,” he said. “Likely Obliviate.”

“Fuck,” Harry muttered. “And they only took the locket?” In hindsight it might have been stupid to keep the two artifacts together. “If someone wanted to destroy Horcruxes…. The Humnerë _can’t_ have gotten in the castle,” he said, going cold. “You said the wards were better than the Ministry’s. Anyway, why would they want him and not you? And not me,” he added in a choked tone, feeling hideously violated. Perhaps he wasn’t entirely numb to the possibility of being killed, after all.

The diadem was less moved. “Perhaps a sentimental Slytherin only wanted a token of history.”

“This isn’t funny,” he said, though Riddle hadn’t properly meant it to be. He still felt sick, and disoriented, but he’d pulled himself sitting. “Could you tell where he – it, whatever – is?”

“As well as you could.”

Maybe. With a hideous noise of frustration, he realized he couldn’t even look until morning.

“It’s not destroyed,” Riddle offered. “Because Voldemort isn’t dying. Again.”

He’d felt Nagini, then. Harry wondered if he would bleed out too this time, since he and Voldemort were closer somatically now than they’d ever been. He felt… alright, physically, apart from his head. He wondered if he could slip into the Horcruxes’ consciousness as he slipped into Voldemort’s.

Chewing his thumbnail: “Did he say…?” I don’t even understand what you’ve been doing, either of you. You can’t _leave_ , though.” He would not become hysterical. “If he was working on a way out – Fuck,” he sighed. “What _have_ you been doing?”

“Our days and interests are separate.”

“What have _you_ been doing?” Harry stressed.

Riddle took a seat at the edge of his bed, apparently deciding if Harry deserved either explanation or magic. “Studying the castle’s wards,” he said. “And looking for the curse on the Defense post.”

“Oh.” Harry blinked at him. He hadn’t realized that’d been anything but an idle request, of no importance or interest to the Horcruxes. “Um, thank you. Really.”

Riddle ignored this. “The locket was crafting protection for the Slytherins – maybe in wards, maybe in keystones. Something ritual and permanent. I didn’t care enough to ask.”

It made him feel a little better. He nearly smiled. Voldemort was so fiercely independent and misanthropic that even iterations of his past selves didn’t like to collaborate. “I didn’t either,” he said. “I wish I had.”

“You’ll feel any danger or damage done to it. Otherwise,” he rolled a wrist in elegant indifference. “Its continued existence is all you promised Voldemort, isn’t it?”

“Who wants it as a bloody _souvenir_?” Harry muttered. And, because he couldn’t let it go, “Was it Snape? Nagini died of _his_ curse, one that he created. He’s supposed to keep his distance, but….”

“He’d be a fool not to,” Riddle said darkly. “He’s got out unscathed, it seems. He should be grateful. And not unnecessarily involve himself again.”

“One of the Death Eaters’ kids? They’re all a bit, uh, resentful.” They’d kill Voldemort to get their families back, he was certain, but taking only one of the three available Horcruxes didn’t quite accomplish that.

“Harry. Leave it.”

Harry’s wordless growl of frustration was all he could muster.

Riddle summoned dreamless sleep for him. “Would you like me to stay?”

“I don’t care.” He felt really incapable of sleep right now. The locket spent nights out not infrequently, but not without leaving the artifact here. The wards faded at six in the morning, maybe he could look before anyone was out of bed….

Riddle clicked, unamused by his anxiety. He began undoing Harry’s robes. “You need sleep,” he said. “To hunt down the locket, or to visit Slytherin’s estate. As we had planned.”

“Right,” he sighed. He’d written Moody, to thank him profusely and inform him he was going to walk through the Slytherin estate that Saturday morning, in case there should be any security concerns. Moody remained skeptical that either Harry or Voldemort would want the property in the end, but had written back that it was an unplottable and unknown bubble, hardly on this plane of existence anymore for how thoroughly it was concealed. And he already felt like Riddle was uncharacteristically humoring him by going. He shrugged off his robes the rest of the way. “If anything’s wrong…” he said hesitantly. “Or if you feel anything – you’d feel him in danger first.”

“Yes,” Riddle said crisply. Harry didn’t believe him for a moment.

 

 _Saturday, November 28._ He did slip out of his suite at six on Saturday to wander the castle. The great hall was nearly empty, set with gleaming platters for breakfast. Remus and Snape sat at the high table, each reading a book, a teapot between them. Snape didn’t wear the locket, nor did he look more guilty than usual. Harry moved before they noticed him.

He tried the library. He paced past the entrance to the Slytherin common room a few times, but felt no different. He even tried the girl’s toilet that concealed the Chamber, but the sink slid open to reveal the same caved-in disaster he’d seen last time, and anyway, how would the Horcrux get in without already being manifest? It was maddening. He returned, defeated, to his suite.

Riddle was awake – or, well, performing awakeness; he’d never answer whether Horcruxes _slept_ as Harry understood it. He was sprawled across the bed, with the new diary that Harry and Voldemort shared open beside him. “Uh….” Harry stuttered to a stop.

“You know, I can’t think of anything to write to him,” Riddle said, sitting up casually. “I thought I’d be able to.”

“You… _can_ write to him, I guess.” Their only conversations so far had been brief and pragmatic. They faded off the page in time, anyway. “Can you use a different color ink or something?”

He flashed his sharp teeth. “There’s no need.” With a survey of Harry: “You haven’t got it.”

“No.” He gave him something of a desperate look. “I don’t think you like each other enough that you’d protect him, but if you are….”

This got a dry laugh. “I certainly am not.”

“Right.” He felt sick. He went to get ready.

 

The diadem would be carried, a new fire lit on site. Before removing his own artifact from the hearth, Riddle had weighted Harry down with books. Somehow, he seemed to have a better sense of what they would find at the estate than Harry did.

They’d have to depart from Dumbledore’s office, and Harry was so grateful that his portrait was empty. He twisted the portkey in his grasp.

The scene was bright but very cold, reminding Harry to renew his warming charms on his cloaks. He blinked into the improbable sunlight, taking a very long moment for the scene to fade into existence around him. He found that he was nervous.

He was standing on uneven stone, knocked askew by plants growing in the cracks. Before him… it had been a building once. Two of the four walls still stood, approximately. Had it been _bombed_? The preservationists hadn’t known anyone to have lived here for decades, but it could have been a shelter. In the Muggle war, children had been evacuated from the city into the countryside, hadn’t they? Or maybe it had been damaged with magic. Tom would know more forensics than he would. If it mattered.

For now – he was looking at a shell of a home, buried under grass and dirt and rubble. Even though it was built on the wet fenlands, the home’s footprint was still narrow, building _up_ instead of _out_. Magic must have kept it from sinking; and anyway it would be imposing, the highest structure around when it had been whole.  

He stepped inside the structure, and froze when he heard movement. Rats? Something quick and low to the ground. He’d keep his wand out. He moved toward a corner, where the Horcrux’s fire would be shielded from the elements. He lit the verdant fire.

“ _A human_.” A voice, speaking about him but not to him.

“ _Alone_?”

“ _Yes_.”

His Parseltongue was very good these days; sometimes it came quicker than English. “ _Hello_?” He’d been about to slip the diadem off his hand. When he got no answer – though he felt incredibly scrutinized, under their invisible gaze – he dropped the diadem into the flames. They flared, as they never had before.

Riddle was moving as soon as he’d materialized, striding past Harry to look at the ruins. “My wand,” he said, holding out a hand nearly without looking back. Harry handed him the cypress wand; Riddle began scrubbing away the dirt and plants, to reveal more of the floor.

“Be careful,” Harry said, alarmed at the swirling magic that moved through the structure. “There are snakes here.”

Riddle shot him an incredulous look. “Well, _yes_.”

“I mean, don’t hurt them. They’re probably in the cracks.” Or wherever snakes lived. They didn’t burrow, did they? He was a sham of a Parselmouth.

But Riddle wasn’t just casting to be useful. “Can you feel it?” he asked, letting the magic swirl behind them, disintegrating a fallen branch that had cracked over the exterior wall. “It’s not _your_ ancestral magic, but neither is Parseltongue your language. Voldemort has been generous with you already.”

Harry didn’t bother to point out that the soul or the Parseltongue he carrie hadn’t exactly been voluntary. He cast his own magic, experimentally. “No?” he said, squinting at the sparks that hung in the air before him. “Maybe?”

Riddle didn’t actually care. He was… not happy, Harry didn’t really know what he’d be like if he were happy, but he was invigorated. He was attractive this way, moving with confidence, his high cheekbones accentuated by a flush in the cold. “If you clear away the debris,” he said, “I’ll find the wards.”

He was confident they’d be historical, then. Maybe original. “Yeah, sure. Thanks.”

Riddle left, to circle the perimeter. Harry took to scrubbing each space – could they properly be called _rooms_ yet? – with care. In each, he took a moment to stand in the center of the floor, considering what it had once been. There were large rooms at the front of the house, presumably for entertaining. He couldn’t tell the kitchen from the others – had there _been_ indoor kitchens in medieval houses? He really didn’t know – because every room had at least part of a structure that had once been a hearth. And none of them was big enough for the Floo network either, although that was almost certainly a later invention.

The clouds of dirt were making his face itch. He sneezed.

As he jerked, he saw a motion from the corner of his eye. “ _Hello_?” he tried again, in careful Parseltongue. “ _I’m probably disturbing your home_ ,” he said, at once feeling guilty. “ _I want to live here, but I don’t mean to displace you…._ ”

Nothing. He approached the wall where he’d seen something. Kneeling, he peered into a deep crack.

Beady eyes, and a moment later, two brilliant fangs, as the snake opened its pink mouth in a warning hiss. Startled, Harry fell back on his arse, embarrassment flaring within him.

When he looked up, the snake’s fangs were still visible in the shadows, as it was still poised to attack. Well, Harry was nothing if not practiced at emotionally disarming hostile creatures. “My name is Harry,” he said to the snake, pulling his legs in so he was sitting properly. “I want to restore this home, but I don’t want to hurt you. Or displace you.”

A long tongue darted out, tasting the chilly air. “You’re not the heir,” it hissed in an accusatory way. “We protect this land for Slytherin’s heir.”

“Oh. I’m not, but I’ll live here with the one who is. I’m his… soulmate.” He said the word doubtfully, not expecting Parseltongue to have words to properly express it. But there was a word; he was desperately curious how the snakes would translate it back to him. Nevermind.

“The one who came with you?”

“Well – sort of. Yes.”

The snake’s tongue darted out, testing the veracity of his statement. “We are an unbroken line from the serpents who protected Slytherin,” it said. “Nobody but his family has ever lived here.”

“I am his family,” Harry said, even if that hadn’t been a threat. “Do you know what happened to the building?”

The snake had poked its heads from the stones by now. It was a viper, with a flared head, and in the morning light its scales went iridescent purple to brown to green. It was oddly beautiful. “It wasn’t safe for known Parselmouths,” it said. It sounded detached, nearly indifferent. “Once your state forbade them, they had to withdraw.”

Oh. They hadn’t reached that moment in Harry’s history book yet. It had been a few hundred years ago, he knew that, at least…. Nor did he know when being it’d been made legal again. “It’s okay now,” he said to the snake cautiously. “Being a Parselmouth, that is. The magic is still illegal.”

“I don’t care,” the snake said. But it had dropped the defensive stance, its fangs disappearing once more. “We’ve done well without humans here. And you’ll scare away the rats.”

Harry didn’t bother point out that _they’d_ scare away the rats first. “The heir will have more to tell you about Slytherin’s line.” He thought of calling Riddle over, to be a diplomat with the snakes, but he was positive Tom would accuse him of wasting his time. “Can we clear away the brush, then? I haven’t seen the house before, and….”

“I am not in command,” the snake said waspishly.

He blinked. Well, shit. “Who is?”

He probably imagined the snake’s incredulous look. “We are not like the humans. We are alone.”

The snakes were Slytherins. He couldn’t escape them. He should know how to deal with them by now. “Thanks,” he said, even though the snake had already receded into the wall. He’d hear in stronger terms if they really objected. He returned to clearing debris.

There was – or _had been_ – another floor to the home, even if little of that floor jutted from the remaining walls. There was a staircase that had once been sweeping, opening into one of the larger spaces on the ground floor. He wondered if Slytherin or his descendants had held _galas_.

He wondered if he and Voldemort would hold galas.

Most of the glass had long since shattered, but some of the shards remained on the floor, multi-colored, thick and mottled. Stained glass, what must have been great panes of it.

The floor above wasn’t nearly complete enough to be safe, otherwise he would’ve climbed or levitated up. He should bring his broom sometime, for an aerial view.

For now… he had no idea how to make a ruin back into a home. He’d need preservationists on site to tell him what could and couldn’t be done to it. He’d bring them in later.

Still, he loved the space. He loved imagining the life they could have here – probably that could be had simpler elsewhere, but – Riddle had looked so near to happy, when ancestral magic had flared inside him. Actually, he went to find him now.

He was sitting on a low stone that might have served as a bench once, his hands working furiously on invisible strands around the building’s foundation. “Don’t – “ he said through his teeth when Harry sat beside him. This apparently meant _Don’t be a distraction_ , not _Don’t sit there_ , because Harry was allowed to stay in silence.

He studied the scenery, then. What _was_ a square mile, was it farther than the distance he could see to the forest? His eyes searched the sky for a shimmering gaze like hung over Cornwall, but he couldn’t see one.

At last, a horrible grinding noise in the back of Riddle’s throat. Harry looked over, startled. “If magic _rusted_ , this would be welded shut with rust.”

“Oh,” he frowned. “Can I help…?”

“I very much doubt it.”

He was right – Riddle had knowledge and advantage both, and if he couldn’t pry it open, Harry wouldn’t be able to.

“The wards would be in Old English anyway,” Riddle continued. “If they weren’t in Old German or Norse. I’ll have to return.”

Harry couldn’t hide his surprise or delight. “You’ll do this?”

Riddle at last looked at him properly, apparently letting the unsuccessful magic fall from his hands. “This is shameful,” he pronounced clearly. “It is politically – _disgusting_ – that the structure should have ever fallen into such disrepair. It is a gesture of hatred.”

His stomach curdled at the vicious words. “I’m sorry,” he said, wondering if Riddle cared at all for sympathy. “I talked to a snake – it said when Parseltongue was made illegal, they had to leave.”

“Mm.” He’d sat back, tilting his head to study the height of the structure. Apparently he wouldn’t expand on this.

“They – it – wanted to know more about Slytherin’s line. I thought I didn’t know enough to tell them….”

“You didn’t. And I don’t need to appease the local snakes.”

“I guess not,” he agreed. “Do they have… I dunno, leadership? Governance?”

He actually found this entertaining, flashing his teeth. They were bright in the weak sun, even against his pale complexion. “Your diplomacy is worthless here.”

“Yeah,” Harry sighed. Pulling the stack of books from his bag: “I do want to do this,” he said, quieter. “And I want you here for it. It’s not…. It’s _your_ family. I don’t want to do it wrong.”

Neither Riddle nor Voldemort had much to say about _family_. He thought the snake would not be impressed to learn that the last of Slytherin’s heir had killed everyone else to whom he was related. Riddle seemed rather perplexed by his statement. “There is power here,” he said slowly. “That you’re unable to _steal_ as you’ve stolen Parseltongue,” he added with a dark look. “So it is only accessible to me. But you’ve got nothing to offer for my labor.”

“Oh. No. I mean – it’s _yours_. I don’t want to do anything to it that you think would be wrong.”

Riddle studied him for longer. Then, reaching up to tug a lock of hair at his ear: “You’re quite a sensitive boy, Harry.”

“Piss off.” He slapped his hand away. “Nevermind.” He’d expected Riddle wouldn’t do well thinking of things that were legitimately _his_ , either. He lived in a stolen artifact, after a life of poverty and – if not homelessness properly – no _home_ either. Still, he did not have enough sympathy to currently feel sorry for him.

Still smirking because he was so awful, Riddle returned to pulling gently at the wards. Normally they’d spring to life, making themselves visible at the first touch. There – he could tell they were in Riddle’s grasp, but nothing lit up. “Are they active? Uh – or whatever the word is. Are they still in effect?”

Riddle glared as though Harry had offended him. Then: “They’ve been damaged. With the rest of the house. These wards don’t fall apart like a wall does, when blasted with a curse. It is more chaotic than that.”

“There will be historical records about the house,” Harry said. “I’ll get them. How… were you up there?”

“I wouldn’t need to. I simply _feel_ a great deal about this house. I’d show you, but….” A frustrated twist of his hand.

A thought. “Have you cast Lumos in infrared before?”

Riddle blinked at him, and took out his wand. “Lumos inhorresco!”

The wards glowed blue and violet and red, tangled at the foundation but climbing like ivy up the walls. Harry gaped – even hundreds of years later, there was a lot of magic. It was very spotty. They were lucky these broken wards weren’t sparking or exploding or interrupting their own magic.

“Well done,” Riddle said because even he couldn’t begrudge this solution. “Still….” A knot sat beside him; he tried plunging his wand in as he’d done with the ritual knots in the great hall. Harry flinched, expecting an explosion. Instead… it really did look like it was rusted shut.

“Is there anything….” He looked up, for wards not protected by the knots. Just so they might have something to copy down, just so Riddle might find the correct language reference books. Nothing – every ward was tucked away behind an ossified knot.

The infrared made the entire scene glow. Riddle was studying it, too. “The ley lines are at least a mile below ground.” Rising, he strode through the scene, to look for anything else extraordinary.

As he did, the dark pink haze of the soil flared with his every step, making magic swirl into the air like dust. It was… beautiful. It made Harry’s breath catch for a moment. It was so clear that the land was just… his, that it welcomed him in a way it’d welcome nobody else. With this, it seemed especially prudent and especially unfair that Voldemort hadn’t been allowed to stay on at Hogwarts. The castle must have loved him, in some real way. Sad, he followed.

Riddle was vanishing bushes from the exterior, scrubbing away dirt. “There must be a cellar,” he said. “Have you seen one?”

“No.” And thank fuck he hadn’t stumbled into a hole he hadn’t noticed.

“It should….” The infrared spell hadn’t extended this far, so he cast it again. Harry vanished a few plants to reveal more of the foundation.

“ _Human_!” a snake snarled (really, there was no other word), lithely hurling itself from the brush where it had slept, into a crack in the wall.

“Sorry,” Harry called after it, weakly.

Riddle snorted, but then approached the corner where the snake had disappeared. “Ah.”

“What?”

“The earth is sunken here, as though….” He _levitated_ a cube of dirt out of the way as though slicing into a lasagna. A jutting square indicated a cellar.

“Nice,” Harry said, surprised. “But, uh, I don’t want to walk into a hoard of snakes. – A den? A clutch?”

Riddle ignored his prattle, but also didn’t pursue the cellar. “Even such a bleeding heart as yours must decide what to do about the serpent population.”

“Yeah,” he sighed. “I mean, I could probably live with them, if they wanted.” He thought of how much more Voldemort liked snakes than humans, and how much better he was at socializing with them. He might enjoy the company. Instead of all this, he asked, “Did you know Nagini?”

“No.” He was stepping through a ruined wall, into the interior space. “She was from Bangalore. I wouldn’t travel to the Indian subcontinent for another decade yet.” He shot Harry a wry look. “You’ll give him a home, children, and now pets as well? I never took you – or certainly, _him_ – to be so thoroughly domesticated.”

“Well. We’re not, yet.” Still, he stood in a structure that he could imagine as his home. The ground floor was large enough to host parties; the first floor could contain as many children’s bedrooms and guest bedrooms as they would ever need. If they built it out, it might even be large enough that his friends would accept being technically in the same space with Voldemort with enough distance.

When they’d cleared the brush and dirt to reveal as much of the structure as they could, they were at a loss. Harry needed to bring in specialists. Riddle needed to work out how to access the wards. Impeded for now, Harry picked the diadem out of its fire, and left.

\\\\\\\ ////

The next week was a flurry of letters to the Department of Ancestry and Legacy: that Harry wanted the estate, that Voldemort would want it, and that Harry would pay for it if he could be on-site to see some of the restoration himself. The following weekend, they’d met him at the estate (he’d had to get the Aurors to send another portkey; the preservationists seemed unbothered by the security measure). They’d walked through the structure; Harry had taken extensive notes for Tom, really, who’d know and care more about these things. Blanche, the first witch he’d met at the office, left him with a very large scroll about contractors he was allowed to use, and said they’d meet on-site again after the new year.

(“Can I put in plumbing?” Harry had asked with some desperation.

Pause. Hesitantly: “It’d be anachronistic.” At Harry’s look, she sighed. “We’ll discuss it.”)

Every night that week, he searched the castle for the locket. It would _only_ be the locket now – nobody would figure out the manifestation fire by chance. The diadem would also slip off, generally, to the library. He swore to Harry that he had no reason to protect the locket, and Harry didn’t really believe him, but had no reason to disbelieve him either. In any case, they didn’t find it. It shouldn’t matter – its continued existence was more important than Harry’s possession of it. Even if he’d never again successfully study for History of Magic without the locket again.

Also within the week, he got an official invitation to the Ministry’s Yule Ball. (That it was called the Yule ball and not Christmas was surprising in its own right, Voldemort had said, because the Ministry had moved in a decidedly un-pagan direction in the past thirty years.) The invitation was on vellum, enchanted to sparkle like subtle snowfall. It was nice and far too much all at once.

He needed to ask Moody. They’d had a lot of brief but important correspondence recently, about the Slytherin estate and Grimmauld Place and his correspondence with Voldemort and the safety of him being outside the castle at all. The duplicated invitation did not sparkle, but he wrote across the top, **_Can I go_?**

There would be security befitting a Ministry event, of course – but still, he knew that he and Voldemort were attractive targets individually, nevermind together. So it was a very unexpected but not unwelcome surprise to get Moody’s reply: _You must go. Look sharp and look gracious. It will be the most visible you will ever be together. Do not fuck him there._

Harry let out a strangled laugh upon reaching the end. He might have blown Voldemort at the Ministry just once – they _couldn’t_ have known, could they? – but they might be able to keep their hands off each other for a night. In any case, it was embarrassing that their most celebrated Auror was relegated to keeping Harry’s cock in his pants. He would write this in apology, but absolutely no words would suffice.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Allusions for Chapter 20:
> 
> Grindelwald’s prison being crafted out of love is inspired by [Hungarian Dances, by eldritcher](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9528887/chapters/21545891).
> 
> You can’t step in the same river twice – Heraclitus.


	21. Chapter 21

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More Slytherins go missing, Tom gives Harry a Christmas gift, and then there’s the Yule ball.

_Thursday, December 10._ By the second week in December, they’d lost a half dozen Slytherins. Some of them were related to Death Eaters; some of them were probably just scared. McGonagall’s strained answer when someone asked her about their missing students was a crisp, “The faculty works closely with the Ministry to ensure every student’s safety.” Snape’s answer was vicious silence. Slughorn’s face was slightly less round or flush than it had once been.

Somehow, all the eighth years remained. The remaining lower years would huddle around them – Malfoy, Greengrass, Bulstrode, Zabini. Harry had sworn a hundred times to the Slytherins in his classes that if any other houses were threatening or intimidating them, he’d see out their punishment himself. The more respectful students would say quickly, “Thank you, sir,” before ducking out of his classroom. The less respectful ones gave him truly withering looks of skepticism. He couldn’t ask why.

Voldemort couldn’t answer for where the Slytherins might be. When Harry had asked about taking refuge abroad, he’d written back, _Some of them have family abroad. More of them take pride in keeping their family in Britain since Norman times. The Death Eaters never had strong international alliances._

Well, shit. The diadem didn’t know either. That night, Harry had thrown on his invisibility cloak to follow him, wondering if he’d enter the Slytherin common room or the Room of Requirement. Instead, he slipped into the library, as promised. When Harry’s frustrated sigh was a bit too audible, Riddle grabbed his shoulder, invisibility cloak and all. “You shouldn’t trust me,” he said, nearly pleasant. “But you shouldn’t _follow_ me, either.”

“It had to be one or the other.” Harry was untangling Riddle’s long fingers from the folds of his cloak.

The library was dim and quiet after dinner, if not technically out of bonds. After pulling his cloak from Riddle’s grasp, Harry threw it over both of them, casting a bubble of silence so they might be undisturbed. They stood too close together, and Harry had to tip his head too far back to look into Riddle’s dark eyes. “What are you doing?” he demanded in a whisper.

Riddle’s mouth pursed – nearly a _pout_. “You’ll spoil your Christmas gift.”

“What – bullshit,” he said, half-offended and half-laughing.

“Really. But I’ll need time alone at the estate.”

Harry’s breath caught, in surprise and unease and something like sentimentality. “You really haven’t got to – You’ve done enough already, I mean.” They hadn’t had a chance to work on the estate proper, but Riddle had spent days working at how to access the wards. He’d said he’d nearly gotten it. The builders would come in a few weeks, but they both wanted a first go at the estate’s security measures.

So Harry sucked his teeth. “Let me take you there, then. And come back for you later.” It was infantilizing, like a parent dropping off their child at footie practice, but there was no other way; he couldn’t stray so far from the fire that manifested him.

“Yes.”

They were walking toward the section of charms – where some of the structural magic was, at least. Tom had been writing Harry’s name in all the books he’d been taking, and when Harry requested that he at least return them on time, Tom amazingly got offended. Still, the Hogwarts library wasn’t curated for building a home, and they’d have to special order books soon.

These shelves in the rear were dark enough that to best browse them one needed to cast Lumos in a large bubble overhead. This time, however, light spilled from an open door. Instinctively they both went quiet, and Harry cast cushioning charms where he would step. They approached.

It was an office, mostly for storing and processing new acquisitions. It was the room that Remus had pulled Harry into once, when Harry had just learned of Snape’s part in his parents’ deaths. And they were both there now, Remus and Snape, seated at either end of the room’s only sofa. The door was open wide enough for Tom and Harry to peer in. Harry’s ethics were just significantly failing this year, because he did.

“ – of course I’ve written,” Snape was saying. “I’ve written to every bloody school. Even the universities. Other than a letter from Greengrass, none of them were even aware…. Or willing,” he added bitterly. “They say it would catalyze more politics than they’ve got resources to manage.”

“Of all the excuses – money?”

Snape snorted in anger. “The most apolitical one.”

“Yes,” Remus said, ducking his head in acknowledgement. “Kingsley said they couldn’t find any breaches in the security wards, Filius said all the protective charms are in place, Willoughby said there haven’t been any threats or ransoms received by the Ministry…. It apparently is just an appealing option,” he said softly, “running away.”

The silence that followed spoke to greater stories than Harry knew. But when Snape spoke again: “I’ll give Greengrass detention every night until she cooperates.”

“Severus – “

A vicious look. “ _Children_ don’t hide tracks this well. They’re not alone. Perhaps another Animagus slipped through the castle security?” His jet eyebrows arched.

Hearing Snape speak of Sirius hurt Harry. It apparently hurt Remus too, because his shoulders curled inward for a moment. Then, straightening again: “You don’t know how much I regret endangering the school then.”

The expression on Snape’s face went infinitesimally softer, less angular. Remus put a hand on Snape’s, neither of them really looking at the other, and Snape left it. “It should be simpler this time, without anyone you especially feel the need to protect.”

At this Remus did look up, with a sad and lopsided smile. “Don’t be stupid,” he chided, lifting Snape’s hand to his mouth. ( _God_ , Harry reflected. He and Voldemort had done the same so many times, pressing kisses to one another’s knuckles to defuse a moment. Had Harry learned it from Remus once, without recognizing it?)

“I am surrounded by chivalry these days,” Snape said dryly.

“Good.” Then, quieter – “He hadn’t been – ? He hasn’t sought you out?”

Remus’s gaze went to where the Dark Mark was emblazoned. Snape didn’t bother to look. “I feel it all the time,” he said. “Potter,” (his name said with utmost scorn and skepticism) “said the summons weren’t his. I am not so curious or so pained as to answer, either.”

“We would come – or if you wanted Aurors – “

A cold smile. “It’s not magic I could share. And really,” he twisted a hand in indifference, “the Aurors have got enough. Alastor could _insist_ ,” (this word spoken in the most prickly fashion) “if he’d like to. He hasn’t.”

“Don’t change your mind without telling me. I’d go with you.”

“I am not changing my mind at all,” Snape said. “And you’ve got enough settings in which to risk your life, haven’t you?” he said a bit bitterly.

An intake of breath. “I didn’t tell you.” Remus was quiet. “Greyback is dead.”

Harry didn’t know what reaction was expected or appropriate here, but it wasn’t Snape’s. “Good,” he said, brusque and dismissive, especially alongside Remus’s reflective melancholy. “If only someone had killed that brute sooner.” A beat. “It won’t… change anything for you?”

A rueful smile from Remus. “I am as cursed as I have been and always will be.”

“Good,” he said again.

Remus’s face ran through a gamut of emotions. He wore them all in the premature creases along his eyes and his forehead. But Harry noted, Snape hardly looked much younger. At last Remus said, “I would help them out, if I knew.”

“As would I.”

A sad glance. “You were a confidant to so many of them at one point. So was Horace. He says they don’t come to him, either. And of course Draco….”

“Yes,” Snape sound crisply, cutting off this thought. “We are self-reliant and our only saviors, each of us.” He spoke lowly enough now that Harry had to cease breathing to hear. “This may include forgoing knowledge for which we’d rather not be held responsible.”

An exasperated. “I wish you were a bit less self-reliant,” he said, as though he’d said it before. Then, going serious: “You think they are safe, then?”

“Yes.”

He absorbed this slowly. “I won’t interfere – “

“You couldn’t, anyway.”

An indulgent look. Somehow, in spite of the conversation’s tension and difficulty, Snape had drawn closer to Remus, so Remus now scrubbed at a spot between his shoulder blades. “I won’t interfere with the Slytherins,” he began again. “But if they need me….”

“Yes.” Snape’s shoulders seemed to get tighter with the backrub, as he hunched in on himself.

“And if you need me.”

The way they were seated, Harry didn’t catch Snape’s expression as he looked back at Lupin. In any case, a murmur: “Yes.”

They sat in silence, which was really inconvenient for Harry because he’d rather sneak away under ambient noise. Riddle must have thought the same, because there was a swirl of his wand, and then a pop and shatter of glass from the far side of the office. Remus and Snape jumped; Harry and Tom left.

Of course, they still actually needed books. Riddle pulled him into the section on runes, nearer to the library’s entrance. It wasn’t what he’d needed, but it would suffice. Pulling the cloak off Harry, he muttered, “Their wards will show your presence anyway. Pick up the book by Lao.”

He did, paging through it so Riddle could see without revealing himself. They both listened for footsteps. At this point, he _wanted_ to be caught, so nothing in the wards would look suspicious.

“Good,” Riddle muttered, reaching beneath the cloak to dog-ear a chapter. “Now the Handbook of Runic Arcana.” A heavy tome. Harry needed both hands to hold it open.

Finally, footsteps, two sets. He held off on groaning. There was an unexpected flutter of magic around him, that swirled in and then back out again. He realized that it must be what Hominem Revelio felt like, on the other end.

The footsteps grew more purposeful; Remus peered into the stacks a moment later. His face softened. “Harry. What a surprise, to find you here, at this hour.”

It wasn’t even an insult. He hiked the arcana handbook to his chest. “I am very behind in runes,” he said with dreadful honesty.

Snape had stopped behind Remus, impatient and reluctant to spend any moment longer with Harry than strictly necessary. “The library is closed,” he said. “Isn’t it past your bedtime anyway?”

It was so shitty to not only be given a curfew as an adult, but to also then be sneered at for it. “Nearly,” he agreed. Taking up both books, he fell in step beside Remus. They’d been awkward with each other since he’d learned that Remus had seen his memories of childhood, and it was very apparent they were both performing nonchalance with difficulty now.

He’d lost track of Riddle entirely. He hoped he would make it out the library doors behind them.

“Are these for class?” Remus asked at last, glancing over at the books pressed to his chest. “I helped Draco pick texts, I don’t recall these titles….”

“No.” He panicked very slightly because he couldn’t really explain _what_ the books were for. So, as a distraction, he told the truth. “It’s for the Slytherin estate. Moody said yes, at last. We’ve only started looking at the wards.” _I_ , he thought in a panic immediately. _I’ve looked at the wards_. It was far too late to correct himself.

Remus and Snape looked surprised, although only one of them pleasantly so. “Good,” Remus said, too kind and too gentle, as though he thought of Harry as an especially fragile doll. “It is a… worthwhile aspiration.”

This was so different than his response at Grimmauld Place, it struck Harry that Remus and Moody must have argued over it since, that they should both support him now. Well. He’d accept paternalism and fragility over… what they’d exhibited before. “Thank you, sir,” he said, even if Remus hadn’t said anything significant.

“Have you found….” Remus sucked his teeth. “It all must be very old. Does any of it look medieval?”

Oh thank god, he could actually answer that. “Loads of it. Most of it is ancient,” he said, because Riddle had been immersed in proto-Germanic runes all week. “The historians had a bunch of rules, about which magic was too anachronistic. So I’m learning.”

“Hm.” They were descending the corridor to the dungeons now. Harry had a moment to wonder if Remus also had quarters down here, and then realized with a bit of a blush that he was probably going to _Snape’s_ quarters. Well. He didn’t have room to critique anyone’s choice of partner.

“Here,” Remus said, at the corridor where they would split. “Goodnight, Harry.”

“Goodnight, sir. Headmaster.” Snape wasn’t even looking at him. Whatever.

He stopped breathing when he reached his own suite, held the door open behind himself, and didn’t feel Tom move past him. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. “ _Tom_ ,” he said in urgent Parseltongue.

The door to the corridor swung open again, and he felt a mocking touch on his shoulder. “You are so over-protective,” Tom chided, pulling them both into the room. He let the invisibility cloak slither from his shoulders.

Harry hadn’t considered it before, but – “Abzu will let you in?” The dragon who guarded the corridor.

A shrug; Riddle didn’t find this an interesting question. “We share magic. I’ve told him that we – _you_ – will be invisible, for your privacy and safety. He speaks Parseltongue, too,” he said helpfully.

“Oh.” The stone dragon doorman spoke Parseltongue. “Ah, good.” He took his cloak back, trading the library books for it. “Was any of that…” he made a vague gesture, “helpful, illuminating? You’ll have to return for the charms books later.”

“Was it helpful to _you_?” Riddle asked archly.

A sigh. “Maybe? Whatever Snape knows about the Slytherins, I hope he can do something about them.”

“He is at least as compromised as you are.” Riddle was peeling off his robe. He looked good in shirtsleeves. He had an air of industriousness that way. It was nice.

Harry hissed air through his teeth, at least as perturbed by one more bit of the conversation. “How does the summoning magic of the Dark Mark work?” he asked. “You… must have had followers by now. Were you marking them yet?”

“No.” Riddle sprawled across the sofa nearer the hearth. “We existed as a semi-autonomous order, registered with the Ministry, at the outset. Much like your own.” He raised his eyebrows, nearly mocking, and Harry felt a bit sick to think Riddle would know anything of the Order. He’d rather _Voldemort_ know everything of them, than Tom. “A guild that would demand a pound of flesh…. We attracted suspicion early, but we’d never have survived if I’d _marked_ them then. I could only offer conjecture.”

“Oh. So…. It _can’t_ be Voldemort summoning him,” he said fiercely. “He swore to me it wasn’t. He and Snape just… if they never see each other again, it would suit them both. But it happened the same night as… Malfoy Manor.” The massacre.

Riddle’s mouth contracted in thought. “I don’t know.”

“Could you do it?”

Glare. “Certainly not.”

“Could the locket be used to summon him?” Harry continued, more shrewdly.

“Mm.” His dark gaze searched the ceiling. “Likely not. But….” He shook his head, finally. “It seems most reasonable that they found the magic in Black’s body.”

(Bellatrix. Tom had opined, upon learning she’d married a Lestrange, that the two families did not deserve each other.) “It could be soul magic. It must persist, in some fashion, after death.”

“He’d better not go. Aurors or no.” And given the way Moody acted with Snape, his support by the Aurors was unspeakably tentative anyway.

He flicked a look of amusement over his shoulder “He’s got more self-preservation than you do, at least.”

“Yeah,” Harry sighed.

He thought this was the end of it – Riddle normally ended every exchange with some manner of mocking or slight – but he went on now. “Take me to the Slytherin estate tomorrow morning. I’ll be there for a few days.”

“A few _days_?”

A flash of his teeth. “I am not human,” he said patiently. “I don’t need to keep your human schedule for food or sleep.”

Riddle was going to build this house as much as Harry. He didn’t want to seem ungrateful. Even so – “What if something happens?”

“Such as?” He tilted his head. “The Aurors’ security is quite thorough.”

“I don’t know. It just sounds… unsafe, to leave you there.” Riddle remained quiet, his objection that he was doing this _for Harry_ going as yet unsaid. “Fine. Yes. But I teach tomorrow morning.”

“Excellent,” Riddle said, rewarding him with a smirk.

 

 _Saturday, December 19._ It didn’t matter, because school was quickly getting even busier than usual. There was a week before students would go home for the holidays. Even if Harry wasn’t taking exams himself (he went to Potions, Charms, and Transfiguration about half the time these days. The faculty all seemed more worried about him than anything), he still had to administer them for his students. They were all suddenly anxious about their grades for the first time – and the OWL and NEWT level students were swearing they’d study over the holidays – and he was so behind in marking. Ugh. During this time, he let Riddle come and go – he spent most of the next few days on the estate, and the rest in the library. At least, on the nights he was in, he’d sit beside Harry to just quietly share magic. That was nice.

He persuaded Tonks to take him and Ginny, Ron, and Hermione to Diagon Alley to do Christmas shopping. “You’re coming home with us, right?” Ron said with trepidation as they walked down the cobblestone. “Mum and Dad already expect you there.”

Harry had wondered if he’d be a pariah this year, because, you know. “Yeah,” he said. “I thought you might not want….” A vague gesture.

“Don’t be stupid.”

He grinned.

Shopping for the Weasleys was always an endeavor unto itself. He and Ron would get each other Quidditch merchandise; he’d buy the twins new potions ingredients that had the most prominent warnings about explosions on them in the apothecary. Ginny… the last Christmas he’d spent with them, two years ago, they’d been together, in a rather chaste way. There hadn’t been the threat of war yet, Dumbledore had still been alive, Harry had been in sixth year and Ginny in fifth and he’d thought he’d marry into her family one day.

Ginny seemed to have approximately the same thoughts. She was much more proactive about them. “Oy,” she said, kicking him across the table where they’d sat down to lunch. “What do you want?”

He smiled, guilty. “I was going to ask you.”

“Could you take care of Arnold after the new year?” she asked brightly. “Tonks and I are going to Catalonia for the week,” she said with a larger smile at Tonks, beside her. (Tonks blushed easily, Harry noted; as pink as her hair.) “He’s not so stupid that he can’t feed himself or anything, he just gets really needy in the cold. I told Fred and George that I think they bred all the seasonally depressed puffs.”

“Oh, no.” But he couldn’t help but laugh. “Oh – then – will you come look at dress robes with me? I’ve outgrown the ones from fourth year.” Everyone but Tonks looked questioning. He hadn’t mentioned – “The Ministry’s got a Yule Ball. I – we – I’m supposed to go. Will you be there?” He looked to Tonks with mild pleading. He’d been thinking about seeing Voldemort there, but hadn’t thought of how the entire rest of the ball would be, well, Ministry employees. Probably important ones.

Tonks wrinkled her nose. “I’ll be posted outside for security,” she said. “Never been in, properly. It’s a bit…. Well, you’ll have a good night, anyway,” she said instead.

“A bit what?”

“ _Important_.” She over-pronounced the word. “Stodgy. It’s a performance as much as anything.”

Hermione had stirred her black bean soup in a figure eight the entire conversation, but she spoke now. “He’ll be there?”

“Yeah.” _And I can’t fuck him_ , Harry didn’t add, still the best and worst thing anyone had ever written to him. “We’ll take every precaution, we’ll still always be targets but the security’s been fixed – “ (Voldemort had told him so, had told him that in fact his own experience in possession and necromancy had been useful in adapting the Ministry’s security panel to non-human threats. Also that it was incredible that the Ministry wanted _him_ to contribute to their security after all, but no matter.)

Hermione was shaking her head. “It will be the first time you’re in public together since getting engaged.” She said the word, small but forceful, as though she’d had to steel herself. Nobody had said it to him before. “If people ask – and they will – could you tell them it’s an alliance? It sounds more… sincere.”

“Oh.” He tipped his head back, thinking. “I don’t think we are, though? Allies, I mean. We disagree on a lot, politically.”

“But he listens to you.”

“Well – yeah.” (He _justified_ himself to Harry, which was not the same thing but this was clearly important to Hermione.) “We listen to each other. And the world already believes that I’ll… whatever. Save him, save the world from him? It’s simple to go along with.” They both knew the stakes, of Voldemort keeping Harry at his side.

“Marriages have been used for political alliance for centuries.” She’d sat up straighter now, determined. “It would be… good for the Unification. It’d feel like starting over. Marriage vows can be _really_ powerful, more than whatever vows you’re both under now.” Harry had nothing to say straight off; she glared. “You haven’t even looked at what a wedding vow entails.”

“You have, though,” he said lightly. “That’s… that happened in the medieval era, didn’t it? Neither of us have got _kingdoms_ to unite.”

“It can still be a peace treaty. Reciprocal peace treaties, really. And everyone will be… relieved,” she said in a near-sigh. “There is only more _precedent_ for this than the vows you’ve got now. It’s perverse, really, for him to swear on your life.”

This marriage was going to be the least romantic thing they’d ever done. “Moody’s been trying to get me out of the vows, actually,” Harry said, hoping this would waylay her.

It did not. With a frown: “That’s a waste.”

He could have laughed. “Maybe.” Hermione sank into an entire ledger of unsaid statements.

 

Ron and Hermione needed to figure out what he’d get her parents for Christmas; Ginny and Tonks went with Harry to look at dress robes. “She’s right,” Tonks said to him lowly as Ginny peeled off to look at scarves.

“Hermione? She usually is.” He was going through bolts of fabric in an indifferent way. “Why?”

“It’s what Voldemort wanted, too, a wedding vow. That’s what Mad Eye said, anyway. Mad Eye refused, said you didn’t need the spectacle. It’s why he swore on his magic, in the end.”

“Oh for – “ He broke off in a sigh. “I mean, maybe. I thought it’d be a license, not a wedding.” Even the word felt wrong to him. “Do wixes elope?”

“It’d rather ruin the political effect, yeah?”

“Yeah,” he sighed again. Scrubbing his face: “I guess it really doesn’t matter, by now. Uh, cheers.” She gave him a rather sympathetic smile.

The jeweler’s was down the road from Madam Malkin’s. He wondered if wearing rings already counted as a spectacle. It already made him more self-aware, if not self-conscious, of people looking at his hands.

Madam Lithwick, the jeweler, was a very old witch with hair in long silver ringlets, as though she’d crafted it out of her own metals. She recognized him on sight; for once this was a relief. “Come in,” she said, locking the front door and swooping him into a peculiar backroom, filled with work he only vaguely recognized as alchemy. “I’ve got a few options for you.”

She did. The few notes they’d exchanged, Harry had expressed that he wanted matching rings, but Voldemort’s hands were quite fine (he did not use the word _delicate_ but he let it hover in the subtext) and Harry’s own were tan and thick and calloused from his broom. He was going to request silver – it looked alright on Voldemort’s complexion and Harry by now had grown used to it on his own hand from wearing the transfigured sickles – until he wondered if it’d hurt Remus. Since he was already shopping for the Dark Lord, he skipped another letter to ask if the jewelry was also werewolf-safe; instead he asked for platinum. This was boring alchemically, Madam Lithwick had written back, but they wouldn’t have to take their rings off to brew potions, so there was that.

Madam Lithwick had a lot to say about how weight and design also affected magic – heavier bands were better for centered, solid arts like defense; lighter ones better for magic of escape and illusion. “And you read my notes on ritual knots?” she asked, putting before him several twisted and braided rings.

“Yes,” he lied.

She was as sharp as his professors, realized promptly that he was lying, and went over it in full anyway. Harry wondered if superstition could still exist in a world imbued with magic. Voldemort had said that wedding rings were an imported Muggle custom, but there seemed to be a lot of… lore or whatever, already developed in the craft.

At last he left with two thick bands, plain but for a small braided pattern at the edges. He put the boxes in his innermost pocket, casting a few sticking spells on for paranoia’s sake. He went to find his friends.

They’d congregated at Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes by now, bags of shopping slung over their shoulders. “If you buy Mum dress robes, we’ll give them a date night,” Fred was saying to Ron and Ginny. “A night of wooing. Romance.”

“Speaking of,” George added, when Harry walked in. He nearly backpedaled out again immediately. “No, come here, Harry, we’re only joking. If we wanted you to do a signing, we’d advertise first, of course.”

“Oh my god,” he grumbled, slumping on the counter.

Most everyone else was too embarrassed for him to speak of the (very popular) Scar-Struck line of merchandise and erotica. Fred and George embraced it. “Write us something, Harry,” Fred requested, gesturing to promotional art announcing the newest novella. ( _In the Arms of Darkness_. It looked horrifying.)

“Absolutely not.”

“You must have fantasies even he can’t fulfill.” Fred was grinning like the cheshire cat. “At least three different reviewers have described the series as _tasteful_ , if that’s any consolation.”

“Oh no,” Harry said, even though he was going red by now. “I’m really tasteless, though.”

Fred winked. And then Hermione approached the counter, brandishing a forever-lolly that would never get smaller. “This is against the laws of thermodynamics,” she said hotly, and then the twins were thoroughly distracted.

He ended up in the Scar-Struck aisle then, somehow, against his better judgment. Ron sort of hovered at the other end, where the erotica sat beside an end-cap of sparkly gold handcuffs. ( _God_.) They both looked at each other for a long moment, and then Ron edged in.

“A beater’s bat would be too much, wouldn’t it?” he asked, quiet and strained but determined. “And then she wants… _these_ ,” he gestured to the handcuffs wildly, “but I’m not buying them from my brothers. It would ruin Christmas.”

Oh. _Oh_. Jesus. Have the details of one’s sex life distributed to the world, suddenly he’s got a reputation as a god or guru. Most other people he could shrug off (he gave absolutely no fucks that Moody witnessed how bruised he’d been last time, really) but Ron was different. He and Ron had only talked about girls a bit, since the girls in question had been Ginny and Hermione, but they’d shared a life, and they’d wanked in the same dorm for years, anyway. Ron was his mate, and this made this excruciating and also important. His mind creaked into action far too slowly.

“I’ve never bought anything.” He made himself steady because Ron would die if he laughed. “He’s already got… enough. And there are spells….”

“She’s got books already,” he said hurriedly. “She knows the spells.”

“Oh. Good. Get her a wooden spoon, something like that,” Harry said. “The slotted kind. Get her a belt. Don’t use the metal end, at first,” he said wryly. “We… I _think_ we’ve got ropes and handcuffs” (Ron went brilliantly red; Harry soldiered on) “but there are so many restraining spells that are so much easier. Like….” He shook back his sleeve, casting their usual glowing restraint so it looped his wrist, dangling to his elbow. “You can cast it to be more or less stretchy. And it doesn’t chafe.” He tugged on it to demonstrate, and then cast Finite. “Really, I’ll show you how to cast it, it’s dead easy.”

Ron shook his head. “Show _her_ ,” he said, with a peculiar look.

Oh. He didn’t know why he hadn’t expected Hermione to be the disciplinarian. She already shepherded Ron through a lot; maybe it’d be a break if she weren’t. He flashed an apologetic grin anyway. “I’ll show her.”

He squirmed. “Does it hurt?”

He couldn’t help but smile a bit more broadly. “Yeah. It’s great.”

\\\\\\\ ////

Shopping concluded. Back at Hogwarts.

**_Are we allies?_ **

A pause, long enough that he assumed Voldemort wasn’t looking at the diary. But then: _You’ve spoken with Granger._

He blinked. **_Have you spoken with her?_**

 _Yes_. Skipping a line to forego preamble or explanation, he wrote: _It would be useful, to secure an alliance with marriage. It’s quite historical. It would imbue you with even greater political significance, however. By necessity – you aren’t a figurehead of anything currently. Much as the Minister would like you to be._

Harry made a face; the emotion couldn’t have carried through their approximation of Legilimency. **_I wouldn’t mind, though. If you needed me to._**

_That sort of marriage includes a production of a wedding. Every head of state attends. There isn’t time. And it would thoroughly undermine the hard-fought negotiation with which Alastor and I already troubled ourselves._

**_I know. Thank you_** , he wrote, and meant it. **_I only though, if it would help_**

 _It would_ , Voldemort wrote before he’d finished. _We could stage such a production in the future. It wouldn’t lose its value, as a political gesture. But nearer to the present – we should sign a marriage certificate on the spring equinox. It is a traditional day for weddings_.

He didn’t know why but he’d look it up later. **_Sure. I got new rings today. Real ones. I’ll bring them to the ball._**

Another pause. A dot of ink that indicated Voldemort spun the quill in place, measuring out his words. _That will be a spectacle as well,_ he wrote, slow and deliberate.

**_Moody said it would be the most visible we’d ever be._ **

_Yes_ , he wrote crisply. _Journalists in the receiving area, if not the ball proper. They might ask you anything._ When Harry didn’t answer, he continued: _I will corroborate whatever you want them to know. We only don’t want to take for granted that you want to be a public figure._

This was thoughtful, perfectly so. It was also a theme of his life right now: everyone asking who he would be and what he would want absent the Boy-Who-Lived expectations, all of it. **_I don’t know who I’d be without this._** No need to clarify; he knew what he meant. **_Or what I’d be without everyone around me._** Voldemort himself most of all. Of course. **_Does anyone?_**

Another long pause. _No. Probably not._

**_I would get out if I wanted out. But I’m really happy._ **

_Good._

 

 _Sunday, December 20._ On Sunday (or at least, the larger world only learned of it then), Anatoly Selwyn was given twenty years in Azkaban, “for grotesque acts of violence, homicide, war crimes, and sedition.” _Wix Policy Weekly_ broke the news; as soon as she heard, Luna was off like a shot to the owlery. Hermione still wore the Slytherin tie. Her mouth was very tight as she read Harry’s Panopticon over his shoulder. “We’ve got to get to them,” she said. At Harry’s look: “The Slytherins. Before another one of them runs away.”

Selwyn didn’t have children. All the Death Eater progeny were gone. The point stood. “Yeah. But….”

“They know where they went,” Ron tried out hesitantly. “They might be safer, wherever they’re being kept now.”

Harry glanced to the center of the table. With exams starting, fewer people were coming to meals, smuggling food back to their common rooms or the library. (Remus had had a hard time being imposing on this point. Snape had been his enforcer in the library this week. It would be sweet, if it weren’t Snape.) And now, the head table was half-empty. They really should be doing something. Snape was gone; Slughorn and Malfoy and Minerva and Flitwick too. He sighed through his teeth.

“Snape has been trying,” he said to his friends lowly. They could still partake in some of his secrets. “I overheard….” A vague gesture, to indicate that it was one of the many things he shouldn’t know. “He’s been asking around.”

Neither of them looked comforted or even extremely believing. “Snape’s loyalties…” Ron started.

“He hasn’t got anyone to serve anymore,” Harry said, lower still because this really wasn’t his place to discuss. “If it is safest for them to get out….”

“They’re so alone,” Hermione said, ashen. “They _can’t_ be – they’ll always be safe here. What do they fear,” she said, struggling to keep her voice quiet, “ _here_? They haven’t – “ She made a broad gesture around her. “ _We_ would protect them. I thought we _had_.” She sounded as though she’d failed them and herself. She sounded heartbroken.

\\\\\\\ ////

He went to find the diadem after lunch, anyway. He’d been at the Slytherin estate since Saturday morning, and Harry hadn’t meant to collect him until Monday. He didn’t even tell the Aurors he was going; he wouldn’t be long.

The ground crunched underfoot; the sparse grass was frozen in spikes. The estate didn’t look different – but the magic felt different, if he had any sense of its aura. Riddle had shown him a string of runes along the walkway up to the house – what _had been_ a walkway one time, anyway, and could be again. He said it was much of the hospitality magic: who was allowed on the grounds, and how deep. He wasn’t working on it now; but the Horcrux’s fire still burned in a corner of the entry hall. Harry circled the ruins cautiously.

A noise at the rear of the house; the walls were low and crumbled enough that he could jump through. As he slashed at a stubborn bramble growing where the back porch had once been, Riddle emerged from a raised tunnel that had once marked the cellar. “Why are you here?”

“Where are the Slytherins?”

He merely blinked, attempting to look innocent without understanding what that meant. “Is another one missing?” He’d mostly kept abreast of the danger and isolation of the Slytherin students this year.

“They will be,” Harry said, full of conviction. He whipped the Panopticon from his back pocket. “Selwyn – Whenever there’s another conviction, they disappear.”

“Mm.” Riddle flipped the Panopticon visible with a motion. “He hasn’t even been Kissed. It’s not even a life sentence.”

Harry looked at him with disbelief. “Does that matter?”

“Apparently not.” He flipped through the other, most prominent articles. “He didn’t have children?”

“No. All their children are gone,” he said in frustration. “Where are they, _Tom_? You care too much to not be involved.”

He found this annoyingly funny. His given name didn’t draw his ire as it did Voldemort; he only raised his sleek brows. “I am more misanthropic than you will ever understand,” he promised wryly.

“The work you’ve done on the wards at Hogwarts – it was to get them out, wasn’t it?”

His lips were curled in an unhappy smile. “If it were,” he said, low and pleasant, “you wouldn’t want to know. What would you even _do_ with that knowledge, Harry? Would you turn me in?”

He glared. “I’d never let you out again.”

“That would be very counter-productive to the Slytherins’ safety. Or are you only acting in spite, after all?”

“I can do more for them than you can.” Riddle’s brows arched higher in doubt. “I, y’know, exist.”

“You do understand why the Ministry relies on Voldemort to cast so much of their more distasteful magic?” Riddle asked. He actually waited, as though it weren’t a rhetorical question.

“Are you above the law, then?” Harry said, unimpressed.

“Yes.” He flashed his teeth. “How fortunate for you. How fortunate for _them_.”

“Is that what you’re doing now?” Harry challenged. “Funneling students through here, on to… where the fuck _are_ they?” he demanded, frustrated all over. “They can’t all hide in Rome with Zabini’s mum.” The way Riddle was standing, he had this horrible suspicion he was right. “They’re not _here_. Oh my god.”

Riddle clicked his tongue. “I’d tell you to look for yourself, but you’ll ruin your Christmas gift. If you even deserve it.”

“I don’t care.” He hopped the crumbling wall, ducking around Riddle to enter the tunnel to the cellar. “Let me see.”

Riddle was composed as always, following him in dry amusement. “Cast a shield charm,” he requested. “It’s a feat of magic that it hasn’t caved in entirely, but only just.”

Whipping his wand with far too much force, he cast a bubble of a shield around them both.

He could see even from its edge that the cellar would stretch under the entire home. It was a vast and empty space, a bit reminiscent of Slytherin’s chamber. (He must have had a very reliable aesthetic.) Columns dotted the space, and stationary globes of Lumos floated at the ceiling, but otherwise there was nothing. And even the lights were redundant – every ward was visible, in threads and knots and planes of every shimmering color. “Wards emanate upward,” Riddle said behind him as he took it all in. “It’s why most of Hogwarts’s are in the dungeons and on the ground floor. But fixing the wards is the least of what I’ve done.”

Harry moved close to a strand. He didn’t recognize a single rune on it. Nobody would believe _he_ fixed these. He’d come up with an excuse later. “What else have you done, then?”

Riddle moved nearer to a sturdy wall. Drawing his cypress wand, he conjured a glittering glass vial, and then pressed the tip to the wall. “Every home is imbued with the magic of its owners. Moreso if it was built by their hands – which it seems this was.” From the stones, he drew a shimmering spirit like a memory.

“ _Oh_.” Harry’s ire evaporated, because that was so striking.

“Memories of the inhabitants would be found elsewhere – but the edifice, the surroundings, the world as it changed around this fortress.” He drew out more memories now. “A time before it was a ruin.”

“That is….” He drew close. “You should want this more than I do.”

His smile was not malicious, for once. “The estate’s magic embraces me as its own, as Hogwarts does. This is meant for a Pensieve, for your access.”

He wondered – “ _Could_ you get into a Pensieve? We can look together – “

He was shaking his head. “It’s rather… multiply removed from tangible existence,” he said, his mouth quirked. “I know what the estate has always looked like, has always felt like. This is for you.” A last shimmering strand into the vial. Corking it, he held it out.

“Thank you.” He couldn’t resist looking into the cloudy fluid for a moment – an entry way in gray and silver.  A fireplace in the great hall. Stables. He was so… _taken_ by what this home could be. It was perfect.

Riddle stepped back. “Now…” he said with an ironic bow. “Leave me to do what I can, before the preservationists arrive. Tell them this was original. Crafted by Slytherin blood.”

Harry looked at him with exasperation and helplessness and some reluctant fondness. “You won’t tell me where the Slytherins are?”

“Darling, you wouldn’t want to know.”

He shot Tom a look. Voldemort could call him that, soothing and affectionate and mocking all at once. Still… he held the estate’s memories very tightly. He probably wasn’t the best person to save the Slytherins anyway. He should probably be grateful. “I…. Tell me they’re safe.”

“They are safe.”

“Thank you.”

He left Tom. He would be back tomorrow, in his lunch break. He did leave slowly, to watch as his deft hands braided and unbraided a glowing gold rope of a ward. He had a fleeting thought that he didn’t deserve him.

 

Ron and Hermione were gone when he returned. He wanted to be alone with the Pensieve anyway. With his home. He tipped the estate’s memories into the basin.

He’d expected people, but that wasn’t what this was at all. He’d see figures out of the corner of his eye at most, but the house itself was central. He stood in what would become the entryway – originally a sort of enclosed porch where magically-significant plants were being grown. The stone was rougher than it was in the present, worn away by generations of life. Open spaces to either side of the entryway, originally a greenhouse (had Slytherin been a herbologist? Or a potions master? It was shameful that he didn’t even know) that became various dining rooms, sitting rooms, social halls, and ballrooms. The family was always _prominent_ , he gathered, in addition to wealthy. Though they hadn’t built so excessively that there were entire redundant wings like Malfoy Manor though, thank fuck.

He found the room that had persistently been a kitchen, with storage or servants’ quarters beside it. The kitchen, as it faded across time, was illuminated in warmer lighting than the rest of the house. The hearth in… the 1800s? Near to the end – was beautiful multicolored stonework. He was so happy, that cooking meant good things to him now, that he’d shed the sense of toil and exclusion it carried in childhood. He and Voldemort had cooked together from the start. It was hard to stay enemies that way.

In the memories, he could access the home’s upper floors, that had mostly… what? Been bombed or eroded away. There had been a sweeping staircase from the entryway to the open landing, which overlooked the space; it was mostly gone now.

The style of the bedrooms changed most of all. He saw the house gain and lose children, adapt bedrooms to play rooms or to studies.

 _God_ , he thought, blinking down at a regency-era cot. He wanted children. Not anytime soon, but… he really did.

There had been enough rooms and certainly enough space for at least four or five bedrooms up here. They’d have guest suites. He’d give Voldemort the largest space for a library. He would like that. A study, too, if they were both to be Ministry employees and as busy as he anticipated being. There was a master bedroom at the front of the house with its own balcony; another balcony ran along the entire rear of the upper floor. In most eras, it was crowded with plants. (They _must_ have been herbologists, Harry decided. The entire family.)

And then the house shifted more – an entire back part was constructed, creating an enclosed courtyard with trees and a fountain. He moved through the newly-constructed rear of the house, finding labs, research areas, rooms of distillation and necromancy and experimental magic. There was a sense that the family had had to hide these things away at one point, that they were no longer to be practiced in shared spaces. The rear wings were shadowy, not as well-lit as the front part of the house that was meant for entertaining, and while the aura of magic didn’t exactly translate in memories, he thought this part of the house may have been cloaked entirely.

The house seemed to fall into decline very quickly, somehow. It wasn’t bombed, but may as well have been. Maybe a magical building, deprived of magic, fell apart that much quicker.

He wondered if he should bring the preservationists into the pensieve, but he’d never be able to explain how he’d extracted the memories. He didn’t know if it was even possible, for any but Slytherin’s line.

By the end, he was certain he didn’t deserve Tom. He half-wanted to run back, to apologize for being shitty to him earlier. This was… perfect. He wanted dreams and he wanted hope more than anything else right now.

He couldn’t share it with Voldemort either, and that was its own disappointment. He would make it perfect for _him_ , too, in the end.

 

 _Tuesday, December 22._ Tuesday was their last day before holidays. Malfoy had asked rather indifferently if Harry wanted an exam; had wanted class at all. He surprised them both when he said yes to the class, at least.

Malfoy had told him that they’d meet beneath the front archway after dinner. The castle was already quiet, students sleeping off exams and packing, and they were alone. In an elegant gesture, Malfoy made the corded wards visible. These were the most substantial set of wards governing the castle’s security. Harry hadn’t seen them before but, if he recognized the handwriting, at least one of the Horcruxes had. Huh.

“These need to be updated before the new year,” Malfoy said. “You’ll open all the knotted wards pertaining to antagonistic presences on the castle grounds. Don’t alter them.”

Oh. The Ministry’s security had been updated to keep out the Humnerë – Hogsmeade, Diagon Alley, every significant public space. He’d assumed Hogwarts had gotten new security then as well, but apparently not. “Is it all even written about humans?” he asked, edging toward a glowing strand. “The castle is older, from before a time when we were so separated….”

He said it rather absently as he ran a finger over the nearest ward. When he felt Malfoy’s gaze boring into his back, he turned. “What?”

“Did _he_ tell you that?” he asked lowly.

At first Harry nearly had a cardiac arrest. The diadem had told him, but if Malfoy knew….. Oh. Voldemort. In a sense. “Yeah,” he said. “It’s… _his_ castle, in a way. He knows its magic.”

A long, unreadable look. Then: “The wards must be revised, anyway. Leave the knotted ones open. Don’t touch anything else.”

They worked in quiet for awhile. A lot of the wards, the older ones, didn’t specifically forbid only antagonistic _humans_ but also didn’t explicitly forbid antagonistic non-humans or quasi-humans. Harry wondered quietly to himself what the problem was, didn’t vampires have to be specifically invited in? But the Humnerë at Malfoy Manor definitely hadn’t been.

Oh shit. He was an idiot. If his thoughts had drifted there, then Malfoy’s certainly had. He looked back. Malfoy was facing away from him, perched on a stool he’d conjured, that floated a few feet off the ground so he could reach the higher wards. “Malfoy?” he said, very quiet.

“If you’re feeling either _bored_ or _invincible_ , you may go.”

“No, it’s not that.” Malfoy didn’t make considerate gestures easy. He swallowed, anyway. “If it’s hard for you… show me what needs to be added to the wards, and I can do this.”

“Why would it be hard for me,” he said flatly. He’d looked over his shoulder at last.

“Because….” Shit. Fuck. Malfoy just wanted him to feel stupid while he struggled to say this. “Sorry,” he muttered at last, unable to put the words together after all. “I’m sorry.”

Malfoy turned back around. His shoulders were very straight, his back very tight. Nothing.

But it was only another ten or fifteen minutes before Malfoy sighed. “Fine. This will go quicker if….” He slipped from the stool, tossing his hair back in efficient frustration. “Draw the runes for vampires, werewolves, centaurs, banshees, and mermaids,” he said to Harry, crisp and demanding.

The others he could understand. (Even werewolves – as the runes were written, it was only when the quasi-humans bore ill will toward the school or its inhabitants. Lupin should be safe.) But – “Mermaids?” he scoffed. “What, if the lake floods up to the door?”

A glare. “No. You idiot. You _sleep_ under the lake. Think about it.”

And he did, picturing the mermaids blowing up the underwater retaining walls and drowning Harry in his bed when the lake collapsed on him. Malfoy looked rather triumphant when he made a tiny choking noise.

He didn’t know the runes offhand – they weren’t ones he’d had any occasion to use before. Pulling his textbook from his bag, he flipped through it. “Here.” He traced the sigil for _vampire_ in the air a few times, a pointy swooping one that seemed appropriate for its meaning.

“If you….” Malfoy was scrubbing out one curled end of it. “If you extend it too far, it explodes.”

“Oh.”

With the textbook before him, he could write the runes well enough. “Leave the wards open,” Malfoy said, tying one into a ritual knot as deftly as Harry had seen Riddle do it. “I won’t want shoddy work preserved in them for the next year.”

“Right.” It was fine; he was bad at tying off the wards anyway. He wrote a new line of runes into the ward in front of him.

They worked; but it was slow. At around nine, Harry looked up with some skepticism at how many wards still needed to be altered. “This needs to be finished before the new year?”

“Yes.” Malfoy was on the other side of the arch, working much faster than him.

“Uh, will there be enough time…?” He didn’t know his own schedule for the holidays exactly. He might be back before the new year, and he’d help then if Malfoy would allow it.

“I’ll stay here. There will be time.”

Malfoy must have felt Harry’s throb of pity at that. He didn’t _mean_ to feel bad for Malfoy, he just did. In any case, Malfoy whipped around in a fury. “If you mewl at me you’re sorry one more time, I will hex your tongue down your throat.”

“I…. Right.” He let silence elapse. But then – “He’s sorry about them, too,” he offered.

He thought Malfoy would get angrier, and there was a flicker of it on his face, but then his affect and tone went very flat. “Is he.”

“Yeah.” It had taken Harry actual weeks to work out that Malfoy Manor and then the trials had affected him more than he’d expected because Voldemort’s emotions just lived in his head now, if they both weren’t careful about it. His grief had actually been _Voldemort’s_ grief, and wasn’t that interesting. “I don’t think he even fully recognizes what… what grief looks like.” He’d turned to look at Malfoy, who was still working on the wards, his shoulders immaculately straight. “But I feel what he feels, and he wishes… that it could have been different.”

“I’m so glad your boyfriend is _sorry_ ,” Malfoy said, scathing. “As though he’s even capable of it. How _tragic_ he must find it, that all the followers he would’ve had murdered himself won’t witness his ascent to the Ministry.”

Harry gaped. He would never, ever say anything right to Malfoy. “That’s not what I meant – “ he tried to say, but then Malfoy really did hex his tongue down his throat, and he was choking and sputtering too hard to think of anything better to say.

“Anapneo.” His gaze snapped up in surprise. Not Malfoy – _Snape_. Snape had ghosted onto the scene, probably coming from the library once more. Harry’s throat hurt. He swallowed hard. Before he could say anything, Snape went on: “The Headmaster would like to see you in his office, Mr. Potter.”

He stared, his brain misfiring from lack of oxygen. “Uh….”

The platonic ideal of a sneer. “Dumbledore, you fool. Go. Draco, come with me.” He spun on his heel. Harry didn’t earn another look from either of them.

He would never understand Slytherins.

In any case – he’d avoided Dumbledore up to this point, and Dumbledore had arguably avoided him, being absent in his frame when Harry had to portkey through his office. But – Well, he would go now, anyway. He didn’t know what would happen if he defied a portrait. He cast a shield around the wards so nobody else would disturb them, and then he went.

The tower seemed infinitely more desolate since it wasn’t often trafficked by humans anymore. It felt like a mausoleum, an archive of dead things. Harry was a bit on edge when he pushed open the door, lighting the lamps with a flick of his wand.

Dumbledore _was_ waiting, not in the frame above his desk but a lower, smaller one off to the side. “Good evening, sir,” Harry said, trying and failing to keep the reluctance from his voice.

“Harry,” he beamed ( _as though everything were okay_ ). “Come in. It is very late, I apologize. But I let this term get away from me, and I didn’t want to end the year with any animosity.”

It would be pointless and embarrassing to deny there was any. Harry sank into a conjured chair. “Well.” He scoffed the carpet with his shoe.

“Alastor has advocated rather significantly for you.”

Had he? That was… surprising, really, especially since Moody had warned against going to the portrait with too many expectations, that it wouldn’t solve anything. _Gryffindor courage_ , he chanted in his head. “What has he said?” he began too cautiously, anyway.

“That you deserved a loving childhood.”

“Oh.” He’d conjured the chair slightly too big, so he was nearly swimming in its velvet embrace, and maybe that was why he felt so young and small now. “I did, yeah.”

He would break if he had to say much more. Dumbledore had asked for this meeting; he could talk. “It would have been much easier a discussion for me if I hadn’t loved you,” Dumbledore said. Harry wanted to stab the canvas. He remained quiet. “You thought rather more expansively about ensuring your own safety than I was able to imagine, or than I knew of. If we’d known of the Horcrux from your childhood – we could have arranged your life much differently.”

This was unsatisfying. Moody had warned him against yelling at the portrait. It wouldn’t help. He’d been back to the therapist a few times, but they hadn’t spoken of Dumbledore yet. I couldn’t be his confidant in this matter. “I… I would have done anything to belong, once,” he said. He’d said it to Voldemort and Hermione and Ron and Remus, variously. How much he tried to substitute any sort of belonging for a family. “I wouldn’t, now. I don’t need to sacrifice myself to make anyone _love_ me.”

He didn’t even say it bitterly, but he couldn’t be that desperate boy anymore. He _did_ still feel immediately inclined to throw himself in front of any sort of conflict, so it was a process.

“Harry – “

“I’d die for the world, if I still had to,” he said fiercely. “but there are worse things than death.” The thing Moody had said to him, that had devastated him.

Dumbledore’s hands were pressed together as if in prayer as he thought. “Of course there are. You must feel so disappointed.”

It was a bit mild for what he felt, honestly. “Did you want me so broken, sir?” And now he was angry, vicious. These were safe feelings, ones that held him together. “You watched me grow up, and you did _nothing_. You told everyone I was _fine_. I….” He swallowed. “I pulled the worst memories from my mind. When I watched them again – when they didn’t feel like mine anymore – how did you do it?” he asked. He was incoherent now; it didn’t matter. “How did you forgive yourself for being so uninvolved in my childhood?”

“I might have been able to answer that in life – “

Harry made a disgusted noise in the back of his throat. Moody had been right.

“Harry, I am so sorry,” the portrait said with urgency. “I asked too much of you in expecting you to die. I certainly asked too much in asking you also to suffer.”

His look must have been so flat, so dead. “Don’t tell me you loved me,” he said, his thoughts coming together. “Everyone who’s hurt me just because they’ve hated me was more ethical. I’ve been so _fucked_ , to think that suffering means love.”

Dumbledore didn’t flinch. “Is this about Voldemort, as well?” he asked. “I failed him also, but in rather different ways.”

It would have been so much simpler if Dumbledore hated Harry as he’d hated Riddle. “No,” Harry said. “We don’t talk about you. He won’t… interfere, in the rest of my life.”

Dumbledore took this in. “I see.” He was unreadable.

“I’ll never hate you. I’ll never betray anyone else.” It was more blunt than he’d ever been able to express before. I did make him reckless in also making him fearless. “But I… I think I need to deal with your death,” he finished, only realizing it himself. “This won’t help.”

Dumbledore’s look was sad and deep. “It all would be inadequate,” he said. “But may I offer you anything?”

“No, sir.” He slid from the chair. “Happy Christmas.”

“You, too. Beloved boy.”

He couldn’t. Couldn’t say how much he _wasn’t_ , anymore. He got out.

\\\\\\\ ////

**_I haven’t even got the words to explain my childhood, and how I feel about it now. I couldn't tell him what I wanted, maybe because I’ve already got it already. This is as good a life as I can have now._ **

Voldemort wasn’t reading what he’d written. Their Occlumency was rigid and complete. He really didn’t want Harry to be involved in whatever was happening to him right now. Azkaban, probably. Fuck.

Maybe it would stop when the Death Eaters were all dead or sentenced.

His quill hovered over the parchment, as he was reluctant to put any other turmoil on Voldemort, in that moment. **_Does loyalty mean standing by someone even when they’re wrong?_** he wrote at last. It sounded absurd. He rolled over to sleep.

 

 _Thursday, December 24._ He would spend Christmas Eve day with the Weasleys, departing from their home to the Ministry’s ball. “A Yule ball,” Hermione said darkly as they levitated their trunks up the narrow staircase. “The solstice was days ago.”

He grinned, but he didn’t tell her Voldemort had written the same thing. ( _If they’d prefer to celebrate Christmas, they should say that. Don’t contaminate the name of Yule._

 ** _How would you even celebrate Yule?_** Harry had asked.

_It’s a night of darkness. Subterfuge and arcana are more effective. Time slows._

Harry rolled his eyes as he wrote, **_That sounds cozy_**.)

“I’m going to fix your hair tonight,” Ginny announced to Harry, as they pulled Hermione’s chest into her room.

“Is there a spell that will grow a beard in a few hours? I really wish I’d grown it out this week. I look like a child in the papers.”

“Ooh, the _papers_ ,” Ginny teased, as they brought his chest up. “Don’t worry, you always look like you’re of an appropriately fuckable age.”

He grinned at her. Hermione, normally unflappable, was blushing at this. As though to bury the words, she asked, “Have you ever grown out a beard before?”

“No.”

“Best not risk it, then,” she said grimly.

Ron was in his room, clearing out space for Harry’s trunk. “I don’t need a bed,” Harry reminded him, seeing a cot in the attic. “I’ll be back tomorrow morning.”

Ron wrinkled his nose. “Right.”

“You’re _welcome_ ,” he said, to see Ron and Hermione go red.

He hadn’t figured out how much time he’d spend at the safehouse. Or how much time Voldemort would be allowed out. He’d been dodgy, and the Aurors indifferent. (“You can’t be anywhere _but_ the Weasley house or the safehouse,” Brightbone had said, “but otherwise….” She waved her hand.)

So Harry put his gifts beneath the tree and then returned to Ginny’s room, where they all crowded around the vanity to watch the feat of taming his hair. Ginny smeared Sleek-Eazy’s through his mop of hair and then set a pair of self-combing combs on it, but it was Hermione who took the lead. “How would you feel about cutting off a bit?”

“Uhh….”

“Great,” she said brightly, brandishing her wand.

Ron and Ginny could tell him at least secondhand what Ministry balls were like. “Doesn’t matter if you don’t know them,” Ginny said briskly, when Harry said he’d know nobody. “They’ll find you if they want to talk. I recommend you lie.”

“What?” he asked, startled.

Shrug. “Say something funny, so we can read it in the papers. And then the retraction they’d have to print. They’re all….” A vague gesture. “All the important people will go to the papers, if there’s anything in it for them.”

Honestly, he didn’t read much of what was written about him and Voldemort, but – “They’re mostly too embarrassed to write about us.”

“Good,” Ginny said decisively. She plucked the combs from around his head, using one to sweep his fringe from his face. “Scar or no scar?”

He groaned. What a hideous question. “I don’t know.”

“I can make it look like an accident,” she offered.

“Do that, yeah.”

“Coward,” the mirror said.

 

So Harry had to go put on dress robes while Arthur and Molly arrived home, shepherding the kids into cooking Christmas Eve dinner. It sort of hurt. He loved Christmas now. Tomorrow, tomorrow he’d be back with them.

His dress robes were light blue, with dark blue embroidery at the wide wrists and along the back, which would drag if not for a levitation spell. (“I’ll trip on this,” he’d objected to Madam Malkin. She’d stared, before casting a simple spell that would sweep the fabric subtly away from his feet. “What _have_ you been doing this entire time?” Not that, apparently.) The buckles along the front were silver. The neckline was high enough that the portkey to the safehouse could be worn at his throat. He wore, for now, the improvised ring. He had the others in a pocket, quite safe.

The reaction when he went downstairs to meet Kingsley, his escort there, was surprisingly positive. “Look at you,” Mrs. Weasley beamed, moving to hug him before she re-thought this, her hands doused in marinade. “Doesn’t he look wonderful?” she demanded of Fred and George, who were shelling peas with increasingly imaginative spells.

“Darling,” said Fred.

“Adorable,” agreed George. “Give Voldie a kiss from us, yeah?”

If they hadn’t been in front of their parents, Harry would’ve told them quite colorfully to sod off. Instead, he grimaced, shooting off a spell that mobbed their face in moths. Mild pandemonium ensued.

Kingsley was quiet when they departed the house. Partway through the field, on the way to the second apparition point, he said in a low tone, “Don’t feel pressured into answering anything you don’t want to. People will be insistent.”

“The journos?”

“Well… everyone, really,” he said. “They’re very curious about you.” His tone was apologetic, as if he’d caused this personally. “The Aurors can be summoned as usual; we’ll be on the building’s perimeter. If anything goes wrong… we’d rather find you at the safehouse. Both of you.”

“Yes, sir. I’ve got….” He lifted the portkey chain from his neckline, just enough.

“Good,” he said, when it caught the light. Reaching the designated spot, they apparated.

They arrived on a floor Harry hadn’t been on before. They weren’t in a crowd, but he could hear the buzz of one nearby.

“You’re meant to arrive with Voldemort,” Kingsley said. “He’ll be in the eastern corridor somewhere….”

“Oh.” He nearly laughed. “I can find him.” The cord at his heart pulled at him, stronger than ever. Kingsley motioned for him to lead the way.

He was in the eastern corridor, surrounded by a small crowd of Wizengamot members. “Good to get _that_ business out of the way,” Apollo Bright, the vice chancellor of legislation, was saying cheerily. He’d procured a glass of whiskey for himself.

But when Harry and Kingsley arrived, they slipped away, not quite guilty. Kingsley, too, left. Voldemort was brilliant where he stood – his robes were gleaming white, so weightless that the bottom might have been made of mist. “You look like a god,” Harry murmured in Parseltongue, his breath sticking in his throat.

He was only amused. “And your hair lies flat, for once.”

He grinned, crossing the space as if their magic were magnetic. Voldemort wasn’t without magic this time, either – his presence was pliant and comparatively warm. “What are we doing here?” Harry sighed, pressing a hand to his arm anyway, for the flash of pleasure from sharing magic.

A cluck of his tongue. “To usher in the year with symbolism of unity and security – even you would see the value.”

“But what do I _do_?” Harry persisted. “Nobody will tell me what to say.”

“Ah.” He looped Harry’s arm in his. They still spoke in Parseltongue as they walked. “Tell them you will cherish the work we’ll do with Muggles in the new year. That you’ll work diligently on securing peace with and between our worlds.”

“Should I tell them we’re engaged?”

It was awkward to ask, and he’d expected Voldemort would be hesitant to answer – but once more, amusement. “I believe they know.”

“ _Oh_.” He reached for his pocket. “Let’s do this here, without photographers.” He stopped them, reaching for the jewelry box. “I got real rings.” He pulled the improvised ones off them both.

The platinum was brilliant in the light. The rings were wide, more visible than the previous ones. He slipped Voldemort’s onto his finger. “There.”

Quietly, Voldemort took the box, mirroring his action. “Thank you.”

“Let me tell them,” Harry said. He was so… proud of Voldemort, that they could be in each other’s lives.

“You hardly have got to. They will only ask _why_. To what end.”

“Uh….”

He elucidated. “There is some popular support for our marriage as political alliance. Ms. Granger isn’t alone.”

He groaned. He’d been skipping articles about them recently. “I can say that if you want.”

“I don’t.” He let Harry’s hand go, delicately.

“Then, should I tell them we’re desperately in love? Or that I don’t want to live without you? I don’t,” Harry said, at Voldemort’s raised eyebrows.

“I think they would be intrigued by that,” he said, unexpectedly careful. “I could narrate, but it’s your… charm that’s rather more important. Everyone wants to like you.”

He’d been so braced for an antagonistic night, this took him by surprise. “I guess, yeah. I haven’t been great at making papers love me before,” he said wryly.

“Not the papers, the public.”

“Or them either,” he said easily. “I’ll try, tonight.”

“Good boy,” Voldemort agreed. They were only a few hallways from the ballroom now; and they slowed to a stop. “Some of the Muggles are present. Say hello to them, and wish them a happy, wretched Muggle holiday.”

He would never not be annoyed at the trickles of Muggle culture entering their wixen world. And yet, he wore an engagement ring for Harry. “From the both of us, then?” he asked with a smile.

A curve of his mouth. He continued: “I must meet some of the foreign dignitaries. You should speak with whom you’d like – they’ll want _your_ company, anyway. What should I tell others about you?”

Harry blinked. “I dunno. Whatever’s true and boring.”

The curve of his mouth grew more acute. “Good. If they ask you about me – and they will,” he added darkly, “you may say that I’m quite satisfied with the political progress we’ve made in the past six months. Tell them that the new year will be prosperous, that the Ministry will make them proud to be Britons again. Or,” he said at Harry’s expression, “you can tell them that you’re here as a private citizen, and I will answer their questions directly.”

“Thank you,” Harry sighed in relief. “I mean – it’s fine, I’ll say all that. I said I’d campaign for you, didn’t I?” he asked with a crooked smile. “But no, thanks – nobody else would tell me what to do here.”

“That is because they believe that sincerity and spontaneity are enough to carry charm.” He took Harry’s arm again, so their magic flared against one another. “Are you ready?”

“Yeah.” He was still twisting his engagement ring around his finger.

The media wasn’t so bad – there was a long carpet, cordoned off, with journalists on either side. “Switch me,” Harry muttered, pulling his arm from Voldemort’s. He pulled his arm into the loop of his own, instead.

Voldemort glanced at him. His posture was tighter, more precise, than Harry’s; he adapted to the position anyway. “Why?”

“So I look less like your bloody fucktoy.”

This got a smile. “They only _imply_ such things, these days.”

“Right. Still.”

“Fiancé, then?”

He was taking their betrothal with grace. “Yeah,” he said. “And… if _you_ need to tell anyone that it’s political, you should. Don’t, I don’t know, put yourself in danger on principle.”

Voldemort didn’t answer, but ran an affectionate hand over the back of his neck. They turned to the reporters, switching to English (“All night, you will _want_ to be overheard,” Voldemort had murmured), and the brilliant display of unity that they performed in public.

Once inside, Voldemort pulled away. “The French ambassador is here,” he said, nodding to a woman with a pompadour standing with a few other foreigners, judging by the fashion of their robes. “The Muggles are….” He scanned the ballroom. “Overwhelmed,” he finished at last. “The Muggles are overwhelmed. They’re probably in a corner somewhere. Please go fix them.”

“Oh my god,” he said, but smiling.

“We’ll need to be together again when the orchestra assembles.” At Harry’s mildly panicked look: “It’s a _ball_ , Potter. You didn’t expect to dance?”

“I haven’t thought of dancing since fourth year, and I wouldn’t have at all if I hadn’t been champion.”

He waved this off. “I’ll lead. The first and last dances are for partners, the others are political. You may tell people no. Or tell them you’ll follow.”

He felt now _exactly_ what it meant that this was the most visible night of their lives. “I’ll do it. I mean, I want to.”

“Good.” Another step back, but he said lowly, still in Parseltongue, “Thank you. Your presence is valuable. If you don’t enjoy tonight… I have something better for you at home.”

( _Home_. He’d always made fun of Harry for referring to the safehouse as such, before. Now wasn’t the time to make Voldemort feel self-conscious, however.) A mischievous smile slid on his lips. “Has it got to do with a spanking?”

“I would never deny you. But no. Look.” He raised his angular jaw in the direction of a knot of Muggles, Antonia and Derek Munro and quite a few Harry didn’t know. “Wish them a happy Christmas,” Voldemort said, and then they parted for real.

Harry took a flute of champagne from a passing tray – it floated on its own, navigating the crowds more deftly than Harry himself did. Snow fell from the ceiling, fading just before it’d pool on the ground. There were trees that were approximately Christmas trees floating in midair, but instead of flaring into a stump, it grew in a diamond shape, with another point at the bottom. Shimmering décor moved over the trees as if on ribbons.

Toni waved him over when she saw him. “How is school?” she asked, quite sympathetic. Apparently it’s what the Muggles had been told, that Harry was too busy in school to be fully immersed in their politics yet.

He offered a smile, nearly sincere. “I gave exams this week, yeah.” The Muggles were edging toward him cautiously, like they were too impressed by what they’d heard of him. He thrust his hand out, at a young-ish man in a crisp gray suit beside him. “Hello. I’m Harry.”

It was better when he found they all knew… _who_ he was? _What_ he was? Toni ended up taking this question for him. “He’s worked alongside Voldemort a lot. They created the shield. He’ll be the diplomat, properly, after the end of the school year.”

See? It was so easy when someone else did it.

He ducked from the Muggles when they’d exhausted the conversation. Across the room, his heart skipped a beat when he saw someone who could’ve been Bellatrix, cascades of dark hair and an angular body. But – no, god, of course it was Andromeda. She’d been peripherally involved in some Order matters, when they needed a safehouse of their own. Harry hadn’t seen her since the massacre of Malfoy Manor. He hadn’t even talked to her then.

Before he could, however, a wizard in burgundy robes swooped before him. “Mr. Potter.” A Wizengamot member, one Harry knew to be high up, but they’d never met. “I’m Taz Swinton, Deputy of Justice. How is your evening?”

“Good, sir.” Swinton was a sharp, fast talker; Harry barely held still. “Happy Yule.”

“These aren’t Yule trees,” he said with an impatient wave of his hand upwards. “Nor will they survive after tonight. Such a mismatched creation never could.”

That was… unsubtle. “Ah,” he agreed blandly. “Well, in any case, good luck with the work of the new year….”

“Come with me.”

He stared. “No, thank you.” He couldn’t pull his wand out – he wasn’t in _danger_ – but he was uncomfortable. Nobody was looking in their direction.

Swinton steered them into a corner anyway. “What are you doing with the Slytherin estate?” he asked, triumphantly.

This really wasn’t having him dead to rights as Swinton thought. “We’re restoring it. Well, _I_ am right now,” he babbled, “the preservationists will be around after the new year. I’ve kept it from him as a… gift,” (this wasn’t the right word but neither were any others) “but everyone else knows.” He glanced around to find other eavesdroppers; finding none, he returned to Swinton. “I’m not keeping secrets for any clever reason. If you’ve got to tell him….” He made a vague gesture. “Then you’ve got to, I suppose.”

Swinton’s look was sharper and more calculating than he’d expected. “No,” he said. “Take the house. Give him a _home_ , while you can.”

Whatever Swinton had wanted to hear from him, he’d failed at. “I will,” he agreed. They were drawing apart.

“Circe’s blessing on your engagement.”

“Thank you.” He realized with concealed horror that if they ever held a massive, politically significant wedding, the Wizengamot would be invited. Bowersock would likely be invited. He wanted to gag. Swinton was moving toward someone more important in the crowd; Harry escaped.

He looked back toward where Andromeda had been. Still there, flanked by… well, not Ministry employees. A witch and wizard, who carried themselves as Malfoy did, too well-bred for the company. He’d come back to her later. He took a canape from a floating tray, before sinking against a quiet wall.

He didn’t wait long for someone to approach him. He did a double-take to see Slughorn, holding a flute of something that sparked and fizzled. “Good evening, dear boy,” Slughorn greeted him easily. “Happy Christmas.”

He swallowed the canape too quickly. “You too, sir.”

“It’s… clever, bringing you here,” Slughorn said. “Well done.”

How could he explain how little he wanted to be here, that this was a favor to the Ministry that would be reciprocated by relative freedom to spend Christmas with Voldemort. “Yeah,” he said at last. “I didn’t realize anyone from Hogwarts would be here. I’ve been at the Weasleys’ all day.” He didn’t know why he was apologizing. He was so bad at this.

“Oh, yes…. Minerva, Filius.” He gestured to them, across the hall. “Severus begged off, you know how he is. Have you met the school governors?” He brightened. “It would be quite good for them to hear how your term has gone. Allow me to introduce you.”

“Oh – yeah – of course.” He straightened, pushing his hair from his face habitually. It crackled with magic and product. “Thank you, sir.”

So that’s where he ended up for the next twenty minutes, telling the governors what a bright group of students they had this year, and what a rewarding challenge it was to teach a post-war generation. He found it so much easier to charmingly bullshit about anything but Voldemort.

Throughout, Slughorn stayed in the same group – not beside Harry properly, but sticking close and casting uncertain glances at him occasionally. It took him far too long to realize what Slughorn wanted. In a lull in conversation, when neither of them were particularly engaged, Harry drew toward him again. “Should I introduce you?” he asked lowly.

Slughorn’s plump mouth went tight. “I don’t want trouble.”

“Oh – no – “ He didn’t even know what that meant, really. He was scanning the crowd for Voldemort. At last, standing on his tiptoes, he spotted him making politic gestures to wixes that must be foreign dignitaries, dressed in robes with unusual flared collars and patterned fabric. Harry turned back, serious. “He’d be happy to see you, I think. He’s never, I don’t know, resented you. Or wished you harm.”

Slughorn gave a nervous laugh that got caught in his throat. “He’s pursued me since his rebirth. I knew of his….” He couldn’t say _Horcruxes_ ; Harry nodded him on encouragingly. He looked at Harry, very serious, his light eyes wet and deep. “I failed him,” he said solemnly. “I excused every moment of darkness I saw in him. I shouldn’t have.”

This was… funny wasn’t the right word, but something like it. _Dumbledore_ had failed Riddle in this way; Harry had a much harder time applying it to Slughorn. “He doesn’t resent you,” he reiterated. “I think he likes you still.” _Relatively_ , it went without saying.

It was wrong: some measure of disgust now mingled with the fear on his face. “I will never belong to him. He was brilliant – but I’m not so opportunistic.”

Was it Voldemort who had told him that Slughorn had befriended the past six ministers? He was clearly hedging his bets. And yet… he was so scared, and so determined. “I’ll stay with you both,” Harry offered. “I’m used to him. He doesn’t…. He knows the effect he can have,” he said. “Oh – here.” Voldemort was pulling away from a dignitary dressed in a kimono-cut robe. Harry ducked into the crowd. He _felt_ Slughorn’s reluctance, an anxious mess behind him. Harry forgot who – _what_? – Voldemort was, until these moments.

“ _Vol_.” Parseltongue as they reached him. “ _Be good_. Here, Professor Slughorn,” he said, switching to English and scuttling out of the way.

Voldemort didn’t hold out his hand but dipped into a bow that looked very old and very formal. Slughorn returned it, without fully dropping his gaze. “Professor,” Voldemort said, very casually beckoning Harry to his side because they all understood his role as a buffer. “How is Hogwarts? I didn’t expect you to return, but I’m pleased you did.”

“Are you?” Slughorn said warily.

He relaxed his posture, deliberately but it might pass as natural. Nearly smiling: “You were very important to me when I was young.”

He probably didn’t mean it to be mocking. Slughorn was not ready for _sincerity_ from him, however, and stiffened. “You came to me asking of evil magic – magic I should have tried to warn you from – “ He fell silent as though the next words had choked him.

A wry twitch from Voldemort. “I’d created two Horcruces before I approached you about anything. Surely Albus informed you of this.”

“He didn’t,” Slughorn said evenly. (Nobody was brave enough to speak of Dumbledore with Voldemort.) “But Potter did.”

A glance by Voldemort down at Harry. “I did, yeah,” he confirmed.

Voldemort twisted an elegant hand in the air. The engagement ring caught the light. It might have been intentional. “Don’t flatter yourself,” he said lightly. “You didn’t set me on that path.”

“Oh – “ He broke off a sigh, because obviously the next word had been _Tom_ and Slughorn was not nearly brave enough for this. Harry felt Voldemort’s distaste anyway. “If I had been a better educator, I would have set you on any other one.”

Voldemort’s feelings were just… snarled. Sad and nostalgic and victorious and disgusted. He really had a pathological fear of his past – and perhaps _the_ past overall. How strange for someone who had conquered the flow of time in death’s direction to want so desperately to flee the past also. And then Voldemort was untangling their hands and their minds both. “Would you leave us?” he asked Harry.

A glance at Slughorn. No point in being subtle now. “Yes. Please,” Slughorn agreed. He was impossibly tense.

“I…. Sure,” he agreed, edging away.

“Don’t stray far,” Voldemort said. “I’ll need you back for the first dance.” Already a group of musicians were charming their instruments into place.

“I’ll be back,” he promised. It was… reassuring, in a way that Voldemort and Slughorn only had fifteen or twenty minutes together at most. Still, Harry watched over his shoulder as he left, to see Voldemort drop a powerful silencing charm around them both. Harry wasn’t finished with his first glass of champagne but took a second anyway, on his way out.

Good thing, too – outside the ballroom some journalists still mingled. Including Luna, he realized with delighted surprise. The Quibbler must have gotten its press pass back recently. She was sitting on a low bench, drawing an intricate diagram of… something. So relieved to deal with her weirdness instead of pureblood Ministry stodginess, he sat beside her. “Brought you this.”

“Thank you!” She beamed at him, her lava bracelets undulating toward her elbow as she reached for the flute. “You’re not enjoying yourself, then?”

“I am,” he lied. “It’s decorated really nicely. Um, everyone’s been interested in hearing about my time teaching.” (This was slightly untrue; they waited patiently as he rambled, waiting for him to say anything about Voldemort. But what _was_ there to say about Voldemort, really?)

“Did they take any of your blood upon entrance?” Luna asked, fascinated.

Harry blinked. “No,” he said. “It’s all still where it’s meant to be.” Before he could ask the obvious follow-up question, he realized – “Where were you, at the beginning? I didn’t see you, when all the papers were lined up.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Those are the stories they _want_ you to hear,” she objected. “Nobody says a single true thing there. I went in search of the stories they don’t want you to know. These are the kitchens,” she said, holding up her diagram. “The house elves were all too cowed to speak, but the working conditions are terrible. You’d think the Ministry would at least be so considerate as to install stoves and countertops at house elf height.”

The idea of a foot-tall oven nearly made him smile. “You’ve been talking to Hermione, then?”

“Yes,” she sighed. “Funny how the ones least familiar with our world are the ones most suited to critique it.”

“Yeah,” he said, not entirely sure what he was agreeing to.

Luna scribbled a narrow passage on her map. “This one, they must have to crawl through.”

Harry didn’t ask why the house elves would crawl through a tunnel when they had both magic and, you know, a door.

“This looks cozy,” another voice pierced the dim hallway. Harry didn’t quite suppress a groan when he looked up to find Rita. “Don’t you have more important company to keep, Potter?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.” Reluctantly he swept his robes up, so Rita could sit on his other side. “Don’t you?”

She scowled. “We’re not allowed in until the dance has begun.”

Oh. Shit. Making the second half of the ball just excruciatingly performative. Damn.

“Anyway, as good as I’ve been to you, your avoidance was unprofessional.” She pouted jewel-toned lips.

He hadn’t thought about it when they’d entered – Voldemort just had very certain ideas about which news outlets were worth talking to, and Harry had followed. But, considering it now, he had to laugh. (A curious look from Luna; a glare from Rita.) “I can’t imagine he, y’know, likes you much.” Actually now he was sad Voldemort _didn’t_ speak to Rita, for that confrontation. “He’d probably prefer you never published your article.”

“ _Our_ article,” she said acidly; and she was sort of right, that this strange group of three had brought Voldemort back into public existence.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “I don’t think I owe you anything, though.”

Unexpectedly she crossed her legs, coquettish. “I noticed he did most of the talking,” she said, her voice going velvety. “But we’re all very interested in how _you_ are faring. It’s been a tumultuous year for you.”

“He had more to say,” Harry said. “I’m still a student.”

“Would you agree that’s generally your dynamic?”

“Are you writing the letters that call me a catamite yourself?” he asked dryly. (After he’d smothered the even more uncouth question, _Are you asking who fucks who_?)

A click of her teeth. “You must have quite a lot of feelings about this accusation. What would you say to your critics, Harry?” She was pulling out a notepad and – oh no.

“Give me that.” Seizing the Quick Quotes Quill, he snapped it in half handily. “This nearly ruined my life,” he said, dropping the pieces into the lap of her sable robe. “My friends are all I’ve got, and you nearly ruined that last time, with your rubbish.”

She tucked the pieces away with exceptional grace, taking out an uncharmed quill. “But now you’ve got a fiancé,” she transitioned smoothly.

“Yeah.” He looked down at his hands, the platinum band glittering. “We’re doing this, then?” he said reluctantly.

“Just a bit, darling. Everyone is _so_ curious. And they’ll feel _so_ much safer when they know the truth.”

Would they? He nodded faintly.

Rita lifted her gaze over her cat-eye glasses. “Out, Lovegood.”

Luna was doing some sort of calculation alongside her diagram, but she looked up with a smile. “Oh, no,” she said. “I’m Harry’s second.”

Rita looked at them both in exasperation. “She’s my second,” Harry confirmed.

“What does that even mean,” Rita muttered, but she loaded her quill with an ink cartridge.

So he told her how wonderful Voldemort was to him, how smart and patient and thoughtful he’d been. He spoke in defensive terms, even if he didn’t really mean to. “He’s given me back a home and family and some sort of belonging, so.” He made a broad gesture. (He was _terrible_ at giving newspaper quotes. It could be mistaken for sabotage, how unusable all his quotes were.)

“So?” Luna prompted, both because precision was important to her and so Rita couldn’t fill that gap with what she liked.

“So… not that we really believe in forgiveness, but we’ve forgiven each other. My life is much better with him.”

“Some people find it very romantic,” Rita said, with a look that made clear she was not among them. “Others say you’re too young, too impressionable, too desperate to belong….”

He choked on his anger. “If that’s what you think….”

“No,” she crooned. “Prove them wrong.”

“There is literally a prophecy that we are equals. I am so happy,” he insisted. “Nobody else understands what it’s like, sharing a soul.”

“What is it like, then?” she prompted.

He smiled. “Warm. Safe.”

She blinked at this. Restarting her train of thought: “Which of you proposed?”

He really couldn’t remember. He thought Voldemort had asked for the marriage, but Harry had asked to live together first. “We both did?” he hedged.

This was a useless answer, he saw it on her face. “Tell us a bit more,” she prodded. “Set the scene for your readers. Was it romantic?”

If he had to tell one more person they were getting married primarily so he could have Voldemort’s corpse back, he’d vomit. “I can’t say.”

Her platinum eyebrows arched. “Many people are saying it’s politically beneficial. We know that you’re already – _integrated_ into his armistice. Is this a new alliance for a new year?”

Voldemort had told him to say anything but he really didn’t know the answer to this. “Everything is political,” he said, one of Voldemort’s own brush-offs.

Her brow knitted now. Luna looked delighted. “Indeed,” Rita said slowly, without writing anything down. “So, it will be an alliance?”

“Like every marriage,” he said. “But I…. Are people missing that I’m not important? I’m not any sort of _figurehead._ ”

“Of course you are,” she said smoothly. “You always have been. The Ministry is quite pleased that you’ve grown into your role as – if this isn’t too forward – the Chosen One.” He must’ve made a face, because she leaned in. “Or do you object to the title?”

He raised his eyes to the paneled ceiling. “Maybe,” he said. “But we chose one another. We chose this relationship. You’ve got to write that.”

“Of course,” she appeased him.

Luna had her head tipped back, listening in the direction of the ballroom. “Oh, I think the orchestra has started.”

“Oh – shit – “ Scrambling to his feet, he pulled his robes into place. “I’ve got to be in there – sorry – bye – “ He dashed away.

The room was shifting as he entered – the high top tables sliding toward the edges, a dance floor opening in the center. Voldemort looked only slightly impatient when Harry slid in beside him. “I lost track of time.”

“Where were you?” He switched to English. They wanted to be overheard, was the implication.

“I sort of – accidentally – gave an interview to Rita Skeeter?” he said by way of apology.

But his mouth only quirked. “Good.”

“Uh, is it?”

“You’re better suited to her brand of _journalism_ than I am,” Voldemort said. “What did you say?”

“Mostly how much I love you.”

He felt more of a reaction than this typically got. They never said it in English. It was so _stark_ in English. But Voldemort only said, “That will mortify you when it runs, I’m sure.”

“It will mortify _you_ ,” Harry said with a smile. “You’re not allowed to read it. It’s going to be disgusting.”

Voldemort’s expression was softer as he ran a hand down Harry’s back.

By now they were all gathered as the edge of the floor, waiting for Scrimgeour to make a statement. And the journalists were all gathered at the back of the hall, quills and cameras poised.

The minister’s statement was brief, wishing them good holidays and the luck of Circe in the new year. When he descended the dais, the orchestra moved into place.

“Just follow,” Voldemort murmured, taking Harry’s hand. “And don’t look at them.”

 _Them_. Everyone looking at Voldemort and Harry. They weren’t the richest or most famous or most powerful couple on the floor, but they were the most interesting _as a_ couple, at least.

“And look happy,” Voldemort added, pressing warm magic between them as a distraction and reassurance.

Harry shook off his nerves. They could be alone together in the midst of a thousand people; nobody else grasped his soul in the same way. “I am happy.”

They fell into a waltz, a simple one that Harry more-or-less knew. He appreciated robes in a new way, how they swept the parquet in elegant circles. He could match the rise and fall of the waltz to his breathing. He wanted the rest of the world to recede. Their rings brushed one another’s palms.

As the dance progressed, they could draw closer together, less poised and more intimate. “Was Slughorn okay?” Harry murmured in his ear, reverting to Parseltongue.

A curve of his mouth. “What did you expect to happen?”

“What did _he_ expect to happen,” Harry responded. “I would have stayed, if he’d wanted.”  


Voldemort’s gaze scraped the crowds along the edge of the room, until he found Slughorn, speaking with one of the governors. “He is not brave,” Voldemort said, nearly as a concession. “But nor is he so ideological that he’d just… apologize for apology’s sake. Or perhaps he does, these days.”

“And you?”

“What, apologize?” He sounded appalled. “Harry, I haven’t even _done_ anything to him. He’d be safe, regardless.”

“Well, good,” Harry said. “But no…. Was it good for you to see him, too?”

He was quiet, looking down to concentrate on the dance as he thought. Finally he said, “I don’t know how humans can bear to live with their entire lives behind them.”

Harry might have gaped. He might have felt something like pity, which hurt both of them. No – they were being watched. He set his face and feelings right. “Taking my memories of my childhood was one of the kindest things anyone’s ever done for me,” he said instead.

A flicker of a smile. “Good.”

“Is there anyone I should talk to tonight?” he asked, navigating to a safer topic while they were so prominent. “Is there anyone I should introduce you to?”

He meant it lightly, but Voldemort had a real answer. “Yes,” he said, “actually. Do you know Andromeda Black?”

“Oh – yeah, a bit.” He was still somewhat hesitant to say anything of the Order to Voldemort. “I was going to find her, anyway. To say sorry.”

“Yes,” he said, rather grimly.

“I’ll take you with me.”

“Thank you.”

The dance was drawing to a close, the strings dying out one at a time for an ethereal effect. Harry was oddly reluctant to let go – of course they hadn’t danced before, but he wouldn’t mind doing it again, the way their magic pulsed between them in time. To Voldemort, however, he only said in muttered English, “How are you so bloody good at everything.” An amused hum.

Andromeda wasn’t far; Harry ducked through the crowds to get to her. Ted saw him first. “Harry,” he lit up. “Andy said you’d be here.”

“Yes,” she said, coming up behind her husband, looking at Harry in a way that suggested she’d been watching for him too. “Dance with me? I’ll lead,” she added at what must have been a very obvious nervous look on his face.

“Uh – yeah. Yes,” he amended. “Thank you.”

Ted cleared out. Voldemort hadn’t followed him, but he should probably get Andromeda’s permission before dropping Voldemort in her lap, anyway.

The first violin struck up. Andromeda was taller than him – the Black sisters all had the precarious, lithe bodies of fashion models, and they all styled themselves to match. _Had_ , Harry thought darkly. Bellatrix and Narcissa had _had_ the bodies of models. Regardless, taking Andromeda’s hand felt about the same as taking Voldemort’s. The dance began, and he was back in the same lilting motion. “I… just came to say that I’m sorry,” he began, rather lamely. “I haven’t had a chance to say it yet.”

“Thank you.” A moment’s pause. “Was she… gone by the time you found her, truly?”

Bellatrix had been animated by a vampire’s magic, more than a corpse but much less than a human. “Yes,” he said, miserable. “I’m sorry, he asked for her body, but they wouldn’t….” This was a mistake.

Andromeda only clicked. “I don’t care for the bodies. Muggle superstitions. But how upset our mother would be to find I survived them. That there are so few progenitors to the line, either.”

Harry bit his lip. “Would you…. Draco hates me, a lot,” he said boldly. “But would you make sure he’s alright?” _To the extent that that’s possible_ , he didn’t say. Christmas had always been the most painful time to be orphaned, and that was even when Harry had grown up knowing no different. “He said he’s staying at Hogwarts for the holidays.”

Her perfect eyebrows arched. “He said he was traveling with a friend to Switzerland.”

“I really don’t think so.” Shit. He wasn’t usually a narc, not even concerning Malfoy, but…. He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. Are you alright? Is Tonks? She won’t say anything about it.” He was seeing quite a lot of Tonks recently, mostly alongside Ginny, but she’d just clearly closed off those feelings in herself. Not that Harry was any great expert on feelings.

“You are kind,” Andromeda said. “We are doing well. It was a complex relationship, and their deaths come with a great amount of ambivalence.”

Harry wondered if what she felt was at all what he’d felt himself, learning of Vernon’s death.

“They would have been here,” Andromeda said. “All of them. Even Bella, as unpredictable as she was after Azkaban, was still powerful enough to hold the Ministry’s attention. There is no morality attached to power.”

“That can’t be true,” Harry said, a bit desperate. It was one thing to hear it from Voldemort. But Andromeda was _good_.

She smiled faintly. “You’ll have done something quite extraordinary if you ever compel a government to organize itself according to morality instead of power. Although, thank Merlin we haven’t got a significant enough theology to impose a theocracy.”

“Have you been involved with the Unification?” Harry asked, struck that he didn’t know that. “We are trying to do things differently. I mean, _they_ are, I’ve barely been involved….”

She shushed him with a smile. “You will be talented in your position,” she said. “And I’m only involved insofar as I’m a voting member of the Wizengamot. I am asked to speak on pureblood interests more often these days. You understand why.”

Because there was nobody left. “Yes.”

She cocked her head. “History will take note that Voldemort’s bid for a purified world thoroughly accomplished its opposite,” she said dryly.

“Yes,” he said again, more hesitant this time. “Uh – he wanted to speak with you, actually. I could introduce you. Or if you’d rather not, I could tell him no. He understands how people feel.”

Somehow, even though he was so bad at this, Andromeda found it amusing or charming or something. “We need no introduction,” she said. “We will have quite a lot to discuss, I think.”

He faintly sagged in relief. “Thank you.”

Voldemort wasn’t dancing, but was off to one side speaking to one of the Namibian scholars Minerva knew. Harry and Andromeda waltzed in that direction, so that he might hand her off at the conclusion. Just before the song drew to a close, Andromeda said lowly, “The Wizengamot trusts what you’re doing. And that, if there is any grace or peace left in his wretched life, it will be because of you.”

He nearly stumbled, surprised as he was. He was even touched. “We’ve done it together,” he said at last. “All of it.”

“I see.” She only sounded thoughtful. And then the song drew to a close, and they were near enough to Voldemort that Harry could catch his eye. Andromeda’s expression didn’t change as he approached. “Lord.”

“Lady,” he returned. He passed a mostly-full glass of wine to Harry. He and Andromeda joined hands – not the waltz they’d both dragged Harry through, but something more complicated and sophisticated, their clasped hands held high around their shoulders. He got out of the way.

At the edge of the room, he was more free to people-watch. Somehow out of the nervousness of looking after Voldemort and Andromeda – and he wasn’t the only one interested in them, he noticed – he drained the wine glass. He’d been too anxious to get drunk earlier, but this was nice. Voldemort and Andromeda remained for a second dance, still in a low and serious conversation, and by then Harry trusted mostly that nothing terrible would happen. He went to find food.

Over olives and canapes he spoke with a few of the committee on educational reform. “Popular support is growing rapidly, with so many purebloods out of the way,” a mild-mannered wizard named Birch said casually, as though this weren’t terrible. Harry must have blanched. “What?”

“There must be plenty of purebloods who aren’t Death Eaters, though.” This _had_ to be true. The Weasleys and Lovegoods might be eccentric blood traitors, but the Longbottoms were still respected. (He’d sort of expected Augusta here, actually.) Or the Diggory family, or the Abbott family, or….

Birch laughed faintly. “Oh, no. You spend too much time with him,” he said, more lightly than it warranted. “It’s just that, we see that it will be a different world than the one we knew.”

There was sadness in this. There was erasure in it. It wasn’t his place to promise any different. “We’ll make a world that everyone benefits from. Really, he cares about continuing the culture, and I care about not letting anyone get hurt.”

His expression was unreadable. “You’re a good lad, Mr. Potter,” he said, before excusing himself. As usual, he had the sense that he’d fucked something up; but he couldn’t even say what.

Nobody else asked him to dance, thank god. When he’d circled the room to ensure he’d talked to everyone who waited, to talk with him, and wished all the important Ministry people happy holidays, he at last took a seat beside Luna again, who was hunched in the corner writing furiously. “Nobody will even tell me what this snow is made of,” she said, scarcely looking up. “It’s probably fluoridated.”

He didn’t know what that meant, but she said it as though it were a bad thing. “Should you be sitting in it, then?” Bits landed in her hair, sparkling as they melted.

“I’ll self-report my symptoms tomorrow,” she said, following his gaze to brush the snowflakes off her swirled braid. “Our surveys have always gotten very low participation. Tell me if you start swelling,” she requested seriously.

“Swelling?”

She nodded. “Fluoride causes swelling in your extremities. It’s also supposed to attract the Grim, but that’s just superstition.”

He raised his champagne to his mouth to hide his delighted expression.

After approximately forever, after he’d taken Luna’s directions to the kitchen so he could request coffee in place of wine, the player-less instruments were slowing. Voldemort found him before he could find Voldemort, for the final dance. Harry swallowed the dregs of his coffee; Voldemort watched in amusement. “You’ve been such a good boy,” he said, and Harry blanched before realizing it was in Parseltongue, that those words wouldn’t end up on tomorrow’s front page. “If it wouldn’t cause _such_ a scandal, I’d throw you over my shoulder as you slept, to carry you home.”

He fantasized about this. It just wasn’t practical. It made him smile anyway. “I wish you would,” he said, rising for the last dance.

It was slow, it was dark. The ceiling had been enchanted to sparkle with stars much brighter than the real ones outside. Most of the journalists and some of the guests had departed already. “Let me hold you,” Harry murmured. “I don’t care how it looks.”

Effortlessly, Voldemort dropped Harry’s hands at his neck, with his own hands at Harry’s waist. They touched everywhere. Even as relatively chaste as this was (or was it? He hadn’t worked out how the wixen world exactly felt about sex) and even if they could actually fuck as soon as they were alone, this had an intimacy to it that burned. He dropped his head to Voldemort’s shoulder, inhaling his dry musk. “Are you happy?” he murmured, low but in English.

“Quite.”

He hummed. “I hated Christmas when I was young.” Dudley’s birthday may have been more excessive within the household, but Christmas had an existential horror to it, like the entire world was happy without him. “I love it now, though. Just… the chaos of it all, that we’re all trying to pull off a perfect holiday together. But then, I’ve only really celebrated with the Weasley family, so….”

A breath of amusement across his forehead. “Presumably some households are more sedate.”

He grinned, his teeth scraping Voldemort’s collarbone. “I really like it like this, though.” To a more somber thought – he switched to Parseltongue because this might be a matter of national security – he asked, “How long will you…?” _Be out of Azkaban._

“At least through the new year.” Of course Voldemort understood what he was asking. “Some of that will be spent with the Ministry, or on the shield. You should spend as much as you’d like with everyone else.”

 _Everyone else_. How he longed for a life that wasn’t bisected between Voldemort and _everyone else_. “You do mean more to me,” Harry said, too sincere. Before Voldemort could protest, he added, “Someday we’ll have a house that’s perfect for having everyone over, and someday that will be normal. And you can talk about politics with Hermione and Luna, and you can talk about whatever you talk about with the Aurors anyway, and if you want anything to say to Ron and Ginny you’d better get a Quidditch team. Oh,” he said. “And you can play wizard chess with Ron. He’s brilliant at it.”

“Surprisingly, I never excelled at chess.”

“All the better. He’ll be really pleased, then. You’d better be a gracious loser.”

It wasn’t roleplaying like in sex, sharing a convoluted scene between them – but then, it sort of _was_. It had become a familiar sort of comfort to Harry, planning out their life together as though it were much more stable than it truly was. He’d pass along his imagination, but – he wouldn’t be able to conceal the Slytherin estate, and it was still _so_ uncertain. “Invite Scrimgeour,” he said instead. “He likes you. Somehow.”

“We have a working relationship,” Voldemort corrected.

“He’s the only one who understands all your clever literary things. Or, the only one who finds them funny, at any rate.”

“Yes. Tragically. His mother was Muggleborn, taught literature at a boys’ school. Perhaps I’d win more of the Aurors over if they were more literate.”

Harry looked up to roll his eyes at this. But then he hesitated before his next question, anticipating the feeling it would stir in them both. “Can we celebrate your birthday?”

But Voldemort’s magic remained unmoved. “Why on earth would you want to? The boy who was born that day has long since died.”

Ow. Still, he pursued it. “It’s important to me. You’re important to me. That’s all.”

“If you’d like,” Voldemort said, too indifferent. “It signifies nothing.”

“That’s alright.” He pressed a kiss to the hollow of his neck. They were both disarmed in the quiet darkness, marked only by strings and the meditative motion of the dance. In a quieter tone, knowing he’d find the answer inevitably tragic: “Did the orphanage celebrate birthdays?”

Voldemort made a skeptical noise. “If you mean, were we expected to be at Mass on our saint’s day, then yes.”

“That’s not what I meant at all,” he said, sad and exasperated, because of course he knew that. A beat. “You’ve got a saint?”

“Saint Thomas Aquinas,” Voldemort said in a sigh, reluctant to conjure the name of his childhood, “though his feast day isn’t until January. The nuns said it was close enough, and good enough. They said I was like him.”

Aquinas. Harry scarcely knew the name. The Dursleys had never had anything particularly flattering to say about the Catholics, anyway. “ _Were_ you like him?”

“No. He was very fat.”

Harry had to stifle a surprised, delighted laugh into Voldemort’s shoulder, and all the tension of the conversation dissipated. Voldemort swept him easily along the parquet in the last insistent measures of the song.

The cello died last, its deep notes reverberating in the floor. Then candlelight flared up a bit brighter. “I must make a gracious exit,” Voldemort murmured. Back to English. “Would you join me?”

“Yeah. Of course.” From the dance floor, Harry slipped his arm into Voldemort’s, and they went to wish everyone happy hols. And even if they circled the room rather perfunctorily – neither of them were adept at this much socializing – it felt really nice that, of all the wixes they approached, not one gave a second look to the way they moved as… partners. Lovers. Soulmates. As though it were just accepted that they belonged together now.

Finally, they could portkey out, from just a few corridors away. Harry was actually leaning against Voldemort as they opened it, letting it pull them away.

He’d been about ready to kick off his dress shoes as soon as they returned – but the ground crunched beneath his feet. Snow, and another bright sky. “Oh,” he said, charmed.

The house was dark, but lines of votive candles glowed in the windows, along with the silhouette of a tree. Harry nearly ran inside.

The tree was beautiful, arranged in the center of their sitting room. It was dotted with tiny glass bells, which caught the light of the candles balanced on its branches. “It’s perfect,” Harry said, with an embarrassingly dewy smile, as Voldemort entered behind him.

“You need to sit on the sofa and close your eyes.” He pulled Harry onto the upholstery.

He had an unlikely recollection of his first Christmas at Hogwarts, in disbelief that there were also gifts for him, when just his inclusion in the day already felt so… generous. He didn’t have any other words. Voldemort left briskly.

Harry kicked his shoes off. Finally. He was unbuttoning his robe from the collar when Voldemort re-approached the landing. “Close your eyes.”

“I am.”

“You’re a terrible liar, Potter.”

With a grin he ducked his head, eyes closed. Voldemort descended the stairs. And then he was in front of Harry, and something warm was dropped in his lap. Warm – and impossibly soft – and _wiggly_.

It hurt to smile any harder when he looked down, to find a puppy. Not a regular sort, but one with wings. The face was sharp like a terrier’s, the coat white and tawny, and the wings above its front legs the color of burnished brass. “Hello,” he said gently. When he reached to pet it, it lunged at his fingers, playful and full of energy. As it grew excited, it fluttered a few inches out of his lap.

“They called her Moira. It means fate, or fortune.” When Harry looked up, he made an elegant twist of his hand. “The runt of the litter. She wasn’t meant to survive. I assumed you’d appreciate it.”

“Yeah.” His voice was soft, even as he drew his hand closer and then farther, letting her chase his fingers.

“She’s an Aralez. From the Armenian mountains.” Voldemort sat beside Harry, taking the puppy in his lap with relative grace. “For the first year, she probably won’t fly any higher than eye level. After that – well, they’ll never reach the altitude of owls, anyway.”

He was running his fingers over her wings, glinting in the candlelight. “She’s perfect.” He had a very funny feeling in his chest.

“And….” He uncharacteristically hesitated. “If the dungeons aren’t an ideal place to keep an adolescent Aralez….”

“Just say puppy.”

“To keep a puppy,” he agreed, even if the word didn’t fit in his mouth, “then you might ask Hagrid to take her in? If he still lives on the edge of the grounds.”

“He does, yeah.” His chest was impossibly tight now, and somehow impossibly warm as well. They didn’t talk about Hagrid, in the same way they didn’t talk about Dumbledore. Harry had told him once (really, _yelled_ at him once, more or less) that getting Hagrid expelled was the worst thing he’d ever done. This was, if not a proper apology, something analogous to one. “He’ll love that. Thank you.” He scooped Moira against his chest, before leaning in to kiss Voldemort deeply. He had to stop, with a laugh, when the struggling puppy between them grew bored and so squirmy.

“I’ll take her out,” Harry said. “Can we have sex tomorrow?” It had been a long day. And he just felt… satiated already.

“Yes. Of course.” Getting up, he tangled his hands in Harry’s straightened locks, mussing it thoroughly. “I prefer you with messy hair,” he said lightly, and Harry grinned at him even as he ascended the stairs.

They slept with their bodies pressed together, as usual, but Moira climbed and pawed and whined and nipped at them both until, at last, she was set between them.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Voldemort and Harry would like to remind you that pets are not just for Christmas, but for life <3 
> 
> Allusions for Chapter 21:
> 
> “A pound of flesh” – The Merchant of Venice by Shakespeare.
> 
> Not that marriage as political alliance is a particularly novel or unique concept, but I’m thinking most specifically with [Resolution’s Ease, by Nimori](https://web.archive.org/web/20090628050155/http://www.nimori.slashcity.net:80/fiction/viewstory.php?sid=63) and [Connubium, by eldritcher](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7889503/chapters/18020923).
> 
> Some of how a house’s magic works is inspired by [What We Pretend We Can’t See, by gyzym](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9794657/chapters/21995357).
> 
> St. Thomas Aquinas – medieval Catholic saint and philosopher. He was known as an intellectual and established a lot of influential theology. Also known for being fat (by medieval standards).
> 
> Aralez – from Armenian mythology, a winged dog with the power to heal wounds by licking them, and to resurrect dead warriors.


	22. Chapter 22

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A Christmas party, a birthday party, a murder.
> 
> (Warning: scene about sexual abuse. Also this chapter is one-half fluff, one-half pretty rough consensual sex, and one-half terrible things happening.)

_Friday, December 25._ Harry awoke on Christmas morning with Voldemort’s tongue in his arse, warm and slick. Voldemort held his thighs back, with his pelvis tilted up, so he was splayed open. He was already sort of hard. “Mm,” he muttered, sleepy and content. “That’s really….”

“ _Shh_.” His mouth was just above his wet arsehole, and the cool sensation made him buck. Made them both, actually; as entangled as their bodies and minds were.

Voldemort sucked and licked and thrust and nibbled, a bit. When Harry reached for his own cock, Voldemort seized his wrist. “Allow me,” he said.

So his back arched as he got eaten out, his cock brought hard with a few precise strokes. And then he was throwing one leg over Voldemort’s shoulder, drawing him in close. His hips pumped, desperate.

Voldemort’s other hand fingered him around his slurping mouth, thrusting and scrubbing deep enough to hit his prostate. Again he bucked with a delicious groan, his balls tightening. Voldemort pressed his mouth against his hole, sucking relentlessly, until with wild thrusts and a sob that stuck in the back of his throat, Harry shot come up his stomach. Voldemort pumped him empty, until there was nothing left inside of him but a warm, wonderful ache. He fell back against the pillows with an incoherent laugh. Voldemort dropped his legs, falling beside him.

After a time, when Harry was not so shattered, he rolled over. “Let me blow you,” he said, but he was drawing himself onto his knees beside the pillows, moving as though they’d 69. And he was libidinal but not _that_ much. Voldemort raised his eyebrows, catching Harry’s hips – and then when Harry put a knee to his throat, he groaned. “Alright?” Harry asked.

“Yes.” He sounded more than alright.

He dipped his head to take his cock in his mouth. His flesh was a familiar taste by now, deep and musky, and every time they were together, Harry was so relieved that he still remembered it. He was still rather boneless, and his motions sloppy, as he pressed his weight down gently on Voldemort’s throat. Voldemort slammed his hips upward and Harry did his best to swallow his length.

He left their Legilimency open – it was safer that way, and he didn’t mind the euphoric dizziness, anyway. So they’d both go slack after a time, lungs burning, Harry’s mouth fully open around Voldemort’s cock. He’d pull his weight off for a moment. Again. It was deliberate and meditative. It was just so filled with… trust.

Their thoughts were interwoven now too, and this strange feeling-thought-word made Voldemort’s cock twitch against Harry’s tongue. He would’ve smiled. He swallowed deeper, no longer gagging when the tip hit the back of his throat. He dropped his weight onto his fragile, beautiful throat once more.

And then Voldemort’s hands were on his hips, not to pull him off but to pull him _down_ , insistent. Pre-come tinged the back of his tongue. Their chests heaved, desperate and hungry and so close. And then, when Voldemort was about to slip under, he gave an empty cry, his fingers tightening. He came, and Harry swallowed him greedily. He slipped in and out of awareness – that the only thing he could feel was the surge of his own body. It was glorious.

 

Some time later, when they’d cleaned up but hadn’t dressed, they went to put on tea. Harry laughed to find Moira curled up, reproachful even in her sleep, on one of the sofas. “You sexiled the dog.”

Voldemort blinked, but it really was a self-evident neologism. “I did. Isn’t that what people do? I am not self-conscious, but she is very young.”

This was hilarious. He couldn’t stop laughing as he went to let her out.

 

Tea, the papers, the puppy. Harry had written to Ron through their shared parchment that he’d be at the Burrow for breakfast, so they didn’t have a lot of time this morning. “ _Please_ spend the day with them,” Voldemort stressed once again. “I’ve got work to do.”

“Do you? That’s tragic.” Moira was at their ankles, until Harry scooped her against his chest. “Can I take her, though? Actually,” he frowned, “ _can_ I portkey an animal? I’ve never tried.”

He hummed. “Give me your portkey.”

Since Harry wasn’t wearing a stitch of clothing, this was a hilarious request. Where was he meant to keep it? “ _Accio_ my portkey.” It floated to him, from where he’d dropped his formal robes last night. He passed it over.

Voldemort took a seat at the table, laying it flat before him. He used his fingers as Harry had so often seen Riddle test the wards, finding the strand of the charms, and then, with a force of magic that stung between them, making them visible. “Here. You know runes well enough to figure it out.”

“That’s it?” he said, flabbergasted. “The Ministry’s portkeys shouldn’t be that easy to break into. Or whatever,” he said, seeing in Voldemort’s expression that this was the wrong analogy.

“What do the wards say, Harry.”

He shot a glare over the portkey. But, looking at it, it really was simple. “Nobody can use it but me.” He ran his finger along the knot in the ward that said so, his name stark in runic. “So… I can add her to this, is all?”

“Yes. In a sense.” Voldemort was pulling the medal back toward himself. “Animals haven’t got nearly so unique a magical signature as humans. They can be included by species.” Pulling the ward in a loop to create a new knot, he drew his wand. “I don’t know the rune for an Aralez. But this is the one for canines.” And he drew a looping symbol. “There. Don’t let in any werewolves. And – “ he looked more serious now than he should, “if the Aurors are annoyed that your portkey’s been tampered with, send them to me. They may be angry with me instead.”

He gave a sad smile. “You haven’t got to, I dunno, _absorb_ everything for me.”

“We spent so much time negotiating how to get you out from between us. Don’t trivialize it.”

This was true. Voldemort had agreed to swear on his magic, just so Harry wouldn’t be Britain’s lynchpin. It was important. Meeting his gaze: “I know. Thank you.”

“Of course,” Voldemort said in a sigh, “now we’re still mutually committed to you, in a slightly different fashion.”

He shook his head, amused even. “No, I… Thanks,” he said again. He took the portkey, tying off the new ward himself.

Upstairs to dress, in jeans this time. He would not miss the dress robe. He collected Moira’s food and chew toys in a tote. (Voldemort had, somehow, shopped for dog toys, bright and clever ones. It was delightful to even imagine.) At last, with Moira to his chest and a bag over his shoulder, he stood before Voldemort in the entryway. “You’ll be okay?” he asked once more, unnecessarily.

A curve of his mouth. “Please go,” he said. “I’d say to give them my best, if anyone would believe it.”

With a laugh, he kissed Voldemort once more.

 

The Burrow was already in full swing, with sausage on the range and sticky buns in the oven and the twins tipping slightly too much brandy into his coffee. He had held Moira close to his chest when he first arrived – did she even like people, or noise, or this domestic chaos? But Ginny saw her first, and at her besotted “ _Oh_!” Moira’s tail thumped against Harry’s ribs.

Everybody asked about her, then, and nobody asked about the ball, and this was a relief. Until Ron slid onto the sofa beside him with a strangled, “How was last night,” in a way that implied he’d already heard or read or seen _something_. God knows what. Had Rita already gotten an article out? She couldn’t have slept, then.

With perfect honesty, he scrunched his nose up. “Everyone was so much more important than me.”

Somehow, Ron was relieved at this. Slapping Harry on the back: “Think that’s your life now, mate.”

Hermione dropped on the other end of the sofa. “You must have talked to some impressive people.”

Had he? Voldemort knew all the high-ups, but Harry had only said perfunctory things to them. “I talked with the Hogwarts governors. And a few wixes from the department of education. Oh. Andromeda was there,” he said, because Ron and Hermione knew her as well, had used her home as a brief hiding spot as well. “She was… as okay as she could be, I guess?”

Hermione dropped her gaze, but Ron gave him an incredulous look. “She helped corner them to begin with,” he pointed out. This was true – last spring, she’d been a significant help in luring the Death Eaters to their own capture.

Everyone at Malfoy Manor had died in a strange, disgusting way. He didn’t want to talk about it; so instead he shrugged. “And Luna was there. As press, you know.”

“Lovegood?” Arthur called from the kitchen. He poked his head in from the kitchen, his face smeared with flour. “I invited them over, but Xeno said today was the best day for ice fishing. They’re going to catch – I think it was frost lampreys?” His tone made clear that these were not a real thing. “He wasn’t there, was he? Last I heard, Scrimgeour threw him out.”

Harry couldn’t quite refrain from smiling. “Just Luna,” he said. Looking to Hermione: “She was investigating the house elves’ conditions in the kitchens. Did you send her on a mission?”

She puffed up like Crookshanks. “Some people actually care about oppression.”

Oh, this was going to get them to a bad place fast. They had both put a lot of effort into civility. “She had a diagram of the kitchens, last I saw. I’m sure it’ll be in the next paper.”

This diverted them enough. They went to let Moira chase the chickens. Later, when they opened gifts, Harry pulled his deep red jumper over his head with relish.

And Tonks stopped by bearing a tin – “Can’t stay, sorry. But Dad made you… I think scones?” She rattled the tin. “Sounds like scones.” She tangled her fingers in Ginny’s hair on the way out, in a way that might’ve been mistaken for playful, and Harry realized with faint horror that Arthur and Molly might not even know they were dating.

Ginny caught his look. “Tell them, and I will hex you.”

She had always been much smarter than him. “But… you’re going away together next week.”

“I told them she’s got a friend at this Spanish charms research institute I want to look at. And… she does, and we might, but.” She shrugged. “They’re _so_ much more protective of me than any of the boys, it’s grotesque. It just… won’t go well until I’m out of school, at least.”

“They haven’t disowned me yet,” he said, trying to keep it light, “and I’m seeing someone a hundred times worse.”

She flashed her teeth. “I think we’ve all given up on you,” she said sweetly.

“Bloody thanks,” but he was laughing.

 

It took the four of them, and Fred and George, to cast enough snow to make a bank for sledding. Charlie arrived later, holding a baby pseudo-dragon in a onesie. “The rest of the litter is big enough to be alone for a few hours, but Thalassa won’t stop crying if she goes an hour without attention…. Oh, hello,” he said cheerily to Moira, who’d bounded-skittered-fluttered over to the new arrivals. “Who is this?”

“Moira.” Harry moved to pick her up out of everyone’s way, but she fluttered just out of reach. “Voldemort gave her to me.”

Pause. “Ah.”

Nobody reacted to his name like they used to – nobody flinched or whimpered or shushed him – but the room went a bit cold.

And then Charlie shifted the pseudo-dragon in his arms. “Is she friendly with animals?”

“I’m not sure,” he said. “You could try?” He was pretty confident they could break up the tiny animals if necessary.

Charlie set Thalassa down. The two of them circled each other. Then Moira threw herself into a low crouch, and when Harry was about to grab her again, before she started a fight – instead, she whipped around, bounding out the open front door. Thalassa dashed after her. They were both so bad at flying, gaining little more than long skips in the middle of their sprints. They dove into the snow. The room’s tensions melted.

Chaos. He loved familial chaos. It felt like home. He went join everyone in the kitchen, to drink spiced mead as Charlie recounted his most recent dragon-rearing.

Then Bill and Fleur arrived, happy and exhausted already from spending the morning with her parents in France. “Bill’s accent iz atrocious,” Fleur said affectionately, combing her fingers through Bill’s hair. “Zey find it very funny.”

The kitchen spilled out into the sitting room, as they caught up. Bill had been in South America recently, raiding Aztec tombs. Fleur had begun at Gringotts awhile ago as some sort of backroom clerk but had recently moved into international trading – a job which, apparently, she was brilliant at. They both wore clothes well anyway, but now it seemed like they wore especially nice outfits. They would have such cool, attractive babies, Harry half-thought.

A few of Arthur’s coworkers popped in through the Floo for awhile. Neville sent a glittering card, saying that he was taking his gran skiing in Switzerland for the first time. (“At her age!” Molly gasped. But Arthur had only smiled. “Augusta will outlive us all.”)

Finally, halfway through dinner prep, Kingsley arrived. Harry tensed momentarily – even if Kingsley wasn’t in Auror’s robes and was ostensibly only here for well wishes, he had the connotation that he was around generally when something was wrong. He shook it off.

Kingsley leaned in to peck Molly’s cheek. “Happy Christmas.”

She beamed at him, summoning a purple woolen scarf to wrap around his neck. “Would you stay? Dinner won’t be long.”

“No, unfortunately, I was just nearby and thought I’d stop in….”

All this was mundane enough that Harry mostly stopped listening, because it wasn’t about him. So he was actually surprised when Kingsley said, “And Harry?”

He barely hesitated before passing the marinade brush to Ron. “Yeah?”

Kingsley brought him into the entryway, quiet and empty. “How was last night?”

“Fine. Good. Everyone there was much too important for me.”

A twitch of his mouth. “Perhaps,” he agreed. “May I see your portkey?”

“Oh – “ He was pulling it from around his neck, getting it tangled in the warm mass of his jumper. “We had to change it this morning, sorry – it was really early and it didn’t seem worth summoning you, when we could do it ourselves – “ Kingsley still held his hand out, so Harry dropped the medallion into it.

“We were concerned that you hadn’t known it had been altered. If Voldemort wouldn’t endanger you like that, it would be done remotely, and that is quite unprecedented magic….” He held his wand straight down over the medal, until his magic made the wards along the edge glow. It wasn’t anything like Voldemort had done, opening the portkey like peeling an orange, but that had probably been the brute force method. Kingsley raised it to eye level to examine. “Alastor was concerned it was some plot to abduct you. To change the location, for example. You understand how simple and devastating that would be.”

He tried not to react too much – not at all, if he could. “I know.” Kingsley wasn’t thinking of the Tri-Wizard Tournament; why would he. But Harry was fighting back feelings he generally buried.

“What is this, then? The portkey is open to… dogs?” he asked, voice full of doubt.

Harry had to smile. It would be the best thing he’d get to say in awhile. “Voldemort gave me a puppy.”

Kingsley took his time in speaking, but even then the silence was long and profound. “Did he?”

“An Aralez. They’ve got wings. She’s….” He gestured to the door, “still outside, chasing the pseudo-dragon.”

He was at a loss and it was glorious. “Don’t…. That’s fine,” he sighed. “But the portkey’s security is weakened each time its magic is altered. Next time, we’ll create a new one for you.”

“Yes, sir. Thanks.”

“How _did_ he manipulate it?”

Harry shrugged. “Just sort of peeled it open.” He made the approximate hand gesture. “I know he shouldn’t be able to.”

“Not at all. That is troubling.”

Shit. Kingsley was better at keeping his feelings about Voldemort separate from his feelings about Harry, not like Moody, so Harry was less certain when Kingsley was annoyed with Voldemort. “He said to be angry at him and not me,” he said, “but… please don’t be angry, at all. We didn’t mean anything.”

Kingsley sighed through his nose, slowly. “It is our job to protect you. You shouldn’t feel as though you’ve got to circumvent us.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“It is also our job to protect Voldemort. Against all odds. He would do well to remember that.”

“I know. I’ll tell him.”

He patted Harry’s shoulder, even if he let his hand fall as though he were weary. “That’s all. Happy Christmas.”

“Actually – this probably isn’t the best time to ask – it’s definitely not – but could we have a portkey? It’s Voldemort’s birthday in a few days,” he said in a rush. And they stepped into a quieter part of the house to discuss it.

Puppies and birthdays. He softened Voldemort’s public image, certainly, but this might be excessive.

 

Dinner. Roast and mash and sprouts and so many puddings. Wine and mead and eggnog – the last of which Harry and Hermione vouched for as a thing Muggles consumed, eliciting an array of responses from the rest of them.

 Fred and George told them about possibly expanding to a second location. (“One for each of you?” Ginny suggested sweetly. -- “Don’t be obscene,” George admonished.) And Ron and Hermione told stories from their adventures in teaching Muggle Studies. After the hols, they’d be taking students to a post office and then the cinema, ‘if they can handle it.’ “We wanted to show them a bank, but the security….” Hermione shook her head, curls bouncing.

At last – they’d never moved from the table, as the dining room was warm and cozy and familiar and just _right_ – Harry was slumped over a half-mug of mead. He was so happy, he thought in a haze, watching Arthur tipsily dab whipped cream on the end of Molly’s nose.  He could never give this up. They’d demonstrated quite firmly that they’d never give _him_ up. He had to make this work, to keep everyone who loved him in his life.

At last, groggily, the washing up. And then Molly took Harry’s shoulder. “I am sending you back with food. You are so thin.”

This wasn’t remotely true these days. He smiled anyway as she heaped everything into containers, as he was utterly unable to say no. “This was perfect,” he said. It was only the two of them in the kitchen now.

She looked up with a rather dewy smile. “Good, dear. Will you be around, then?”

“I think so, yeah. Ron and I write, we’ll make time again next week.”

She nodded. “And….” Her throat didn’t work for a moment. Very low: “Is he good to you?”

His chest hurt. Not in a bad way. “Yeah. He really, really is.”

“Good,” she said, and dropped a pie on top of the stack.

 

Warm hugs, well wishes. Finding all of Moira’s toys to put back into their tote. Finding _her_. (On Ginny’s bed, exhausted from the day. Thalassa, on the other half of the bed, snoring sparks rather alarmingly.) Finally, weighted down with cargo, he apparated into the Ministry’s atrium (silent as the grave, with the barest of candles lit) and then portkeyed back to the safehouse.

The windows were glowing from the lit hearth, but the house was otherwise dark. He let himself in quietly, to find Voldemort asleep on the sofa, a book dropped onto his chest. Ovid’s _Metamorphoses._ He wanted to touch him – he looked so near to happy, and so near to innocent – but he didn’t.

Setting Moira, also asleep, on another sofa, he went to put the leftovers away. When he was nearly finished – god, they wouldn’t need to cook all week – he heard movement from the sitting room. “Harry?”

“Hi. I didn’t mean to wake you.” He backtracked, peering in.

“You didn’t.” And this was true, because the sneaky dog who had been asleep moments ago had bolted over to Voldemort, bounding on his lap and licking his hands as though she’d missed him terribly. He let her. Harry melted. “How was it?”

He was going to exhaust this word today. “Perfect,” he pronounced. “It was brilliant. Are you hungry? Do you want pie? Molly sent me back with so much food.”

He shook his head, setting Moira aside so he could pull his robes into place and put the book away. Harry returned to the kitchen.

If Voldemort had eaten, there’d been no evidence of it. He cut them each a slice of apple pie, anyway. Footsteps behind him; he beckoned Voldemort in, so they both fell across from one another at the table. Harry was probably glowing. “It was so….” He levitated forks over as he formulated his words. “Sometimes I thought I could choose. That if I _had_ to choose – nobody’s making me, I know,” he said, before Voldemort could say it, “I’d choose you and leave them behind. I couldn’t, though.” Breaking open the flaky crust, he said, not sad but just thoughtful, “It is so unfair that some people are just given… that.” Family and home and love. “From when they’re born. But I’ve found it too, eventually.”

Voldemort’s face lost its edges in soft lighting. “Yes.” It would hurt them both to say anymore.

 

 _Saturday, December 26._ The next day, Ron was going to Hermione’s parents’ home for the first time, and their shared parchment was filled with his anxious scribbling as Harry sat down to tea that morning.

_I think I got them the wrong gifts._

_Should I bring food? They said they didn’t want us to. I don’t know what food dintists approve of._

_Dentists. What if I say that wrong all day?_

_Do I offer to let them look at my teeth?_

_No, that would be mental._

_I think they drink special dentist-wine? They must, the regular sort turns your teeth purple._

_Do they know we’re teaching Muggle Studies? It might be weird to tell them. Or they might expect that I’m an expert._

_I can beat them in Mario Kart, but that’s thanks to Dad._

_You were brilliant yesterday, bringing the puppy. It took a lot of attention off._ (This was incredibly true.) _Nobody wants Pig, though._

_Should I ask them for their blessing to marry H?_

 

Harry nearly spat his tea across the table. Up to this point, he’d been writing back vaguely encouraging things, but at this his mind sort of ground to a halt.

“Mm?” Voldemort probably felt his reaction more than he saw it, still immersed in the Panopticon across from him.

“Nothing. Ron’s being stupid.” Picking his quill back up: **_She would never forgive you for asking her parents’ permission._**

_??? That’s what they do. We do it too, usually._

**_Not Hermione._** A breath, because they didn’t have such sincere conversations, especially not about this. **_You want to marry her?_**

_Yeah._

**_Now?_ **

Pause, then Ron’s words blooming on the page. _You are._

Oh. Well. They hadn’t properly talked about that, either. But he _had_ said enough to the journalists at the Yule Ball that they would’ve seen something in the papers by now. He levitated the teapot over. **_We’ve got to. And I want to. But we’ve got to._** Ron didn’t write anything, so Harry persisted. **_We live so long, you don’t need to start all that straight off._** (This was vague and hideous phrasing, but Ron would know what it meant.)

_I don’t know what comes next, though._

Oh. And once again they diverged, and once again Harry had the security and privilege that Ron didn’t. Voldemort or no, he’d always thought (if he lived, itself a sticky proposition) that the world would be clamoring to employ him: the Aurors or the rest of the Ministry, or some private defense-for-hire business, or even a Quidditch team. He could live off his family’s money not for life, but for a long while, if he wanted. **_I don’t know_** , he wrote. **_Does Hermione?_**

_Uni. She’s got a place at both Switzerland and Singapore. They’re so far away. She said she could do a mastery at Hogwarts if she had to, but it feels small these days._

**_Yes. It does._ **

_If she goes,_ Ron began, but then he crossed it out violently. It was clear enough, anyway: then she might not come back. And Ron was the jealous type, because he was the type who _did_ have to scrabble for everything he had in life.

Harry looked up. Voldemort was still reading the papers. “Can people apparate abroad every day?” He hadn’t heard of it, but he didn’t know why not. “Like living in one country but working in another. Not me,” he clarified, at his look.

“Yes. It would be unpleasant. International portkeys and floos need to be certified by the Ministries on either end, but that’s probably not so uncommon.”

“Cheers,” he said, without further explanation. To Ron, he wrote, **_I’m getting us a flat._** There was no response. Oh. **_The three of us_** , he wrote, because that wasn’t clear. **_I want to be able to have people over, and it won’t be the home I have with Voldemort. And_** , he went on, **_Hermione can get a floo or portkey set up, to come home at night._**

A pause, then: _How long can you keep doing both?_

**_Forever, I think. I want you all in my life, but you haven’t got to be in each other’s._ **

A large smudge of ink grew where Ron’s quill rested for a long moment. Then: _You’re a really good person._

He really, really wasn’t. He was greedy, in a way. He could have it all.

 

 _Tuesday, December 29._ Of course, _all_ being relative, because over the next few days it became really apparent that this concession of the Ministry’s, to let Harry and Voldemort have the holidays together, was in fact merely that they could be imprisoned together. Harry spent a lot of time ‘outdoors,’ chucking balls for Moira, who was inexhaustible. They cooked, they read, they fucked. By the end of the weekend, Harry was a little stir-crazy. “You should go out,” Voldemort said over breakfast on Tuesday.

“Yeah?”

“I’m required in the Ministry.” At Harry’s frown, “For rather routine matters. The new year will begin in peace, I think.”

“Oh. Good.” It hardly made him anxious anymore, to think of Voldemort with the Ministry. He didn’t offer to go with, because he really didn’t need to. “I’ll go out, then, too. Hey, what cake do you want for your birthday?”

He said it normally, as mundane as he could make it, but there was still that hook behind their breastbone. Voldemort was still so bad at being loved. “You should decide,” he said.

“That’s not how it works.” A moment. “ _Please_ say someone’s given you a cake before.”

A flicker of mirth. “Yes,” he assured Harry. “I was quite beloved at school. Or pursued, in any case.”

“What about the Death Eaters?”

Actual amusement, now. “Our relationship was professional, not fraternal.”

Damn. He would have been so thrilled to hear of the Death Eaters bearing cake. “Can you tell me it’s true anyway?”

“You are ridiculous.”

 

Voldemort left first. Harry, after having been in touch with Ron, made it back to the Burrow mid-morning. Molly and Ginny were out, but Arthur was home, along with Ron and Hermione. Hermione’s parents had sent Arthur a racecar, and he was so happy. “Look,” he said, maneuvering it deftly around Harry’s ankles. Then, more serious, he looked up. “Are you back at Hogwarts, then? You could stay here, if you’d like.”

He smiled at the offer. “No, I’m not. But he’s at the Ministry today, and I wanted to be out of the house.”

Arthur’s eyebrows, slightly grayer than his hair, went up. “The Ministry’s closed through the new year.”

Harry shrugged. Voldemort was at the Ministry after hours all the time. Security, he’d said. “I’m not sure,” he said apologetically. Arthur let it go.

 

The Aurors weren’t so worried about Harry’s safety in Muggle spaces – even if he couldn’t be without his cloak, portkey, and the malevolence detector on the end of his wand. They wouldn’t go to London, though – Hermione’s parents lived in St Alban’s, “and they’re visiting Uncle Joseph today but the house is still connected to the floo network, we might as well….”

They went. Hermione had grown up in the area, even if it no longer fit her, so she took them to a shopping center downtown. Harry had some faint thought that this was what typical teenagers did. They walked through an outdoor statue garden, even in the crackling cold, and past a couple buskers. Into the warmth of the mall.

Wizarding public spaces were _small_ , generally – even Diagon Alley was only the equivalent of High Street, not an entire commercial district. “How do they sell so much stuff?” Ron asked in quiet wonder, gazing up to the packed upper floors of the mall. “How do they _buy_ so much stuff?” Hermione only sighed.

Most of it, the wixes had an equivalent for. The escalators, wixes had moving staircases too, obviously. Ron had never struggled with the concept of film or television because wixes had moving pictures too – actually, they probably had them _first_. Anything automated, there was also a spell for.

“Did we just… converge, then?” Hermione asked. “The Muggles did with tech what the wixes have done with magic, but we all end up at the same place.” She looked at Ron with a slightly apologetic smile. “I thought I could show you something new here.”

Ron grinned. “I’m gonna get us coffees,” he said, motioning to a nearby coffee shop, “and then I’ll have Muggle change to throw into the fountain.”

Hermione was amused. “I don’t know that it’s got to be Muggle,” she said. But she let go of his hand so he could go. And then, when he was gone, she turned to Harry. “Ron said you wanted a flat.” Her tone was… not unhappy, exactly, but wary.

“Yeah.”

“He said you’d _pay_ for a flat for the three of us.”

“Yeah. I will.” They were both cautious.

“We don’t…. _Thank_ you,” she said, slowing herself, “but you haven’t got to do that, for us to keep you in our lives.”

“No. Of course not. But… then, there’d be a little less pressure for you to figure everything out immediately. He’s nervous.”

“I know.”

“And if I didn’t have this all… given to me, I would be too. Anyway, I need a place apart from him.” He was still so hesitant to talk to Hermione about Voldemort, but she’d need to hear this. “To have a place where I can invite people over. I wouldn’t… force him on anyone.”

“You think you can hold your life in two forever?”

She said it rhetorically, but he didn’t take the bait. “Yes?” She was unimpressed even when he flashed a smile at her. “People can choose, is all. Did you know I introduced him to Luna last month?”

She pressed her hand to her mouth, in horror or amusement. Likely both. “No. Why?”

“They wanted to. I didn’t stay, but it seemed to go well.”

“God,” she muttered between her fingers. But she wasn’t angry with him.

Ron returned, handing them paper cups. “What?” he said, at Hermione’s expression.

“Voldemort is friends with Luna, apparently.”

“Oh,” he said, his brow wrinkling in thought like his father’s did. “Figures.” But he wouldn’t explain what he meant by _that_.

 

The cinema was mostly empty. They took seats at the back anyway, casting a bubble of silence around themselves so they could talk and explain things and whisper clever things to one another.

The film was a romance, and about Shakespeare, so there weren’t so many references to modern things that Ron would miss. (They decided to skip the rom com about the internet.) And it was good, and it was nice to look at, and it was a bit novel for Harry too, as few films as he’d seen, and never in a cinema. Still, partway through, he was a bit… empty. Maybe it was the subject, maybe it was that Ron and Hermione had their fingers tangled together. He reached into their shared soul to find Voldemort, to brush up against his magic.

Nothing. _That_ was it, then. He was empty because there was a barrier between them. They normally had some feeling of one another’s presence. It was stabilizing. He sank deeper into his seat.

 

On the way back to Hermione’s parents’, he made them stop at Tesco’s. Into the baking aisle. They both stared. “It’s his birthday soon,” Harry said, unapologetic. “I’m baking a cake.” He dropped a box of candles into his basket.

“You are….” And then words failed Ron. He shook his head.

\\\\\\\ ////

Voldemort had left the door open for Moira – the ‘garden’ itself was bounded, after all – and she hopped-fluttered-bounded to him upon his return. She was always very impatient with being petted, much preferring to play, and even now she was pressing a ragged scrap of cloth into his legs. He pulled at it a bit before recognizing it as one of their pillows.

Only a mild amount of chaos inside, but – one pillow produced so much fluff, scattered all across the floor. “God,” he groaned. “You are a terror.” She darted away as though he’d chase her. So he did.

Voldemort came home later to find them both wiped out, nearly asleep on a sofa, Harry casting summoning charms for each bit of fluff, with his hand dangling over the edge of the cushion. “Hi,” he said. “How was the Ministry?”

“It will survive another year.” He lit the hearth with a wave of his wand. He was not quite so domesticated as to ask in turn, _And how was your day_ , but he had the look of expectation.

“Ron and Hermione and I went to St. Alban’s. She’d grown up there. We looked in some shops, saw a film. It was really… normal,” he said with a laugh. He’d pulled himself sitting by now.

“Doesn’t that life get monotonous?”

Voldemort… he didn’t know what he felt currently. He might be cooler. The sitting room _was_ still sort of a disaster. Harry cleaned up the rest of the cotton in a swirl, but nothing changed. Their Occlumency was still rigidly separated. “It might,” Harry agreed. “But I’d never been to a cinema before. I’m not sure I’ll be bored of it for awhile.”

“Mm.” He was undoing the tiny silver fastenings down the front of his robes, until it could slip from his shoulders to reveal his narrow chest. (Hadn’t he had a shirt underneath this morning? Harry was not detail-oriented, though, really.) “I need to shower.”

“Roast for dinner, then?”

“Yes.”

This was so…. He was never affectionate exactly, but he was wry and vibrant and clever in a way that was just _gone_ currently. Before he’d taken the staircase, Harry asked, rather hesitant, “Are you alright?”

Voldemort looked back, making an attempt to soften his expression upon seeing Harry’s concern. “It’s nothing to do with you.”

“Okay.” It was already obvious he didn’t want to talk about it. “Do you need anything?”

The ghost of a smile. “I entirely don’t deserve you,” he said. “As you know.”

He wanted to touch Voldemort, to hold him, if it’d at all be appreciated. “I love you.”

He made a tiny noise in the back of his throat. It was apologetic. He fled.

 

When Harry went upstairs later, he found the bedroom door closed, if not locked. He knocked anyway, because at the rare times the bedroom wasn’t _theirs_ , both of theirs, then it was Voldemort’s. No answer. Dinner was ready, though. He let himself in.

Voldemort was lying on the bed, above the covers. While the Panopticon hovered before his face, he nearly looked through it. “I’m not _broken_ ,” he said, a bit wry, when Harry approached so cautiously.

He flashed an apologetic smile, moving in normally. “I came to see if you wanted to eat.”

“Mm. Not yet.”

Harry sat at the edge of the bed, brushing his fingers down Voldemort’s arm. “Do you want magic?” He couldn’t tell if he had much, or any. Their Occlumency was still in place.

“Yes.” He sat up, against the pillows. “But I can’t be touched right now.” He offered his hands. The rest of him still looked contained, pinned in on himself.

“Sure.” He pressed magic in, to find that it felt entirely different, resisting him. “Your Occlumency….”

“Yes.” He edged it off.

“You’ve had it up all day.” At Voldemort’s look, he shrugged. “I just feel… empty? Incomplete? Different.”

“Ah. It was a necessity.”

They sat in the quiet for a long time. Voldemort wasn’t completely without magic, but near to it. Harry refrained from even wondering what had happened because he didn’t want to expose Voldemort to his own thoughts.

Anyway, he finally realized it when Voldemort went downstairs to dinner, and Harry stepped into the toilet to wash up first. His robes, still in a heap on the floor. For anyone else, it would mean nothing, but Voldemort was meticulous about such details. The scene of it emerged – that it’d been thrown off as quickly as possible, in a moment of crisis. Harry recalled that Voldemort had gone in for the Wizengamot today, with few people around. He swallowed.

Bowersock. Bowersock was still touching him and fucking him and abusing him. That Voldemort needed him reciprocally, needed whatever power and concession came from this abuse – He’d already made clear that he didn’t want Harry to be a part of it, that his decisions would be worthwhile if not without trauma. Voldemort had said on several occasions that he _needed_ Bowersock. Harry picked the robe off the tile carefully.

He would kill him. When he could, he would corner him and he would kill him. Voldemort didn’t need to know that. He wouldn’t want to talk about it; Bowersock was part of his political plans; Voldemort needed little from Harry, least of all a killing curse; Harry’s soul was meant to remain unrent anyway. But Voldemort wouldn’t do it himself, and… he should.

It gave him something cool and dispassionate to focus on. _When the moment is right, I’ll kill him_. It kept him from falling apart. God willing, it kept his feelings away from Voldemort, because he just deserved better.

 

The night was… complicated. They were holding their emotions separate, in unspoken agreement. Nearer to bedtime, Harry brought baobab to the sitting room for them both, and a jar of kaval to split. He’d already left dreamless sleep upstairs. He was about to offer to sleep in the other bedroom – the guest bedroom, as he sort of thought of it, even if they’d obviously never have guests – but Voldemort looked at him. “I don’t want sex tonight,” he said. “Read to me?”

Harry’s heart stuttered in his chest. “Yeah. Of course.”

“Good.” He drifted to his bookshelves to pick something out. “Have you read _The Picture of Dorian Gray_?”

“No. I have heard of it.”

He slipped a leatherbound volume from the shelf. “You’ll like it. It’s quite gay.”

Harry blinked but didn’t interrogate this, instead taking the book from Voldemort. “More Muggle literature. Unless – “ he looked down at the cover “ – Oscar Wilde was another secret wizard?”

“I _wish_ ,” Voldemort responded with faint joy. They were moving upstairs now. “No, Harry, most wixen literature is just… horrifying,” he said in a sigh. “It might be that we may alter reality too easily, that most wixies have got no imagination.”

“That can’t be right.” The world, his world, was infinitely more vibrant with magic in it.

“Pick up some wixie lit. You will be appalled.”

Ah. This felt okay. Voldemort was always more okay when being dismissive and arrogant to others. Harry glanced at him fondly. “I read Beedle the Bard awhile back,” he offered. “It’s a children’s book. Whatever this world calls fairy tales.”

“I know it.”

“You do?” He was incredulous, imagining Voldemort seeking out the children’s books he’d also missed.

“’Death searched for the third brother for a great many years, never finding him. Until at last, the brother took off his cloak, greeting Death as an old friend.’ It’s an invisibility cloak in that story, as well.”

Oh. He saw how it might stir Voldemort’s singular, obsessive interest. He shook his head in loving exasperation. “I really don’t think my cloak would be any great help in stopping death.”

“Mm.” They were in the bedroom now, peeling off their clothing. Voldemort twisted the dreamless sleep on his bedside table, but didn’t lift it to his mouth yet. They slipped between the sheets. “In any case,” Voldemort said, picking up an earlier thought, “artist grants are not _very_ high on my priorities, but they are on there. Perhaps contact with the Muggle world will breathe new life into their tripe.”

He grinned. He had a special fondness for Voldemort when he was withering and disdainful and just better than everyone. He flipped open _Dorian Gray._

Another romance. Or – Voldemort swore that it was not, that it was a gay horror story before anything else – but it opened on a delicate scene of flowers and gardens and an artist’s studio anyway. Harry didn’t mind, exactly, but between this and the luscious burn of the film earlier, it all felt quite foreign to him.

Much less so when Voldemort let his head fall on Harry’s shoulder, his breath ghosting across his collarbone. Though he generally preferred sarcasm and spankings to the wispy confessions and kisses of this other sort of romance… this was sacred. Their trust was sacred.

He kept reading. Eventually Voldemort uncorked the dreamless sleep, draining it. “Don’t stop,” he requested. Harry was careful, having not really touched him tonight, when he put a hand to Voldemort’s shoulder, kneading his tense trapezius. Their breathing slowed.

He could tell when Voldemort finally slept, because his Occlumency… loosened? Receded? Their magic fit back together in a way that felt natural once again. And it made him so sad. Summoning parchment and a quill, to write a note so he didn’t trap Voldemort in a conversation, where he could crumple the parchment and never acknowledge it – **_You don’t have to keep anything from me. You can, but you don’t have to. You will never hurt me. Don’t let him hurt you._**

It felt like enough. He dropped it on the bedside table. And in the morning, it was gone, and Voldemort predictably said nothing, but the enmeshing of their souls felt normal again, as though they filled one another.

 

 _Thursday, December 31 st. _Thursday was Voldemort’s birthday, and Harry was mildly disappointed to find Voldemort had arisen before him, so he couldn’t kiss him awake. Anyway.

From his trunk he took out a cloak, blue-black in a way that reminded him of wet ink. The silver embroidery at the edges held protective charms. The warming spells woven into the fabric would never fail. He’d bought it at the same time as his dress robes, and at the time he’d been thinking of how cold Azkaban’s cell always seemed, with frost sometimes clinging to the walls and Voldemort sometimes without enough magic to cast even a warming charm. But it would suit them today as well.

He couldn’t conjure wrapping paper – the delicate gold foil in which Voldemort had wrapped his diary on their anniversary remained a mystery – but he could conjure ribbon. So he folded the cloak in a square, conjuring thick gold ribbon that shimmered against the dark fabric. The ends of the bow cascaded in curls. Satisfied, he brought it downstairs.

Voldemort was in the kitchen as usual, tea and the Panopticon before him. Harry pressed a kiss to his neck as he came up behind him. “Good morning,” he said. “Happy birthday.” He dropped the cloak on the table before him.

“Thank you,” he said, but there was a glimmer of caution in the way he reached for the cloak.

“You’ll need it,” Harry said, as his long fingers unraveled the ribbon. “We’re going out tonight.”

Voldemort looked up, curious. “Are we?”

“Mmhm.” He took a seat across from Voldemort, to delight in watching the care with which he handled the cloak. “The Ministry knows. Kingsley made me a portkey. Did I tell you I saw him on Christmas? Moody was pitching fits apparently; he thought my portkey’d been tampered with.”

His eyebrow quirked. “There is precedent,” he said, in a dark humor.

“I fucking know.” And somehow it was easier to speak of the night of the graveyard to Voldemort than anyone else – that it hurt less than Kingsley not realizing what he’d said, anyway. “So I told him that you brought me a puppy and that we’d be celebrating your birthday. So… sorry if nobody’s scared of you anymore,” he concluded with a lopsided smile.

“Well done.” He shook out the cloak, and even under the warm morning light it dripped like dark ink. “This is beautiful. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” They were both careful, precise – that Harry didn’t completely understand Voldemort’s antipathy for his birthday and really, the entirety of his childhood, but he felt it percolating in their soul regardless. “What is Moira, anyway?” he asked, keeping the conversation mundane. The house was too quiet.

“I already let her out. And conjured birds for her.”

He let out a surprised laugh. “You’re teaching my dog to kill birds?”

“She is a hunting breed. It is her nature.” At Harry’s look, he made an exasperated sound. “It is not a metaphor. Do give me some credit.”

He grinned. “Sorry.”

“Anyway, it doesn’t pass metaphysical muster. The birds, never alive, cannot possibly die.”

“Ugh. Fine. Thank you.” He moved to the front door, stepping into the garden to watch Moira, whose talent in flying only amounted to particularly springy jumps. She never had a chance at those birds. Smiling, he went in.

 

Later, he tried shooing Voldemort from the kitchen. “I need to bake your cake. It’s bad luck to watch.”

He looked up in amusement, from the diary where he wrote to Scrimgeour and the Aurors as necessary. “I am confident that it’s not. Happily for you, I need go in for a bit anyway.” _In_ should mean to the Ministry; it went without saying by now. He caught Harry’s expression. “The world doesn’t stop for the holidays. I won’t be long.”

“Is everything alright?”

“Approximately.”

He wondered if Voldemort was obligated to fuck Bowersock again. He could never ask. “Alright,” he said, trying to smile. “Don’t let them keep you long.”

Voldemort went, throwing on his new cloak and letting Moira back in on his way out. She promptly flopped onto the kitchen floor, falling asleep. Her paws twitched as she dreamt, and so did her wings. Harry set out everything to bake a cake.

 

He soaked the cherries in liqueur first. It would be a black forest cake, not one he’d made before, but he’d flipped through the Weasleys’ cookbooks on Christmas, copying out the recipe. It was dark, rich – perfect for winter.

As he measured and sifted and whisked, he found that he _did_ want company. He regretted sort-of banishing Voldemort. There was a radio in the house. They’d never used it. He brought it into the kitchen, putting it on a bubbly music station, to approximate the warm socializing of cooking together.

When the three tins of cake batter were in the oven, he went upstairs, to kick off his jeans and put on a nappy in place. He was… unsettled. Actually, it was likely _Voldemort_ was unsettled, and the feeling just bled through. In his Weasley jumper and a nappy and his soother, he fell backwards on the bed.

Definitely Voldemort. Damn. He’d hoped he’d gone to the Ministry for innocuous reasons, but… probably not. There were still baobab tablets on the bedside table, and he swallowed a few, to keep them both from depression.

And then his timer charm downstairs buzzed, followed by quite insistent and confused barking. He heaved himself from the bed to deal with it.

The feeling receded with time. The cakes needed to cool, and he whisked cornstarch into the cherries as they did. Moira was now begging at his ankles, though she didn’t know for what, so next he cubed tiny pieces of cheese for her to catch in mid-air. Her coordination was as good as his.

The cake was cooling in the fridge, and he was practicing his whisking charms prior to making whipped cream, when the door opened. Moira sprinted out before Harry could grab her. “Shit – Moi – wait – “

Voldemort walked in, Moira held against his chest such that her tail thumped against his ribs, even as she struggled. His eyebrows only went up a fraction at the sight of Harry in a jumper and nappy. “Well?”

“Oh. Yeah.” He glanced down at himself, unperturbed. “I felt awful earlier. _You_ felt awful earlier. It helped.”

“Mm. You took something, as well.”

“Baobab, yeah. It’s good you keep it around.” He was taking sweetened cream from the icebox.

“That was useful. Thank you.” The puppy got too wiggly; he set her down.

Harry swallowed. “I’ll kill him for you,” he said, very low and very serious. It was good that they were both held steady by the baobab.

“Who, Malfoy? Why? – Harry, here.” He charmed the whisk into motion, setting the bowl aside.

“ _Malfoy_? No, I thought – I assumed it was Bowersock. Again.” It felt like he profaned their home by saying his name, but he couldn’t _ignore_ it any longer.

Voldemort only scoffed. “Bowersock is a simple man, impressed with nothing so much as his own unlikely ability to still get hard. He is insignificant. And today I was at Hogwarts, anyway.”

Harry regretted that the cream was whipping itself, because he had nothing to do with his hands. “You – Sorry. What _did_ happen, then?”

Voldemort poured whiskey for them both, casting a charm over the whipped cream to preserve itself when it finished. “Here.” He led them into the sitting room, pressing Harry onto a sofa. It actually didn’t bode well.

“What?”

“Two more Slytherins are gone. The Pickering twins.”

“No.” He’d lifted the glass to his mouth but lowered it now. Hypatia and Hyacinth had been two of the few Slytherins in his upper level classes. “They weren’t – I mean, I don’t _think_ they were related to the Death Eaters.”

“They were raised by their grandparents, who were infuriatingly neutral Ravenclaws. Selwyn is their uncle, but it wasn’t a close relationship. If they were targeted, it seems more likely they were targeted _as_ Slytherins.”

“Fuck,” Harry sighed.

“This was the first incident to show clear signs of struggle,” Voldemort added, just because he spoke to Harry as an equal, as few others did. “That the protective wards around their door were torn open.”

Harry had a hand pressed to his mouth. “I thought they’d just… left. The Horcruxes said that, that if Hogwarts wasn’t the safest place for them anymore, then they _should_ go. That I’d be immoral to trap them there.”

“It might have been staged,” Voldemort offered. “Magical signatures are so built up in the dorms – they’re never wiped, but they should be. If it wasn’t – well, with every missing Slytherin, the chances of finding one increases.”

Harry took a long draught of whiskey, so that for a moment he could only focus on its burn. “Do you want to find them?” he asked, hesitant.

“No. You shouldn’t, either. I find myself surprisingly in agreement with the Horcruces.”

“Oh.” Breath. “And you said Malfoy…?”

“Yes.” His expression darkened. “The Aurors are convinced that Draco has orchestrated this, or that he has particular knowledge. They brought me along as an _intimidation_ tactic.”

“Oh.” Harry frowned. “That’s shite.”

“I thought so as well, and told the Aurors as much. I offer many talents to the Ministry, and none of them are so common as an enforcer.”

“Bet they loved that.”

“It was Moody and Brightbone, so yes, they did.” Harry winced. “They might have asked for my Legilimency, too, otherwise. Pity, I should have done it and lied. For my own enlightenment.”

“Well, Malfoy….” He hesitated. “All the eighth years have tried getting the others out. Zabini’s mum lives in Rome; Greengrass wrote to Durmstrang. If they _are_ doing it, I don’t know how.”

“Mm. Draco learned Occlumency from his Aunt Bella, and from Severus. He’d never crack.”

“But if they’re being _taken_ – “

He lifted one bony shoulder. “Perhaps. The only active threat to Britain currently is the Humnerë, who, as you recall, would like to destroy me and also you. Slytherin students – not even of Death Eater families – seem rather out of their purview. Now, if there are some _domestic_ vigilantes – well, students are still not anyone’s first target. I am skeptical.”

The way Voldemort spoke of politics to him, competent and collected, always soothed his frayed nerves. “I guess.”

“The Horcruces know of the disappearances?”

“I – Yeah. I left them manifest a lot. They said they were protecting the Slytherins, creating wards and I think blood protection? They can’t _not_ be involved, I think.”

This intrigued him. “And the students…?”

“Can’t know about the Horcruxes,” he said firmly. “I send them with my cloak, and with a map that shows everyone’s location. The diadem – what did that twat say – something like, ‘I killed a girl in the ground floor toilets and they gave me an award for it, I’m brilliant at avoiding detection.’”

Voldemort was greatly amused by this. “I assume you’re correct, since Moody hasn’t ripped you limb to limb for doing something so reckless.”

“Yeah.” He smiled in a terrified way to think of _that_ confrontation that would hopefully never come. “But – fuck, the day’s already ruined – Vol, listen.”

Eyebrows up, curious. “What?”

He thought he could fix this before Voldemort needed to know, but he apparently couldn’t. “I haven’t got the locket anymore. I don’t know where it is. I’m sorry.”

A pause. “It hasn’t been destroyed.”

He had really, really expected anger. He deserved it. He blinked up at Voldemort. “No, it hasn’t. But it also…. I don’t think it’s in the castle. I’ve walked about all of it. It’s sort of… magnetic, the feeling between us, whether they’re manifest or not. The diadem says he’s only as good at finding it as I’d be.”

“What happened, then?” Voldemort was unconcerned, but he did summon the whiskey, pouring another glass.

“I don’t know. Someone took my memories?”

Voldemort drew his wand. “Let me see.”

“I don’t know how to show you memories I don’t have.”

A curve of his mouth. “Get as near as you can.”

“Right,” Harry said with a sigh. “So, from that same evening….”

Voldemort could be gentle. Legilimency like this, felt like the mental equivalent of having fingers run through one’s hair. Harry held either side of the memory – Friday afternoon, classes, dinner, finding out the Yaxleys had been sentenced, and then afterward waking up disoriented in his room – at the forefront of his mind, so Voldemort wouldn’t look elsewhere. At last, he withdrew. Harry saw on his face that there had been nothing.

“I’d accuse Dumbledore if that were an option,” he said, unhappy. “It’s more thorough than anyone else typically performs.”

Harry sighed again. “I’m sorry. They weren’t manifest that night, but they _were_ together on the mantel – it was stupid to keep them together, I wasn’t thinking – “

“That is important,” Voldemort interrupted.

“What, that they didn’t take the diadem too? I know. I just don’t know what it means.”

“Yes. Very good. If it’d only been a thief – or if it’d been someone intent on destroying us…. But this.” He lifted his mahogany gaze to the ceiling. “That locket is trapped in a cycle of being stolen and lost, it seems.” (They had _finally_ pieced together what had happened when Moody came in grumbling that Dung had tried pawning Grimmauld Place’s candlesticks, the waste of flesh. Harry had laughed himself sick to think they’d lived with a Horcrux for that long.) “If it comes into Borgin’s possession again,” Voldemort continued, “we parted ways a very long time ago, but he would not pass it on. He is not a stupid man. I only regret that the locket is no longer cursed.”

Harry was very warm and very confused. “You should be angry,” he insisted. “I _lost_ a part of your _soul_.”

Voldemort reached to tug a wild lock of his hair. “I rather appreciate it,” he said. “I spent decades without them. The Ministry may, at some point, attempt to force them back upon me, because they are timid and uninspired magicians, so I’d quite like to tell them no.”

Harry shook his head. “You’re incredible,” he muttered. “Literally incredible.” Voldemort pressed a kiss, gentle and a bit mocking, to his fringe.

Harry went to ice the cake, and Voldemort was allowed to follow him this time. “I realized I only really like cooking _with_ people, and not _for_ them,” Harry said, shaking out a piping bag. “They’re completely different. You still can’t touch this, though,” he warned.

“I will not touch it.” So he held Moira in his lap, to keep her from getting underfoot, in spite of her protestations.

Partway through, Harry half-looked over his shoulder. “How was it, being back at Hogwarts?” he asked, careful.

A thoughtful hum. “Unexpected. Quiet. We only congregated in Slughorn’s office, so I didn’t see much else of the castle. He was there. So was Minerva. Snape was not.”

Harry tried to picture being surrounded by _that_ group, and also the two most intimidating Aurors, and suffered a moment of pity for Malfoy. “That sounds awful.”

“He did well, considering. I would have advocated for him more stringently if it wouldn’t cast more suspicion on him. I did bait the Aurors, to the extent that I could.”

He would do it anyway, to be obnoxious, but Harry saw the value in it now. _Malfoy_ needed to get out too, or at least out from under such scrutiny. “Have you got anyone,” he asked, aware that this was going to be light treason, “not Death Eaters exactly, but people outside who could help? If they are escaped and not, y’know, being abducted.”

He was quiet, thoughtful. “I believe I’m alone.”

His stomach twisted. “Sorry.”

Voldemort rewarded him with a smile. “Sweet boy. It is a good question, anyway. The answer might have been different even mere months ago.”

“Well.” He popped a new icing tip on the bag. “Someone’s got to advocate for the Slytherins, though. I don’t know…. It used to be that there was money enough, right?” It felt grotesque to say, but not incorrect. “But now they’re so….” He struggled with words. “Alone,” he decided at last.

“Your sympathy is misplaced,” he said. “Nobody’s slaughtered any of your peers in the streets. Likely, nobody’s slaughtered them at all.”

“I bloody hope not.”

“I assume they don’t want your assistance.”

“As much as they want yours.”

“Your cloak may be helpful. In whatever they _are_ doing. Even if they’ve avoided detection this long.”

The idea hurt. The Horcruxes had suggested it too, because they were wretched and inhuman, but to hear Voldemort suggest it…. He looked back. “It’s all I’ve got,” he reminded Voldemort, a little hurt and a little wary.

His expression softened. “Yes.”

Harry had to laugh. “Not everyone discards the past as fast as we can,” he said, and ease settled over the kitchen again.

Finishing the whipped cream frosting, he added a candle. “Make a wish.”

“Muggle superstition,” Voldemort murmured, but leaning in, he blew it out anyway.

\\\\\\\ ////

Partway through the washing up, Voldemort slipped a finger into the legband of Harry’s nappy, behind his balls. He yelped a bit, going flush. “You’re not wet,” Voldemort remarked.

“Should I be?” Whiskey made them both a bit squirmy and full and uninhibited.

“Well. I thought I’d be fucking you by now.”

Oh – He hadn’t thought much of the sensation, it wasn’t prominent, but Voldemort had waited to piss all day. “Here, love.” He closed the tap, pulling Voldemort into the sitting room because they wouldn’t make it to the bedroom. “You haven’t got to wait any longer. How do you want me?”

Voldemort was just… gratified. And quite desperate. He dropped Harry to the sofa, drawing his wand to cast glowing chains. “Tell me you hate this,” he said lowly. “Tell me you find it humiliating.” And Harry’s arms were pulled behind his back, making his shoulder blades protrude. With a gesture, he brought Harry’s ankles up and together, so sitting sideways on the sofa. He jerked against the restraints, testing them, but of course they were perfect.

Voldemort moved to lift his jumper, but then rethought it. He vanished it altogether. “You won’t be cold for very long,” he promised, ducking his head to press his tongue to his nipple piercings. Goosebumps ran all the way down his torso, as he shuddered in Voldemort’s touch.

He was unbuttoning his robe, pushing it back, fingers working at his belt. “I wish you’d asked,” Harry said, admiring the urgency with which he moved. “Or I wish you’d just come up behind me and pulled me against you….” Even if he’d try to get Voldemort hard before he could piss.

“Not quite, darling.”

“Would you, though?” He looked up into Voldemort’s face, from where he stood over him. “For as long as we’re here – just piss on me. Or I’ll go on myself, whichever.”

He clicked his tongue. “Shameless.”

“Well, _yeah_.”

But Voldemort’s cock was in his hand by now, his other hand reaching to pull open the top of the nappy. “We will go slow,” he promised. “You need to watch.”

Oh. He realized what would happen only when Voldemort brought his cock to Harry’s collarbone, letting a stream dribble down his torso. “Oh my god,” he breathed. It was searing hot, glistening in his sparse chest hair, running in circles around his navel. It tickled over his hips and lower stomach, trickling through his pubic hair. His cock twitched hard in his dampening nappy, and he shuddered again.

“Tell me you hate this,” Voldemort prompted once more.

He tried, tried stirring ambivalence and disgust and resistance within himself. “I hate this,” he repeated back. “I – Fuck.”

He let his eyes flutter closed for a moment. The last time he’d been so ambivalent with Voldemort was a year ago, abducted and scared. He _had_ been humiliated, wet and nappied in that first week. It was strange but not bad to revisit the feeling. He’d been restrained often then too, but Voldemort had never even touched him – If he had, though. Somehow, it was enticing.

“Struggle,” Voldemort hissed.

So Harry was pushing himself backward. “Don’t, don’t,” he muttered, caught up in the fantasy. “This is sick, it’s – “ Without his limbs, he was off-balance, falling back against the cushions.

Voldemort didn’t stop pissing, but Harry had pulled the nappy out of his grasp. The stream sprayed against his chest, running over his nipples and his ribs ticklishly, staining the cushions. Voldemort stepped in closer, his motion marked by the shift of the stream. “Open your mouth.”

“No,” he said, because that was the right answer.

When Voldemort grabbed his chin roughly, wrenching open his mouth, he about melted. Voldemort pushed his cock to Harry’s lips, piss bubbling over his tongue, and Harry was never obligated to swallow but he particularly shouldn’t now. Spluttering, he spat a mouthful of piss back at Voldemort.

 _Smack_. His hand, sharp and indifferent, hitting Harry’s jaw so his head was snapped sideways. The sting, not even being worthy of being punished with magic, was fantastic.

This was half-real, at least. Harry struggled to get his legs beneath him, to keep his knees and shoulders between Voldemort and the rest of his body. The restraints would come apart with _Finite_ and he sort of wished they wouldn’t, so he could properly struggle to get out of them. Voldemort had put his cock away, but he was half-hard. So was Harry. When their gazes met, their eyes must be just as wild.

Voldemort reached for Harry’s throat, to pin him back against the sofa. Harry threw a shoulder, knocking his hand away. He shoved magic into the bonds which would melt them but slowly, so he could struggle. “Don’t touch me – you don’t deserve to touch me,” he muttered, thrashing his legs. The cords burst, and he was up, throwing a shoulder now into Voldemort’s chest to knock him away. He was wrenching his hands free even as he sprinted up the stairs.

Into the bedroom. He snatched his wand from the dresser, but he’d dash out again; he didn’t want to be cornered in here. Spinning on his heel, he would have run. But Voldemort’s footsteps on the stairs, quick and light, caused a piquant jerk in his stomach.

(Had he gotten hard in battle? Had the sheen of sweat on his skin felt erotic before? He couldn’t recall.)

He’d pin Voldemort before Voldemort could pin him. _Escape_ wasn’t an interesting goal. They’d fuck where they trapped one another.

“Harry. Sweetheart.” Voldemort’s tone was much too soft. Supernatural – it shouldn’t carry as it did, as soft as it was.

Harry was crouched behind the dresser, parallel to the doorway, waiting to hear the first footfall on the landing. When he did, he cast a tiny localized windstorm, a hard gust that would impede him for a moment at least. Harry ran out the door.

Voldemort had a shield before him, but he still fought a lot of resistance. At last, raising his wand – _pop_! The windows shattered, inwards so Harry had to throw up a shield as well, and the air pressure dropped. Another swirl of his wand – some variant of devil’s snare around Harry’s legs, until he cast a roaring fire that withered it, lobbing it then in Voldemort’s direction. When Voldemort caught it, Harry ran in, as though he weren’t a wizard at all. And he would’ve grabbed Voldemort, he wanted to, but Voldemort used his extra momentum to swing him upward, fully onto his shoulder. Harry yelped, laughing and incredulous, and suddenly it felt like a game one might play with a child.

There was magic in it, that Voldemort could hold him over his shoulder steadily. One hand was under his arse, the other still held his wand. “Legs up,” he muttered, carrying Harry down the corridor as though he were the spoils of war. He supposed he was.

He _dreamt_ of being carried like this, just being held, so he relaxed too easily into Voldemort’s grasp. Until Voldemort dropped him gracelessly on the bed. “Pathetic.”

They weren’t finished. He didn’t want to be, anyway. Shoving himself sitting, he had his wand up – “Expelliarmus,” Voldemort said, though he would have been near enough to simply pluck it from Harry’s fingers. “Your favorite.”

He flushed. Voldemort had never lost his vicious humor; he only put it toward more innocuous purposes now. Harry was scrambling up, until Voldemort cast a spell that gave him vertigo, making him swoon backwards. “ _Bastard_ ,” he swore, clutching at the sheets to make the room stop spinning.

“As though you don’t adore being helpless.” He dropped beside Harry now, pulling his lower half onto his lap. And Harry kicked and struggled, but he was so dizzy. Voldemort shoved his head down into a pillow. He pushed the sensation of suffocating back at him.

“Piss for me, darling,” Voldemort said. “You’d like to, anyway. It would be such a properly submissive gesture. If you haven’t gotten over your thing for _wolves_ yet.”

He got his hands under him, pushing himself onto all fours. Voldemort grabbed the back of his neck, redoubling the vertigo. He couldn’t – he’d fight through it – He reached for Voldemort’s throat –

Voldemort was so unthreatened that he popped Harry’s fingers into his mouth, mocking. His teeth were sharp against his fingertips. And then – _slam_ , Harry’s face was smashed back into the pillow, his pelvis dropped into Voldemort’s lap. His breath was taken not with impact, but with a spell. He felt a rush of warmth into his nappy.

It was… safe. He felt euphoric, from the oxygen deprivation or from the adrenaline or from (he realized) the magic that Voldemort diffused across his skin. He still had a firm hand across the back of Harry’s head, holding him immobile and partially suffocated as he pissed. _Submissive_. It did feel like defeat. His belly went slack as piss spread beneath him.

A thumb massaged the base of his skull “For the remainder of the weekend,” Voldemort said, “you’ll piss in my lap. In a nappy or not, I don’t care. You will ask permission, and if you are charming, I might agree.”

Harry was blushing. The puddle bubbled beneath him, until he was too hard to continue. “Y – Yes, sir,” he said in a deliberate way. His breath was ragged.

“I need to fuck you now. It is my right. It will restore order, anyway.”

Oh, this – They were better at roleplay in sleep than in the flesh, but he recognized this. “Yes, sir,” he said again.

“What do you need?”

He loosened the grip of Harry’s scruff, to marginally let him breathe. When Harry still swooned, he tangled his fingers in his hair, to pull his head back. “Fuck me,” Harry said, hot and overwhelmed. “Please, just – I don’t even want to tell you I don’t want it. Of course I do.”

A moment of thought. “Good boy. Yes.”

“And teach me that hideous vertigo spell.”

A smile in his voice. “Yes.”

“That’s it.” He tried to sit up, to be shoved down again. “Urgh – what – “

“Trust me,” he purred. A shifting of the bed. The nappy was vanished. Harry was pulled to his knees, head down. He felt Voldemort conjure a handful of lube, pressing slick fingers inside of him. He sort of swayed, even from this contact. “Get a hold of yourself,” Voldemort muttered, amused.

“Sorry.” Though he wasn’t.

And then he was slick enough that it was nearly running out again. Voldemort moved him himself, dropping him to the bed again, near one edge. “Tilt your hips….” His hands were not gentle. Harry loved it.

Voldemort was straddling him, with one leg on the floor for leverage. He began with both hands on his hips, as though he were just an unwieldy fucktoy, and it made Harry go red. He pushed in one – two – three, even strokes. And when Harry tried to buck or move to meet him, his head got shoved down again.

“By all means, struggle. I hope you would.” And then one hand was in his hair, pressing him down, suffocating him. In gratitude, he passed the sensation back to Voldemort.

The sex was rough, hot. Harry was pinned and it was _amazing_ – he’d been so insistent on having sex face-to-face, and sex that pressed their entire bodies together, that they hadn’t done much like this before. Voldemort’s hands were all over his back, and they both relished the sensations when he grasped at Harry’s hips, his sides, his shoulder blades, the back of his neck. He ended up with one hand on his neck, and the other at his hip, fingers clenching.

Harry could bump his hips up and back a bit for Voldemort, but most of the pleasure came from _inside_ , as he held himself tight at the right moments. On top of him, Voldemort shuddered.

They really wouldn’t last long. Voldemort was bending over him, his cock shifting angles so they both jolted at it. One hand on Harry’s soft throat: “Say that I own you.” It was beautiful and intimidating in Parseltongue.

“Do you?” Harry challenged him breathlessly. His hands were at Voldemort’s. He didn’t know whether to pull them off or close them harder.

Voldemort had slowed, barely pushing forward inside of him, with tiny and maddening thrusts. “Tell me how polluted you feel, carrying me around inside of you the entire time.”

“Mm,” Harry murmured in appreciation, his insides twisting. He was right. “Tell _me_ you feel polluted,” he said in response, speaking nonsense as Voldemort delicately choked him out, “that I’ve burrowed this far into _your_ soul.”

Voldemort didn’t respond, except by tightening his fingers exactly to make Harry light-headed. He swooned. His stomach tightened. Voldemort’s other hand was beneath him now, pumping his erection in time with his deep and perfect thrusting. As he got close, his grip on Harry’s throat became tighter, making them both spasm and quiver and kick. He thrust deep so he _did_ fall upon Harry, so he felt owned, used, contained…. And then the heat of orgasm overtook them both – their pelvises slammed together – Voldemort was filling him with wet heat, enough that it’d run back out – And Harry came into the bedspread, sticky and shameful. They collapsed, breathing hard.

He lay there, letting the sweat cool on his skin and letting the fluids dribble back out a bit, wetting his balls. Beside him, Voldemort was boneless, his narrow chest expanding and contracting with steady breaths. “That was good,” Harry murmured stupidly, pressing his mouth to Voldemort’s angular shoulder. “We’d gotten really… soft.”

“Mm.” For once, Voldemort was less composed than Harry after sex. “I thought so as well.”

“It’s easier in sleep,” Harry said. “But… I want that again.”

His gaze was disarmed. “Of course.”

They were both going to slip into not-quite-sleep; Harry cleaned up and set an alarm spell first. “We’ll leave around eleven.”

“As I no longer know my way around London’s nightlife, I hope that’s not it.”

“It really isn’t.” He slipped into Voldemort’s arms. Their breathing was synchronized. His mind drifted – _their_ mind drifted – until Harry laughed abruptly. “Whorecrux,” he muttered into Voldemort’s chest.

“Mm?”

“I am your whorecrux,” he said, stupidly pleased with himself, pronouncing it exactly so Voldemort couldn’t miss the wordplay. “Say it.”

“Don’t be disgusting.”

“I am, though.”

“Puns are the least erotic form of self-expression. Get the hell out of my bed.” But he was charmed, and Harry kissed him hard on the mouth.

 

They’d let their false garden snow for most of the week, so they stepped out into the cold late that evening. Harry offered the portkey; at Voldemort’s look, he said, “There’s no point in asking where it leads. You’ll find out.”

“I suppose I will.” He took hold of the medallion.

They arrived in a much colder, darker place. The stars above them glowed, in a way he’d never seen even in the dark of Hogwarts. “Iceland,” he said, by way of explanation. “The remote part of Iceland.” He was conjuring a blanket to spread on the sparse, frozen ground.

Voldemort was politely confused. “For the stars?”

“Not quite.” He pulled them both seated. “We might have to wait a bit. Here.” He was pulling firewhiskey from his cloak to keep them warm, conjuring glasses. “Cheers. Happy birthday.”

“Thank you.” And Voldemort was sitting near enough to wrap Harry in his cloak as well. Their magic mingled. The stars glittered in the cold night.

They really didn’t wait long before an arc of brilliant yellow-green filled the horizon. “Ah.” Voldemort’s voice beside him was quiet.

“The Northern Lights,” Harry filled in. “There would be fireworks tonight, too – for the new year – but I’d rather do this. It’s not magic or human-made.” The greenish glow spread upward, a gradient that moved into yellow and then deep oranges. They fell quiet.

The sky above them swirled – oranges melting into pinks, greens so deep they could be turquoise. Voldemort’s face was beautiful in this light, his features chiseled but not severe. A streak of fuchsia lit the sky. Harry’s heart was full.

The lights churned, lighting the entire landscape. Orange fading abruptly into green, the same green as Harry’s eyes. Wisps of gold within it. Voldemort was very quiet, but he touched Harry easily, pulling him backwards so they could watch in recline. His breath was the only thing Harry could feel, hot on his throat and cheek in the midst of the cold night. He turned, pressing a kiss to his jaw.

The lights were spectacular, literally a spectacle. The sky stretched on farther than anything he’d seen before. It was hypnotic, meditative. Their breathing went slow. The numinous sky weighted them down, bigger than their entire world.

When the sky was left in only a pulsing green, they stirred. Harry looked over, worried that this was stupid or trivial or something. Voldemort caught either his expression or emotion directly. “Perfect,” he said. “It was perfect. Let’s go home.”

 

 _Friday, January 1._ While they fell into bed late, Harry was awake again too early, mischievous and aroused. He slid close. “Vol?”

He made a sound not belonging to a human.

“Did you mean it,” Harry asked lowly, “when you said I should piss in your lap?” He did love the idea. He loved the idea of asking permission, just as much.

“Yes. Of course.” And then Voldemort’s hands were on him, lifting him so Harry, still lying down, was straddling one of his narrow thighs.

They were both barely awake. It was so easy for him to let go, heat spreading between them. He was in a nappy, and it swelled, too much of a puddle collecting along the front at first. Voldemort’s hand was between his legs, shameless but not yet trying to get either of them off. Harry pissed, relieved.

“You want to?” he murmured, partway through. When the fabric was saturated enough, they could hear the hiss of it, a muffled but unambiguous sound.

“Later.” He was rubbing in circles now, pressing all the squishy bits against the head of Harry’s cock. He pressed in insistently, adoring the attention.

“Can I tell _you_ when to piss, too, then?”

Voldemort considered. “Yes.”

“Brilliant.” He was empty now, frozen in Voldemort’s lap for a moment as the cotton absorbed the moisture, so he didn’t risk it running over his thighs. “I’ll get off later,” he said, sleepy and thrilled. The warmth and weight of a nappy would always put him back to sleep. He climbed off Voldemort’s legs.

 

It was later, mid-morning, when they were finally awake, that Harry approached him. “Have you waited for me?”

“Of course.” They were in the living room, with Voldemort in an armchair.

“I want it rough. Like you don’t give a shit about me.” The ambivalence of yesterday had ripped something open in him, another world where he and Voldemort had ended in circumstances of hate instead of love.

He set his book aside. “Come here, Harry.” His voice was silk.

He approached, his bare feet soft on the carpet. He was still in the same swollen nappy from earlier.

Voldemort vanished it with a twitch of his fingers, and Harry stood naked before him. He resisted the silly impulse to cover himself. “Here.” Voldemort summoned his jeans. “The only reason to keep awful Muggle clothing around is to ruin it, I think.” He held them out.

Harry took them, stepping into them curiously. He rarely went without pants, and the feeling of rough denim against his soft cock was a bit dangerous.

“You’re quite safe in nappies, yes?” He hooked a finger into his front pocket, drawing him in. “You are very _precious_ about them.”

“Yes. Sir.” His heart pounded differently now.

He hadn’t done up the fly, so much the better now as Voldemort rose, drawing out his own cock to slip it inside. Harry only realized what was happening when he let go, when a bubbling torrent of piss streamed into the crotch of his jeans. He bucked, overcome.

The denim soaked through, piss spilling down his legs, running ticklishly over his calves and ankles, soaking into the carpet beneath his bare feet. It would’ve made less of a mess if Voldemort had just pissed onto the floor directly. The fabric grew heavy, hanging from his hips. He was covered in goosebumps, shuddering in lust and horror and everything between as urine soaked through his jeans with its searing heat.

At last, Voldemort finished, with the final trickle falling onto the head of Harry’s own cock. He choked. Voldemort smirked. “You wanted this,” he said, in a way that didn’t allow for denial.

“This is….” He couldn't think straight. He got hard when he was overcome with disgust, and he was so hard now.

“Stay in them. Stay nearby and you might be useful.”

“Can you….” He lifted his gaze. “Chain me up, or something. I’ll kneel.”

“Yes, you will.” But, because he knew Harry’s fantasy realm as well: “Pity we’ve only got a basement and not a dungeon. And pity I’ve only got chairs, not a throne.”

He grinned at this, caught. “Yeah.”

Voldemort pressed him to the floor, transfiguring a collar around his neck, the leash a chain in gold. “Is this what you want, pet?”

 _That_ was new, and they both felt the thrall that shot up Harry’s spine. “Yes,” he said, low and unnecessary as he’d already reacted to it. “Can you – I don’t know – hobble me or something?”

“Helpless,” he mocked. “Just say you’d like to be helpless.”

“I want to be helpless.”

Cords, tying his legs so they were bent double, so he could _only_ kneel. “Thank you,” he breathed.

“And then – I will cast Imperio on you,” Voldemort said evenly. “It will be quite gentle, and you’ll like it.”

He raised his eyebrows, intrigued. “Yeah?”

Voldemort swirled his wand through the air, a beautiful gesture if it weren’t connected to an Unforgivable. He felt a dribble from his thick cock, and he still flinched, even if it made no difference to how wet he already was. “Uh… that I’m desperate?”

“Not at all.” In an unlikely gesture, he cast a slew of cleaning spells, so Harry’s jeans were dry again. Immediately a spot formed at the fly. Harry was blushing. “I quite like the idea of seeing you grow wet with arousal.”

“Oh my god.” He had his hand between his legs, touching himself even through the rough denim.

Voldemort clicked his tongue. “Filthy and common, touching yourself so openly,” he chided, and in a single motion he’d seized Harry’s hands, binding them behind his back as well. The stretch across his chest was glorious. “Stay here, darling, and demonstrate some control over yourself, and perhaps I’ll fuck you later.”

Harry was blushing so hard. He _was_ a bit wet already. He sank to the floor, burning. Fingers carded through his hair, in a way that felt really good. Voldemort threw his legs over Harry’s shoulders, holding him between his knees, and Harry was allowed to rub his calves and prominent ankle bones and the tight arch of his feet. Somehow, they settled into a quiet protection.

He was meant to struggle. The cords were imperfect, they could be broken, but he liked the feeling of straining against them without freeing himself. It was indulgent, watching his own body writhe as he worked against the restraints, even as the wet spot on his pants slowly spread.

 In a moment of weariness, when he slumped against Voldemort’s calves again, he asked Voldemort what he was writing – it was a bit complicated for him, with parchment and the Panopticon before him even as he kept one hand in Harry’s hair – but the only answer he received was a weary, “Words, words, words.” Glare. No expansion on this.

The cords that bound him were fraying, such that he’d actually pull them off if he struggled any longer. So when Voldemort didn’t acknowledge him, he wondered if he could fiddle with the collar, concentrating on how to transfigure it. His magic didn’t work like this – with or without a wand, he still channeled it through his hands, and it was exhausting to think of drawing it from his core to his throat. But he thought he’d done it – he’d done something, at least, as it sat heavier against his collarbone now. And then Voldemort tipped his head back. “Leather,” he said. “I like it.” And then he spelled a bell to the front, as though Harry were a cat.

“I do, too.” It made him move carefully, even delicately, aware of every motion. He left it.

And so when he was restless, when he was squirming, the bell rattled at his throat. Voldemort pulled him backward, to look into his face. “You’re _bored_?” he asked. “How very ungrateful.”

“No. A bit.”

With magic, he found himself in Voldemort’s lap, without even having the restraints undone. “Hm,” Voldemort muttered, running an indifferent hand over the front of Harry’s jeans. The wetness spread, as his cock twitched. He still jerked as though this were embarrassing. A drop of piss ran down his thigh. And then Voldemort ducked his head, sucking at Harry’s throat, his lips, his ears. He was hard _and_ he was wet.

“Just fuck me already,” he muttered, impatient and overcome.

Voldemort tsked. “Not when you ask like _that_.” Scarcely lifting his mouth from Harry’s lower lip, he asked, “Shall I bind you to a gravestone, next time?”

Harry jerked backward so hard that Voldemort was obligated to throw both hands behind him, so he didn’t topple stupidly from his lap. It was one of the few bits of their past they hadn’t discussed before, and he hadn’t expected it _now_ , when they were both hard. “What the fuck,” he breathed, casting Finite on the cords to rip them away. “That night was the worst in my life, you know.” He wasn’t even angry, just _shocked_.

Voldemort let him up, so Harry stood before him, his posture tense. “I know,” Voldemort said evenly. He didn’t touch Harry now. “It seemed like the… aesthetic you are seeking, though. What you want out of it….” He raised his eyebrows in half a question.

He didn’t mean it all in a bad way. It hurt, but he wasn’t trying to hurt _him_ , at least. “I might,” he said slowly. “Sometime.”

“All trauma becomes fetish, eventually.”

Harry stepped in again. “I’ll tell you when I want it. It might be never.”

“Of course.”

Harry pulled Voldemort’s Panopticon out of his hand, dropping it to the end table. “Right now, I just want you to fuck me.”

A curve of his thin mouth. “You do not _dwell_ ,” he said, even as he let Harry pull open his robes.

Harry hummed, not able to refute it. His jeans were streaked down his legs. He couldn't say he wasn’t aroused. Piss spilled from him as Voldemort pressed long fingers into his fly.

“Tell me you’re wet for me.”

Harry’s hips were bucking against his palm. “I’m not sure I’ve got to,” he muttered. His thighs steamed.

Voldemort drew out his fingers, putting them in his own mouth. It was filthy. Harry loved it. When he drew them out again, they were slick with saliva. He ran them around the wet head of Harry’s cock. “How would you like it?” he asked, charming and genteel.

“In your lap, right here, is all.” He pushed Voldemort slightly reclined, until his erection was straining beneath his trousers, obviously. “I’m so wet for you.”

It was a spell doomed to failure from the start, that he’d wet a bit when he was aroused, but being wet was the most erotic thing to him. Every dribble sent a shiver up his spine. It didn’t even matter that he was hard, he could at least leak around it. Voldemort was touching him through the wet fabric, pressing it upwards into his balls and arsehole. Their Legilimency was open enough that they both shivered.

Harry was kicking off his jeans at last, until his bare legs glistened. He summoned lube from upstairs – how boring they’d been, only fucking in the bedroom. He was hard, and Voldemort nearly was. “Do it yourself,” he said with brusque indifference, trying valiantly to capture the feeling of fucking without caring about one another. Voldemort’s look was only mirthful as he slipped out of his trousers. His cock was dark and dusky even in the late morning light. Harry loved it.

The armchair was deep, with solid arms. It would do. Voldemort pulled him into his lap, taking the lube from him, as though Harry couldn’t be trusted to do it himself. “There you go, very good,” he was murmuring into Harry’s ear, twisting his long fingers inside of him. Harry was too hard by now to piss, but he just felt – _full_. Tense. It was a nice feeling.

Lube down Voldemort’s own erection, and then Harry was meant to sit back onto his length. His hands were on Harry’s hips then, holding his weight carefully, until they were positioned. When Harry sank onto him, inch by inch, it stole his breath. He gripped the arms of the chair very tightly.

It was a… sweet position. Harry had crawled into his lap at other times, the desperate neediness he had to be touched after sex, when he’d wet himself, or when they’d share magic. It was _too_ sweet, for what he needed, right now. “Pull my hair,” he muttered. “Bite me. Choke me. I don’t care.”

Voldemort’s hand was tangled in his hair then, vicious and merciless, so hard that he yelped and then laughed. Pulling his head back, Voldemort was sucking and biting at Harry’s lips again. They would be swollen, marking him as some sort of harlot. He was rough and reckless, as though he didn’t give a damn about Harry’s well-being, and in that moment it was perfect.

Voldemort was deep inside him, drawing upon Legilimency enough to tip his pelvis in exactly the right way, his cock rubbing past his prostate until his toes curled. He kissed him back furiously – it felt _competitive_ , which of them could leave the other more bruised. They had been careful about this before yesterday – strife felt a little too close to something real – and it was nice to indulge now. He curled his nails into Voldemort’s hands, leaving marks. “I should beat you,” Voldemort muttered into his mouth, making Harry laugh.

They didn’t have room to fully ravage one another and he regretted that now. He threw a leg over the arm of the chair, so he could twist partway around, kissing and biting. They gasped against one another’s mouths, breathing the same inadequate air. One of Harry’s hands was on Voldemort’s shoulders by now, gripping painfully, for leverage and to leave marks. Voldemort reached into his lap to jerk him off, and the first touch, full of heat and magic, was so good that he arched violently. “Ugh – fuck – “ Voldemort closed his mouth with a kiss.

They were _open_ , just fully open to one another in magic and Legilimency. It made their pain feel good. It made them shudder against one another, or grasp at the sensation in the other. It was overwhelming; it was impossible. Together, they stopped breathing, as arousal crested and then burst, as Harry shot come up his own stomach and Voldemort filled him inside. They still clawed, gasped, shuddered, and then fell backwards in a slump.

Harry’s eyes were still closed when he felt his thighs growing warm and wet. “Oh – “

Voldemort grabbed his hips before he could jump up. “Finish. You’re probably desperate after sex. I am sorry you’re not wearing any clothes to stain.”

Imperio was still on, making him leak with arousal, but he was only now soft enough. His stream came in long drips and spurts, and it was… incredible to just remain slumped here as he wet both of their laps. Voldemort pulled out of him, so dribbles of come also made them slick and sticky, but they otherwise didn’t move. Finally their breathing became even.

“Can I do that for myself?” Harry asked, even as he was casting Scourgify on the worst of it.

Voldemort found this funny. “One cannot Imperio themselves. You understand why. If the Horcrux has any talent at magic – and it should – you may ask him. Although I didn’t perfect the Imperius until later.”

This made Harry blush. “Uh, maybe,” he muttered, not sure he could repeat what he wanted to another person. Quasi-person. Whatever.

Their day unfolded after that around reading and working and a bit of magic. Harry had pulled clothes back on, but left the bell collar, to feel a rush of self-consciousness each time he moved. He chased Moira through the garden for a long time. In the evening, Voldemort wanted to show him more dueling magic – Parselmagic, this time. “If you use this, you _will_ answer for it before a court,” he warned rather grimly. “It’s not unstoppable as the killing curse is – but you’ve already seen how seldom wixes account for non-human magic. It will penetrate their shields as creature magic penetrates our wards.”

“Right,” Harry said. Already he felt overpowered, in his ability in wandless magic. He knew it was all what he shared with Voldemort that made him so talented – both that Voldemort was powerful, and that their connection itself generated power – but he still felt _dangerous_ in a way that was ambivalent. That night, he would only practice a shield charm in Parselmagic. No offensive spells, yet. And just as wandless magic felt a bit wild, twisted, addictive, so did this. He might not be strong enough to control his own impulses in Parselmagic. He set his wand aside early that night.

 

 _Saturday, January 2._ They slept late the next day, but Voldemort at last shook him awake deep into mid-morning. “Your scroll glows,” he said, at Harry’s bleary look. “Is it a spell of urgency?”

“Yeah. Hermione found it. – Urgh. Accio.” The scroll thumped into his lifted palm, glowing brightly. Even if they hadn’t charmed it specifically for urgency, he and Ron rarely wrote when everything was fine. He was anxious.

 _We’re back at Hogwarts,_ Ron wrote _. They’re keeping it out of the news while they can, but the fifth year Avery was found back in his dorm. He was dead in his bed._

His stomach twisted. Could they not go a week without tragedy? **_How?_** he wrote back, mired in grief.

_Poison? Heart attack? There’s no mark on him. Nobody else was staying in his dorm, and nobody else would say they had even seen him._

Voldemort had stepped into the bath to wash up for the day, but raised his eyebrows as he re-entered the bedroom. Harry held out the scroll. He wasn’t thinking about it, but he had more faith in Voldemort’s ability to handle crisis, with cool indifference and competence, than anyone else in his life. He didn’t _want_ to deal with this without him, anyway.

Voldemort took a seat beside him, their magic rolling around one another’s like air currents. And at first he didn’t read it, instead studying the magic itself. “This is well done.”

There wasn’t time for this. “It’s yours. I copied it from the diary. So Ron and I could write when we’re apart.”

Voldemort shook the scroll out now. Reading the few lines on it: “Ah.”

“They were supposed to be alright.” He’d kept it as an unlikely promise in his heart, that they’d escaped to somewhere better. Now Avery was back and he was dead.

“Would he know anything particular?” Voldemort was reaching for a quill. “They should scan for blood curses, creature magic…. Soul damage, even. Even after death, residual trauma remains in the soul’s void.”

“Ron wouldn’t know, unless he overheard the Aurors. I’ll write it,” he added, mildly alarmed at Ron’s potential reaction to seeing Voldemort write back to him. Harry took the quill: **_The Aurors should check for soul damage._** “And…?” he asked, glancing up.

“Blood curses. Creature magic.” Harry copied them down.

“His family…?” Harry asked then, hesitant. He’d lost track of where each prior Death Eater had ended up.

“His father’s in Azkaban. Twenty years. He won’t make it, he’s been in poor health since Hogwarts last year.”

Avery, Sr. had been choked out by Professor Sprout. He shouldn’t have lived at all. He wouldn’t, now.

Harry sucked at his lower lip. “Rowle’s daughter didn’t know what would happen if they killed her father. Avery – Edgar – would’ve been the same. Maybe he….” That was a dark thought.

“He was alone,” Voldemort said, far less devastated than Harry. “Isn’t everyone, in the end?”

Sometimes he lost track of how inhuman Voldemort was. How deeply cynical. When Voldemort saw Harry’s face, he at least had the grace to say, “Perhaps not everyone. Certainly none with the good fortune to share a soul. But... the isolation of his death means _something_. I couldn’t say what.”

The edge of his thumb was in this mouth, half to worry the nail and half to let it sit heavily against his tongue. “The locket was working on – or _said_ he was – a blood protection spell. I don’t know if he finished it.”

“Hm. For the good it may have done.”

This was terrible and true. And then, the scroll glowed again. Voldemort reached for it instinctively, before letting Harry take it. His hands were clammy.

_The Aurors were here. They took his body, but one of them was saying there was no point. His face was gone already. Like the attack at Diagon Alley._

Ron hadn’t seen the faceless attackers, he’d only heard about them from Harry after. Avery’s features melting off his body…. His soul, of course, had already been taken then. It would presumably be put to other use by the Humnerë.

Voldemort had worked through this same train of thought, naturally. “But why would they send him back?” he mused. “Well. His body. If his soul was present, it was in some extremely temporary circumstance, as you saw in the Manor.”

A shade of Avery, just enough to find his way back into the castle (but _how_?) and take his place in his bed. It was a hideous thought.

Voldemort was moving to get up. “I am going to the Ministry. You are staying here.”

“What – no,” he protested. “I don’t want to be left out.”

“Neither do I,” Voldemort said grimly. He produced the book he shared with the Aurors, settling in briefly to negotiate with them. “They would all be at Hogwarts now anyway,” he half-conceded. “Which must be on lockdown.” He wrote something, and then, as he waited for a reply, he looked to Harry. “Where is the diadem?”

“I left it in the castle,” he said. “Not manifest. It’s not – he’s not – a part of this.”

“Perhaps it isn’t _now_ ,” Voldemort said. “But if it’s arranged escape – if it’s had any part in this – it really should be. His magic, _our_ magic, allows the castle to bend to our will more readily. Perhaps the Slytherins carved a new passage. Perhaps they discovered some exception in the wards.”

“He said only the faculty can change wards, though,” Harry said, uncomfortable.

“Yes,” Voldemort said, a bit darkly, and Harry wondered what plan of his had once gone awry to get _that_ reaction. “But that is not such an impediment.”

“I don’t know what he’s done,” Harry muttered. “Either of them, really. They said they didn’t want to implicate me. Or that my Occlumency wasn’t good enough. Or that I’d take their help on their conditions or not at all. Uh, we fought about this a lot,” he said with a wry smile, upon hearing himself.

“Clearly.” He kept glancing back at the diary; nobody had written back. “However the Slytherins have crafted a way _out_ , is also a way _in_.”

Harry slumped, staring into the carpet. “Do we tell them?” The idea twisted his stomach. Moody would be furious. The Order would be furious. The Aurors. Everyone in his entire life. “It would ruin everything. But…”

Voldemort, too, was thoughtful. “We are rarely co-conspirators, really,” he said. It wasn’t the most pressing thing, but they were both hesitant. “It’s peculiar. One would think we would be.”

“Well. I’ve been open – you have too – that I’ve had the Horcruxes. Just, nobody knows what that means.”

“I would ruin my relationship with the Aurors for an appropriate cause,” Voldemort said. “Not for this. Not yet.”

“But – “

“You don’t know what you’d be confessing _to_ ,” Voldemort said, exasperated. “You barely have any knowledge worth knowing. Find out what’s actually happened, and _then_ feel guilty if you are implicated in it.”

“We’re losing them about every other week,” Harry said. “There’s no _time_. I don’t want to feel guilty, I want to keep children from having their _souls ripped out_.”

They were co-conspirators; and they were at an impasse. Voldemort was formulating the best way to call Harry a weak, cringing, authority-fellating savior; he could see it in his eyes.

There was a knock at the door.

They both jumped up, the tension not lost but displaced. Moira, dashing from the other bedroom where she’d slept, tore down the stairs before them, aided by her wings and barking furiously. Then it all sort of just felt like chaos.

“Stop – christ – stop – “ Harry grabbed a robe to throw on as he ran after her, trying to grab her. Voldemort was somewhere behind them both.

He could only grab her when she was at the front door, all ten pounds of her ready to protect them. Scooping her up with her wings pinned at his chest, to foil her attempts to flutter away, he grabbed the door with his free hand.

Scrimgeour, alone, taking in the chaos. Moira still barked and struggled, even as her tail thumped at Harry’s ribs. “Hi – sorry – come in – she’s friendly, she’s just loud – “ He was pulling the door open to let him in. “I’ll put her away. Voldemort is….” He didn’t have another hand to gesture. “Somewhere.”

“Here.” (How _did_ he make his quiet tones carry over louder noises? It had to be magic.) “Thank you, Harry.”

“And then – “ Scrimgeour was pulling off his cloak, charming off the snow. “You should be present for this. You do recognize that it’s confidential, for now.”

“Yes, sir.” He took the stairs two at a time, locking Moira in the spare bedroom once more with a beef knuckle bone and a silencing charm. “You are a terror,” he told her, to an exuberant wag of her tail.

Downstairs. Voldemort and Scrimgeour sat in the sitting room, hearth lit and tea before them. (They drank whiskey together more often, but it wasn’t yet eleven a.m.)  Harry joined them, taking a seat beside Voldemort.

Scrimgeour asked, “You know about Edgar Avery, then?”

“Yes,” Harry said. “A bit, at least. He’d been missing for weeks already….”

“How _are_ the Slytherins going missing?”

His tone was casual and concerned. Harry was already so close to confessing – but as Voldemort said, he didn’t properly know what he’d be confessing to. “I don’t know, sir,” he said instead. “The faculty – Slughorn, McGonagall, Snape – said they’re looking into it, and that I shouldn’t get involved.”

“You shouldn’t. We only thought you might have, anyway.” The faint smile of his mouth didn’t reach his eyes. He looked at Voldemort. “This is the first casualty that we’ve found mystifying. The Death Eaters, the Ministry, those close to Potter… but Avery seems quite detached.”

“I haven’t recruited this generation,” Voldemort said, to answer the question he couldn’t quite ask. “It was a hardship, managing teenagers the last time around.”

A flicker of amusement on Scrimgeour’s face; Harry realized in fascinated horror that he meant the war, the first war. Dumbledore had recruited students just out of school, his parents among them. Voldemort had Snape but there must have been more, including some of the Death Eaters now languishing in Azkaban.

It takes so little to ruin a life, he reflected.

“They _can’t_ kill the Death Eaters’ children,” Voldemort continued, too brusque and insistent. “The pureblood lines it would devastate…. By all means, kill their parents, but protect the inheritors of those lines.”

“Is that why they’ve done it?”

Voldemort cast his gaze to the ceiling, considering. “They are antagonistic to Britain in general and its purebloods in particular. To scrub the Death Eaters from the world, and also devastate us genetically? It’s indirect, for terrorism, but it’s effective.”

“It’s convoluted and time-consuming,” Scrimgeour pronounced. “We have little intel on the Humnerë, even now. Their own governments have less. Greece and Albania both have stronger laws for quasi-human sovereignty than ours.”

“They are scattered, anyway. A Leviathan without its head.”

“We heard nothing of their ruler.”

“Neither have I. However,” his teacup was tight in his hand by now, “ _someone_ is giving them direction. The hostage souls don’t work without someone. And the Humnerë – last I interacted with them, at least – are quite fond of self-preservation overall. Not suicide missions.”

“The voices that say you’ve become more trouble than you’re worth have gotten loud. They’ll get louder, at this.”

“The Wizengamot?”

“The public.”

“Fuck the public,” Voldemort said rather pleasantly. Scrimgeour’s expression twitched in dark mirth. “They don’t know what they want, much less what they need.”

“They need peace and stability for once, and they think of you as rather antithetical to either.” Voldemort opened his mouth to protest. Scrimgeour spoke over him. (A look of unpleasant surprise at _that_ ; Voldemort was never not listened to.) “The Wizengamot isn’t quite as sensitive to public demand now as they might be, but they’d like to see you fail. From what I’ve gathered.”

“Then they’d see me go.”

“They might.”

“But the Aurors….”

Scrimgeour’s smile was wry. “I came alone,” he said, “so we might make more candid, beneficial decisions. Robards might acquiesce. Moody never will. But you must need something from them.”

Voldemort would never admit to needing anything from anyone, least of all the Aurors. “Not immediately, if I could get intel from elsewhere.”

“Yes,” he said. “I’d rather send them with you, but Moody….”

 “Yes.”

“More significant is the question of trial. I’ve forbidden it previously – we _can’t_ put wixes in Ministry custody in dangerous situations knowingly. It is a human rights violation.”

“Is it,” Voldemort said, in a tone so flat as to indicate what he thought about human rights. “Mock up a trial, then. Condemn me to death as a formality, and after that fails, I will go.”

Scrimgeour had, up to this point, maintained some ease and camaraderie with Voldemort. This vanished now. “That is grotesque.”

(Harry was inclined to agree. Even still, he was surprised and impressed how well Voldemort did in naming his own death these days. He was almost not sick with the prospect, he noted through their Legilimency.)

“They’d run you out of office over a pardon. It wouldn’t be helpful.”

“I was going to recommend your exile, actually.”

“Ah.” Voldemort considered. “Yes.”

“Excellent.”

“I would require a couple months of preparation. Not only for myself, but to hand off as much politically as I’m able. Harry can handle Cornwall, but the rest of my legislation….” He considered, a smile curving his thin lips. “What I need is a _cabinet_ , then.”

“We can’t bring on anyone new. It would look corrupt.”

Voldemort hummed in agreement. “I’ll delegate what I’m able, though.”

“You don’t expect this to be… tidy.”

“Well, no.”

“There’s also the matter of the vows,” Scrimgeour said, a bit reluctantly. “We can dispense of legal formality much more easily than magical formality, and nobody would _want_ to rescind the vows anyway.”

“Then there’s nothing to be done, is there?”

“A few could be combined, at least. A few more might be altered. To ensure that we understand the same things of one another.” He said it in a sigh.

“Such as?”

“That we’d only visit the question of your reinstated citizenship under extraordinary conditions of patriotism and goodwill.”

His mouth twitched. “How fortuitous.”

“Peculiarly, it’s standard to cases of exile. It’s quite out of fashion legally, but otherwise credible.” He steepled his crooked fingers before his face. “We’d have to cut both resources and contact altogether, you understand. Our responsibilities are only to citizens.”

“Of course.”

“We would be able to keep this safehouse accessible. That is as much as I could do for you.”

His non-eyebrows went up. “Yes. Thank you.”

“Any other untraceable resources?”

“The werewolves,” Voldemort said decisively. “Even if they’re out of Britain by now – even if their packs have been re-constituted into something new – I’ll need them.”

“You’ve had better relations with them than we have, historically.”

“Tell me you know _something_ since they departed Britain.”

“I don’t.”

“I do,” Harry said, sitting up a bit. This entire conversation scared and depressed him, but he could be useful for a moment. “Greyback is dead.”

This got both of their attention. “How?” Voldemort asked.

“I don’t know. I only, uh, overheard it? From Professor Lupin.”

“I need to talk to him,” Voldemort muttered, thoughtful.

“Don’t make him go back,” Harry said, alarmed for Lupin. “By now he’s… not a spy. They’ll kill him.”

Voldemort’s look was shrewd, but he spoke dispassionately: “He, like Severus, knows how to be precisely useful enough to everyone at all times. Greyback would have killed him with his first Hogwarts position, otherwise.” He tipped his head back. “I didn’t even know the makeup of the rest of the pack. He forbade it, so we couldn’t go behind his back to support a coup. It is… unsurprising that he is dead,” he sighed, choosing the word carefully, “but inconvenient, nonetheless. Thank you,” he added, to Harry.

Scrimgeour’s gaze was down, hair swinging forward as he thought. “Do stay out of sight from their governments. They take quasi-human sovereignty quite seriously, even without making it an international affair. I’d much sooner denounce you than go to war.”

“But fear is such an effective motivator.” Scrimgeour looked up sharply, softening when he saw the quirk of Voldemort’s mouth. “I won’t lure Britons out or lugétër in. I want peace more strongly than you do.”

“I know.” Quiet elapsed. Scrimgeour swept his hair back in a human, unprofessional way. “I’ll begin with the Wizengamot. Unless you’d like to?”

“I will,” Voldemort said “I’ll be in this week. They are likely aggravated with me anyway, so it will be welcome news.”

A smile, at last. “Excellent.” He rose. “Happy new year.” Voldemort walked him to the door. Harry stayed out of the way.

When they were alone, Voldemort let Moira out of the bedroom, and the way she tore down the stairs dissipated some tension of the home. Harry poured firewhiskey into his now-empty teacup, waiting for Voldemort to tell him to stop being anxious or sentimental or whatever. He didn’t.

Voldemort sat beside him, also taking up the whiskey. “Is this what you want?” Harry asked, hesitant. They spoke in Parseltongue once more.

“Yes. Very much.”

“And you’d leave behind… everything you’ve done politically, to go chase Albanian vampires?”

A flicker of a smile. “There will _be_ no politics if the Humnerë aren’t contained. They have made this clear.”

“Can I come with you?” He was bold or reckless for a moment. He always was, in unprocessed grief.

Voldemort didn’t rebuke him straight off. “I wouldn’t say it in front of Scrimgeour,” he said carefully, “but to kill a student and leave his body in Hogwarts…. That might not have been for me. That might have been for _you_.”

“Oh.” His stomach curdled. “Oh my god,” he muttered into his fist. “Yeah, maybe. That I’d rush into it myself?”

“Your goddamn heroics,” he agreed easily. “Harry, the most useful, heroic thing you could do without me is to keep us both alive. That’s it.”

“We need to pull the vow,” he said decisively. The vow between Moody and Voldemort, that gave him control over how often they saw each other. “So I can give you magic every night.”

A pause. He said carefully, “It would probably be safer if we didn’t maintain contact.”

“ _Bullshit_ ,” Harry said. “That’s _my_ condition. If I can’t follow you, let me help you like that, at least.”

Voldemort did not feel the full weight of this ultimatum, as he still answered lightly, “That’s rather in Moody’s purview. He doesn’t have any reason to rescind the vow.”

“Can I threaten that I’ll run off too, then?”

“You may _try_ ,” Voldemort said doubtfully. “But if you burn through all your goodwill with him, he will stop negotiating your own safety with you; and turn to ripping your mind open directly as he throws you into a nice Auror-standard cage for eternity.”

“It’s not goodwill, it’s guilt,” Harry muttered, very sure Moody would be done with him any day. “But he hasn’t got Legilimency, at least.”  
  
Voldemort nearly stared. “Why would you believe _that_?”

“He told me!” Okay, so it sounded stupid like that. “And he gave me Veritaserum once. He wouldn’t have to if he could just read my mind. And also… I’d just be _so_ fucked,” he admitted. “About the Horcruxes, but also the contact we had in sleep when we shouldn’t.”

“Mm.” Voldemort was unsettled if not properly unhappy. “You need to stay away from him, then. I’ll ask for the vow to be rescinded. If he _doesn’t_ know anything… you are unaccountably lucky. I am skeptical.”

“Sorry,” Harry said. “It was stupid to assume….”

Voldemort ran a hand through Harry’s hair, albeit with a sigh. “Every Ministry employee with any clearance is required to have Occlumency,” he said, patient and didactic. “Everyone involved with criminal apprehension and interrogation has Legilimency. He’s never attempted it on _me_ , even after taking my magic, so I couldn’t say how effective he is. But one doesn’t reach Moody’s success without an arsenal of magic.”

“ _Ugh_.” Harry felt lied to and compromised and completely embarrassed. He wanted to _confront_ Moody about it, even if he knew that wasn’t right. “I’ll stay away from him.”

“Good boy.”

Harry sank deeper into the sofa, taking a long draught until his throat and nose burned. “I can do more than Cornwall, you know,” he offered. “Your legislation… I could learn.”

“Even if you’ve given up on being a student, you do still need to teach.”

“And _you_ need to…. Handing off everything that’d made you useful to the Ministry seems like _such_ a bad idea,” Harry said, a bit desperate. “You’ve made yourself – _indispensable_ – and now you’ll just let it all _go_. They won’t have you back, you know.”

Voldemort was looking at him thoughtfully. “Yes,” he said. “Very good. If there were a particularly subtle way to hold the state hostage, I would. But we’ve only torn the economy, culture, and inter-world politics apart by now. We’ve not yet re-assembled them. The void _would_ leave us open to war if I let it fester – either with the Muggles, or a civil war. I can’t leave it to _that_ , at least.”

He didn’t have words for how unfairly he thought this would end up. “You’ve given them everything.”

Voldemort flinched, and so did Harry – he hadn’t meant it to also mean the abuse, the way Voldemort would offer up his very body to the Wizengamot. “I have,” he agreed. “But you’d be much happier if you didn’t expect so much of people. We are all vicious and petty and exploitative. It is… a constant of our political realm.” When Harry set his glass down too hard, there was a flicker of a smile across Voldemort’s face. “I will not be without leverage,” he assured him. “That would make me more trusting than _you_.”

“Wanker,” he said, moving to get up. “I need to brew kaval. Want to come?”

He shook his head. “I’ve got quite a lot to write,” he said, nearly apologetic. Harry left him.

Moira joined him in the basement, at least. He could nearly brew kaval by memory; he made a batch about once a week. As he brewed, Moira begged – for what, she didn’t know – and instead he scooped her under one arm as he brought the jar upstairs.

He found Voldemort, rather alarmingly, sitting motionless at the kitchen table, lost in thought. The Panopticon and journal were before him. Harry didn’t recognize the other handwriting in it. He tried taking a seat demurely, but then – he lost his grip on Moira, who bounded across the table, throwing herself at Voldemort’s face, licking furiously. He was rather shaken from his reverie.

“Sorry, sorry,” Harry said, but he was already a bit high, laughing. _Thwack, thwack_ went her tail on the table. With more patience than could be expected of him, Voldemort scooped Moira against his chest, scrubbing a hand behind her ears. _Thwack, thwack_ , against his chest. The feelings inside them both eased.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Allusions for Chapter 22:
> 
> Charlie with a dragon in a onesie comes from this exquisite [tumblr post by fourandahalfdragons](https://fourandahalfgiraffes.tumblr.com/post/154585665961/seriously-married-or-not-i-reckon-charlie-weasley#). And a pseudodragon is a Dungeons and Dragons creature.
> 
> The film they go see is Shakespeare in Love. The film they do not see is You’ve Got Mail.
> 
> The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde – a novel about a man who stays eternally young while a cursed portrait ages instead.
> 
> The Northern Lights are a natural phenomenon that light up the sky in vivid colors. Winter is the best time to see them in Iceland. (Also, just go look up a video if you haven’t seen them before, they are amazing. Nature is amazing.)
> 
> “Words, words, words” –Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
> 
> “A Leviathan without its head” – Thomas Hobbes uses the image of a society as a mass of people acting with the ruler as its head.


	23. Chapter 23

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the aftermath of Avery’s death, the faculty and the Aurors struggle to find out what has happened to the missing Slytherins. Harry attends the memorial and discovers the locket, but not for long.

Harry drank kaval all afternoon, until his grief was dull and distant. Voldemort and Moira were reading in the basement (well, one of them was, anyway) when Harry tipped himself off the sofa. He needed to go to Hogwarts. He needed to free the Horcrux, who must be a part of all this. He wouldn’t accept the brush-offs anymore. He threw on a traveling cloak, stepped into the garden, and triggered his portkey.

Into the Ministry – more of it lit and bustling than he’d expect late in the evening, on a holiday weekend, but he supposed it _was_ a crisis. In any case, nobody guarded the Floos now – “Hogwarts, Dumbledore’s office,” he said, tossing in a handful of powder. Onward.

He’d expected to arrive in darkness. He did not. He heard gasps and chaos on the other side – and when he stumbled out, it was at the end of a dozen wands and one great Petrificus totalus. He hit the hearth stones hard, panicking.

It took a moment to sort out the voices – faculty, Aurors. The first voice he heard distinctly was Snape’s – “Potter never can keep away from the excitement, even after someone has _died_.” If he were more sober, he’d feel awful about this.

A spell to lift him to eye level, and Camilla Brightbone glaring into his face. “What’s your favorite class?” she asked crisply, easing the petrification off his mouth and little else.

“Uhh…. Oh, potions.” His mind clicked into place. Somewhere behind him, Snape snorted dramatically.

Brightbone released him, but he still stumbled in regaining his balance. He looked around: Snape, McGonagall, Flitwick, Slughorn, Remus. And the Aurors, looking very worn down: Brightbone, Squire, Herzog, Kingsley. No Moody, but Voldemort’s warning that every Auror would know Legilimency remained. He tried shutting down his mind.

“Harry.” _Oh_. Dumbledore. Of course they were meeting with Dumbledore. “I assume you came to be of assistance?”

“Yes,” he said, though he didn’t know what he could offer them.

“Very well. You have two responsibilities. The first is that you’ll turn over your father’s map to the Aurors. It will greatly assist them in matters of security. The second is that you should open the Chamber of Secrets for examination.”

It took a long moment to process this. “Yes, sir.”

Brightbone and Kingsley peeled off to flank him. He had the sense that he’d interrupted a very tense conversation, one to which everyone needed to return without him. He tried to think of nothingness. He tried to move as though he weren’t high.

A few floors down, Kingsley broke the silence. “The castle’s under lockdown. Your way in was the _only_ way in.”

“Uh, then thanks for not hexing me right off.”

Shacklebolt didn’t smile. “What _did_ you intend to do back here? It wasn’t this. And the Slytherins – if I may say so – don’t rely on you for moral support.”

He felt stupid and exposed. He shouldn’t have come. He gaped for a moment, then – “I just want to save everybody, I guess.” He tried to make himself sound pathetic.

He did. So much so that neither of them pursued this.

They let him into his suite alone. He left the door propped open as a gesture of goodwill or something. The diadem glittered on the mantel, but it would have to stay there, for now.

The map was at the top of his trunk, in frequent use by the Horcrux. He wanted to hug it goodbye or something. He brought it to the Aurors.

“This is the marauders’ map.” He was still so reluctant. “My dad made it, with Sirius and Remus.” He wouldn’t name Pettigrew. Fuck Pettigrew; he hoped he’d gotten himself killed in a stupid way by now. “ _I solemnly swear I am up to no good_.”

The map’s ink curled into the familiar diagram. Of course there were many fewer people speckled on it than usual. “Here – the dungeons.” He pointed to their own names. “And the Slytherin common rooms…” were oddly full compared with the rest of the castle. All four eighth years, and four more of the lower grades, were huddled in one of the dormitories together.

They all studied the map so intently, that when the door beside them creaked – well, Harry jumped, at least. Ron peered out. “Hiya, Harry. Thought I heard your voice.”

His heart started again. “Hi. We’re….” He indicated the map. “I was gonna come see if you both were okay after.” He should have said that to the Aurors first, not the muck about saving everyone. What was wrong with him. He was slow when he was high, even functionally so.

“We’re fine. Hermione’s in her study,” he said, indicating the adjacent door. “Or, we’re fine as much as anyone. Avery was….” Ron broke off in a sigh, making a vague and wild gesture. Oh. He’d been drinking. Harry suddenly found this very funny, that neither of them could cope with being sober right now. “But I know we can’t say anything yet. I don’t think even all the students know.”

“Not until the portraits talk,” Brightbone said darkly. “You’ll see Potter later, Mr. Weasley. Good night for now.”

He blinked at her, surprised she knew his name. “Right. Goodnight.”

The Aurors brought Harry rather wordlessly across the dungeon, up the sloped corridor, where they found themselves at the first floor toilets. “Have you ever returned here?” Brightbone asked, letting them in.

“I… wondered about it, after the disappearances.” Honesty would serve him best here, he thought. “I opened it then, but it’s entirely caved in. I already knew it was – the basilisk destroyed a lot of the lower parts, and it’s still crumbling. We thought about using it in the war last year – though getting in and out would be a problem – but even then we couldn’t find a way to stabilize it. It’s too dangerous.”

He had to cast Lumos to find the snake etched into the sink. “ _Open_.”

At first, the grinding of stone sounded normal. Bits of the sink slid back, rearranging themselves. But then – _crack_! The tunnel opened up in time to shoot a plume of dust into the air. The tunnel crumbled, enough that it looked like it might swallow the entire sink with it. “Arresto momentum!” Brightbone cast. Everything froze, but a few small stones escaped the perimeter of the spell. They heard them hit a pile of rubble very far down, setting another rockslide in motion. Dust plumed higher.

When the rumbling stopped, they edged in, each of them casting light to peer into the gaping hole. Rubble and stone at the bottom of what must be a fifty foot drop. The air was thick and foetid. He couldn’t help but think the basilisk was still decomposing.

“The chamber curves back,” Harry narrated quietly, gesturing. “But I don’t think anyone could get past this…. It was a tunnel we slid down, and there’s not another way in….”

Kingsley cast Hominem Revelio. It came back empty. Harry looked at him. “You… think someone would be in there?” If they were, they’d be in danger from the rockslide. Actually, if the passage had been crumbling away like this for very long, Hominem could’ve come back empty because whoever was on the other side was now _dead_. The thought horrified him.

Kingsley spoke, slow and even: “We’re having trouble accounting for how Avery entered the castle. It isn’t such an unusual idea, that Slytherin might have added a passage down here.”

“Oh. Yeah. I mean, I didn’t see one, but I was about to get killed last time, so….” He peered in once more. Their light couldn’t penetrate the rubble or beyond.

“It was a very distant possibility,” Kingsley said, “as it would predate any other structure in the area several times over. And Avery couldn’t get through _this_ ,” he waved his hand, “without a scratch on him.”

“Could he get in through the windows?” Harry suggested. “Or, like, the astronomy tower? We’ve seen them transfigure into birds.”

“There is no breach in those wards… but it seems more likely than this, at least.” He stepped back. So did Brightbone.

“Did _he_ have any ideas?” she asked, not so much reluctant as antagonistic.

“Uh, not about getting in. For his death, he said to look at the soul damage… but that isn’t so pressing now,” he finished dispiritedly. “I could ask. I mean, if I’m allowed back tonight.”

“Yes,” she said crisply – he didn’t know to which.

There was nothing more to be done. Brightbone returned to the Headmaster’s office; Kingsley walked Harry back to his suite. Harry meant to say that Voldemort didn’t want this, _desperately_ not. But – well, either the Minister would repeat that or he wouldn’t.

Harry would see Ron and Hermione, but first – back into his own suite. “ _Hithgalach_.” He dropped the diadem into the hearth.

Riddle stepped out, attuned to Harry’s unsettled soul if nothing else. Harry dragged him to a sofa. He recounted everything. Riddle listened impassively.

At the conclusion, he said to Riddle very seriously, “I won’t ask how you’re getting them out. But _this_ can’t happen again. Find somewhere safer for them. Make sure nobody else can get in.” He took a breath, having rethought this suggestion from earlier. “If I give you my dad’s cloak, would it help them?”

“Yes.”

“I want it back, after everything.”

“Of course.”

“I gave the Aurors my map.” At Riddle’s look – “I had to! Dumbledore asked. I didn’t have a good reason to say no.”

“Then we won’t need your cloak, since they’ve got the only resource they need to catch the Slytherins anyway.”

“Don’t,” he groaned. “You’ve got to get around it.”

Riddle rose, taking the slippery cloak from Harry’s chest. When he turned back around, he asked, “How do they think he re-entered?”

“They’re pretty confused,” Harry admitted. “The outer wards aren’t breached. They had me open the Chamber, but it’s all caved in. Uh, don’t go, if you haven’t, it’s just a straight drop with heaps of rubble at the bottom.”

His mouth twitched. “Your concern is noted.”

Harry sighed. “Anything you need – anything _they_ need – I wish it didn’t have to be like this, but you should get them out while you can. If they just had somewhere safe to go…. I’d offer Grimmauld Place, but it’s under the Fidelius. _Oh_ ,” he said. “If you are taking them somewhere, put a Fidelius on it. Please.”

“And where would I be taking them?”

Glare. “I don’t know. There’s a lot of Death Eaters in Azkaban, some of their houses must be empty.”

“Mm,” Riddle said, contemplative. “They’ll all be seized imminently, if they haven’t been already. But otherwise it would be a viable idea.”

_Oh_. Riddle had never let him in on this before. His people-saving thing fell into place. “Voldemort’s kept his father’s – _your_ father’s – house. I dunno how you’d get them there, but it’s an empty place, at least. I could ask him for a portkey….”

“Every portkey’s authorized by the Ministry.”

“Then… he tells them to piss off? It really is _his_ property, it’s not weird that he’d have access to it.”

Riddle’s head was tipped toward the ceiling. “We aren’t so desperate as to take those risks, yet. Nevertheless,” his dark gaze flicked to Harry’s, “this is helpful. Thank you. Do you want these thoughts out of your mind,” he said rather solicitously, “or could you keep it from the Aurors?”

Riddle knew of his anxiety about potentially getting caught by Moody. “Let me keep them,” he implored. A nod.

Harry did go see Ron and Hermione then, after warning Riddle that the castle was on lockdown and _he’d_ definitely get caught. (Stare. “ _I_ am not human enough for your map. It is the only saving grace.” Bugger.)

Hermione let him in. They were both drinking if not yet drunk. Not a liquor Harry recognized – a very floral mead, mixed with pixie-made champagne. They collapsed on the sofas.

“Thank goodness Lupin let me into the library tonight,” Hermione said, sotto voce even though they were quite alone. “They took his _soul_. Not like a Dementor, which just destroys it – or so it’s theorized, anyway – but they absorb it into some sort of collective.” She held _The Book of Lugétër,_ the Humnerë’s particular species of vampire, in her lap gingerly. “They could use his… lifeforce? _Zoe,_ the word doesn’t translate easily…. But also they could take his memories.” She looked to Harry, serious and concerned. “ _Did_ he know anything important?”

This was a very good question. “I’m not sure,” he said slowly. “Where the rest of them were, I guess. Or where they _would_ go.”

“Mm.” Her lips were pale from being pressed together so hard. They drank.

Kaval and alcohol made him different types of floaty, but they were complementary. Kaval made him feel something like optimism, and alcohol just made him not give a shit, but it was all the same, wasn’t it?

Hermione cradled more books in her lap as though she’d find the answer via osmosis. Ron fiddled with the Muggle wristwatch he’d taken apart, for something to do with his hands. Harry kept reaching into his pocket, to take out the diary he shared with Voldemort, before putting it away again.

“Will they let the students back?” Harry asked at last. There was another week before the term started, but sending all the students owls that said they couldn’t return after all….

Both Ron and Hermione found this idea horrifying. “They’ve got to,” Ron breathed. “To just not let them back….” His hands were tight around the watch face. “Nobody’s ever threatened to close it ‘til now – then again, they don’t tell us anything about the Slytherins….”

“They’re safer here than in their homes,” Hermione said. “The castle’s been used as a fortress before. We only need….” She stared down at her books. “Perhaps bodyguards? The Slytherins move together, anyway. Just put an Aurors on them at all times.”

Ron made a face. “Might as well suggest a buddy system.”

“We could. We _should_ ,” Hermione said. “I don’t understand what threat they see in the castle, but if we could address it….”

“Spiro said he just detonates the Howlers now. Snape’s orders, they’d cause a panic otherwise.” The caretaker, and first line of defense for their post. “Howlers _shouldn’t_ be enough….”

“And if it’s the other students – “ The thought infuriated Harry, “we’ve got to do something about them. But I haven’t seen _anything_.”

“We haven’t either,” Hermione said grimly. “But I don’t believe something’s not happening. Children are… awful,” she concluded in a sigh. “Granted, so are adults.”

Harry needed Riddle once more. He didn’t exactly have a curfew over the holidays, but he should go anyway, and then back to the safehouse. “I need to see Voldemort,” he muttered, half a lie. “Ask him, I mean.”

They both stared. “ _He_ needs no part in this,” Hermione hissed. “And the Slytherins would be stupid to associate with him.”

“He’s already got a _part_ in it,” he said. “The Humnerë won’t stop until he’s alone and dead.”

“Avery wasn’t a Death Eater,” Hermione said firmly. “His _father_ – But Moody would never let someone Marked back into the castle. Not ever, and especially not now.”

He thought of telling them what Voldemort had suggested, that it was meant to lure Harry instead. But it was just such a _horrible_ idea – he couldn’t. Instead: “I don’t know. I should go. The Aurors want to see me out.”

Ron’s eyebrows went up. “You’re not staying?”

“No, I just… wanted to be here. I’ll be back in the castle in a few days.”

They walked him out. He ducked into his suite. Riddle was gone. Of course.

He did summon the Aurors then – _Auxilio_ , cast as he ascended to the ground floor. Brightbone met him in the great hall, and he didn’t quite groan. He’d hoped for Kingsley, but he didn’t deserve Kingsley. “I’m returning to the safehouse, if that is okay?” he asked.

“I’ll see you back.”

Fine. They approached Dumbledore’s office in silence. When they’d nearly reached it, Harry looked over in hesitation. “What are the Slytherins so scared of?”

She barely glanced at him. Their relationship was not great; he didn’t expect answers from her. But then: “We _are_ dedicating many resources to find out. Don’t pursue it, yourself.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. It was almost helpful.

 

She brought him to the Ministry but didn’t join him on the portkey to the safehouse. The front windows were all dark when he walked up.

He found Voldemort in the bedroom, in reading glasses with the Panopticon before him. “Hi,” Harry said quietly as he entered. “Sorry.”

“Are you?”

“Uh….” He blinked. He was still drunk-high, a bit. “Yes? The Aurors were angry at me, for running to Hogwarts, I thought you’d be….”

“Of course you’d return. What did you find?”

Harry was shedding his robes. “I gave the diadem my cloak, and the Aurors my map.”

“How… judicious of you. So neither has an advantage?”

He made a face. “No. Dumbledore told me to. And he asked me to open the Chamber, to see if there’s a passage in here, but the entire thing’s caved in. Actually – christ – are there protective spells to keep the castle from collapsing into it?”

“There are. And there is no passage. Who would maintain the other end of it, anyway?”

“Right. Thanks.” He was moving toward the bath, to get ready for bed.

“If you bring me a nappy, I’ll put you in it for bed.”

Harry shot him an immensely grateful look. On bad days, it was all he wanted. “Thank you,” he reiterated.

So a bit later he was curled up in bed beside Voldemort, half-reading over his shoulder as he flipped through international news. “Do you know what the Slytherins are so scared of?” he asked, not expecting an answer. “The castle should be safer than… wherever they’re going. Where _are_ they going?” he added.

Voldemort clicked his tongue. “How could _I_ know?”

“What don’t you know?”

A wry look. “It can’t be schoolyard bullying that drives them out. None of them are so weak.”

_Children are cruel_ , Hermione had said. He listened.

“If some sort of curse or intimidation made its way into the common room – a cursed object, for example, could cause paranoia, psychosis, or pain even merely in proximity. I assume the post is being searched – “

“A lot,” Harry affirmed.

“But if a curse were put into something innocent – a scarf with a note from a loving parent, that they’d need for the Scottish winter. Something miserable and ordinary like that.”

Harry smiled. Voldemort’s idea of _miserable_ was rather charming. “Maybe. How could I find…?”

“ _That_ would be the Horcrux’s task. We’d traded in cursed artifacts for years by then, he’d have no reason not to recognize something immediately.”

“Right. I’ll ask.”

“Mm. It might also be….” He set the Panopticon on the covers, now engrossed in this. “Faculty harassment? I couldn’t imagine whom or why. Threatening letters? Or perhaps something that is compelling them _toward_ itself, leading them out from the castle. Whether magic or a message.”

“St. Patrick,” Harry murmured, drunk and tired and stupid.

Voldemort’s mouth twitched at this. “Quite,” he said. “Imperio must be cast in close proximity – though it can be maintained from a distance – but a suggestion charm could be embedded in an object. A letter, even. Hogwarts doesn’t still employ that Squib caretaker, do they?”

“Filch. No. There’s, uh, a wizard doing it now. And the Aurors are on the post now, anyway.”

“I’d suggest they’re sending promises – threats, whichever – to lure students out, but assuming the Aurors are also _reading_ the post….” He sighed. “Otherwise, I would take the children from the castle by offering better sanctuary elsewhere. They _might_ threaten their families, but obviously that’s less effective now than it might have been months ago.” When Harry made a noise of protest, he flicked him a wry glance. “Harry. Really. Half of the reason the Ministry keeps me is to name criminal psychology that they are too weak and in denial about to speak for themselves. How would _you_ draw the Slytherins from the castle?”

“I don’t know,” he said firmly.

“You do. You are not so _flinching_ as the fools at the Ministry.”

He tried imagining it. “It seemed like they wanted out,” he said. “At least, that’s how the Horcruxes talked about it, so…. Nobody reacted like they were being abducted.” He let his head fall against the headboard. “Maybe Avery just got intercepted from where he was trying to reach. Wherever that is. _Oh_ ,” he recalled. “If they need somewhere safer – could they get into your father’s house? I couldn’t think of many places that’d be good hideouts. He said – the diadem said – all the Death Eaters’ houses would be seized.”

“They will be. They could get into my father’s house – or rather, the diadem could, and he could change the wards from within. I don’t know that it’s not monitored by now.”

“He also said that every portkey is traced?”

“Yes. Their creation, at least. The Floos are traced too. Apparition less readily, but assuming most of the students are underage…. Which gestures to a larger problem, that they’ve all still got the trace on them.” His brow furrowed; he sat up a bit straighter. “Why _haven’t_ they followed the trace?” he mused. “Or have they?”

_Maybe they’re all dead_ , the worst part of Harry’s brain supplied. “Could they take it off?” he asked. “Or maybe… they’re just not doing magic anymore?”

“Yes.” Voldemort was still quiet and thoughtful.

“I hate this,” Harry sighed. “Please fix it.” He didn’t mean to sound so… _young_ as that came out; he winced. “That is – find the vampires. I’ll do everything I can, for you and everyone.”

A hand through his hair. “I will fix it.”

 

_Monday, January 4._ They departed on Monday morning. It was on Voldemort’s insistence, mostly – the Ministry was back in session and he wanted to be there. Harry had another week of school holidays, but he was obligated to pygmy puff-sit for Ginny while she was in Catalonia with Tonks. He wanted to be at Hogwarts, anyway, sort of. The world couldn’t fall apart without him.

On the way out, he moved to kiss Voldemort, but ended up dropping his head to Voldemort’s chest with a sigh. A firm hand on his back. They parted.

Voldemort had written to the Aurors that Harry was returning, so he wouldn’t be stunned on the way back in. An Auror was stationed in Dumbledore’s office at all times now, as the only way in and out of the castle. He found Savage in there now – but more significantly, he found Dumbledore, deep in dispute with Phineas Nigellus Black.

“ – you’ve only got yourself to blame. Your mad ideas, fomenting anti-pureblood sentiment. You knew it’d come to violence!” Black was squared off in an adjacent portrait, his hands braced on the frame.

Savage was watching from the seat before Dumbledore’s desk; Harry slowed too out of curiosity. Moira squirmed against his chest in mild protest.

“Avery is a tragedy. Every missing student is a tragedy. You are well-traveled, Phineas. What might you have heard?”

“That we’ll only have halfbloods and mudbloods left, when Voldemort’s done with our world.” (Dumbledore’s mustache twitched, at this rather counter-intuitive declaration.) “The Ministry’s gone mad as well. No sense of culture, of history. Purebloods are a proud lot, and the only chance we’ve got at carrying on such a _precarious_ culture. Now that they’re murdering the offspring….”

“A tragedy,” Dumbledore said again.

Black at last felt himself watched by another person. At seeing Harry in the office, he hissed. “Like this one! Generations of our noble family, our history and dwelling, passed on to a halfblood,” he snarled the word, “by my idiot progeny, brainwashed by your propaganda. You’ve probably burnt the portraits,” he accused Harry.

“No, I haven’t.” He failed to add that he _would_ if he _could_ ; Sirius’s mother might be the least pleasant person in his entire life. “And I’d like to save the Slytherins.”

“How benevolent of you. Save them so they might know your new world of electricity” (Impressive; he’d clearly spat the word before because he didn’t stumble at all) “and those awful blue trousers.”

He glanced down at his jeans. Voldemort thought they were unfit for wixies too. “No? Maybe? I’d do everything I can to save them. I don’t want them to die and I don’t want to destroy their – _our_ ,” he stressed, “history.”

“You hardly respect it. When you take over the Muggle liaison office, give them books to describe what _real_ wizard society was once like, because all the purebloods will be _dead_.”

He was a bit hysterical. Dumbledore thought the same, it was clear, and had folded his hands before himself as Harry had seen him do once before, at the end of fifth year when Harry had smashed his entire office. When he was quite sure Black was finished, he said, “We care deeply about the survival of this world. All of its iterations.” Black snorted. Dumbledore went on: “You must see that our rights are not – to use a Muggle phrase – a zero sum game.”

“Shall we be the martyrs for your cause?”

A gentle smile. “Phineas, I think you’d consent to being nobody’s martyr but your own.” Black glared; Dumbledore continued. “We’ve extended every hand to our students. Anything more would be, I think, an imposition on their own rights.”

“You haven’t even got any Slytherins on staff! Ones committed to the old ways, not these simpering idiots you offer.”

( _Simpering._ Slughorn, perhaps. Malfoy, when he was being a prat. Snape? Never.)

Harry was quiet but Moira was loud, by now struggling against his chest and chewing on his collar. When he couldn’t stop her any longer, he turned to go. “Sorry,” he muttered to the paintings and to Savage. “This isn’t my fight, anyway. Sorry.”

Dumbledore turned away from Black for a moment. “An Aralez?”

“Yes, sir.” He was currently shoving his hand in Moira’s mouth, with her needle-sharp teeth, to save his tie from being mangled.

“Hagrid would dearly like to meet her,” he proposed.

A smile. “That’s where we’re going first.” He left.

He and Dumbledore these days… to say they were _okay_ would be drastically overstating it, but at least, all of Harry’s feelings toward him receded in times of crisis. But Harry had cooperated even with _Snape_ last year, in the battles of Hogwarts, so he could compartmentalize his feelings if he had to.

It would be far from the least likely act of forgiveness, anyway.

After dropping his trunk in his suite (the Horcrux’s fire still burned; it was still gone), he went down to Hagrid’s, letting Moira bound in the snow before him. It was so deep that she’d get lost within it, then flutter out of the crater of snow a moment later.

He pounded on the hut door, prompting Fang’s deep, mournful baying. Moira stopped in her tracks, curious and probably intimidated by the sound. The door swung open.

Hagrid’s face lit up when he found Harry on his doorstep. And then Harry offered Moira to him, and he about melted. “Who ‘re you?” he asked her. It was amazing, Harry reflected, how gentle his giant hands could be with such small creatures.

Harry had bought Hagrid a kettle enchanted to raise and lower itself in the fire for Christmas. “I hoped you’d be by the Weasleys’ house,” he said, curious.

“Oh, is that where you were.” His voice went a bit flat and guarded.

Right. Voldemort. They had to do this. “For part of it, yeah.” He set aside the mulled cider Hagrid had poured for him. “I can split my life between him and everyone else. I’ll…. It keeps peace this way. And we share a soul. And I like spending time with him. But I wouldn’t bring him into anyone else’s life.” He looked down at Moira, cradled between Hagrid’s chest and one meaty arm. Hagrid was running a finger down her back, over the points of her wings. “He gave her to me, but since my room’s in the dungeons, he said you might like having her live out here?” he offered tentatively. “That…. We don’t talk about you,” he plunged in, to this thing he’d hate saying, “after I told him that… what he did to you was the worst thing he’s ever done.”

Hagrid’s closed-off expression, dark eyes on the fire, went immediately to shock as his head snapped up. “No, i's not.”

“It _is_. War is war, but that was just… horrid and bigoted and spiteful.” He still felt angry thinking of Hagrid’s expulsion, at his mistreatment by the entire world. And Hagrid was in his class now, eager and sincere and incongruous, so he had a lot of time to consider Hagrid’s life as a student anyway. “So he knows that it’s hurt me. He’ll never…. Neither of us believe in forgiveness really, but….” But what? _He wishes you well? He’s sorry? He won’t do it again?_ “He isn’t going to hurt people, this time,” he settled on, inadequately.

A long stretch of silence – the sort he’d become used to whenever talking about Voldemort. At last – “Yeh deserve someone who’s good to yeh,” Hagrid growled.

“He is. He really is.”

“And yeh deserve someone who’s _good_.”

He stopped short on this. Did he? He cast around for what Dumbledore might say – for better or for worse, he found himself in a position of modeling open and sincere emotionality these days, not just for Voldemort but for everyone, and the way Dumbledore spoke of love and loss was the best guide he had. “Dumbledore said that any decision’s only a moral decision if they can choose between love and violence,” he said, one that had worked before. “And I am the first person to ever love him.” (A faint snort, and he saw in Hagrid’s eyes a response something like, _Because he’d never made himself loveable._ Fair.) “And it’s a responsibility I’ve got, and I want. And he listens. And he’ll keep peace to keep us safe. And he…. If he were the sort to apologize, this would be an apology. I know it’s crap and not enough. I’m sorry.”

He made a right mess of _that_ , then; but saying it all aloud made him panic with the weight of what _was_ his responsibility. The first recipient of Voldemort’s love. The first one to show him a healthy relationship – insofar as Harry even knew what _that_ was. Voldemort had warned him once that taking someone’s virginity was a significant responsibility, but to be the first person to love another seemed infinitely moreso.

Without answering, Hagrid set Moira on the floor, near Fang. It was a distraction, but an effective one. She crept up; he half-opened one eye. She bounded forward, pulling at one of his floppy ears. His tail swished along the ground, hesitantly. The room relaxed.

“He is a monster,” Hagrid said lowly. “And he doesn’t deserve yeh. If he touches a hair on your head – !”

He was angry, but it was on Harry’s behalf. It was a relief. “No. He won’t. We share a soul, you know.” (Hagrid’s shudder at that might’ve shaken the cabin on its foundation.) “And it helps. It helps _him_. To know what it feels like when someone else is hurt.”

Hagrid’s gaze was very dark. “He’s not a victim.”

“No,” Harry agreed. (Though in some ways he _was_. Nevermind that.) “But it’s better for everyone if he’s… integrated, I guess? Otherwise he’s just trapped, that he’d only have violence left to handle the world. He doesn’t deserve it,” he added in a rush, anticipating that’d be next. “But I… guess I don’t believe in justice either.” _Mercy is the suspension of justice_ , the Aurors’ slogan. He found it hideous.

Another silence. Then: “Yer a good kid, Harry.”

In other circumstances, Hagrid might have added that his parents would have been proud, or Sirius, or Dumbledore. The absence was notable.

And then Hagrid picked up his wand, swinging the cabin door open. “Out, Fang. Show ‘er around.” The hound got up, loping to the door. Moira fluttered above him, nearly doing flips with excitement. With nothing else to say, Harry and Hagrid followed.

On the way back in, Harry stopped by the hospital wing, leaving a note on Sabita’s door to ask if they could meet with the new year. His feelings on love and forgiveness and the rest of them were a horrid knot, tangled like old fairy lights. And then he gave a moment’s consideration to seeing Dumbledore again as well. Not yet.

 

_Thursday, January 7._ This week of hols was filled with animals – Ginny’s pygmy puff sitting; and he went to see Moira and Hagrid and Fang every day; and then he stopped by the owlery in the evenings before Hedwig hunted, so she didn’t get jealous.

He and the diadem went to the Slytherin estate once more, before the preservationists came that weekend. Riddle hadn’t done much work on the building – there would be rules of what materials and what spells would be sufficiently historical – but he’d done a lot on the wards. They glowed around the perimeter, promising protection and non-aggression and screening of visitors and shelter from natural disasters. Harry only needed to know enough to give the impression to the historians that he’d managed all of this himself. “Just tell them you’ll send them your notes in full,” Riddle said with impatience when Harry stared over the long strands of runes.

“Have you got notes?”

“No. Then you send nothing. They’ll forget, in time.”

He looked over with a smile. “Thank you. You’ve been really helpful.”

“You are incidental, you know.”

“Right, right, your heritage and all. I know.” He didn’t entirely keep the teasing from his voice. “D'you still want to come when I meet the builders here? The artifact, I mean.”

“Yes.”

“And is there anything…. This has all been quite selfless.”

His lips curved. “Oh, Harry. You are so good.”

“Yeah, I am,” he said, a bit defensive. “And I just expect you’d want… something. I spend my entire life around Slytherins, these days,” he reminded him.

“I didn’t do this for you. There is nothing you need to offer me, nor anything you could.”

Even when Riddle was being helpful, he was still such a prat. “Well. Thanks, anyway.” He closed the wards until the preservationists came, and collected the diadem from its fire.

Back at Hogwarts, when he let the diadem out again (so to speak – back into its fire), they stood looking at each other for a long moment. “You’ve got to get the Slytherins out,” Harry said.

“Yes.”

“Before the new term?”

“Ideally.”

“I asked Vol – Voldemort,” he said, because dumb nicknames weren’t meant for other ears. “He said if you wanted in to your father’s house, you’d undo the wards from the inside, and then you could let them in.”

“Hm.”

Harry gave him a sharp look. “It’s a good idea.”

“We’ve already got ways out.”

“Are you apparating them from the forest? That seems – “

He was going to say _ill-advised_ , because he spent far too much time with Voldemort and his fancy words now. But before he could, Riddle held up a quieting hand, too close to his mouth. Harry slapped it away. “God, nevermind – “

“I will tell you how to be helpful,” Riddle said over him.

“What – really?”

“You’ll create a distraction tonight. Later would be better but,” a flicker of an unfriendly smile, “you have got a bedtime.”

“Ugh. Piss off. – What sort of distraction? And where?”

“Anywhere.”

“A distraction _anytime_ and _anywhere_?” he asked in disbelief.

“Fine. Stay away from the front entrance. The entire ground floor, really.”

“You’re just walking out the front door, then.”

Unexpectedly, Riddle seized him, his fingers curling into Harry’s shoulders hard. It was the first time he’d _scared_ Harry, really. “Why are you so insistent?” he hissed. “If I tell you that you don’t need to know, then _you don’t need to know_. You are already a liability, your shit Occlumency and your inability to _not_ be involved in anything. We only need a distraction to begin with because _you_ gave them that fucking map.”

The air between them was charged. Harry breathed hard even as he threw off Riddle’s grasp. “Jesus Christ, how did you ever convince anyone to _follow_ you, you psychopath,” he muttered.

“I promised them that they’d be empowered, and safe, and free. If you won’t do this, I am taking your memories,” he said, deadly serious.

“No – I will.” He held the quiet for a moment, letting the tension dissipate. “Tom – what are they running from? Or what are they running _to_?”

Riddle shook his head, tired. His hair was down today, and it swished over his shoulders at the motion. “Threats. Danger. What do you think?”

“From, like, the students?”

“No. Of course not.”

“Do you know who?”

Riddle lost his patience, again, less violently. “They wake up cursed. They wake up swearing someone had stood over them in their sleep, to imprison or torture or kill them. Now, _Avery_ – “

“They can’t get in. The Humnerë.”

“They shouldn’t,” he agreed doubtfully.

“Voldemort thought there might be cursed artifacts in the dorm.”

“Thank him for his uninformed opinion.”

“There’s _got_ – “ He stopped himself with difficulty. “We’ll get them out tonight,” he said. “The ones who have escaped… are they safer?”

A cold smile. “For their sake and ours, we couldn’t be in touch. You might believe so, anyway.”

He scrubbed his face. “Right. Tonight. Eight?”

“Fine.”

On the way out, Riddle tugged at a stray lock of Harry’s hair. It was nearly affectionate. It was _definitely_ something Voldemort had done, many times. Feeling weird, he walked to Hagrid’s.

 

That night, he crafted a small explosion in the Floo of Dumbledore’s office. He’d cast a poor disillusionment on himself – it was dark and the portraits feigned sleep at this hour anyway – and brought the newer cypress wand, leaving his holly one with Riddle. With a touch of gargoyle moss in the hearth and a badly-cast fireball, there was an explosion that’d be heard downstairs.

He only needed to attract the Aurors’ attention should they be looking at the map, but he got them both sprinting in a moment later, wands drawn. “What – “

The explosion had been rather smoky, obscuring him, and he was choking on it. “It’s – _urgh_ – it’s me. Harry.” He’d brought the wand as an excuse for a failed spell, but he really couldn’t cast well with it. When Kingsley sucked up all the smoke, Harry found him and Brightbone looking quite unimpressed.

By the end of the day, some of Brightbone’s curls had escaped her bun, and they bounced wildly now. “What are you doing?” she demanded.

“I was trying to light a fire. Haven’t gotten used to the new wand.” And he was fortunate that she’d been present when it’d been delivered, though Kingsley didn’t look surprised either. “I wanted to see Dumbledore,” he added, rather pathetically. “But he’s not here, I guess.”

Lies. He did not at all want to see Dumbledore, and he was massively relieved he wasn’t there.

To his chagrin, Kingsley cast a glowing charm on Dumbledore’s frame. “There. Give him a few minutes. He’s likely at the Ministry.”

Curious, he asked, “Is the Ministry always working this late?” That seemed odd – he’d seen the floods of wixies depart at precisely five p.m.

Kingsley raised his boxy jaw to the portrait. “Albus could tell you,” he said. “Goodnight, Harry. Don’t be out late.”

“Right,” he said, trying not to sound resigned. “Thanks. ‘Night.” He hoped this had been enough time for Riddle to work. Maybe he should ask the Aurors to stay for emotional support.

But they left him as Albus slipped into the frame, taking his place in a plush painted chair. He looked warm but slightly concerned. “Harry?”

“Hi. I mean, good evening, sir.” Shit. He hadn’t prepared for any of this. The last time he and Dumbledore had spoken, before the holidays, Harry had said some rather terrible things, that he nevertheless didn’t regret. Still. “Sorry. If there’s something more important at the Ministry – this isn’t urgent – “

“The Ministry shall survive without my presence,” Dumbledore said. “The beginning of the year is a frantic time for them. One would think they’d anticipate it by now.” He tipped his head down to look over his glasses. “Furthermore, Voldemort’s legislation – if not his very presence – has become rather divisive in the Wizengamot. As he’s thoroughly sworn to do no knowing damage to the Ministry’s efficacy – a contradiction in terms as that may be – I can only assume it was unintentional.”

“I don’t want the Wizengamot to fall apart,” Harry said, nearly honest. There were more unpleasant people on it than pleasant ones, but chaos wouldn’t help. “Should I… say something?”

“It has already all been set in motion.”

“Right.”

Dumbledore motioned him to a seat. “Certainly, bureaucratic pettiness is not the occasion for your visit.”

“No. I….” There was only one thing he could credibly be here to say. He so didn’t want to. Rapping the cypress wand at the corner of the desk, he was gratified when tea and ginger newts popped into existence. Dropping too much sugar into his tea, he stalled. “I’ve seen Hagrid a lot this week. Moira – uh, my dog – is staying out there, so we’ll take them out on the grounds together.” It was a part of the day he’d come to look forward to, wandering the snowy grounds with Hagrid. He swore Fang had new life in him, spending time with a puppy.

“I haven’t seen Hagrid in awhile. Pass along my felicitations for the new year.”

“Yes, sir. But we’ve talked, a lot, and…. I’ll never excuse Voldemort, or defend him to anyone. Getting Hagrid expelled was the worst thing he’s ever done.” (Dumbledore clearly didn’t agree with this either; his brow furrowed.) “And I wish so much it could’ve been different, that he hadn’t thought of violence as his only… tool? Path? That he’d been in a place where he found goodness effective too. And I’ve done a wretched job trying to say that to Hagrid, that I haven’t forgiven him so much as I’ve offered him… well, a life he doesn’t deserve, but one he’s never had, where somebody loves him.” He was doing a wretched job _now_ , come to think of it, but it couldn't be helped. Actually, hearing himself, he flushed. “Not that anyone deserves a life without being loved, but….” He flailed his hands uselessly. “You know what I mean.”

“I do,” Dumbledore said. His expression was solemn and closed off.

“But saying all this, it’s made me see…. It’s much easier for me to get past what Voldemort’s done to me because he _only_ did it out of hate. It’s really simple, to understand why someone who hated me would want to hurt me. Someone who _loved_ me, on the other hand….” He set the teacup down a bit too hard.

Dumbledore hadn’t fully expected his anger. Neither had Harry, honestly. Still, he said, “I should appreciate if you’d finish this thought. It seems important that I not misunderstand your point.”

He couldn’t. He was overcome in that moment with the thought – Dumbledore had hurt so much others he’d loved. Snape and Grindelwald came to mind first, and _that_ was an unpleasant pair with whom to be associated. “Voldemort told me recently that love’s not good, just powerful.”

“Do you agree?”

“Well, yeah. It can be really dysfunctional, can’t it? Or obsessive or manipulative. It can ruin lives.”

Dumbledore _flinched_ at that, uncharacteristically. Harry was horrified. “I didn’t mean – sorry,” he muttered.

“No. You are correct. _He_ is correct, at least in that respect.”

“I can’t accept that you’d hurt me, _and_ love me,” Harry said in a rush. “Or that you’d hurt me _because_ you loved me. Love’s not anything I want a part in, not that sort, if that’s how it’s expressed.”

There. He’d said it while he had the words in his mouth, because he was a shit orator and losing his nerve, anyway. He wanted for Dumbledore to tell him he knew nothing, to get out of his office and leave the politics to the adults.

He did not. There was a long silence, and then Dumbledore said, “Voldemort is quite lucky to have you as his guide in love. In addition to your roles as confidant and partner.”

He had nothing to say to that. He shrugged.

“Your objection is not only valid, but wise. I have nothing to teach you of love. Indeed, as you indicate, perhaps I never did. Voldemort and I were victims to the same logic, it seems – that as he sought power from the absence of love, I sought power in its presence. Both, as you say, became rather dysfunctional.”

“He said you imprisoned Grindelwald with love.” To avoid his name any longer would be excruciating.

“I did. How peculiar that he would know this, since it was deliberately never made public knowledge.” Harry shrugged again. Dumbledore and Voldemort, their particular obsessions notwithstanding, had been obsessed with one another too. He wasn’t surprised.

So Dumbledore continued: “What, then, are you seeking here? I can offer apologies or explanations, inadequate though they may be. You are welcome to break anything in this office, though I believe you destroyed all the most satisfying pieces last time.” (At this Harry sort-of smiled and sort-of blushed at _that_ embarrassing recollection.) “Unfortunately the social capital of guilt is less effective with portraits, so I could not effect change in quite the same way as, for example, Alastor Moody could.”

“I didn’t mean to _guilt_ him into anything.” But to get the Slytherin estate in exchange for breaking down in front of Moody was about even.

“No, no. Nevertheless.”

He actually couldn’t process the question. “I don’t – Nothing,” he said. “I just wanted to tell you – I can’t go on being angry with you. I know it didn’t sound like it,” he added, somewhat sheepish.

“You could be. I would venture, you _should_ be.”

“I know. I’m not.”

“Neither of us deserve your generosity or heart.”

This felt embarrassing. He just wanted out of the awkward mess he’d been in with Dumbledore the past month. “Can you tell me, then, how you did it?” he asked, to get off this hideous praise. “I understand why – more or less – but how did you send me back to them every year? How did you tell the Order I was fine?”

“Fine,” he echoed doubtfully, “would never be the appropriate word. I told them you would survive childhood. Of that, I was confident.”

“I wasn’t,” Harry muttered. “Oh – not because of the Dursleys, sir,” he said at Dumbledore’s look. “Just, y’know, Voldemort.”

A quirk of a smile. “Just Voldemort,” he agreed. “Sending you back to a home which you clearly despised – and which clearly despised _you_ , as enchanted by your mother’s love as it may have been – was not so difficult as preparing you for death, I thought. Especially as you returned each year, as resilient – which is no reward for resilience, of course.”

“I didn’t mind dying,” he said honestly. “It felt appropriate. Cruelty, though…. I couldn’t explain why it seems worse. Maybe because it was so common. Dying, at least, meant something.” _Dumbledore sacrificed more than your life_. Moody’s statement still stung inside him.

But Dumbledore looked as though he was uncertain what Harry did want. He didn’t really know himself. Not an apology. “I just don’t want to carry these feelings around with me anymore,” he said weakly.

“Harry.” He said it in a sigh. “I want so much for you the peace I couldn’t myself give you.”

“Thank you, sir.” He had something like it, sometimes. The chaos of the world notwithstanding. A thought occurred – “Oh, there is one thing.” Dumbledore inclined his head, glasses somehow catching the light painted into the portrait. “Stop calling him Tom. It’s so… spiteful. And whatever point you’re making” ( _if there is one_ , he thought quite darkly) “is lost on him.”

A flicker of a smile. “I have held out hope for half a century. You’ve done better in a year.”

Dumbledore, clever and politic figure as he was, could never have believed infuriating and infantilizing Voldemort would do any good. Harry did his best to keep the skepticism off his face. “Maybe.”

Another gentle smile. “We are so privileged to have so much to learn from you.”

This was embarrassing. His response might’ve been an uncomfortable squeak. He’d never intended to speak to Dumbledore at all, and not like this. “I shouldn’t keep you,” he said at last. “Goodnight,” and he rather fled.

Tom was still out when Harry returned to his suite, so _that_ was unnerving. Nevermind, though. He summoned the diary he shared with Voldemort, conveying everything in very scrawled Parselscript as the hideous feelings still coiled inside him. Voldemort had heard most of it before, generally resisted saying much about Dumbledore at all around Harry, and wasn’t present anyway. Harry sank into his thoughts, filling a page – a lot for him. He was indifferent to the idea of having a good relationship with Dumbledore, he wrote, not because Voldemort was more forgiveable but because Dumbledore was dead. Obviously. Forgiving a portrait felt very hollow, he thought – but then, he hadn’t gone there to have this conversation to begin with.

**_Also_** , he wrote at the bottom of the page, **_I told him to stop calling you Tom. It’s just spiteful and shitty._**

He moved to go have a shower, and was startled when the page corner lifted itself gently, indicating writing on the other side. Voldemort’s neat hand: _A martyr at every moment._

**_There was nothing I wanted from him. I’d ask for it instead, if I did._ **

_I’m at the Ministry now. Contain your lukewarm feelings about Albus for a few hours._

**_Why?_** he wrote, startled.

_Because they are typically inefficient. There is no crisis._

**_There sort of is,_** Harry wrote with a frown. ** _The Slytherins are getting out. If someone says anything about Hogwarts, stall them._**

A pause. He might’ve been doing something on the Ministry side. Then: _Is the Horcrux with them?_

**_Yes. Or he’s not here, anyway._ **

_I’ll need to correspond with it later. I’ll keep them from Hogwarts, for now._

**_Thanks_** _._ This felt flat. He normally ended conversations with Voldemort by touching him, kissing him, fingers down his arms or back. It felt incomplete, like this.

The Horcrux arrived, at last, too close to curfew. (Or when the Aurors would pull the wards over his door, anyway.) He seemed indifferent, face blank and gait easy.

“Are they out?” Harry asked, with some trepidation.

“You’ll find out at breakfast.”

“Just – “ Instant frustration.

“Yes,” Riddle relented. “The eighth years remain. And we closed the exit.”

“You still won’t tell me how.”

A flicker of amusement. “No. Of course not.”

Harry shook his head, exasperated. “Thanks, anyway. Are they… they’ll be safe?”

“Could such a promise ever be made?”

“I hope so.”

Riddle gave him a look that said quite clearly that he was an idiot. “They’re out,” he said. “Their temporary sanctuary is not similarly antagonistic, in our experience. Avery probably went where he shouldn’t have. The others will be more cautious.”

Still sort of depressed and anxious, Harry went to shower. Before doing so, though, he tossed Riddle the diary. “He’s at the Ministry now, but he wanted to talk to you. Write to you. Whatever.” Riddle’s face was still stone as Harry went.

 

_Saturday, January 9._ He met the preservationists on Slytherin’s estate on Saturday. He brought the diadem with him, worn like a ring. Riddle was strangely prickly about the idea of bringing the Ministry around, Harry couldn’t draw why out of him, and he couldn’t do anything about it anyway.

Holland was present as a historian, but there were a handful of others – specialists in preservation and archaeology, equal parts academic and physical labor. Five of them altogether, meeting Harry on the estate with portkeys that the Aurors had to send them.

“I haven’t done anything to the building yet,” Harry said, pretending to be more competent than he really was. “Other than clearing off brush and rubble. But the wards were eroded, and all in different….” The word _syntaxes_ escaped him in this moment, and it was panic-inducing. Riddle had graciously coached Harry on what he’d done, and Harry was failing now. “All in different languages.”

They didn’t seem to expect much of him. “Ah,” the expert on wards said, casting magic to make them all visible at once. The light reflecting off the snow was dazzling. And even as amateur as Harry was, he could see the order that Riddle had restored to the chaotic remains. He was so grateful.

They were before the front ‘entrance;’ he led them ‘in.’ Dr. Franken, the archeologist, paced into the largest adjacent space. “The front entryway is early medieval. This is regency era. The doorways, the glaze of the tiles….”

“We found a few floor plans,” Holland said, delicately charming a scroll so it floated, so nobody could touch it. “Not all of them. It seems as though the family was constantly building. The upper levels, the window’s walk, the various cisterns, the second cellar, the greenhouses, the gardener’s shack, the stables….”

Part of this was in the memories Riddle had extracted from the ruins. He’d walked those ballrooms and greenhouses. Since he couldn’t explain to them how ‘he’d’ extracted these, he played dumb. “I thought these,” he gestured to the large spaces on either side of the entryway, “were for entertaining. A dining room, or a ball room.”

“Certainly. They were always influential. The ban on Parselmouths was likely in part supported by their political opponents, to also remove them from the Wizengamot. It was the Gaunt line by then – I couldn’t find directly what happened to them after that, but they were still included in the Sacred Twenty-Eight decades later.”

What happened to them? The family had grown increasingly paranoid and inbred at the edge of a Muggle village, clinging to racist ideology for lack of anything else. Before he could decide what of that to actually convey, Hanson, the edificial magic specialist, looked up sharply. “Are there still snakes on the property?”

Everyone in earshot had gone tense. Harry tried not to sigh. “Yes. They’re probably in the cellar, mostly – the cold makes them sleepy, and I cast a warming charm for them down there.” And humidity, and airflow, and a bit of light. He did not ultimately want the cellar to be a terrarium, but for now, it gained him the snakes’ mild gratitude. “I’m a Parselmouth, too,” he added, unnecessarily. “And they want – well, they think they are the descendants of Slytherin’s snakes. They rather want to see this home restored.”

“What do snakes care for heritage?” Hanson said in faint shock. Harry shrugged.

But then everyone fell back into work. Harry followed, and took inadequate notes. The building materials and the magic were both fairly stringent. He had a long discussion with Hanson about the building codes for plumbing. They took samples of soil and stone and magic. They were all, he realized, _excited_ for this work. Nerds. He wondered if Hermione would want to see some part of this process.

Hanson was peering up at where the upper stories once were. “How do you intend to use the space?”

He blinked. “In… normal ways? Like a house.”

“It can be tricky. Household magics can interfere with each other in unanticipated ways – that a Floo too near to the entrance can disrupt security spells, and anti-fire charms and anti-flood charms must be put at opposite ends of the house, and atmospheric charms wreak all _sorts_ of havoc on the lighting…. Not all of it is intuitive. We could guess at the rooms’ functions, by the requirements of the layout. So if you have particular wishes for the space….”

The imagination of their life together was both enchanting and painful. “I’d like to keep the ground floor open to have people over,” he said. He’d thought of it at Christmas – the Weasley family couldn’t swell much larger, nor the home enchanted much more outwards or upwards. He wanted to have Christmas here. “And then bedrooms above. We’ll need guest quarters and – uh, eventually – kids’ rooms. And then a library somewhere. A study for him, maybe one for me as well? And we’ll set up potions in the cellar, so we’ll have climate control spells down there. And, like, tea rooms? Sitting rooms? And outdoor space for the animals….”

It was a life. He had a life in mind. Voldemort had to survive, to share it with him.

Hanson had drawn a layout in midair, shuffling rooms around like blocks. “You should be able to. The library should be oriented north, and the kitchens east, so….” More shuffling. She sketched him a few options and then called over Franken and Greenleaf, the preservationist.

At last, money. It wasn’t that he _had_ to use the Ministry-registered builders in particular, but that he had to use builders familiar with historic materials, and none of the private builders would be likely to be. The price for a reconstructed four-story home would drain his royalties from WWW and maybe a third of his vault. They offered him numbers with hesitation but really, what else would he need the money for? He tried not to sound too blithe about what _was_ a lot of money when he agreed. They gave him information for their contractors.

“And…. I know there’s magic in building it myself,” he said carefully. “Would there be some way…?”

Greenleaf and Hanson, the most qualified to answer, shared a look. “They might let you reinforce a room or two,” Hanson said. “Your magic is already in the wards, yeah? And his is in his blood. The house will grow with you.”

Harry wondered faintly, familiar as he was with the wixen world by now, if she meant literally. In any case, with a lot of handshakes and well wishes, the experts all let themselves out. Harry went to check on his terrarium.

The snakes were quiet. Many of them had eaten recently, visible bumps inside them. It was a strange sight, to see a variety of vipers and a few boas inhabiting such a small space, but maybe magical snakes talked out their feelings rather than eat each other? “Do you need anything?” he called down softly from the top of the stairs. He could already feel the climate spell decaying, and he recast it.

“You brought humansss,” one rather sleepy voice said from the darkness.

“Yes. They’ll restore it, to what it was like – well ,for Slytherin and his descendants, a bit. I can tell them to leave the cellar like this, if it won’t collapse.”

“It won’t.” The snake did not sound worried. “Where iss the heir?”

It meant Riddle. Harry hadn’t intended to make him manifest here, but he certainly could. “Can I light a fire here?” he asked. “There won’t be heat, only light.”

Grumbles. The snakes _grumbled_ at him. They reminded him of Voldemort when he was prickly, and he smiled. He summoned Riddle.

He was in a heavy winter cloak this time, even though he didn’t feel the cold. “Yes?” Brisk. Not even directed at Harry, but at the snakes themselves.

“There iss danger. A portal, near the lake. It’ss only arrived yesterday.”

Oh no. Harry had never gone that deep out onto the estate. It was beyond the Aurors’ boundaries. But why would anyone be out _here_?

Tom was collected, thoughtful. He _was_ like Voldemort in that way, willing to look a crisis head-on, even if only to prove everyone else’s incompetence. “Would you like to come with me?” _Again_ , not to Harry but to the snakes.

“It iss very cold.”

Riddle descended. It was one snake in particular, a green and purple boa. He scooped the snake up easily, dropping him around his shoulders, and the snake was surprisingly content with this. At last he looked to Harry. “You need to return to Hogwarts.”

“What? No.”

Impatience. “Yes,” he said. “What do you intend to do? It’s out of your reach. It is likely dangerous. You should _thank_ me, not only for my labor on the estate, but also for offering my own invincibility to keep you from danger.”

The flip side to how charming Riddle could be when he wanted, was that he could be as guilt-inducing as he wanted as well. Still, Harry saw how stupid it’d be to insist on unnecessary risk. “Right. Cheers,” he muttered. “Should I get you this afternoon?”

“Please.”

He hoped very much that the snake was wrong, but he assumed it wasn’t.

 

When Riddle returned later, he was particularly unmoved by this security risk. “Whatever they attempted, they cast it wrong. The portal was impassable. Or perhaps the Ministry protections are stronger and farther-reaching than I expected.”

“It’s that one. Do you know how paranoid Moody is?”

A flicker of amusement. “Historically, he was the first to suspect that the fraternal order that would become the Death Eaters was any menace. He’d have us suspended himself, eventually.” A tug at the corner of his mouth. “His paranoia has always been a part of my life.”

God. He hadn’t known. Literally decades of antagonism. Voldemort’s career (such as it is) bookended by Moody. And now they were… _here_ , collaborating more or less non-violently, for Harry’s sake and Scrimgeour’s and the rest of the world. It made him anxious. “Well, he wasn’t wrong, anyway,” he said darkly.

Riddle gave him a brilliant smile that was its own response. Then: “I need to visit the library, before the school is teeming with students again.”

This gave Harry pause. “Since the Slytherins are gone, and the estate’s ready, what….”

Riddle clicked his tongue. “Hasn’t the Mudblood lectured you often enough about the immorality of servitude?”

“Don’t call her that. And I didn’t mean, what can you do for _me_. Just, what are you doing?”

“Perhaps it’s for leisure. Perhaps, after a half-century of being trapped, I’ve got rather a lot to learn now.”

He at least took solace that Riddle was apparently restrained from harming anyone in the castle. “Right. Whatever.” He passed him the cypress wand. “See you tonight?”

“Perhaps.”

 

_Monday, January 11._ The students arrived back on Sunday evening. The reporters were owling and trying to force their way into the castle by Monday morning. Honestly, it was surprising that it took that long for news to spread that the entire Slytherin house was missing.

The Quibbler broke it, with a Monday morning paper. Luna, of course. She styled herself as _Hogwarts correspondent_ occasionally in the bylines, and her presence was invaluable.

Still, the great hall at breakfast was chaos. There were as many owls as Harry had ever seen, such that there were feathers in the porridge and it was all a bit disgusting. The students were angry and panicked, the faculty were tense, and the wards were strained from all the packages and floo calls that had to be screened.

Snape was absent from breakfast, which was alarming in itself. So McGonagall stood, amplifying her voice. “Owing to current circumstances,” she said, looking to the owls and to the empty quarter of the hall where the Slytherins would’ve been, “morning classes are cancelled. Heads of house will be taking questions in your common rooms. Faculty should report at 9 a.m. for a meeting in the coral suite.”

The buzz of voices. Nobody was crying, but looking out, a lot of the students were pale. Beside him, Hermione had been tugging on her hair so it stuck out like a dandelion. She still wore the student’s tie in Slytherin colors, but it seemed to clash with her dusky complexion now.

Ron and Hermione followed McGonagall to the Gryffindor common room. (“In case it’d help,” Ron shrugged.) But Harry had to flee back to his suite when he saw Aurors, many more than usual, on the perimeter of the hall. Shit.

He sort of flung the diadem into the fire. Tom did not look at all flustered – would he ever? – but arched his brows. “Yes?”

“Could you take my memories?” he asked, a bit desperate. “There are Aurors – they’ll go through my mind if they can.”

“Mm.” Riddle strode to the bedside table, twirling the cypress wand through his fingers. “You’ve been told that too much manipulation of memories will break you.”

“It won’t be long, just enough to get through the meeting – “

“I’ve been present nearly every day for months.” He flashed a sharp smile. “I’ve no compunction about tearing myself from your mind, but it’d be rather noticeable.”

“Then… what,” he asked dully. “I feel like I’ve already gotten away with it for too long.”

Riddle made a grinding noise in the back of his throat. “This wouldn’t be an issue if you practiced Occlumency.”

“I do! But with Voldemort. It’s probably nothing like with anyone else, but how would I _know_.”

Frustration, from both of them. When Riddle brandished his wand, Harry nearly reached for his own. “I’m taking what I’ve told you of the Slytherins.” When Harry nearly protested that he hadn’t told him _anything_ , Riddle pointed the wand at him briskly. “Do not argue. Clear your mind before you go. Take the artifact; I’ll give you magic. If things go _terribly_ , I could Obliviate an Auror, but I’d rather not.”

As he stepped in to let Riddle pull apart his memory, he reflected that at least it was advantageous to be allied with him, not against him. Maybe he’d grown a little soft on sociopathy recently.

Riddle wasn’t nearly as practiced as Voldemort, of course, but he was precise and determined. “Don’t search for what’s missing,” he said as he conjured a jar. “You know it won’t help.”

“I know.” He kept his eyes on the ceiling, his breathing measured, as he pushed forward every moment in which he’d asked Riddle about the Slytherins. (Really, it had been a lot. That must have been tiresome, he reflected.) And then Riddle corked the bottle, handing it back. “Uh, should I write myself a note…?”

“Should you?” He was so indifferent.

He decided against it, shoving the bottle in the back of a desk drawer. “Thank you,” he said, meeting Riddle’s gaze.

A smarmy little shrug. He, like Voldemort, could never do sincerity. “It will never be for you.”

“I know. Can I…?” He nodded to the hearth.

“Yes.”

Diadem on his hand, _Surripio_ to conceal it within his flesh. Enough innocent spells cast in rapid succession that Priori Incantatum would look innocuous. Counting back from one hundred until his mind was quiet. He went.

The coral suite was not named only for its color, but for the twisting coral that grew along the walls, attracting all the mermaid portraits. It was a wildly inappropriate setting for such a grim meeting.

The faculty was congregated inside, but the Aurors were still clustered in the corridor: Moody, Bragg, Kingsley, Brightbone, Herzog, Rye, Dawlish, and Robards. It was such an unnerving group. He began counting backwards again, to clear the guilt from his mind.

But the faculty met alone first. McGonagall took the head of the table – albeit with Snape at her side, but still. He looked terrible these days. Oh, and Malfoy was missing from the meeting. So there was that.

Tell the students that the Ministry was diligently tracking down the Slytherins. Tell them that Hogwarts was a fortress, and the safest it has ever been. Only the students who’d stayed over the holidays knew much about Avery’s death. The papers were largely full of speculation on the case and motivation – and Luna undermined herself on this one, because she’d written that his death was vampire-inflicted, but that _was_ what the Quibbler would say.

There would be a memorial. They spent a few depressing minutes discussing whether he belonged on the war memorial, and then decided against it. Slughorn and Snape were asked if there should be something placed in the Slytherin common room; Slughorn’s shrug was weak and Snape’s was surly. They decided against that too.

The remaining eighth years, as it turned out, were being questioned by the Aurors, _again_. Harry assumed it was a full Auror panel – questioning, Priori Incantatum, maybe even Legilimency or Veritaserum. Their suites were probably already torn apart for evidence. It stopped just short of a strip search. Kingsley had said once that warrants even for Legilimency were difficult to obtain, but…. Anyway. He’d never understand why they didn’t get out, too.

Oh. _That_ – something tugged in his mind then. That memory wasn’t to be touched. He pulled back.

They were talking now about how to teach this. The classes were already small and – well, resilient, but anxious. The world had been tumultuous for the past few years. “A few classes may adjust material to be less stressful,” McGonagall was saying. “Potter, especially. Come see Remus and me afterward for suggestions on how to change your syllabus.”

“Yes, Professor.”

“Good. And to speak about defenses, we’ll need the Aurors – “ And she summoned them with a Patronus.

The faculty meetings were usually chaotic in a good-natured way. This was a group who’d spent in some cases decades together, and Harry was seeing now one couldn’t survive teaching magic teenagers without some cathartic dry humor. But this meeting was quieter than he’d ever known. The Aurors filed in, and the only sounds were the scraping of chairs on the floor, and the clunk of Moody’s leg.

The castle _hadn’t_ been breached, and that was the part that distressed the Aurors so much. Robards began there: the wards weren’t triggered or pried open or loose or eroded. They seemed immaculate. They searched Avery’s room, and his body. Perhaps he’d gotten back in as a student and _then_ been infected, with an artifact or slow-acting potion or some sort of contagion? “ _That_ ,” Kingsley said grimly, “can’t be repeated to students. It’d cause a panic. But we’ve brought in a contagion expert, who swabbed his room but the results aren’t back yet…. Nevertheless, we don’t anticipate the same harm for any other students.”

On it went. Discussion about rescinding the moratorium on Slytherin sortings – but they’d need the governors for that. The governors had also neatly shot down Lavender’s proposal for a dueling club back in August, but she said she’d try again now. The students would want self-defense.

“I might be mistaken,” Snape broke in. He’d been so quiet that some people jumped, as though they’d forgotten his presence. “But is there not already an entire class dedicated to defense? I understand your lack of confidence in its instructor, as I share it; nevertheless such a club would be an irresponsible use of resources.”

Harry glared; so did Lavender. “They want more,” she said. “They’re scared. Maybe _you_ don’t see it, but I do. Sabita does.” (The therapist had joined them, and made a tiny noise of agreement here.) “Professor Slughorn’s already brewed too many calming draughts for this year. And Harry can’t do _everything_ , anyway.”

She was right. He jumped in. “We spend about a month on dueling, and another on evasion. That’s it. And it’s all… age-appropriate, I guess, not the most useful.”

“And this will make the students less anxious,” (he spoke the word as though he found it distasteful), “to give them the impression that they’re living in an active war zone?”

_Well, the Slytherins are gone, so without hide-saving cowards like you…_ he bit back furiously. He tried to remember that Snape was brave in his own way. “Some of them, yeah.”

“Potter – “ McGonagall said, without fire.

“Sorry.”

“The headmaster and I will meet with the governors. Ms. Brown, you might come as well?” Lavender ducked her head in acquiescence. “We might ask the students what they want or need – which would be best done by the heads of house.” Flitwick and Spiraea nodded. Slughorn fiddled with a quill. It was horrible.

Snape was still displeased. “ _What the students want_ ,” he echoed. This was surprising and uncomfortable – he typically interacted with Minerva with the proper deference of a junior colleague and former student. “You know the inanities thirteen year olds want.”

“This is a discussion for the governors,” she said firmly. Snape’s eyes glittered with fury, but he didn’t argue.

They broke shortly thereafter. Avery’s memorial would be held the following Saturday.

As expected, the Aurors were here to gather information – how the Slytherins had acted in class this year, if they’d said or done anything that indicated plans for escape. If they’d been threatened, if they’d been harassed, if they’d ever been in danger.

Kingsley took Harry into a small corner room, an awkward space that stored inanimate knights’ armor. Harry had completely expected Moody; Kingsley sort of chuckled at his surprise. “You are beholden to the Order as well,” he said, “but Alastor’s elsewhere.”

“Right.”

The questions were standard; Kingsley asked them dispassionately and Harry answered in kind. The Slytherins were more guarded around him than nearly anyone. He hadn’t heard anything from them. He’d never heard of them being threatened, and he would’ve dealt with it if he had. (At this, his memory tugged again, and he dismissed it.)

Finally, Kingsley looked up from the Aurors’ forms. “There is one last thing.” His quill was down, and he was looking at Harry seriously. “We’ve discussed inducting Draco Malfoy into the Order.”

Harry sort of choked. Whatever he’d expected, it hadn’t been that. “Uh… why?”

A faint smile. “It has its advantages. But some people,” (he was so perfectly neutral, Harry couldn’t say if he himself was among them) “thought it would cause unnecessary strife.”

“Oh.” He might’ve gone hot, to think that they still felt obligated to navigate around something so young and embarrassing as his childhood rivalry. “I wouldn’t make it a problem. Of course.”

“Good. We may decide against it, in the end,” Kingsley added. “But we thought you shouldn’t be an impediment.”

“No, sir.” Embarrassing.

Kingsley let him go. This was simpler than expected. He slipped away before any other Aurors wanted him.

But somehow, he fell in step with Malfoy himself, also released by the Aurors and returning to the dungeons. Malfoy made a noise of disgust, swerving to alter his path (which was ridiculous because the only way to the dungeons was _down_ , so he could only walk out of his way). Harry groaned. “We’re going to the same place. We haven’t got to talk.”

“Apparently we do.” Still, while he stayed a few paces apart from Harry, they moved in the same direction.

Harry tried to study Malfoy out of the corner of his eye, discreetly. The eighth years had undergone a _lot_ of Ministry interrogation this past week. They didn’t seem to be roughed up at all – but as he knew from Voldemort, any injury could be healed. Maybe, he thought bitterly, Moody would rescind the Slytherins’ magic as he’d taken Voldemort’s. But Malfoy, other than the weariness in his features that they all had these days, seemed to carry himself immaculately.

Nearer to the dungeons, Harry cleared his throat. “I should tell you – I don’t think I’m sitting NEWTs this year.” He’d run the idea by McGonagall just recently, and she’d given her blessings, more or less, and told him to inform his other professors. “So we can stop meeting, if you want.”

Malfoy slowed so much that Harry was obligated to stop. “Absolutely not,” he said. “You’d waste an entire term and now you’re so indolent that you won’t take the NEWT?”

“I didn’t _know_ – It’d clear up your time anyway, wouldn’t it? And, y’know, I thought you’d be happy about it.”

“Potter, nothing makes me happier than seeing you flung into a wall when you _still_ write the eiwaz backwards.”

He copped to that with a grin. Ancient runes had become a contact sport with their absurd competitiveness. He did like it, in a way; he just wasn’t sure he _needed_ it. “You still want class, then?”

“I _still_ expect you’ll sit the NEWT. I’m submitting your name. And if you embarrass yourself before the examiners, so much the better.”

“Wanker,” Harry said, without really meaning it. “Right, yeah, alright. What happens if you fail a NEWT, d’you know?”

“As you have never faced a single consequence in your entire life, I assume nothing.”

He really…. This would’ve infuriated him even last year. How funny, how _hilarious_ that Voldemort had been the one to teach him patience. Not taking the bait: “Tomorrow night, then?”

“Assuming we’re not still under quarantine.”

Whether he meant _we_ like the entire school or _we_ like the Slytherins specifically – “Yeah.” He tried to say it lightly. “And I’ll ask Remus to pull past exams. I assume it’s not all so practical as your classes.”

“No.”

They reached the place where they’d part. Both sort of hesitated. Harry figured he’d ruin the moment: “Why did you stay?”

Strangely Malfoy didn’t lash out at him, as expected. “You know,” he said with a quirk of his mouth, and then he turned and Harry was watching the outline of his perfectly sharp shoulders recede down the corridor.

He did not know. He had no bloody idea. He assumed Malfoy was fucking with him, as usual, and left.

Back in his suite – the diadem went back into the fire; his memories went back into his mind. “You’ll want to – “ Riddle began with unusual concern as he lifted the silvery strand into the hollow of his throat.

_Thump_. He sat hard on the ground, given momentary vertigo by the abrupt transition of regaining all those memories. “Urgh,” he mumbled on the floor, rubbing his palms where they’d smacked the stone. And then Riddle was laughing at him, so that was infuriating. He couldn’t get his bearings just yet, so from that position: “Did you see anything? Or – y’know, whatever.”

“Take the artifact to Avery’s memorial,” Riddle requested.

Harry tested out his legs. Wobbly, but they held out. “Uh, why?”

“To pay my respects.”

Harry glared but knew he’d never get an answer out of Riddle that Riddle didn’t want him to have. “Maybe.”

“If I’m well-behaved?” Riddle asked wryly, completely guessing Harry’s thought.

“Yeah. – Hey, do you know what Malfoy meant either?”

“No.”

“Huh.” He scooped up a pile of books reluctantly. “We’re having class this afternoon, though, so….”

“Excellent.” Riddle let himself out with alacrity, casting a flawless Disillusionment. Harry was sort of alarmed at how thoroughly hidden he was. But then, he was counting on it.

 

_Saturday, January 16._ He did take the diadem to Avery’s memorial. It was awful. The day was miserable and sludgy. They used the great hall, and it felt like it profaned all of Harry’s connotations of the space with warmth and love and safety. The four Slytherin eighth years sat in a neat row at the front, impeccable black pressed robes melding into each other’s so they resembled a very well-behaved hydra. Harry sat a few rows back, blissfully anonymous. Luna and Ginny were on one side of him, Ron and Hermione on the other.

And there were outsiders. The Avery family, Death Eater or no, had been prominent for centuries.

( _One of the Sacred Twenty Eight_ , Voldemort had written last night.

**_You’ve mentioned that a few times_** , Harry wrote back. ** _It always sounds like the twattiest thing._**

_It is_.)

Furthermore – worst of all – the memorial only seemed to highlight how very many Slytherins were gone – not just the students, but the families. The Malfoys should’ve been there. The Goyle, Parkinson, Greengrass, or Zabini families should’ve been there.

Neville wasn’t there, but his grandmother was. Hannah Abbott came with her mums. Terry Boot’s parents sat with him. Marietta Edgecombe and her mother. (Hermione judiciously didn’t make eye contact.) Justin’s parents and grandparents. Harry had imagined the world split into light and dark families, more or less, but now he could also see it organized as purebloods and everyone else. These families came because they’d been a presence in each other’s lives for generations.

And the Ministry had a presence – a _significant_ one, for what this was. Madam Bones, Bright, a few of the Wizengamot he hadn’t interacted with. Robards. Some of the upper ranking wixes from the Department of Education. At the rear, covered by Bragg and Kingsley, Scrimgeour and Moody murmured to each other, looking very grim.

Hermione saw this procession first; her breath caught. “Why is the _Minister_ here?”

The rest of them turned to look. “Why are they _all_ here,” Harry murmured. A dozen Ministry officials. It wasn’t even the real funeral – actually, he didn’t know that there _would_ be a real funeral, without family to organize it. He thought with horror that Avery’s father was trapped in Azkaban, knowing his son had been killed while he was powerless in prison. His throat closed.

The entire Ministry cohort took seats at the front. Most of them had something to say to the faculty and governors; but none of them addressed the Slytherin students. Malfoy’s shoulders, if anything, went sharper.

At last the front doors swung closed. An old woman with silver braids coiled atop her head rose to greet them. “Welcome to Hogwarts, to the families who join us. Good afternoon to the faculty, students, and staff. I am Hester Avalark, Hogwarts’s current head of governors. I wish I came to you under other circumstances.”

She spoke as Scrimgeour had spoken after the massacre at Malfoy Manor – with little reference to Death Eaters or Slytherins or Voldemort. She was in fact overly cautious, Harry thought, in not speaking of _blame_ at all. She spoke of Avery’s death as a fluke, happenstance – as though he’d had a sudden and tragic heart attack over holiday.

It wasn’t enough.

McGonagall, then Slughorn. (“I had the privilege to serve as young Edgar’s head of house. A bright pupil, sharp wit – “ He shook out a handkerchief to mop his nose and brow.)

It was _bizarre_ that Snape didn’t speak, not in his role as Headmaster, former head of house, or anything else. He sat on the dais, between McGonagall and Remus. His face was granite.

Madam Avalark had spoken of being an advocate to the students: “We are implementing every measure of safety in our power.” A DMLE employee dedicated to the castle’s security repeated the promise. If it didn’t feel like the surveillance of his fifth year, it at least felt like his third. Voldemort _had_ recommended Dementors, anyway, so he wouldn’t be all that surprised to see them again.

Still, Harry was bored. That was shitty of him. He hadn’t had any particular feelings about Avery as a student or a person. He wondered if he would’ve sought out dark arts (if not crime properly) like his father had. They’d never know now. He was picking his nails subtly, trying to still look alert in case any photos or later Pensieve memories were focused on him.

In attempting to look straight ahead, he was keeping his eyes on Malfoy’s gleaming hair. Shut up, it wasn’t weird. But then Malfoy shifted, and his collar slipped, and Harry’s fingernails dug into his palms. The _locket_. Holy shit, he’d recognize that chain anywhere.

He must’ve jerked or made a noise or something, because Ron looked over. “What?” he mumbled. Harry shook his head.

Why the _fuck_ – was it a Slytherin souvenir for him? Did he even recognize it? It wasn’t Malfoy’s aesthetic, as it wasn’t Harry’s. Could he feel its magic? Had he grown up writing to the diary, kept in his father’s library? The idea was alarming.

Still – he had to get it back. The Slytherins would be more heavily guarded now than ever. They’d sort of be untouchable – he couldn’t imagine them not moving together through the castle. But he _had_ to get it away. He’d gotten it away from _Umbridge_ , for the love of god. He’d be alone with Malfoy for class Tuesday, but there was no guarantee he’d be wearing it then. He picked desperately at his nails as he thought. Was his disillusionment charm good enough? It had to be.

He was sort of bouncing in his seat by the time Avalark rose again to let them go. The rest of his friends had noticed by the time they stood. “I need to get Malfoy alone,” he muttered.

Oddly, it was Luna who sighed at this. “Hasn’t his life been full of hardship enough recently?”

“Talking to me isn’t a _hardship_ ,” he said, disingenuously. “He’s got something of mine.”

But when he looked back up, Malfoy was speaking with a flock of Wizengamot members. Snape stood behind him, protective. Fuck.

But everyone else lingered too. Students’ families caught up. Various permutations of faculty, Ministry, and governors. The students themselves looked uncertain what should happen next. Among this crowd, and in these circumstances, they looked so young.

Hagrid approached them. So did Remus. “Awful business,” Hagrid murmured. “Thought, for a bit o’ cheer….” Opening his coat, he revealed Moira in an inner pocket. Looking around, she seemed delighted by the company, and by Harry in particular. She struggled and fluttered out of his coat.

“Hey, good girl,” Harry said, catching her. “You were very quiet in there.” She nipped at his nose and fingers as he held her up. “Here, you need to meet Remus, and Luna.”

It was a welcome distraction. Or it would’ve been, at least, if he didn’t see Malfoy slip out with other Slytherins. Shit. Sighing inwardly, knowing he’d have to deal with Malfoy later then, he put the Aralez in Luna’s waiting arms. “Voldemort got her for me for Christmas. She’s been staying with Hagrid and Fang.” Looking back – “ _Is_ Fang alright with it? He always seems a little, uh, tired when I’m out.”

Hagrid beamed. “He plays like a puppy again.”

Luna held Moira in her hands outstretched, to see how high she could flutter. (Not even out of their reach.) “They’re supposed to be able to resurrect heroes,” she said thoughtfully. “Although I’m not sure you should rely on it.”

“Really?” he said, fascinated. If this were not merely a Luna thing – how funny, that Voldemort would gravitate even toward gifts of immortality. There was no deeper obsession.

When everyone’s attention was on the dog, he slid beside Remus. It had been awhile, really, and since the new term had been consumed with Avery and the Slytherins, they’d talked of little else even then. “Hey, where were you for the holidays?” Having Moira here stirred the memories of showing her off at Christmas. “You should’ve come to the Weasleys’.”

A faint smile and shake of his head. “My parents are aging. We went to see them, and then we spent a few days in Calais. We both prefer a quiet life, I’m afraid.”

He was right – Harry had thought of both Remus and Snape as being fundamentally _alone_ , even when they were surrounded by other people. “Sure, yeah.” A glance at Snape then, on the far side of the hall with some of the governors. “Is he… alright?” he asked uncertainly. Somehow, Snape felt more like his responsibility than anyone. “I mean, he’s keeping a low profile, as Headmaster.”

He worried that Remus would react badly or tell Harry it wasn’t his business – and really, it wasn’t – but instead he followed his gaze. “Yes,” he agreed. “He is much happier working out of sight. And given the political climate….”

“I know.” He regretted asking. “I wish it were safer. Is there anything…?”

Lupin’s expression went dark and serious. He pulled Harry apart from the others. “There must be a way to remove the Mark,” he said lowly. For the sake of security, if not mercy. We’d… go, if he had to, if we couldn’t stay in Britain. I don’t know what else to offer him.” He sucked his sharp front teeth. “It would be simpler if it were inactive. But he is summoned frequently. It is a distraction and a… trauma.” He looked up with a lopsided smile. “Not that he’d say such a thing, himself.”

“It’s not him,” Harry muttered. “He wants nothing to do with Snape. He says the Humnerë have access to the soul magic – but what they could want from him….”

“I believe that,” Remus said. “Severus, however, is rather more convinced of his cruelty – not without reason,” he added. “Regardless, if Voldemort wants to be rid of him, then erasing their ties should be a simple matter. Anyway, it’s becoming a matter of security – that he’s compromised, arguably by the rebels, in a quite somatic way. What if they could draw upon their connection to let themselves into Hogwarts somehow?”

“Right,” Harry said. “Uh, I’ll ask. It might not…. Does _he_ know?” he said suddenly, wondering if Remus had made this endeavor not on Snape’s behalf.

An amused hum. “Clever. No. I expect the answer is no – more likely that he _won’t_ than can’t.” He made a resigned gesture. “But if anyone would make inroads… we’d appreciate it.”

Of course. Harry paid attention to how Lupin and Snape presented themselves as partners, these days. It wasn’t a perfect model – nobody would be pleased with the comparison, for one – but just seeing who they spoke to and who they left to the other; how they named each other in mixed company and when they didn’t; which politics were safe to be involved in. He hadn’t thought of it consciously at the time, but in retrospect, it had hurt that Remus hadn’t joined them for Christmas, hadn’t brought Snape along as he should have. Harry had needed to see that, to imagine that someday Voldemort didn’t have to be held separate from the rest of his life.

“I’ll try,” he said at last. “I mean, really. It should be in person, so whenever I see him next….”

“Thank you,” Remus said. His smile never fully washed the weariness from his eyes.

Harry collected Moira to spend the day in his suite. They walked back alone. It was only when he was nearly at their corridor that he recognized – god, he felt out of breath. He felt as though someone had tightened a belt around his chest.

A panic attack. Why would he be having a panic attack. “Hi, Abzu,” he muttered, holding Moira up so she could observe him. He blew friendly smoke at her; she sneezed.

Why – _Ugh_. Harry got pretty crushing depression and anxiety when he skipped kaval for too many days in a row, but that happened in evenings and it was only midday now. Did dreamless sleep ever have this effect? The hangover was mostly just grogginess. If the Horcrux was fucking with his soul….

_Shit_. The Horcrux was the problem. Not the diadem, the _locket._ He let Moira down on the bed. Malfoy had the locket, why the _fuck_ would Malfoy have the locket. But Harry’s vows dictated that the Horcruxes (the artifacts, specifically) would stay in his room or on his person. Apparently there was a reprieve when he hadn’t known where it’d gone, but now…. Fuck. He had to rescue it before he suffocated.

He pounded his fist into his forehead as he thought. No invisibility cloak, no map. He considered manifesting the diadem, but really, they disliked each other enough that he mostly expected it would sabotage his efforts.

He’d just… walk in, then. He’d had in mind that he’d have Malfoy alone for ancient runes on Tuesday, but he didn’t have nearly that much time. He cast Anapneo on himself for a brief respite.

Ugh. He didn’t want to fight Malfoy. In current circumstances, it would feel like a hate crime.

“Hey.” Moira was sprinting-fluttering circles around his bed. “Don’t cause trouble. I won’t be long.” She barely stopped to listen; but when he transfigured one of his pillows into a rope toy, she seized upon it.

He trudged to the other side of the dungeons, casting Anapneo on himself every few minutes. Voldemort was right, he did rely too heavily on sincerity and other people’s goodwill, because that was the entirety of his plan. Either he’d charm Malfoy or he’d fight him. And he hadn’t brought a second, so it’d be better resolved without a duel, anyway.

Down the corridor to the common room entrance, what otherwise looked like a dead end. “ _Open_ ,” he hissed, stepping back so a door could emerge.

But… it didn’t. “ _Open_.” It had worked before, hadn’t it? Riddle had told him that Parseltongue was a skeleton key to the castle.

Well. Their password couldn’t be difficult. He sighed. “Pureblood. Purity. Cunning, ambition. Blood, skulls… no, sorry. Salazar, snakes, python, viper, cobra, basilisk, venom, death, murder….” Maybe not. Shit. He was light-headed by now. There was probably not a lot of time left.

At last he just pounded his hand against the stone. He really was dizzy.

Footsteps. “Potter.” Zabini approached from behind him, his tone flat. “Have you no respect for the dead?”

He’d really never paid attention to Zabini, even in class. He had no idea what to do with him now. “Malfoy’s got something of mine. I need it back.”

Zabini’s look was indifferent. “Malfoy wants nothing to do with you. Haven’t you already ruined his life?”

“What – _no_ ,” Harry said, furious. The pain and panic of the vow did not particularly make him any more level-headed. He felt his voice going thin: “I’ve got a vow to keep… this thing nearby at all times. The Aurors should know – “ He was pulling out his wand.

Zabini’s look was of searing hatred, even as he opened the dungeons. ( _Non-verbally_. It wasn’t even a spell, it was only a password, what the hell.) “What a hideous thing to threaten, when the Ministry is systematically killing us.” He made a move to drag Harry in by his robes, even when he followed freely.

“They are not,” Harry said hotly. “The Aurors would protect you, if you all weren’t such paranoid wankers.”

Zabini was utterly ignoring him, moving toward the dormitories. “Malfoy?” he called. “Potter’s here.”

All he heard in response was a noise of disgust.

Harry had his wand out by now. This was stupid. Would he escape if he cast a disillusionment on himself? No, certainly not. He would cast Auxilio but – well, Zabini wasn’t entirely wrong. Harry was overvalued, and the Slytherins were far more likely to bear consequences or violence from the Aurors. Especially now. The entire school was on edge.

Malfoy emerged from a dorm (not _his_ dorm, he had a faculty suite like Harry, but the eighth year dorm anyway). He wasn’t alone. Harry _gaped_ at locket-Riddle, following behind him and looking irritated.

Somehow, he had nothing to say to Riddle himself. He spun to look at Malfoy. “You’ve got no idea, who – what – he is.”

“Harry Potter, come to save us from the Dark Lord, again and again,” Malfoy mocked. “Even as he swears he’s _tamed_ now, he’s _good_ now.”

“You do know,” Harry marveled, shocked before the panic set in. “I mean – oh my god. What are you doing?” But he broke off in a cough, his throat closing once more.

“Oh.” Not Malfoy. Riddle stepped in. “Anapneo.” No wand, but as he was imprinted on Harry’s soul, it really didn’t matter. Harry half-straightened from his coughing fit. “You’ve still got a vow on you? I assumed they’d rescind it when the locket was _stolen_.” On that word his lips twitched, irony deep.

Harry had his wand at his side, if only to cast Anapneo for himself. And he left it there, because not only were Malfoy and Zabini flanking him, but Bulstrode and Greengrass had emerged from a dorm, poised at the top of the stairs. He was surrounded by desperate people, whose lives he’d ruined. Still, he looked around. “This is _mad_ ,” he pronounced. “He is Voldemort. Do you understand? He’s a bit of Voldemort’s soul, and the Aurors will only see you trying to rebuild the Death Eaters here, if they find out.” He stopped to suck in shallow breaths. Anapneo. “Is this… protection?” he addressed Riddle uncertainly. “ _Is_ it a new generation of Death Eaters? They’ll throw you all in Azkaban and destroy the Horcruxes. There’s really no good way forward from this,” he said lowly.

“Why did the vow move against you only today?” Riddle asked. He stood cool among the Slytherins. What Harry had loved so much about Voldemort, how competent and collected he was in crisis, he saw in Riddle now. The students all looked so worn down. Malfoy stood too close to Riddle. Harry didn’t understand any of it.

“I didn’t know what happened until today.” Anapneo. The choking was coming in closer intervals now. The vow also drained his magic for non-compliance, he could swear he felt himself growing weak. “You took my memories,” he accused. “The night the Yaxleys were sentenced – Voldemort said it was thorough. He thought Dumbledore could’ve done it.”

The twinge of disgust on Riddle’s face indicated what he thought of _that_. “It lacked subtlety, I admit,” he said. “I hadn’t yet studied much of memory magic. But, soul of my soul, I _do_ have access to your psyche.” He stepped in. “Shame it wasn’t enough.”

Harry raised his wand, pointing it at Riddle’s chest. “Don’t.”

Riddle brought his hand up, running it down Harry’s cheek to indicate just how wispy and immaterial he was. “It’s really quite humane. You finally saw the artifact today, then?”

“At the memorial,” Harry confirmed, reluctant.

“As many times as we’ve told you that you don’t want or deserve the burden of knowing….” Riddle clicked his tongue.

“But what are you _doing_?” Harry groaned.

“If it were harmful, you would have suffocated long ago,” Riddle said. “Really, the sense of _possession_ you feel over me is inappropriate.” Stepping in, he pushed Harry’s elbow up, until his wand pointed to the craggy ceiling. “Summon the Aurors, if you feel so unsafe. They understand dangerous artifacts. They understand dangerous _Slytherins_ , at that.”

Harry wrenched his arm out of Riddle’s grasp, shooting an irritated leg locking spell at him. He shook it off with a faint smirk, and Malfoy stepped in, glaring. “We’ll do it again,” he said. “You really haven’t got to be involved in this, Potter.”

“I do, though. Look, what’s the point of swearing that I’ll keep all of Hogwarts safe from Voldemort if….” He made a wild gesture. “Are you just… friends?” He already felt like he’d been hit in the head. “Does he protect you?”

“Yes,” Riddle answered to the last of it. Reaching back without looking, he held out his hand; Malfoy dropped his wand in his palm. What the fuck. “You know that I – _we_ ,” he said with deepest irony, “can access the castle’s magic in a way nobody else can. I have a duty of lineage to protect the Slytherin house – in spite of the attempted genocide,” he said darkly. “I will tell you, quite honestly and sincerely, that it would be better for you and for us if you weren’t involved. You are putting them – and _him_ – in danger if you pursue this.”

“I promised him I’d keep his Horcruxes safe.”

A quirk of Riddle’s mouth. It was a gesture he’d seen of Voldemort’s often, and it was _so_ unpleasant to see it on such a more antagonistic presence now. “I am quite safe.”

“You’re staying… here?”

“Yes.” The smirk was more pronounced. “Clearly it’s safer than your suite.”

“Bastard,” Harry breathed. “I spent weeks walking the castle. I’ve spent months sick with _guilt_ , that I’d lost something so important to him.”

“You’re right,” Riddle said pleasantly. “This time, you can also have new memories. Assuage your charming guilt.”

“Stay out of my head.”

He was backing toward the door now, wand up. He didn’t aim it at Riddle, however – what would be the point – but at Malfoy. “You need to come with me,” he said to Riddle. “ _This_ ,” a gesture toward the common room, “is mad.”

Riddle pursued with ease. The students drew in behind him. Harry cast a shield charm before himself. “There is everything to lose with this. Please – “

His hand was tight on his wand, still pointed at Malfoy’s chest. They were all wary to start shooting – it would become very dangerous very quickly, with no way to go back on that decision.

“There is no one here for you to save.” Riddle spoke calmly, with a deft step in such that Harry cornered himself. Stupid, stupid. He was looking into Riddle’s dark eyes now.

Plunging his wand in the air: “Accio locket!”

Oh thank fuck. Riddle dissolved before them, like smoke dissipated by wind. Malfoy’s wand – it should’ve clattered to the ground, but instead it threw itself back into Malfoy’s hand.

The locket had been in one of the dorms – it soared through the air, the gold bright even in the dull light. Malfoy saw it too, lunging –

Harry body-checked him, catching it handily. “Every single time,” he said in an undertone, into Malfoy’s ear. He was turning to get out, reaching to gouge blood from his chest to hide the Horcrux there –

“Obliviate!”

All four of them. He swooned, hitting the flagstones hard. _Oh_ , he had just enough time for half a thought before passing out. _That’s where my memories went._

\\\\\\\ ////

He awoke with the diadem reading beside him. A new batch of kaval was brewing, filling the suite with herbal steam. His head was pounding. “What – ?”

“You are a disaster,” Riddle pronounced, sliding out of the way so Harry could stumble from bed. He was going to be sick.

“I don’t remember….” He hung onto the doorjamb of the toilet just long enough to hear Riddle’s answer.

“Of course you don’t. Coming back from the memorial, you drank far too much kaval, asked if I wanted to fuck you, and then passed out.”

Oh. He did remember – a potions knife in his hands, a warm if impatient grip on his shoulders, a blanket dropped over him. “I hope we didn’t have sex.” _That_ was embarrassing, but not so much that he didn’t want to know.

“No,” Riddle said. His utter disdain made Harry feel even grosser and more ashamed than he already did.

“Right. Thanks,” he muttered. In the toilet, he snapped open a hangover potion, hoping it’d cure his vertigo. He drank it in a very hot shower.

Riddle had removed the diadem from the fire by the time Harry was out, leaving him alone. He looked curiously at the diadem. There was something…. He should probably be more careful, especially taking it out. Had someone tried to take it from him at the memorial? Something like that. Really, though – the diadem and Harry himself were the final two Horcruxes, all that tethered Voldemort to life. He should be more careful about _both_ of their survival.

 


	24. Chapter 24

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With the vow that kept them apart rescinded, Harry and Voldemort come together, in preparation for a wedding and an exile.
> 
> (Warning: a scene about trauma in the aftermath of sexual abuse.)

_Tuesday, February 2._ On Candlemas they had the first indication that the struggle with Muggle religion would proceed as Voldemort had warned. The Quibbler had picked it up, actually. ( _How_ , Harry didn’t know, because Luna was here and Xeno would never pass in Muggle society. They must have hired some new reporters in their recent success.) _Anti-magic protest staged before St. James in Bristol_ , ran Tuesday’s headline.

“It’s to be expected, really,” Hermione said, shaking the paper out before her. “Every historical persecution…. ‘One anonymous adherent questioned where their powers come from,’” she read out. “’They’re playing God,’ he commented. ‘Man was not meant to manipulate nature like this.’ Oh for heaven’s sake.”

Related articles – a proliferation of Muggle religious tracts, denouncing magic but also recruiting in the face of fear. _Fear_. All of Harry’s encounters with the Muggles had been so positive – there was always a tinge of disappointment that this world existed and they weren’t a part of it, but otherwise they were charming and engaging and curious. But of course, of course there was fear among another segment of the population. That they’d use it for recruitment – well. Voldemort had done the same.

Farther down the page: interviews with religious Muggleborns, a pro-magic CoE priest, speculation about the veracity of the ‘magicians’ in the bible and Quran. He was used to reading the Quibbler by now, slightly unhinged but generally illuminating. This… was going to cause problems, soon. And he was shit as the would-be ambassador, because he had exactly nothing to say to unite wixies and Muggle religion.

The other thing holding his attention that morning was a cream envelope from the Ministry – he’d only opened the news first for presumed context for what they’d sent him. Most of his post came midday – the Aurors were more diligent now than ever – but they’d pass on something of their own. As usual, Ron and Hermione leaned in as he opened the thick envelope.

A contract. Not _his_ contract, even, but the one between Voldemort and Moody that traded the safety of his Horcrux for their separation. He’d seen it all before – he already had a copy – so he flipped to the final page where a note was pinned.

Oh. Voldemort’s and Moody’s signatures glittered like ghosts, vague remnants of where they once were on the parchment. Moody’s note to accompany it: _The contract is void. Keep the Horcruxes until you’re told otherwise._

_He expects you at Cornwall this Sunday. Squire will have a Portkey._

_You should taper off dreamless sleep, but you won’t sleep for days anyway. Ask Brown._

A sharp _A_ , as he signed all their correspondence, in his magical signature. “Oh,” Harry breathed. Why, though? Why _now_?

He looked up to find the same question etched into the faces of his friends. “I don’t know. I am happy, though.”

Hermione was nearly chewing off her tongue with the effort of not saying something. He looked at her. “What?”

“Have you… _proven_ yourself to Moody in some way by now? Has _he_?”

It was an unpleasant question, but not necessarily wrong. “It’s not a reward, I know that much.”

Her dark eyes searched the ceiling for answers. “Moody’s been re-introducing,” she said the word precise and cool, “you into one another’s lives these past few months. The Ministry, the diary, the Yule ball. Christmas.”

“Yeah,” Harry said. “I don’t know. At least, they’ll need me at Cornwall when Voldemort….” And then words failed him. The exile couldn’t be far off – just past the equinox and marriage license, as Voldemort had alluded to it so far. March. Six weeks.

Ron and Hermione had gathered that Voldemort would have to leave the country to sort out the Humnerë. They didn’t know of the official exile and he could say nothing of it now. “They’ll need me,” he said decisively. And then he pulled out the diary. **_Why is the contract void?_**

No answer. He didn’t know where Voldemort might be on an average Tuesday morning, but they wrote more often in the evenings, so.

**_I’m quitting dreamless sleep. I don’t care if I withdraw. I want it over with._ **

**_And I want your Legilimency, as often as you can. I feel empty without you._** Like now, actually – there was a cold and solid wall of Occlumency between them when he probed at their connection. What _was_ Voldemort doing? He was still in Azkaban these days, nominally; Harry knew that from their nights together. But his name was in a lot of articles about Ministry meetings and legislation, too. Setting aside these concerns that would only hurt them both:

**_I love you._ **

His friends always reacted with reluctance and embarrassment when he had the diary out, or when he wrote in Parselscript. It was like he was doing something crude, wanking at the breakfast table. For now he put it away, digging parchment from his bag to also write back to Moody.

Thanks were in order. If there was a particular reason the vow was gone, it was not anything Moody would put in writing anyway. He wrote that he’d be at Cornwall. And then he nearly wrote to ask if he could have the weekend together – but of course Moody would recognize this as a desire, and he would’ve already extended the possibility if he’d wanted to.

Oh. One final thing: **_There must be meetings about Muggle religion. I don’t know anything about their religion, but I can be there if you need me to be._**

The Ministry’s screech owl had hung around eating a bit of ham, but obviously had been instructed to wait for a response. Harry handed the scroll over. “Cheers,” he said.

\\\\\\\ ////

On Tuesdays he had Runes in the evenings. He’d felt oddly on edge around Malfoy since the new year, but – well, he should. Malfoy had undoubtedly had a worse year than Harry, than perhaps anyone at Hogwarts, and it was clear just by looking at him that he was not alright. His eyes and the dark rings encircling them were the same shade of gray.

Runes had also gotten less fun (and how strange to apply that word to a _class_ other than sometimes DADA. A class taught by _Malfoy_ at that) since he’d decreed that Harry would sit the NEWT. The written theoretical portions were not at all intuitive – the runes on the page didn’t squirm or struggle to show their efficacy as the wards did. “I’ll gladly curse you while you read,” Malfoy had snapped last week, seeing how quickly Harry lost interest in the non-praxis bits, “but you’ve still got to read.”

On this night, though, Malfoy was running late. Harry took a seat in the front of the classroom, again pulling out the diary as he waited. Its warm glow indicated that Voldemort had written back.

_It is a concession, not a reward. They will need you, as will I. We only have this freedom for a finite time._

**_Give me your magic_** _,_ Harry wrote. He needed proof it was real, that they were free even under these circumstances of separation.

_Not now. Tonight._

**_I won’t sleep for days_** , Harry wrote. ** _It might as well be now._**

A long pause. _My magic is more emotionally volatile than you would recognize. It would hurt you._

If he knew how to force his way into Voldemort’s head, he would. Most people who knew Occlumency at least had the basics of Legilimency. Instead, he was reduced to begging. **_Then it will help._** A breath. **_You can’t hurt me and you can’t scare me._**

For he’d encountered it at the edges of Voldemort’s consciousness, the nights they slept together. Not that his _magic_ was emotionally volatile; _he_ was. They hadn’t seen each other since the new year and, well, they both somewhat deteriorated with their soul so fragmented. Maybe that was why the Aurors would reunite them. Voldemort become unpredictable, if not properly dangerous, when his soul was left so unstable.

They had enough connection for Voldemort to trace the contours of his thoughts. _You may not be angry_ , Voldemort wrote at last. _It is painful to be mired in your anger._

They hadn’t properly worked out when, but sometimes Harry’s anger was excruciating for Voldemort. He thought it might be the magical equivalent to aversion therapy, something inflicted in the healing in Azkaban. Not that it mattered – he’d take the Healers’ treatment as it was offered or not at all.

**_I promise._ **

Voldemort tore open his soul, so thoroughly and abruptly that Harry gasped. Voldemort was furious and disgusted and trapped. He tired of the performance of obsequity and remorse at the Ministry. To see people shrink from him now no longer delighted him, but neither did anything else. The dementors’ depression had sunken into his flesh. He was supposed to be above such fragility. He’d recreated this body to resist common damages. He was _immortal_ , the pinnacle of magical achievement, and yet he was trapped in these ignominious, _embarrassing_ …. He felt unhinged.

And Harry sat, feeling it with him. Fury, made worse by being magically or chemically restrained. Half the Ministry surrounded him only to flaunt their ill-gotten power over him. _Bowersock_ –

That thought was aborted immediately.

He knew how he’d kill each of them if he could; but he couldn’t. That wasn’t the terrible part. The terrible part was – either he was more a slave to his passions than he’d ever been before, or he was always so mad and now merely _aware_ of his own volatility for the first time.

Harry was distracted by a tinge in his wrists, shaking him from this grief and shame. _Bruises_ , grayish-purple bruises encircling his wrists. Splotches on his upper arms too, when he shook back his sleeves. Voldemort had been _fucked_ today. Maybe beaten, maybe humiliated, but the only bruises he retained were from being fucked.

 ** _Where are you?_** Harry wrote, with urgency. It was no wonder he’d felt so empty tonight.

_At the safehouse. It was a long day at the Ministry._

Harry’s laugh at that was choked and bitter.

**_Do you want to be alone?_ **

A long pause, then: _No_.

So that was that. **_I’ll be there soon,_** he scrawled, shoving everything back in his bookbag.

On the way out he nearly ran smack into Malfoy.

“Are you _going_?” Malfoy said, incredulous. “It’s barely been ten minutes, there was a sparking ward in the dungeons…. Actually,” he sneered, realizing how apologetic he sounded, “you’ve no right to go. That’s it.”

“I am,” Harry said firmly, shoving past him. “It’s Voldemort. I’ll be here Thursday.”

Malfoy hissed air through his teeth, but people fell back whenever he invoked Voldemort. It was useful, if shitty, to weaponize him in this way. His trainers echoed in the empty corridor, as he strode away briskly.

Squire and Kingsley were on the grounds this week; Harry cast Auxilio and then held his breath. Kingsley found him at the bottom of the stairs to Dumbledore’s office. “Harry?”

He hadn’t actually considered what he would say. “The vow is gone,” he said, “and Voldemort is… not alright. Emotionally, I mean.” Nothing else was his to disclose. “He’s at the safehouse so I’m going too. Which would be better, if I returned after curfew or if I stayed through the night?”

Kingsley’s dark eyes searched his face, as though Voldemort’s trauma would show up there. He thought of holding up the bruises as proof, pulling back his sleeves to reveal how Voldemort’s thin wrists had been encircled, his upper arms had been grabbed – from behind? Face to face, propped on a desk? Had he been thrown to the ground – No. Harry wiped his face of emotion as Kingsley asked, “What’s wrong with him?”

He took a deep breath through his nose. Voldemort’s anger bled through – he held back nearly all of it but even the residual moments were an inferno, all-consuming, roaring in his ears. Somehow, as cold as Voldemort was, it was always fire. “Bowersock, mostly,” he bit out.

A peculiar look from Shacklebolt. “Harry, none of the Ministry has been in Azkaban since December. Why would they? The Death Eaters have been questioned and sentenced.”

“Not Azkaban.” He hoped he had these feelings, these glimpses of memory, correct. “He’s fucking him at the Ministry. After hours, probably. He went in New Year’s Eve for the same. Today… I haven’t asked. I don’t know that I will. But I need to see him.”

Kingsley looked aghast. “What?” Harry snapped, taking the steps to the office because he’d follow. “Everyone already fucking knows. Why are you surprised _now_?”

Kingsley, the most patient person in his life, cast a furious shield charm before him. When Harry bounced off, he whirled back around to glare.

“As we’ve told you,” Kingsley said in a measured way, though obviously beyond angry with him, “Azkaban is beyond our legal reach. Clearly the Ministry is not. The first time Voldemort was harassed _there_ – we could pursue it. He knows we can.”

This had slipped Harry’s mind entirely; only the indifference of the Ministry had remained. His anger dissipated. “You’re right,” he muttered. “Sorry. I don’t know why….”

Kingsley’s broad shoulders lost some of their tension; but the shield remained, the only lighting in the stairwell. “It’s not for you to decide. It’s not for him to decide, either, what is worth pursuing. We’ll send Amelia for him in the morning.”

Harry wasn’t entirely sure she’d be welcome – Voldemort would have already done what he’d wanted to do, himself. He always did. “Thank you,” he said anyway, and the shield vanished.

Shacklebolt followed him into the office, lighting the sconces before Harry could. A few portraits blinked owlishly at them. "Go," Shacklebolt said. "I need to speak with Dumbledore. Albus?” he asked the central portrait, flicking some sort of summoning charm at it. (And Harry marveled that a summoning charm could be used on a _person_ , before remembering that Dumbledore wasn’t one. Dammit.)

Quiet. Dumbledore was elsewhere. This wouldn’t be Harry’s conversation anyway. “I’ll be back in the morning,” he said lowly. “I’ll tell him….”

But he couldn’t think of _what_ he’d tell Voldemort. With a vague gesture, he stepped into the Floo.

When he arrived at the Ministry, he had the horrible impulse to burn it to the ground. It was dark, and late. The surveillance spells burned around him, but nothing else did.

 _Next time_ , he promised himself quite falsely. Seizing the portkey that he wore beneath his robes, he activated it.

The safehouse was even darker, but for a faint light in the basement. Harry didn’t light any of the sconces as he moved through the house. The dark felt stable, sacred.

He knocked on the doorjamb before descending. As though Voldemort didn’t know he was here, as though they didn’t know exactly where and how the other was at all times. He was at the far side of the basement, among the bookshelves. On one end table was a Pensieve (left over from _September_ , ripping out the Humnerë soul’s memories) and on the other was whiskey. Voldemort sat on the sofa, his legs drawn up beside him. He looked so _small._

When Harry crossed the room, he set the Panopticon down and conjured a second glass. “I can’t have your pity, or your grief, or your anger,” Voldemort warned. “They all bloody _hurt_.”

Harry dropped onto the sofa beside him. “I was going to give you magic first, actually,” he said. “And then we decide what comes next.”

Voldemort relaxed marginally. He’d been bracing for an _argument_ , Harry realized. Neither of them was in any shape for an argument.

Last time – well – the first time Harry had run to Voldemort upon learning he’d been abused, was in Azkaban. “Thank fuck you’re not out there,” he muttered, knowing already that Voldemort felt the contours of his thought. “Oh – but – could I conjure my Patronus? It would help.”

An unreadable look. Then: “Yes.”

He drew his wand. With some hesitation, he asked, “D’you want to feel what it’s like, to cast? It’s… powerful, and sort of satisfying.”

“Are you not merely shuffling around the location of your goodwill?”

Harry grinned at this. “Sort of. Here, love.” And he was fitting Voldemort’s hand behind his own on his wand, as though he were a child. Warm, bright love – he pushed it to the forefront of his mind. It was more than enough to cast a Patronus. He held the magic between them. “Expecto Patronum!”

Magic erupted, washing over them like a balm. It was bright, too bright to see, but they’d cast a corporeal Patronus, not the painful surge that Voldemort’s last attempt had been – He was looking to the ground, as it was too bright to stare into the Patronus itself, when he saw its spindly legs approach. “Hi,” he said quietly, so as not to startle the stag.

But Voldemort made a noise, sitting up. “You reached for _our_ magic, not your own,” he said. “That is, the magic created in our connection.”

“Oh.” Immediately his hands were at Voldemort’s forearms, pressing new magic into his flesh. “Did it hurt? I’m sorry.”

“No – Harry – look.”

He looked, into the burning white center of the Patronus. And he too gasped, because it wasn’t his stag at all. A bright, spindly thestral stood before them, at once curious and shy.

Of course it was a thestral. Voldemort’s obsession never really receded. But then… it wasn’t properly _Voldemort’s_ Patronus. It was _theirs_ , the magic that held them together.

Between the Patronus and Harry’s magic, Voldemort’s soul settled just a bit. He was very quiet.

“Have you spent any time with the thestrals?” Harry asked. It was a distraction, but it also felt so critical. “The pack at Hogwarts… we kept them nearby at the battles. They’re dead smart, they can carry messages, and they’ll let you ride them if you’re gentle about it.” Slowly, without his wand, he was extinguishing the basement’s sconces. The conversation they _actually_ needed to have, they could only have in the dark.

Voldemort was quiet, overcome. Harry went on. “Luna and I needed to get to the Astronomy Tower once, from the far side of the lake. They took us straight up. It was dusk, and warm that day….” He was smiling. “Flying will always feel like an escape. And somehow, they’re comforting? It makes sense to see one as a Patronus, really….”

An incredulous noise from the back of his throat. “The animal of envisioned death is _comforting_ to you.”

Harry slid in closer. “Can I hold you?” he asked lowly. A faint nod. He slid his hands along Voldemort’s narrow shoulders. “They aren’t _death_. They’re acceptance of it. I swear to you… it can be so good, and safe, and helpful.”

A long silence. “I cannot see thestrals,” Voldemort confessed. At Harry’s look: “I know their appearance. Their magic is distinct. But this is the first I’ve seen.”

The thestral paced the room, stretching its wings and tossing its shining mane. Harry got caught up in watching Patronuses – all the worst edges of the world seemed sanded off in their presence. “I’m glad you can see this one, then,” he said. “Did it hurt your magic?”

“No.”

“Good.”

A longer silence. Voldemort summoned the whiskey. His own glass was already wet from a previous drink. His fingers clenched around the bottle erratically as he poured. For some reason, he gave Harry the fuller glass. “I will tell you,” he said in a deliberate tone. “But at the end, I am removing those memories, for you to take with you. They need to survive, but they need to survive away from _me_. I recommended Parselmagic to conceal them.” He tipped his lowball back too fast, swallowing too much at once. They’d be doing this drunk, then. Harry followed suit.

“Of course I’ll take them,” he said. “But then…. I had to summon Kingsley,” he started over. “To tell him I was going. And I sort of told him that….” The gesture he made with his glass indicated that it’d be cruel to put words to the abuse. “But he said – I wasn’t thinking about it – that when it’s at the Ministry, not Azkaban… they’ve got to be able to do something. Right?” His tone became too pleading.

Voldemort swallowed his whiskey, poured another. “Do you believe that people are good?” he asked, too casually. He would make this into a teaching moment. Harry nearly smiled.

“Sometimes,” he hedged. “When they’re free to be. When they’re not trapped, or… or scared, or broken.”

He made a noise. “I didn’t mean myself.”

“Oh. Neither did I, really.”

His scarlet gaze was dubious. “Which do you believe the world rewards more often, trust or suspicion? Selflessness or selfishness?”

This was very indirect but Harry had the sense that it needed to be this way. He met Voldemort’s eyes with a smile. “Well, I’m a Gryffindor, so.” When the mirth wasn’t reflected in Voldemort’s eyes, he sobered. “I don’t believe you should _trust_ them. In fact, I think that’d be stupid. But there are _laws_ , that have nothing to do with how good anyone is.”

“Amelia would put on a good disciplinary hearing and self-audit,” Voldemort said, a bit flatly. “She would never get the numbers to ever begin to look into it, though. The elite takes care of its own. Lawmakers, twice as much.”

Harry closed his eyes briefly. “I’m not _naïve_ ,” he said. “But I want better for you.”

A flutter of amusement between them. “Of course you do.”

“ _I’ll_ get him sacked. If you don’t want to, y’know, recount it all.”

“I’ve told you what I want from you.”

“Alright.” His voice was quiet. He tried to keep the grief from his tone and his soul, so as not to burden Voldemort with it further.

So that was what he was there for: the sole witness to the abuse before Voldemort pulled it from his own mind. He doused the final sconces, so the basement was now only lit by the twin glow of the thestral and the Pensieve. Voldemort let his head fall on Harry’s shoulder. Their magic _saved_ them, there was no other word for it, as it stripped away all the desperate feelings.

Voldemort’s mind was cold and deep and unsettled. Harry hadn’t practiced Occlumency like this before, consuming Voldemort’s feelings while withholding his own. They’d been quite mutual before. He was likely doing a bad job of it. Still, if they only needed to sit in the dark all night, he would do it. His touch along the back of Voldemort’s neck was light and stabilizing.

Long minutes later, Voldemort spoke again. “We need to sign a marriage license before I go.”

“Yeah?” He’d known this. The entire purpose of the marriage would be protection, if something happened.

“I told you that the equinox is a traditional date for a wedding.”

“Yeah,” he said again. March 21, he’d looked it up. A weekend, but not Easter holiday or anything. Still, it was only signing a contract.

“We should plan for the equinox to be the date of the ceremony. The terrible, formal one,” he said quite wryly, “that is thoroughly performative. To ensure as many powerful people are available as possible, it should be two years out, but it would settle domestic politics more effectively if it’s only one. Do you or your friends have any interest in wedding planning, by chance?”

He blinked, pouring another drink. “No. I don’t know anything about weddings. Bill and Fleur planned theirs themselves, I think.” Or rather, their parents did. Best not to mention it, as everyone was still rather traumatized.

“Mm. We will have rather more pressing matters. The Ministry will take it on, then. As a _state function_. Could you write… whatever the department is called,” he murmured. “Department of Society and Social Function, something like that.”

“Yeah, I’ll write them. And just… say we want a super-political, traditional, terrible wedding?”

“Right.” He said it in a sigh, his warm breath ghosting along Harry’s collarbone. Harry reached to pull open his robes, so they could touch skin to skin. The stability, the domesticity of planning a life together so appealed to him, that he was lured into a false sense of security.

“However, we can’t wait until the equinox this year. I need to get out,” he said lowly. “And I’m not _so_ attached to tradition or aesthetic to wait until March.”

Oh. That felt like a punch in the ribs. “I hadn’t really accepted you were going at all,” Harry said, keeping a self-deprecating smile in his voice, but his Legilimency indicated how sincere he was. “When, then?”

“Would you need more than one go at the airspace shield? It is more stable magic now than when you last saw it.”

Saying yes would keep Voldemort with him for another two weeks. It would keep him with Bowersock for another two weeks, as well. “No,” he said. “So, this Sunday?”

“Well, Monday. Stay overnight, and we will sign a marriage license on Monday morning.”

“ _Monday_ ,” Harry marveled. “Don’t these have to be published in the papers or something?”

“It _will_ be in the papers,” Voldemort said darkly. “You should only engage with the press if you’d like to. I’ll draft an open letter for them. It will be… madness,” he said rather wryly, “but not anything to which you’re unaccustomed.”

Harry waved this off. “What do _you_ need?” he asked. “What goes into stalking vampires?”

“Only your magic.”

“Where will you stay? Do you, like, know people there? It was a long time ago. _Oh_. Here.” He’d dropped his school bag beside him; he was digging through it now. At last he found the soft leather pouch that served as a coin purse. “Take this.” He shoved it into Voldemort’s reluctant grasp. “It’s tied to my Gringotts vault. You can only withdraw a hundred galleons a month – I got it when I was underage, they put some limits on it, but.” He swallowed. “Please buy anything, or… whatever. Keep it,” he said more severely when Voldemort was pressing it back on him. “We need to get better at talking about money, too.”

Voldemort was amused and chastised by that. “Thank you,” he said, slipping the purse into an inner pocket. “I know the area. Of the towns and shelter and landscape. While I was dispossessed, I didn’t quite network.”

Harry both grinned and shuddered. “Right. _That_. If you lose your body again, I will be so cross with you. Be careful with this one.”

Voldemort shifted, pressing a patronizing kiss to Harry’s forehead. “I can promise nothing.”

“Seems like you’re short both mortal enemies and loyal followers, so, y’know, I wouldn’t.” Quieter: “I don’t mean that. I do want you back, anyway. Just be careful.”

“Of course.”

The bottle of whiskey was half-drunk, but they’d done it so fast that tipsiness was only just catching up with them. Voldemort circled back: “The marriage license has a ceremony of blood magic. It is only a vow, really. And in addition to the priestess, we need a witness. I would ask Rufus. He might refuse, but you see the value in it if he agrees.”

“Oh. Yeah, I do. Sure. And if he doesn’t?”

“It still must be someone with social standing. For the sake of the vow, not merely my own arrogance. Someone from the Wizengamot,” (Harry’s breath caught at this, imagining Bowersock or Bright or Swinton signing their fucking marriage license) “perhaps Andromeda, or Griselda Marchbanks. Have you met Madam Marchbanks?” he asked, as an aside. “I should introduce you. Or,” his gaze searched the ceiling, “someone at the DMLE. I don’t know that the Aurors _support_ our relationship so much as they are _resigned_ to it. Oh. I should inform Moody regardless, since your Order still has purchase on your life. Accio….” He lifted a hand, and the diary he shared with the Aurors fluttered across the room. When it slipped from his fingers, Harry caught it for him.

“Maybe tomorrow,” he suggested lightly, setting the diary aside. Drunkenly writing Moody did not seem like a great idea. “You’ve only just decided this, then.”

“Yes.”  He accepted that he wasn’t getting the diary, and settled back against the sofa. “It seems so obvious. And our marriage is only for legal purposes, not magical ones, so the equinox….” He twisted a hand in the air elegantly. “The vow bonds both partners’ magic, but I’d say we’ve rather exceeded that, anyway. I would be surprised if there were any magical impact.”

So would Harry, really. With one hand he rubbed Voldemort’s tense trapezius, with the other he conjured two glasses of water. “Here.”

A dubious squint. “Don’t patronize me, Harry Potter.”

He grinned. “I’m not,” he promised. “I think we should get wildly drunk. But I’ve got to teach in the morning.”

He hummed. “So you do.”

“Can we….” He hesitated. “Don’t go back to Azkaban. There’s no point, now. Stay here, and I’ll stay with you. Kingsley… well, he wasn’t thrilled, but he didn’t stop me. And it is only a few days.”

Voldemort was thoughtful. “Yes,” he said at last. “The days at the Ministry are long, however. Longer, now, since there is so little time to establish everything they must do in my absence.”

Right. Harry hated this idea. “What if they realize they don’t need you back?”

He flashed sharp teeth. “They will. Our marriage will also be a _treaty_ , one they’ll want very much, but it will only be fully recognized at the wedding next year. They know that they need me within the Ministry, not against it.”

Harry sighed, swallowing whiskey instead of water because the idea of _trusting the Ministry_ still distressed him. He didn’t want to make it worse for Voldemort, though. “You can’t keep in touch, then?”

His non-eyebrows went up. “Harry. I’m sorry. I thought they’d told you.” At his (understandably) alarmed look, Voldemort ran a hand through Harry’s hair. “They need plausible deniability, that officially there is no contact. Their diary… well, I’d rather leave it with you than with them, but it is not my decision. In any case, a record of their contact would look very suspect. But they’re aware of _your_ contact – in writing, and in sleep. If an Auror pulls you aside to ask of my progress…. I will tell you what to say,” he said to the bubble of uncertainty within their Legilimency. “It will even largely be true. But you haven’t entirely discarded the role of mediator.”

“Sure, yeah, that’s fine.” He liked it, honestly – a promise that Voldemort wouldn’t abandon _him_ , anyway. “I want to give you magic, anyway.”

“Thank you.”

By now the basement was still and dark. The thestral had settled a few feet away, flicking its tail idly. Their magic was still unsettled.

With a final, decisive swallow of whiskey, Voldemort pulled the Pensieve to himself. “You won’t need to….” He trailed off, unable to speak it. “Just hold my wretched soul together,” he muttered.

“Of course, love.” He was trying not to be crushed, himself. It wouldn’t help. “Uh, although doing mind magic while drunk….”

He flashed a wry look. “Do you fear it will drive me mad?”

“No. Maybe?” But the magic he offered was warm and steady.

Voldemort set the Pensieve on a coffee table before him, taking out his wand. But the moment he seized his memories, there was a flurry of anger, fear, _brokenness_ , that hurt them both. Dropping his wand to the table, he gave the tiniest strangled noise.

Every glass before them popped in a shower of shards. His magic – _their_ magic, was wild. It took his breath away.

“I can’t,” Voldemort murmured, his face pale and angular in the eerie light. “I can’t. I haven’t been so powerless since I was a _child_.” He snarled the word.

Whatever Harry had braced for – it’d been closer to fury than despair. Voldemort was shaking in his touch, indifferent when Harry drew him close. “You’re alright, you’ll be alright.” He rubbed circles between his sharp shoulder blades. Voldemort pressed his face into Harry’s neck.

He said nothing. His magic was already disrupted, pain and panic wedged in it like the shards of glass themselves. He did his best to separate out the warm magic, holding back all of the hideous feelings to himself.

“I’ve gone mad already,” Voldemort said, tipping his face to speak clearly. “I am so… _affected_ by it all. Our separation never helped, of course. But now… it is awful. I feel as though my head’s held underwater. I’d like to….” He took a breath, dropping into a didactic moment because he did find it grounding. “This magic isn’t capable of removing feelings. Only memories. Otherwise I’d rip the entirety of _this_ from my mind. But enough must remain to provide context, or I really will go mad. Madder.”

 _This_ , this instability, may be the cost of a nascent soul, Harry thought. It was probably selfish of him, to wish Voldemort to endure depression in exchange for humanity. “I’m sorry,” he said lowly.

But Voldemort had been broken open, reaching for his wand furiously. “How do the humans do it,” he said. “Vulnerability – pain – when you all are so fucking _spiteful_. It can’t be worth it, in the end.” His gaze was dark and unpleasant. “Perhaps I deserve nothing, but neither does he. Neither do _they_. What is even implied, that I’ve found the most hateful specimens of humanity among its rulers.”

Harry shook his head. “I don’t know.”

But Voldemort was only angry now – Harry saw it as often as he retreated to anger himself, that it hurt so much less than depression. “I have been _merciful_.” He pronounced it precisely. “And I have given them _everything_.” With that he wrenched a first memory from his temple. Harry winced, pressing magic into him as though staunching a deep cut.

A second, and a third. Harry wasn’t looking directly at the Pensieve – he wasn’t sure he either should or would want to – but the glimpses he did catch were directly from Voldemort’s thoughts. Legilimency, he realized. They were open enough to one another that he could catch a few thoughts without ever even having practiced Legilimency. Only flashes emerged – a few not-accidental shoves, standing too close, warm hands sliding from his neck to his chest to his stomach – Questions about Harry himself, how they fucked. The strongest surge of anger he felt was attached to a memory of Swinton, the Deputy of Justice, leaning in close to murmur _pedophile_ in Voldemort’s ear. It was only when he felt the painful _lack_ afterward that he realized – of course they took Voldemort’s magic. Would they be so bold otherwise?

“He didn’t properly fuck me until after Christmas,” Voldemort said, before ripping that memory from himself. Harry recognized the end of it – Voldemort returning to the safehouse, cold and unhappy, throwing off his robes because he couldn’t stand to be touched. “While the Aurors are responsible for the logistics of my transit, the Wizengamot must authorize it to begin with. There is a contract, signed weekly.”

 _Weekly_. Voldemort had spoken of tolerating the abuse as a strategic decision, that Bowersock would be a good whip and ally, since the Wizengamot elected the Minister by consensus. But this was so much simpler. Everything fell apart if Bowersock didn’t authorize Voldemort to leave Azkaban. He was the sort of person to act on spite.

Voldemort pulled more memories – he was nearly manic, so insistent on discarding them. Some of the impressions to Harry were just one sense, a sound or touch. More were an emotion, anger and shame and self-loathing. A few felt like full memories in his own mind. He recognized that it all took place in the Ministry’s quiet hours, before other employees arrived or after they’d left. The corridors were dark. The Wizengamot’s department was circular, with nearly all the offices surrounding them darkened or closed.

In the final memory Harry saw, Bowersock let himself into an office ( _Voldemort’s_ office? It made sense that he’d need one, some sort of space, but the idea was still jarring) and sighed as though it were a great relief to be here. The door closed decisively behind him. And then Voldemort wrenched the memory away from him, ashamed and disgusted. Oh, Harry realized with horror, that was _today_. That was a few hours ago, and the source of the dark handprints around his arms.

The Pensieve shone brightly, brimming as it now was. Closing his eyes, Harry felt for fissures in their magic, filling them gently. Moody had warned him that taking too many memories would wreck their mind, but their _soul_ …. Well. He could hold it together, anyway. He let magic run from his fingertips as he rubbed Voldemort’s back. Their breathing slowed.

Voldemort vanished the shattered glass and spray of whiskey, conjuring new glasses and pouring himself a drink. He ran a finger around the edge of the Pensieve. “Leave it, for now,” he said. At Harry’s questioning look: “It will be a bad week. He will be quite unhappy that I won’t stay.”

 _He_. They might as well drop the pretense that it was _they_ , the Wizengamot as a whole, though from what Harry could tell, every fucking one of them was complicit. “I’m sorry.”

Voldemort shoved a new glass in his hand as well. “I want to get quite drunk. I don’t want to discuss it. I only want your magic. Can you do that?”

“Yeah. Of course.” So he had to pull apart his own mind a bit, shoving all the painful feelings to the deepest recesses, foregrounding love and hope and belonging.

It was easier, really, with the thestral at their feet. “Could you cast a Patronus with my magic?” Harry asked, curious. “Or, I dunno. It’s some of the best protection I’ve got.”

A ghost of a smile. “I am not so redeemed,” he said lightly. “I don’t expect to ever have access to the magic that relies on such things as _goodness_ and _love_. And anything it might dispel, I can defeat more efficiently with other means.”

“Not dementors,” Harry said softly.

This, he considered. “If I had leverage over the dementors, I’d take them to Albania with me. Creature magic is much better at manipulating souls than our own.” Frown, then: “The British werewolves are missing. I must ingratiate myself with Albania’s, instead.”

“Huh,” Harry muttered. Greyback had had at least a few dozen werewolves in his pack. He only knew of them vaguely, as the Order had kept track of them as well. “Have you asked Remus, then?”

“Yes. He is useful. Everyone at the Ministry is a fool for not bringing him on before. They fear _contamination_ ,” he said with disdain. “Not the literal sort. The sort to do with moral purity and social homogeneity. It is among the primary problems I must fix.”

It didn’t matter, at the moment. Harry smiled at him indulgently. Then: “Is there anything else I should do in the Ministry, myself? Relationships, meetings. Spying.”

He found this quite funny. “You would be a terrible spy,” he assured Harry. Then: “I doubt Muggle Liaison has _forgotten_ you in the restructuring, but you might owl them, to ask the same.”

“Right. I will.”

Drunkenness was setting in sincerely for Harry – or fuck, maybe for them both. They shared effects of every other drug. He didn’t mind, sliding deep into the sofa. “Urgh.” He fumbled for his wand, setting an alarm. “Don’t let me fall asleep down here.”

“I wouldn’t want sex,” Voldemort said carefully, “but do you want to shower?”

“Oh. Yeah.” He pulled himself up again. Even as he turned toward the stairs, he cast a backwards glance at the Pensieve. “And…?”

“Leave it,” he said decisively. “Until this is finished.”

“Right,” Harry said. Voldemort let him slip their hands together, anyway.

In the shower, Harry’s greatest surprise was that Voldemort wasn’t bruised; Voldemort’s was that Harry was. Seizing his wrist, he held it to the wall sconce for examination. “ _This_ shouldn’t happen,” he said, rather horrified. “It is perverse.”

Harry swallowed. “I’ll wear your bruises,” he said. “Even if you can’t.”

A dubious look. “If you think you’ll _indict_ anyone – if you’d say anything at all – “

“No,” Harry said, his heart breaking because of course he wanted to. “It’s… I’m sorry, it is invasive. I’ll heal them if you want. But to just _erase_ it….”

He hummed in some amusement. “Like pulling memories from my mind?”

“Yes,” he said stubbornly. “Exactly the same. Entrust me with your bruises, too.”

Quiet consideration. “Alright,” he said. By now he’d let go of his wrist. The bruises were darker by now, and more defined around the edges. He thought he could make out the fingers individually. “Do they hurt?” Voldemort asked.

“No. They never have.” He sucked in a breath. “Does he hurt _you_?”

“Rarely,” Voldemort said, and his voice was nearly steady. “It’s not the most damaging thing he can do to me.”

Harry pressed a gentle kiss to his angular shoulder.

 

They’d drop off fast tonight. Baobab and kaval for them both before bed. (On cracking open the kaval, Harry muttered, sort of in embarrassment, “I’ll wake up short of breath if I skip it now. I know it’s withdrawal.” – “Later,” Voldemort said. “We will fix you later.”) Dreamless sleep was waiting on the bedside table. Harry pulled _The Picture of Dorian Gray_ from his bag. “Let me read to you?”

“Mm. Yes.” He fitted their bodies together, with Harry propped in the crook of his arm. Harry adored the horcrux, he decided; they would never touch (cuddle!) so much if not for its magic.

So he settled in to read. Voldemort said he knew the story, he’d follow from wherever Harry had left off himself. He picked up the day after Dorian had broken up with Sybil Vane: “ _It was long past noon when he awoke_ ….”

And then Sybil had died, and Dorian found the portrait altered. _The touch of cruelty round the warped lips_. Voldemort said nothing – he _thought_ nothing, if their Legilimency was complete – but the parallels to the horcruxes were undeniable. Backwards, though, of course – that the objects preserved his younger self, while Voldemort slipped from age and humanity entirely.

Or had he? Harry looked up now, thoughtful and distracted. So close, he could see the lines around Voldemort’s eyes. He had aged, quite a bit, even within the past year. His humanity… well.

As Harry had no Occlumency between them, Voldemort snorted at this mess of a thought process. “I lived with a professor of literature in my early twenties,” he said, lifting the book from Harry’s hands. “Trinity. When I left, he must’ve given me an entire bookshelf.”

It explained why Voldemort had so much Muggle literature – and nice leatherbound volumes, at that, nicer than he could have afforded himself as a young man. Harry smiled. “We’ll have a house with a library,” he informed Voldemort, because the builders had just finished blueprints for the estate that included a two story library, and a two story ballroom, and as many guest bedrooms as they’d ever need.

“Oh?”

“Yeah. But it’s a secret.” He slid deeper into the covers, cleverly avoiding further questions.

So Voldemort read him to sleep:

“ _No, she will never come to life. She has played her last part. But you must think of that lonely death in the tawdry dressing-room simply as a strange lurid fragment from some Jacobean tragedy, as a wonderful scene from Webster, or Ford, or Cyril Tourneur. The girl never really lived, and so she has never really died. To you at least she was always a dream, a phantom that flitted through Shakespeare’s plays and left them lovelier for its presence, a reed through which Shakespeare’s music sounded richer and more full of joy. The moment she touched actual life, she marred it, and it marred her, and so she passed away. Mourn for Ophelia, if you like. Put ashes on your head because Cordelia was strangled. Cry out against Heaven because the daughter of Brabantio died. But don’t waste your tears over Sibyl Vane. She was less real than they are_.”

\\\\\\\ ////

But Harry awoke too early to an unnerving scene. Beside him, Voldemort thrashed in the sheets, his moonstone complexion glittering with sweat. He didn’t cry out, his jaw quite clenched, but his eyelids fluttered and his hands gripped the air before him.

A nightmare. Harry spent a moment to just consider how peculiar that was – Voldemort had said it was a side effect of the Horcruxes that he didn’t dream at all, and even as he did very recently, it was mostly Harry’s memories of which he dreamt. This… well, he didn’t properly know, but it looked more traumatic than that. He must’ve skipped the dreamless sleep before bed.

Harry caught his thrashing hands, so he wouldn’t get hit in the face as he moved in. Speaking lowly, so he might not wake him abruptly: “Vol. Voldemort. You’re alright, love.” He caught both of his bony wrists in one hand so in the other he could conjure a cool cloth. “You’ll be alright.”

He couldn’t remember – are you not supposed to wake someone in a nightmare, or was that sleepwalkers? Sometimes Ron or Neville would shove him awake. Deciding he’d want to be awoken, anyway, he took Voldemort’s shoulders. Speaking louder: “ _Voldemort_.”

He flinched away, as though he’d been struck. Then, a sharp intake of breath, and Harry only sat back in time to avoid their skulls slamming together. His eyes were wild, unseeing. Harry’s fingers twitched for his wand, and he felt horribly guilty for the impulse. “Vol. You’ll be alright, love. Here.” He tried moving in carefully, as though approaching a wounded animal.

Unexpectedly, Voldemort flinched again, sliding out of reach and then from bed entirely. He was breathless even as he explained, “Memory magic… unsettles things. As much as I’ve done today. There is nothing you can do for me.” He stalked into the toilet, swinging the door closed behind himself. The room wasn’t so dark that Harry couldn’t tell he was shaking.

He wasn’t meant to follow. He wasn’t meant to know any of this. But this was _unnerving_ – as utterly impervious to the world as Voldemort projected, he’d never seen him so affected. To give him time, Harry padded downstairs, warming an entire calming draught in the basement’s cauldron.

As he waited, he drifted over to the Pensieve. Should he offer it back? Voldemort had pulled a lot of memories at once, he was right. Moody had warned of addiction, but emotional devastation seemed even more likely.

Back in the bedroom – Voldemort had scrubbed his face. He looked so tired. Harry handed him the calming draught, slipping baobab and dreamless sleep on the side table. “What was…?”

He shook his head, taking too large a mouthful of the potion. “Nothing real,” he said. “Nothing from which you could save me.”

“Could I give you magic?” Harry asked, tentative.

His gaze was still and deep and serious. “I don’t deserve you.”

He’d said it before, light and easy. This was neither. This meant no. Guilt? Remorse? When had he _ever_ – but no matter. If it was some development of his soul or capacity for empathy or whatever, Harry should celebrate that. Instead, he just felt sad for him, for the accompanying pain. Harry was not a great fan of _justice_ , as it was turning out.

Crawling back into bed, he pressed a kiss to Voldemort’s temple. “I don’t know what you deserve,” he murmured. His skin there was so soft, and paper-thin. “But I really don’t care. I’d rather give you what you need. And it’s better than this.”

Voldemort’s tense posture slackened marginally. “I _don’t_ deserve you,” he reiterated. But this time, he let Harry press warm, stabilizing magic into his broken soul.

 

 _Friday, February 5._ It was an unlikely gift that the Aurors allowed them both to spend the rest of that week at the safehouse. Harry still had to be at Hogwarts during the day of course, and Voldemort would spend long hours at the Ministry, but in the evenings they’d fall exhausted into bed. No sex, this week.

On Friday, as soon as classes were over, he ran to pack a weekend bag – and was abruptly stopped before his corridor, by Ron, Hermione, Ginny, and Luna. “An ambush?” he asked, trying to smile. “Or an intervention?”

“A confrontation, at least,” Hermione said, looking unhappy. “May we come in?”

“Oh – yeah, sure. I’ve got to pack, though.”

Ginny and Luna hadn’t been down here before, and looked at the faculty suite with interest. “Does all of the faculty sleep down here?” Luna asked. Before he could answer ( _probably_?), she added, “Because a set of pneumatic tubes would allow for very easy communication between bedrooms. Since the owls would be unhappy in the dungeons. Or perhaps,” she said, brightening, “you could train bats.”

Ron smothered a laugh in a cough. “Dunno what sort of pillow talk I’d want with any of the faculty,” he said. “Er, ‘cept for you, Hermione.”

Hermione cut to the chase. “You’re getting married.”

He shook out a bag big enough for Moira’s food and toys. “Yeah? You knew that, though.”

“You’re getting married _this weekend_ ,” she hissed. “Madam Bones said so.”

Ah. He saw the problem. “We’re signing a marriage license,” he said. “There will be a ceremony next year. The spring equinox.”

“Of course,” Hermione said in exasperation, though Luna smiled.

“You’ll be invited to _that_ one,” he said. “This is rather… well, it’s probably meant to be private anyway, but it’s also sort of rushed. He wanted to sign the license on the equinox _this_ year, too, but….” He made a vague gesture, flinging his bag and a few robes on the bed. “Things happened.”

Ginny perked up at this. “Oh, are you pregnant, then?”

This made him snort saliva into his sinuses, which fucking hurt. “God, no.” He wiped his nose. “He’s got to go. It’s complicated,” he said, even though it really wasn’t. He had to go before they killed him, inside if not out.

“You _still_ don’t know what goes into a wedding vow,” Hermione accused. “That it _could_ be used as an alliance.”

He was so reluctant to tell the truth, that he’d do whatever Voldemort asked of him. “It’ll just be a regular license. Next year – the big, formal, political one – well, it’ll be political. That’s all.”

Her jaw worked. “Then _why_ – “

“Because if he dies, I want his fucking body,” Harry snapped. He hadn’t been forced to say it in awhile, and it felt so real and so proximate now. “If he dies abroad especially, it’ll be a legal nightmare.” He didn’t know if the details of Voldemort’s exile had broken yet anywhere. Hell, Voldemort might write something himself. He’d said the appearance of accessibility was important.

This usually shut people down. Not Hermione. “Why?” she challenged. At everyone’s horrified look: “He resurrected himself from _nothing_ once already. You’ve got his Horcruxes, you’ve got Slytherin’s estate. Or would you offer your body like Quirrell?”

This was vicious but it was also just… absurd. And Hermione was right, in a perverse way – he shouldn’t worry so much about Voldemort’s death because that had never stopped him before.

It was less pleasant to realize that she’d implied, if he did die, that she’d rather he stay dead. Maybe she even specifically _wanted_ him dead. Any generosity he had for her evaporated with this thought. “Haven’t I lost enough people?” he asked in quiet horror.

“Because of _him_!” She threw up her hands wildly. “He’s killed everyone! He doesn’t deserve your _time_ , much less your generosity or forgiveness or _love_.” (She said it in a scornful way, much like Voldemort himself did, and wasn’t that a funny thought in this awful moment.) “And it is _madness_ that anyone should support this, at all. You are normalizing hatred.”

It was ground they’d trodden before; he didn’t care to do it again. Swallowing his impulse to shout back at her (spending time with Voldemort had made him so much more patient, and wasn’t _that_ funny too), he said instead, “Okay. Don’t come to next year’s wedding, then. For your _principles_.”

He’d expected her to react with some sort of pain, regret, something. “I never would,” she said instead, and walked out.

Brittle silence followed. It took Harry’s breath away. “I should…” Ron muttered, looking out. (Since the door to their suite across the hall hadn’t slammed, Hermione had gone elsewhere in the castle.) “I mean – I’m not _happy_ for you exactly, but, y’know.”

“Go find Hermione,” Harry sighed. “I know. I’ll be back on Monday.”

“Right.” And he left. Ginny and Luna stayed.

“Well, you had a good run,” Ginny said brightly. “Three months! The Gryffindors had a pool, but nobody bet farther out than two.”

He had to smile. “Are you making money off my broken friendships?”

She shrugged apologetically. “Fred and George used to have a death pool every year. Date, way you’d die, who’d do it, whether you’d get a posthumous Order of Merlin…. It was intricate. I told them they should let you in on it,” she added, “but they said it wouldn’t be fair.”

“Oh my god,” he said, and then he was laughing hard, and then things were okay again.

“It’s not your fault, you know,” Luna said, after a moment. “There’s a terrible firewhisp infestation in the castle this year. They cause discord. They migrate in the summers, at least.”

“Firewhisps, yeah,” Harry agreed, because it was easier that way.

“You’re bringing the dog?” Ginny asked, surveying the scatter of toys and food he’d dropped on the bed. He nodded. “Can I come to Hagrid’s with you?”

“Yeah. Of course.” He threw his own clothes in the bag rather less carefully, slinging it over his shoulder.

On the way out, he said rather hesitantly, “Was Bill and Fleur’s wedding… normal?”

She frowned. “It’s the only one I’ve seen, either. There are more… traditional? ritual? ones than theirs. No Latin in theirs,” she said with a grin.

“Greek,” Luna chimed in. “It’s in Greek. Latin is very cold and calculating, you know. A terrible language for a wedding.” Taking in the surprised expressions of them both, she shrugged. “I don’t know very much. There’s a private bit with a priestess first. And there’s blood magic. It’s not done at the public ceremony because nobody wants to bleed on their dress robes.”

Blood magic. Voldemort was right, it would be utterly redundant for them. “We’re doing that Monday, I think. He said it’ll just be a priestess and a witness.”

Ginny made a face. “Is his blood all black and sludgy? I sort of imagine it is.”

He laughed. “No. He’s really quite, ah, normal. Relatively.” He still thought of the lines of age and sleeplessness he’d seen in Voldemort’s face. “I think he’d prefer to be thought of as monstrous, sometimes. Keep his enemies on edge, you know.”

Ginny shook her head in disbelief. “Hence the puppy and wedding and just… the way he is around you.” Her words trailed off, uncertain that she could say such a thing. “ _Monstrous_ ,” she echoed in some doubt.

And then they reached the point where they’d leave Luna. “Congratulations to you both,” Luna chirruped in that way she did, floating away.

And then Ginny directed him toward the Gryffindor tower. “Come up to my dorm, Harry. I’ve got something for you.” In the common room, she only hesitated briefly. “Hm. Try coming in? You’re faculty now, after all. Uh, not that it’d make that better, but….”

She was right, he could get into her dorm without the stairs impeding him. “Huh,” he said, dropping his bag on what was obviously Ginny’s bed, with a Cannons throw blanket at the foot.

Ginny was at her wardrobe, throwing open her underwear drawer. “Mum would send me these, when she wanted me to take her side.” She was pulling out glossy mags now, of beaming couples in formal robes, variations on wixie weddings. “Parvati and I looked at them for a laugh, but… ugh.” She tossed them on the bed beside him. “I think it’s mostly straight couples in there, dunno why, Hermione says wixes are much gayer than Muggles. _Oh_.” Her face lit up mischievously, as she reached farther into the drawer. “A wedding present,” she said sweetly, also tossing a pack of shiny silk knickers at him.

Reflexively he caught it, damn his Seeker skills, before registering what it was. His face went scarlet. “Gin – oh my god – I can’t – “

“Shut up,” she said pleasantly. “I bought them for another boy, but we broke up before I could give them to him. I’m not saying who,” she scolded, at his furrowed brow. “You should be happy your ex doesn’t _kiss and tell_ , yeah? Anyway, they won’t fit me, and Tonks only wears Y-fronts, so you should take them.”

“I. Uh. Thanks.” He was boiling red. But he did want them, a lot. “Thank you.”

Her smile was vibrant and snarky. “Who knew we only had to get the dark lord a boytoy for him to settle the fuck down already.”

He made a strangled noise of laughter and disgust in the back of his throat. “Pity no one’s tried it before,” he agreed. He shoved the knickers and wedding mags in his bag, anyway.

The cold was bitter as they walked to Hagrid’s. He wondered how miserable the Sunday at Cornwall would be; the cold seemed even terrible enough to pierce Voldemort’s immaculate warming charms. When Hagrid let them into his hut, then, Harry’s glasses instantly fogged.

Moira was thrilled to see him, and more thrilled with the attention she got from Ginny. “You’ve gotten so big,” Ginny cooed, catching her mid-flutter to hold her up.

“Wings’ll be strong enough to hold ‘er up in flying soon,” Hagrid said, putting a teapot before them. “They’re still soft, yet.”

Harry was running two fingers over her tiny head, in exchange for excited licks and nips. “I’m taking her out to Cornwall,” he said. “We’ll be casting there, Sunday. It’s sort of boring work, so she’ll help.”

Hagrid’s mouth went tight. “E’d better treat her right,” he said lowly. “Both of yeh, really.”

Did Voldemort treat Moira well? He’d hold her to keep her out of the way. He’d cast magic birds or bubbles for her to chase across the garden. He’d bought all of her toys, but for a few Harry had picked up later. Dogs were, of course, an imperfect analogue for children, but it put Harry at ease, the grace with which Voldemort took care of her. He struggled to express love or even fondness, but with Harry to translate all of the easily-overlooked gestures of care and concern…. They’d do alright between them. “He’s really good to her,” he promised. “And to me.”

In the sticky quiet that elapsed, he fiddled with his teacup, knowing what had to come next. “Hagrid. Uh. We’re going to be signing a marriage license on Monday.” He looked up to find Hagrid’s face dark and guarded. “I wanted to tell you, before you saw it in the papers. But I also wanted to ask… we’ll have a real ceremony next year. It’ll be important and political, but I still want everyone…” (he got stuck on the wording here. _Everyone I care about? Everyone I love?_ ) “everyone there too. Would you think about coming?”

His expression didn’t ease, but he ran a hand through his thick beard. “Your parents married young, too,” he said instead. “The war – people thought it’d be now or never, a lotta them. James’s parents were dying anyhow, and he wanted them there. Lily’s weren’t happy. Proud o’ her, mind, but the Muggles didn’t feel the same urgency. If circumstances had been different….”

They would’ve waited. Harry swallowed the statement _Voldemort says_ , as it never helped. “I know we should wait longer to settle down,” he paraphrased Voldemort’s words. “We’ve got time. I want to do… I dunno, normal young adult things. Go out. Travel. We’re not getting married because of a war, exactly, but it will be an alliance.” He offered a tentative smile. “Really, half the Ministry will be there. It’ll be really boring, so if you don’t want to….”

“I’ll think about it,” Hagrid said. Normally so expressive, he was unreadable now.

“Thank you,” Harry said, because it was the best he could’ve hoped for. Hagrid shrugged off the sentiment, still wary.

 

Ginny had Quidditch practice in the evening, so he left her at the pitch. “We were supposed to play Slytherin this weekend, on the schedule,” she said, pulling her hair into a high ponytail. “But… Madam Hooch said it’d exhaust the players to play any more frequently, so we’ve got a bye week. We’re only running drills tonight. You’re lucky not to miss anything,” she said in faux-anger, pointing a finger at him.

He smiled, but she was right – taking up the shield would burn a lot of his weekends. “Make me proud,” he said with his most winning voice.

“Harry Potter, you are such a twat,” she said, laughing, and with a last pat of Moira’s head she disappeared into the locker room.

Dumbledore’s office, then, to the Ministry floos, and then the portkey brought him to the safehouse. He sighed in some satisfaction.

Moira was squirming, so he let her down, and she sprinted into the house ahead of him. Well. Hopefully if Voldemort was here, he wasn’t doing anything delicate. Harry lit the sconces as he moved through the house.

He _was_ here; the tug on Harry’s soul said so. He followed it to the bedroom… to find it locked. Huh. Hopefully he was asleep; the past couple nights had been rough on them both. Harry returned downstairs to put on coffee and look at the glossy, girly magazines.

But the house was still quiet a few hours later, when Harry wanted to start dinner. Venturing back up, he knocked. “Vol?” As the door was only locked manually, he let himself in.

Voldemort looked so small among the heap of blankets. He might actually be cold-blooded, Harry reflected as he pulled back the blankets to slip among them. Voldemort was curled in on himself. His skin was goosebumped, and an empty vial of dreamless sleep sat on the bedside table. Wincing, Harry pushed magic into his skin, scrubbing at his arms to make them any warmer. “Vol?”

He stirred, turning over to look at Harry with an unguarded, if bleary expression. “It must be late.”

“Yeah,” he said. Skipping the question _Are you alright_ because he’d never say otherwise, he instead asked, “D'you want me to start dinner?”

“Mm, no, I’ll….” He was reaching for his robe on the bedpost, scrubbing his face in his hands. “I’m fine,” he said, shaking off Harry’s gentle touch. “Unless you are affected?”

“No.” He sort of should be – it was a lot of dreamless sleep at once, and they normally shared potions effects; but Voldemort kept their Occlumency very rigid. “I just worry,” he said lightly.

“You do,” Voldemort agreed, and then he pulled Harry downstairs.

 

Voldemort said nothing about it, as usual. He did raise an eyebrow to find all the shiny wedding mags scattered along the coffee table. “Ginny gave them to me,” Harry said, only half-defensive. “Bill – her oldest brother – got married before…” _the war. The battles. Everything._ “Before my seventh year. They were left over. It’s the only wedding I’ve been to. Oh,” he recalled, deflating. “And Hermione’s not speaking to me. Again. Do you know she keeps in touch with Madam Bones? I’ve no idea why.”

“She’ll sign as our witness,” Voldemort said, clearing off the magazines.

“Madam Bones? Good. Uh, I didn’t realize she’d want to.” Voldemort had killed most of her family. This was perverse.

He shrugged an angular shoulder. “We might be beneficial to one another. Nobody else even knows of the existence of genetics, much less the genetic crisis toward which wixenkind is approaching.”

He wondered if Hermione was involved in this. He wouldn’t find out now. “Right.”

“Is that alright with you?” At Harry’s blank look he clarified, “To have Amelia as the witness.”

Voldemort… took him seriously as a political figure, more seriously than Harry took himself. “Yeah,” he said, “I’m glad she agreed.” No need to ask why Scrimgeour had declined, or who else Voldemort had asked. He could think of many reasons to refuse, but very few to accept.

“I’ve told people that there’ll be a wedding – a real one – next year,” he offered then. They were moving to make dinner now. “Ron and Ginny could probably get the rest of their family there. Hermione said no. Hagrid said he’d think about it.” A sudden challenging look. “They _can_ be there, right? Not just all your hideous politicians?”

“ _Our_ hideous politicians,” Voldemort corrected easily. “And yes. Of course.”

His first instinct was to say _Thanks_ , but it really wasn’t a concession or hardship on Voldemort’s part. “Great,” he said instead.

 

Their evening was quiet, apart from Moira tearing through the house incessantly. Voldemort was by the hearth, writing legislation at a breakneck pace, until Harry slid onto the sofa beside him. “Education?” he guessed, seeing words like _enrollment_ and _curriculum_ in Voldemort’s neat script.

“Yes. Probably the most fragile of the legislation proposed.” He glanced up. “Would Ms. Granger consent to be involved in my absence?”

Ugh. He did not feel charitable toward Hermione right now. “I don't know. Have Madam Bones ask her.”

He meant it flippantly, but Voldemort hummed as though that were credible. “Perhaps.”

“Can we write a wedding announcement?” Harry asked. “ _Should_ we?”

A flicker of amusement. At this point, Harry could no longer tell whether he saw it on Voldemort’s face or in his soul. “A wedding announcement written out of spite seems like no wedding announcement at all.”

He grinned guiltily. “I would make it just… lurid,” he confessed. He was finished with apologizing. (Hermione wanted Voldemort _dead_ ; he wouldn’t have expected this to affect him as it did.)

“The purebloods do it,” Voldemort said, but he was reaching for a new parchment anyway. “But we’d best get ahead of the journalists, you’re right. Would you like them at the Ministry on Monday?”

“Like hell.”

“Then it will ruin Tuesday morning,” Voldemort said. Harry slid close as he wrote.

But he could not have possibly written a lurid announcement after all, because there was more formality to these things than he’d ever known. “We’ll skip our respective parentage,” Voldemort muttered as he wrote. “And also perhaps how we met.”

He nearly choked on his tongue in laughter. “Do it,” he said. “Write down every time you didn’t kill me.”

They lived off morbid humor. Neither of them was emotionally astute enough to survive a referendum on their relationship and _how strange_ it all was, so dark humor would substitute. But, to at least gesture in that direction, Harry played his fingers down Voldemort’s arm. His sleeve had fallen back and the musculature of his forearm as he wrote looked oddly beautiful. “I _am_ happy,” he said, more seriously. “With how things have gone, in the end.”

“The end?” Voldemort echoed.

“Well. So far.” Really, what he wanted most was the peace of stability. Not this year, not while they both established themselves in the Ministry, but after that. He was at the Slytherin estate about once a week now, and it always stirred these feelings of domesticity in him.

So Voldemort did not write much about their respective pedigrees – although he did style himself _Lord of Slytherin_ once, to Harry’s skeptical look. “It’s not unknown,” he said. “That the Gaunt family was among the Sacred Twenty-Eight will be mildly useful. Founders’ heirs, however… I don’t properly know how the wixie world will treat it. Certainly with more prestige than just being of a prominent family. I’ve never pursued it as a persona, before now.”

“Mm,” Harry said, wondering if it was stupid not to tell him about the estate. “But you don’t even want Hogwarts.”

“What would I do with it?” he said easily. “Best to leave it in the hands of those madmen who actually like children.”

Harry grinned at this. But then: “The way the Horcrux can use magic in the castle – it’s amazing. It seems obvious. Dumbledore said it was obvious, in hindsight, that the castle loved you.” He said it quietly, if firmly. “I’m sorry you couldn’t stay.”

Voldemort was unmoved. “It was a very long time ago.”

It was, but they both knew the interview with Dumbledore had been a moment of divergence – at least as significant as Myrtle’s death and the first Horcrux; at least as significant as his father’s murder. At least as significant as the first instance of dislike and distrust with which Dumbledore treated him.

He’d never had a chance. Which was not to excuse anything, but…. He had never had a chance.

Since Harry had paid no attention to Occlumency at this moment, Voldemort at least caught the contours of his thoughts and feelings. “I’ll thank you to take your grief and pity elsewhere.”

He winced even as he smiled. Rather than being embarrassed, he leaned in. “You’re so much better at being hated than being loved,” he breathed along his pale throat, pressing a kiss to it. “It’s alright though, I like it.” Kiss. “That feeling you get in the pit of your stomach….” Kiss.

“Ambivalence,” Voldemort offered, though they both knew it was closer to enthralled disgust. The same feeling Harry had at being in wet clothes or a nappy, Voldemort felt when he was held and baby-talked and _loved_. The prickly feeling of wanting to crawl out of your own skin even as lust washed over you.

“ _Ambivalence_ ,” Harry enunciated, teasing, because it was so scholarly. Like Voldemort. Maybe he really had wanted to fuck one of his professors once; why else would he feel this way? A kiss, just beneath Voldemort’s ear. “I’d miss it, if you ever stopped feeling _ambivalent_ , then.” And then he ran his tongue around the curve of his ear, to hear his breath hitch.

Voldemort still set his parchment aside carefully, because he was insufferable. But his hand closed on the top of Harry’s robes with too much force. “Yes,” he said, and Harry was so fucking relieved to feel his interest mirrored. “But there is a problem.” Harry raised his eyebrows in question. “We’ve already fucked everywhere in this house.”

He choked on his unexpected laughter. They had – both bedrooms, both baths, the sitting room, the armchairs of the basement, the goddamn kitchen table. “The garden,” he said. “Fuck me in the snow.”

“Brilliant,” Voldemort agreed, and then he was pulling him outside.

They’d let it snow for the past few days, and apart from the places Moira had run, the snow banks were still so powdery and perfect. Neither reached for their wands, even in the cold. They clung to each other instead.

And then Harry was pulling Voldemort into a snow bank, too desperate to be careful. They were both still in robes, skirts draped dark against the snow. Their false moon was huge and brilliant above them.

They were quiet this time, their mouths on each other. The way their magic flared against one another’s was instead their communication. Voldemort was… unguarded with his magic now. Generous, even warm. Harry luxuriated in it.

They were moving only enough clothing to fuck – Voldemort pushing his robes back, Harry kicking his trousers down his thighs. He’d put on a pair of the knickers earlier, just because, and Voldemort was distracted by their flash of bright blue. Snapping them against his arse: “These are lovely. Wear them to bed.”

He grinned, but this wasn’t the time for conversation. “Yeah,” he agreed, easily, and then his mouth was on Voldemort’s again, their lips warm and slick against one another’s. A handful of lube pressed inside him – though they fit together now, in ways they hadn’t always. He pressed his hips skyward, the fake moon bright between his lowered lashes.

Their magic always crashed when they first slipped inside one another. This time, both the physical sensation and the rush of warm magic made Harry buck. He was kicking his trousers off entirely, damn the cold, so he could throw his legs over Voldemort’s back. The snow beneath him was an amazing contrast to the heat of their magic and bodies.

They normally had sex more sprawled out, but in the cold, they curled against one another. Voldemort’s head was pressed into the curve of Harry’s shoulder, by the end, and Harry’s arms were wrapped tightly around him to draw them in. Their panting breaths were visible in the cold air; Harry’s hair was dotted with thick snowflakes, stinging against his cheeks.

Snow melted beneath them, as they gasped the same air. And then Harry arched – their pleasure crashed against one another’s – Harry pushed Voldemort’s chin up so he could press a sucking kiss to his warm mouth as they came. They bucked, and shuddered, and slumped.

Harry was laughing by the time they slipped apart. He summoned his trousers and knickers, but he’d come across his own thighs and Voldemort’s was leaking out of him already, so there was no point in dressing again. He allowed Voldemort to scoop him out of the snow, and then they pulled each other back into the warmth.

“Oh my god,” Harry breathed, pushing his hair off his face. “Here – god – “ he laughed. “I need a shower. Join me?” He was already bringing Voldemort up the stairs. “And then – I don’t care if you don’t sleep tonight. Come read beside me or whatever.”

He saw on Voldemort’s face that he’d correctly anticipated and headed off his objections. “Yes,” Voldemort said instead. He’d never tell Harry what he dreamt, what was so distressing in sleep these days. But not asking was the next best thing.

 

Harry did wear the blue knickers to bed, with Molly’s jumper on top because he was still cold. Voldemort touched him decadently, running a thumb along his hipbone, spreading his fingers to just graze his cock. He hummed in contentment, arching into the touch as though he were a cat.

But he was knackered – from teaching, and magic, and sex. He ended up curled with his back at Voldemort’s thighs, Voldemort’s fingers tangled in his hair as he read. It was… really nice. They’d only fallen asleep together, really, but this felt even more safe and intimate to have Voldemort awake beside him. He’d popped a soother in his mouth as he dropped off, but even so, he felt his lips curl around it.

 

He awoke a bit later as he was tipped onto his back, a warm hand on the front of his knickers. He was – oh. He was so bleary, but he felt piss slipping from him, wetting the fabric that clung to his cock. He’d spat out the soother in his sleep, but he could do little more than mumble, “Here, love.” It took no effort to let go.

He watched through half-lidded eyes as wetness bubbled through the thin shiny material, making a dark spot that spread across his hips. Voldemort had sat back now, and as open as their Legilimency currently was – he was _enthralled_. Harry dipped into his feelings easily, offering his own in return: the ticklish heat of piss rolling over his thighs, pooling behind his balls; Voldemort’s wonder at how soft and easy Harry was in sleep; the safe childishness of wetting the bed; of being _watched_ ; the physical relief as he’d skipped the toilet earlier; the way their disgust and arousal played against each other, until their stomach was in knots.

It became so intense that Harry’s breath skipped. He pushed himself to his knees, wincing as the bed sloshed beneath him. But the wet fabric moving between his legs – that was really, really nice. He fought back his own arousal. “Let me finish in your lap.”

Wordlessly Voldemort pulled Harry into his lap, facing away with his knees up. He slumped backwards, letting go again. Voldemort jerked when the stream that trickled over Harry’s thigh reached his own, but then he stilled. Harry could fall back asleep like this, utterly safe –

Oh. No. He was aroused, and Voldemort was too. As though there were any difference between them, these days. He leaned back deeper, so Voldemort’s hardening cock slipped along the crevice of his arse. The knickers were so wet as to nearly be translucent – and he liked the brazenness of the image, even as he missed the swelling and bulk of a wet nappy. But then Voldemort’s fingers stroked the outline of his cock, pressing his thumb to the slit where his stream still bubbled out. He groaned.

His lap – their laps – steamed, Harry’s knickers and Voldemort’s pants sticking to their erections. He pressed out the last of the wetting quite deliberately, shuddering. “I want to come in them,” he murmured. “Do you…?”

“Allow me.”

It sounded so absurdly accommodating and genteel, he laughed, twisting to press a kiss to Voldemort’s angular jawbone. “I love you, I love you,” he said easily. “I don’t care if you hate to hear it.”

A careful pause. “I don’t,” he said.

He felt _something_ , Harry could never put words to all of Voldemort’s emotions. Funny, since half of them he’d experienced before had been _murderous rage_ or _intense satisfaction_ , the simple ones. But the other half…. “Good,” he said instead, pressing another kiss below his ear.

They’d end up grinding, just as they were. Voldemort’s hand was inside Harry’s wet knickers, but Harry moved just right to also rub himself against the wet fabric that clung to him. Voldemort’s pants, nearly as wet, ground against the back of his legs. They were both slick, hot with friction. Voldemort’s hands were at Harry’s hips, bumping against him rhythmically, as though they were fucking. When Harry thought that Voldemort would come in his pants too – so shameful, sticky and obvious – the idea made him shudder with interest.

Voldemort made a noise of amusement behind him. “For you, darling.”

Harry pressed a sucking kiss to his neck, so hard that he’d bruise. Their movements grew more erratic, shuddering and kicking, and then Harry’s hips slammed upward into Voldemort’s grasp, and then the wave of orgasm crashed inside of them both. Voldemort’s hand was slick, sticky, jerking him off through the waves.

They slumped against one another for a long moment. Until Harry’s hand snaked beneath himself, into Voldemort’s pants. He was wet and sticky too, in a way that was just… endearing. He was so sensitive, and Harry’s fingers on the head of his cock nearly _hurt_.

So Harry grinned, slipping off his lap. “Look at you.” He was stupid after orgasm and they were both a mess. Voldemort’s breath caught as Harry ducked low, moving his pants out of the way to lift his softening cock to his mouth. Faint salt of his own piss, along with the familiar taste of Voldemort’s come. It was still warm, very fluid, and he sucked, scrubbing his tongue to get every bit of stickiness from his length. When he raised his gaze, Voldemort’s head was thrown back, his mouth in a tight o. It was wonderful.

And when he clambered off, Voldemort was still quite speechless. “Harry….”

Harry kissed him hard on the mouth, to see the way he’d wince at the ghost of wet and salt on his lips. “There you go,” he murmured, and offered up everything – magic, satiety, and sleep – through their connection.

Not that Voldemort took it. When Harry woke again in mid-morning sun, Voldemort was beside him, looking like he’d never slept. But Moira was between them too, and Voldemort’s hand was on her back, running a thumb between her wing joints, and that made Harry smile.

 

 _Saturday, February 6._ Their Saturday was quiet. Voldemort was busier than Harry had ever seen him, ducking between long parchments and the diary he shared with the Aurors (and today, the Minister). When Harry became a nuisance, Voldemort looked up with a glare, conjuring the same birds he’d conjure for Moira. “Go practice magic.”

He glared back. “I’m not a dog.”

“You could learn Parselmagic here or not at all.” He was clearly trying to be reasonable. “Arresto Momentum,” he said, but Harry heard the sibilant hiss of Parseltongue underlying it. The birds froze in midair, more abruptly than he’d ever seen it when cast in Latin. The magic between them was… piquant, arresting, enticing. He hated to admit Voldemort was right.

With a jerk of his wand, he brought the birds outside. By now, Moira had found them, and was fluttering around waist level with excitement, anticipating a game. So… he’d make it a game.

It took four tries before he could cast Rennervate in Parseltongue. He couldn't cast the spell around the entire flock, he had to do it one at a time. With each rejuvenation, the bird would fall out of the sky for a moment, catch itself, and swoop out of Moira’s reach in time.

“You can’t kill them,” he said to her sternly, when she’d nearly got the closest one. “I don’t care if they’re not alive to begin with. Alright?” He scooped her up to eye level; she used the advantage of height to lunge from his arms at a canary. “Hey!”

But with each iteration of Parselmagic, he felt something inside himself… growing? Changing, at least. Parseltongue had become easier if not instinctive for him, but this….

It would save his life, if he could get it right.

He wouldn’t use any offensive magic. The one time he tried Diffindo in Parselmagic, it felt like a wrenching of his soul and he aborted it immediately. “Sorry,” he muttered to the barely-saved canary, shaking off the feeling. For Moira he scooped snow into snowballs, levitating them just above her head. She lunged.

When they were both cold and exhausted, he returned inside. Voldemort had moved from the sitting room by now; Harry put on cocoa before he followed the cord from his heart to the basement.

But Moira ran ahead – how could she not be exhausted? “Sorry, sorry,” Harry called down the stairs before running after her.

He found Voldemort holding Moira steady in his lap, casting warming and drying spells on her cold, wet paws. It felt… overly intimate, in a way. Tender, careful, thoughtful moments of Voldemort always felt embarrassingly intimate. “Are you finished?” Harry asked, careful about the question.

A dubious noise, in the back of his throat. “They don’t respect how much they benefit from me,” Voldemort said, but in an easy tone. “Which is to say nothing about what the public should be told about my absence.”

“What do you want?”

His face was carefully neutral. “I don’t quite know.”

Harry didn’t believe this. Voldemort was many things, but never indecisive. “What do the Aurors want?”

A stifled sigh. “Nothing. They’d like to say _nothing_.”

“That seems, uh, ominous.”

He flashed sharp teeth. “Yes.”

By now Harry had settled on the arm of the chair, taking Moira, warm and fluffy again, into his lap. “What should I say?” They would ask, he already anticipated. The press, the Muggles, his friends….

“Also nothing, I presume. Nothing sensitive, at least. They…. The Humnerë will realize I’ve crossed into their territory when I breach their wards, but they shouldn’t know any earlier.”

Harry knew how powerful wards could be. He’d already seen the Humnerë… what? Animate corpses or create homunculi or whatever those precarious figures could be called. “Right,” was all he said, because his anxiety wouldn’t be helpful. Pressing a thumb into Voldemort’s tense trapezius, he asked, “Do you need anything?”

“No.”

This was a lie and Harry let it stand. Pressing a kiss to his temple, he let him be.

 

 _Sunday, February 7._ On Sunday morning, Tonks and Rye arrived to accompany them to the airspace shield. “Not Cornwall,” Voldemort had told him in the minutes before their arrival. “It varies, for security’s sake. We fortified the other sites months ago.”

“Good. I mean,” he frowned at him, “against who?”

“In addition to our own safety, terrorists could either alter or destroy the shield, if they could seize Ministry access to its magic. From there… well.” He was not wary, only thoughtful. “An environmental effect of any sort. A siphoning of magic? Even something as simple as a lightning curse would disrupt magic if not fully dismantle it. The Ministry would likely be spared – Hogwarts and Gringotts might be – but the rest….”

It was all quite casual, hypothetical. Harry pressed a slow breath through his teeth. In many ways it was amazing that Voldemort hadn’t been _more_ disruptive. “Did you ever…” he started somewhat reluctantly. _Did you ever consider this sort of terrorism?_ he did not ask.

“No. And I should have.” At Harry’s surprised look he said, “What? Individual violence is… satisfying, but ultimately inefficient.”

“Ugh,” Harry protested, even if he was right. It took him a very long time to recognize this feeling in Voldemort, this drive or compulsion. _Bloodlust_ , it could be termed, but it didn’t feel so different from Harry’s own recklessness. There was nothing cunning, subtle, or Slytherin about it. Sometimes he even had the sense that Voldemort found it embarrassing. In any case: “So where are we going, then?”

“Talacre.”

“Oh,” he said, pleasantly surprised. Talacre was a coastal town on the edge of Wales, but the anchor for the airspace shield was set back a bit from the shore, so they wouldn’t have to contend with the freezing cold sea spray.

With a broad swoop of his wand, Voldemort collected the appropriate dog accessories. They’d be taking Moira – she’d probably be alright on her own here, but there was no reason not to take her either. Harry had written it into Voldemort’s book yesterday, and Willoughby had written back that it was fine, anyway.

And the dog herself came tearing through the house with the knock at the door. “Hey – hey – “ Harry was grabbing her as Voldemort moved for the door.

But Voldemort paused to shoot him an amused glance. “She is well-trained, but not so much as to respond to Parseltongue.”

“Oh my god.” He was finally able to scoop her to his chest. Searching for his English tongue: “I can never tell. Here, I’ve got her.” Voldemort opened the door.

Tonks and Rye, dressed in long winter cloaks that were the same deep red as Aurors’ robes. They didn’t need to come in, really, so Voldemort and Harry stepped out. Moira was very tight against Harry’s chest.

He hadn’t been to Talacre since the day they’d actually cast the shield. There were long stretches of dunes behind its beach, and the Portkey deposited them in a particularly wet and cold location. Rye grimaced, immediately casting a drying spell in a circle around them, solidifying the sandy soil.

The anchors were kept invisible until they were necessary, but either Voldemort recalled where this one was or he could follow its magic, because he brought Harry directly to it, tugging on a bit of midair until the transparent pseudo-fabric of the shield became visible. Then, drawing out sea salt and focusing crystals, he asked, “Do you recall?”

They were doing this. Harry would do this _alone_ from now on. He felt massively unprepared. Still, he said, “Yeah.” He set Moira down to play.

Voldemort would do little today – not more than he had to. Harry had asked him not to. Scooping the salt into the enchanted funnel they’d use, he asked, “How’d you find the anchor?”

“It’s really quite intuitive.” He said this in a way others might say _disgusting_ or _stupid_ or _trivial_. “It’s imbued with your – our – magic. It is much more compelling than the environment.” At Harry’s still-lost look: “It will be more apparent in my absence. And the Aurors could find it. Bring Herzog with you, he nearly understands.”

 _Nearly_. Harry grinned at this. The shield didn’t even qualify as arcana, just a big bloody piece of magic. “Right.”

To his surprise, Voldemort produced the notebook in which he’d first created the shield, including its runes. “Here.” He passed it off. “Nobody should see this. If they can counteract the runes….”

What they’d discussed before. Exploitation, mayhem, evil. Setting aside that he’d handed it off to Malfoy once this summer – only to inform him what runes Harry had already worked with – he said smoothly, “I know. Thanks.”

Harry worked, rediscovering the runes he’d written all summer. He recognized more of them now, thanks to Malfoy’s class (a fact he’d only begrudgingly admit) – protection spells, but written with improvised runes. _British Muggles_ , the most frequent ones read.

 _Every war achieves its opposite_ , Voldemort had said to him once. ( _Quoted_ at him? He was rarely sure.) Voldemort, champion of Muggles, and all the soft squishy causes Harry supported. Dumbledore had supported. He held this bit of a thought far from Voldemort.

Moira had free run of the dunes – it was an undeveloped part of the area, so she couldn’t quite run into a road or anything. She couldn’t eat anything on the dead landscape. Tonks was apparently indifferent to animals, but Rye had lit up at the sight of her, and was now launching some sort of orbs deep across the dunes for her to chase.

“Was it ever difficult, doing it alone?” Harry asked. This was nearly a day at the shore with friends, as easy as it was. The summer days of Cornwall felt infinitely moreso. “Or, I dunno, tense?”

“Sometimes,” Voldemort said. “Your presence is… significant. Not _necessary_ ,” he added, at Harry’s anxious look. “But significant.” He made a twisting gesture with his hand. “It’s never become dangerous or violent. Just, as you say, tense.”

“They need to be fucking grateful for you,” Harry said, suddenly fierce and loyal.

But Harry’s sincerity amused Voldemort most of all. “They do not,” he said. “I’m not grateful to them.”

“It’s not….” He made a grinding noise in the back of his throat. “Nevermind.” He didn’t have words for it – that it wasn’t about reciprocity, or even about debt at all. (Could one be grateful without feeling indebted?) But just… grace. He knew nothing of it, other than that it was what he wanted for everybody.

But Voldemort’s mind was far from his, and he caught none of that. He was peering into the dull slate sky, where the milky shield shimmered. “We had to adjust some anchors,” he said, “to more consistently fill in the magic. If it begins looking spotty again, you’ll need to shift the anchor at Kirkwall.” Harry was giving him that look again. “It’s all written in here. My documentation is thorough.”

He offered a faint smile, gently floating the notebook before him so he could more steadily copy runes. “We’ll manage the shield,” he said. “Now, the rest of the world…?”

“May also survive,” Voldemort said. “Certainly, they’ve got a better chance in my absence.”

“Could you hold bits of your legislation hostage or something? They’ll just…” _fuck you._ Everything Voldemort had done, they’d take it and exile him and _never_ let him back in again.

As Harry was the optimist between them, Voldemort had considered all this and more. In place of what would usually be a clever and confident look, however, his face was carefully neutral. “I don’t know,” he said, and somehow Harry found it the worst sentence he could utter. “Really, it would be reckless of them to allow me back. Into the Ministry or into Britain at all.”

Harry straightened, too distracted to write the runes. “If they don’t,” he said coldly, because the idea infuriated him, “I’ll find you. I couldn’t stay.”

“You _could_ and you _should_. Don’t throw your life away on principle.”

This was all so hypothetical, it was nearly not worth fighting about. He offered a tepid smile. “I’m a Gryffindor. It’s all we know.” But he still wanted to scream when Voldemort ran an appeasing hand through his hair. It wasn’t enough, this wasn’t enough.

 

The sky remained a uniform deep gray all day. They had to recast warming charms on themselves every few hours. Otherwise, it wasn’t bad. In the afternoon, Moira trudged over, having been thoroughly exhausted, and flopped at their feet. “Good girl,” Harry said, sparing a glance away from the shield. A tired swish of her tail.

There was a picnic table, and Voldemort sat across from him, once more writing diligently. “Can you feel this?” Harry asked, lifting his chin to the stream of magic issuing from his wand. “I mean, I don’t want to take your magic.” He was fatigued himself.

A thoughtful pursing of his lips. “It may no longer make sense to speak of our magic individually.”

He turned this over in his mind. “Fine,” he said. “Does it hurt, then?”

“No.”

“Good.”

At their feet, Moira shot up from what had seemed like a deep sleep. “What – hey – “ Harry said, alarmed. But then, barking furiously, she was off like a shot, sprinting away, in the opposite direction from the Aurors. “Moira!”

Voldemort had his wand out immediately, and Harry threw his free hand out in front of him. “Don’t,” he said severely, angry that using magic on her was Voldemort’s first impulse. “You’ll hurt her.”

Voldemort gave him an exasperated look. “Then give me – “ He was reaching for Harry’s wand, to take the shield uninterrupted. But then his wand _jumped_ , the malevolence detector at the handle vibrating wildly, and he looked up into the landscape over Harry’s shoulder. Abruptly, then, a dark look crossed his features, and he plunged his wand upwards instead. “Auxilio!”

Harry whipped around but he felt the shield rip when he did. “Shit – “ Wild magic surged into the atmosphere, making his skin prickle and his stomach lurch. But as he turned –

Black, his entire field of vision went black with a flock of crows flying much too low to the ground, much too fast, much too sinister. The Humnerë, at least a dozen of them. And his magic was exhausted, but he had to fight anyway – “Diffindo!”

It missed. Voldemort was throwing great spheres of fire, large enough to engulf the entire flock, but it seemed not to affect them. They soared nearer, and then as they’d dove in the Ministry, a crackle of magic as they transformed –

 _Slam_. The nearest took Harry down, kicking him in the chest with newly-formed legs. The man – or approximation of a man, Harry thought, just a stolen soul wrapped in temporary flesh – bared his teeth. “Diffindo!” Harry cast again, jamming the wand into the man’s throat. Blood hit his face as the flesh tore open.

But there were more of them, swarming over him. His glasses were snatched from his face, and then a massive hand slapped over his mouth. The flare of magic, and he felt – oh god. His mouth was frozen shut, or maybe dissolved off his face, and he felt like he was choking. Where was his own magic? He reached deep – any magic, anything nonverbal, but he was so exhausted. His vision was graying, he shoved his hands upward, trying to cast wandless magic with his free hand since it was so much stronger, but he was _drained_ – How clever of them, to come late in the day when he couldn’t – He reached deeper inside himself –

His wand jerked up, nearly of its own accord. Even as his head fell back, he felt a burst of white hot magic. He didn’t think it was a spell, but something coalesced before him, just before his vision went dark altogether.

But the figures drew back – only momentarily, but it was enough. They’d wanted his _soul_ , he realized only now, as it fell back inside him, as a relaxed muscle after a long strain. But then Voldemort was levitating him, shoving magic into his chest directly, and then he felt the cold prickle of Disillusionment….

He was dropped somewhere, fading in and out of consciousness. There were explosions, shouting – He tried to pull himself to wakefulness, but the drain on his magic and the damage to his soul was heavy inside him.

In front of his closed eyelids, then, was a bright flare of magic. He threw his hands up – how did he still have his wand? – but the spell for the shield charm wasn’t coming to him. Anyway, wasn’t he disillusioned…?

But he was filled with magic again, somehow. He jumped up without looking – but Voldemort had dropped him behind the picnic table, turned on its side to create a shield. It was clever.

Even without his glasses, he could make out the scene, thank fuck. The Aurors were in red – there were more of them now, he couldn’t count – and then Voldemort’s inhuman frame, and then the dark clothing of the Humnerë. The area was bright with spells – he’d have the advantage if he kept the disillusionment on, but he could get hit by friendly fire…. Well. In typical Gryffindor fashion, he ran in.

There was one Auror surrounded by three Humnerë. Rye, he saw upon getting close, fierce and lithe but still alone. He threw spells as he ran, so they couldn’t locate him – stunning spells, spells of impediment, psychological spells of disorientation, ones that’d catch the Humnerë in thorns or pins or vast bubbles. Nothing had much of an effect. They were closing in on Anya, cracking her shield charm, and he panicked. Running in closer than he would otherwise so he could see: “ _Sectumsempra_!”

It hit – graphically. The man’s body slumped to the dirt, but it had showered the other three with blood. Dead, he had to be dead – And he was, Harry saw a moment later, when the ruined body was reverting rapidly too unmarked flesh. Rye looked up at him, stunned at first, and then raised her chin in thanks. The death had bought her enough time to stun a second rebel. And with a crack, the third reverted to the form of a crow, with another Auror – Moody, Harry could tell by his staff even at this distance – hurling electrical spells after it.

Harry whipped around to look for the others, but the motion made him sway on his feet. He felt awful, tasting bile in his mouth. That had been gruesome, but no more than the war, than anything he’d seen. Swallowing hard, he ran.

Tonks and Savage, in a duel with three rebels. Voldemort, a distance off, with another two. Moody grabbed Harry’s shoulder, making him jump. “There’s more,” he muttered, shooting a bright light into the sky. He couldn't properly tell, but four or five crows circled above them. “ _Fulguris,_ at the nearest of them. Kill them if they dive.”

He and Moody had done this before, actually – at Hogwarts, an attack by the Death Eaters from broomsticks over their camp. Harry had to run yards out, to catch the birds from the opposite angle. Moody’s staff up, and Harry plunged his wand upward – “ _Fulguris_!”

The first missed, and the birds scattered. “Fuck.” But one swooped low, Moody cast again and so did Harry. “ _Fulguris_.” With lightning hitting it from opposite angles, the bird dropped out of the sky. It was… satisfying. Harry found himself grinning.

He and Moody had to move to follow the flock. There was a second, and a third. The rest departed, lost into the dark sky. Moody spun on his wooden leg to survey the scene. Voldemort had a few of the rebels trapped in glittering bubbles, a dozen feet above them. Rye had a last rebel, throwing red and blue curses that clashes in midair. The other two….

He nearly missed them, but Moody didn’t, and Harry had to run after him. Behind the picnic table, Tonks was huddled, with Savage beside her, casting urgent spells. She had a hand to her throat, where blood seeped through her fingers. She was very pale and not breathing well.

Immediately Moody was on the ground with her, ripping open a pouch of supplies he carried. Potions, a blue one for blood loss and a green topical one. She couldn’t be apparated yet, not before she was stabilized. Harry hung back, watching Voldemort pop the bubbles around the rebels in turn, wrenching out the memories of the stolen souls as they still hovered in midair. As he turned, the bodies dropped to the ground, inanimate.

He was safe, Rye was safe. The dune had probably a half dozen human bodies on it, and several more in the form of birds. If Harry’s disillusionment still held, he dispelled it now. They drew close.

And so did Moira. “Oh thank god,” Harry said, his heart warming to see the tawny mass of fur bound over. He moved to pick her up, letting Voldemort draw close. “Good girl, you were so good.” He scrubbed behind her ears.

Voldemort, at close range, was not injured but was impossibly grim. “The Aurors…?”

Harry gestured. “There. Tonks….”

“Yes.”

It seemed very clear that Voldemort might do something for her, and she’d never let him. More to the point, Moody wouldn’t let him. They drew in earshot but out of the way, holding each other. Moody had smeared the topical potion along her face, throat, and chest. It looked like a shrapnel bomb had exploded just beneath her chin. It was awful. Her mouth was stained with blood but Moody clearly couldn’t fix enough of her throat to get her breathing properly, and she was shaking too hard for them to inject a blood-replenishing potion, and she’d gone so pale….

Untangling himself from Harry, Voldemort stepped in. Harry bit back a rebuke, but drew up behind him. Voldemort made a gesture, revealing a knife he kept hidden along his forearm at all times. He was dropping to Moody’s other side, in spite of the man’s violent jerk and a harsh word that Harry didn’t catch. “ – intubate her,” Voldemort was saying then lowly. Moody took the knife nearly without looking at Voldemort. Rye was holding Tonks’s head steady, stroking her now-brown hair, as Moody lowered the knife and let the charms guide it precisely. Harry looked away.

He only realized he was injured when Moira licked an abrasion on his shoulder. “Oh. Ow, shit.” He was covered in blood but hadn’t registered that any of it was his own. But the first mobbing, he didn’t quite know what had happened, all of them on him at once…. He felt sick again, swaying in place.

And then Voldemort was beside him, knife clean once more. Noticing Harry’s reaction, he conjured a bench essentially behind them, so Harry could simply drop onto it. “ _Thank_ you,” he breathed. “Ugh – Moi – “ She was still licking him. It had to be massively unhygienic, and he squirmed away.

“Don’t,” Voldemort said. “She will heal you.”

“I think you’re thinking of phoenixes,” Harry muttered, but he looked down to find pink flesh where a row of deep gashes in his shoulder had been before. “ _Oh_.”

“They were bred by warriors, and taken into battle. Though more significant wounds….” He was looking to Tonks, her head on Rye’s shoulder as Moody and Savage cast before her, chanting a complex spell in unison. Magic glowed around them.

Harry swallowed. “This is awful.”

“Yes.” Glancing up, he asked, “Do you remember how to tie off the shield?”

“I wasn’t finished.”

“We can’t stay.” His brow furrowed. “ _Are_ you alright, otherwise?”

“I… think so?” And then he got a little belligerent. “They tried to take my _soul_ , as though they’re fucking Dementors. And my magic. Oh, and my fucking glasses.” He was probably squinting terribly.

A twitch of Voldemort’s mouth as he raised his wand. “ _Accio_ Harry’s glasses.” Something landed neatly in his hand; Harry reached for them.

Shattered. All that remained was a fragment of the frame. “Oh.” He dropped the mangled plastic into his lap.

“There are spells. They only last a day. Here.” Voldemort had his wand very close to Harry’s face now; Harry sort of flinched.

“Spells on my _eyes_?”

“Well, yes. It’s quite safe.” Seeing in his body language mild acquiescence, he said, “Look up, and stay very still.”

He did. The spell began at the tip of his nose, swirling upward to his forehead. Suddenly, he blinked at Voldemort with perfect vision. “Oh. Cool. Thanks.” Thanks for how much better he could see the chaos around them, the spatters of blood. “Are you alright?”

“Of course.”

He shot him an amused, exasperated glance. “ _Of course_. Would you tie off the shield, then? I’ll tell them.”

“Yes.” He got up. Their magic was so entangled that Harry could feel it stretch between them as he went.

And then Harry brought Moira nearer to the Aurors. Immediately she squirmed out of Harry’s grasp, running to Rye, who still held Tonks’s head steady on her shoulder. “Oh – the Aralez – right,” Rye said faintly, but when Moira lapped at a dark bruise along her arm, she let her.

The jagged cuts along Tonks’s throat and chest were much worse than he’d thought without his glasses. She’d lost so much blood. There was a glowing green spell over her lower face, some sort of breathing apparatus pushing oxygen through her mangled throat. Savage and Moody still cast in unison, a pulsating healing spell that stitched together a tiny bit more of flesh with each syllable. Rye put Moira into Tonk’s lap – not to fix the largest injuries, but to staunch the smaller ones along her hands and arms. Glass, Harry decided, they must have hurled a spell of shattered glass at her.

When the healing spell ended with a drawn-out hum, Tonks’s wound was closed but she otherwise looked no better. Still, she was stable enough to be moved now.

The shield above flared as Voldemort tied it off, sealing it for the next fortnight. They’d been near to done, it would hold, but it was infuriating that it hadn’t kept the Humnerë out to begin with. Nevermind, though – the shield was for the Muggles, and meant to keep Muggle threats out, not undead bird-people. Christ. Harry shuddered, nausea welling up again.

And this time, it didn’t go away. The after-effects of battle were unpredictable. Staggering to his feet, he moved away. Nobody was even looking at him. Still, he cast a silencing charm around himself when, a hundred yards away, he fell to his knees heaving.

When he looked up again, Voldemort had joined the Aurors. They’d righted the table, setting Tonks on its bench, and were negotiating… something now.

Portkeys, as it turned out. They’d all end up in St Mungo’s, but Moody and Rye would flank Tonks, and Savage would take Harry and Voldemort. When Harry drew nearer, Voldemort glanced at him. “You are poisoned.”

“Poisoned,” he repeated. His stomach still convulsed unpleasantly. “When?” A shrug.

But Moody was looking at him too. “Send a Patronus to Ginny, tell her to meet us there.” (How strange, she’d always been _Weasley_ to him before, as had all the others.) “I’ll get Andromeda.” Already he and Rye were casting spells of restraint to prop Tonks against them.

“Sure, yeah.” Raising his wand, he reached for that feeling from earlier – the warmth of his magic flooding back inexplicably, as he’d huddled behind the table, disillusioned. The relief of it…. “Expecto Patronum!”

Oh. _Oh_. It was the exact same sensation, he should’ve recognized it. The blue-silver light coalesced again before him….

He was looking the thestral in its narrow face. He sort of gaped, but nobody else even looked interested. His Patronus, his stag…. But if he dwelled on the loss right now, the thestral would dissipate. “Go to Ginny Weasley,” he said. “Ginny: meet us in the Aurors’ ward of St. Mungo’s.” With a flick of his wand, he sent the thestral running on its bony legs.

They departed quickly, Moody and Rye with Tonks first; Savage offering the Portkey to Harry and Voldemort second. Moira was clutched to Harry’s chest. To St. Mungo’s.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Harry doesn't know the real name for the bird people/homunculi yet, but these are the same creatures as attacked in Diagon Alley in August. The vampires send them in as cannon fodder. You'll find out more about them later.
> 
> Allusions for Chapter 24:
> 
> The detail of Voldemort dating Muggle professors is from [Catullus 16, by eldritcher](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4472828/chapters/10166102).
> 
> “Every war achieves its opposite” is from [How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Lord Voldemort, by cheryl bites](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/3542099/1/How-I-Learned-To-Stop-Worrying-And-Love-Lord-V). (And if it is quoting a more scholarly source, I can’t find it for anything. So.)


	25. Chapter 25

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _This man. Proud and insufferable and so broken. Harry reached across the table, putting both his hands over Voldemort’s, curling his fingertips so the nails barely bit skin. “Voldemort. Tell me you were wrong.”_
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> (Warning: mention of sexual abuse)

He’d never been in the Aurors’ ward before, though he’d known it existed. Sometimes Aurors themselves were treated in this secured corridor; sometimes victims or suspects were. It was dark and quiet, until Moody summoned the healers from other parts of the building.

Tonks was paramount – she was nearly lucid but in a lot of pain now. Her face was drawn and her hands shaky as Moody pulled her into a private room. Rye summoned a few more Aurors then as well. “We’ll need statements,” she said by way of explanation. “And memories.”

“Right. Yeah.”

“Take a room.” She gestured to an open door. “Do you need anything right off?”

“No. Please just….” His gaze slipped to the closed door of Tonks’s room. Nodding, Rye turned on her heel.

When they were alone together (Voldemort said it would be more detrimental to be separated, and Harry preferred this anyway), he had to laugh. “Is this our life now? Just an endless cycle of getting attacked, getting prodded by healers and questioned by Aurors?”

Voldemort’s glance indicated that he thought about the same. “You can’t be surprised.”

“I guess it makes sense,” Harry said. “I spent a lot of time in the hospital wing. Not even all your fault.”

“I would still take the credit, or blame.”

He grinned. He couldn’t help it, adrenaline usually made him a bit manic. He knew it was fucked to feel the same about incapacitating someone as a good Quidditch game, and he’d try to suppress it. Still, he was warm, and chatty. “What happened after…?”

“I disillusioned you, and gave you enough magic to cast a Patronus, to recover faster. Your magic…” he frowned.  “They did damage it, somehow. The shield alone couldn’t have. Then the Aurors came, we dueled the Humnerë. They wanted _you_ , clearly, but the Patronus kept them away. Really, you weren’t out long.”

It felt like ages, but battles always did. Time dilation, that their fiercest battles happened in minutes but felt like hours. “How many were killed?”

“Nine. Out of thirteen.”

He swallowed, a thought occurring. “The souls they were using… are you sure they’re dead now?”

“No. One can only hope.” He’d followed the contour of the question easily – that _Voldemort_ had existed as a soul absent a body for a decade. “But it seems irrelevant – they’ve sent in now dozens of souls, presumably anticipating their destruction. How many more they’ve kept….” He twisted an elegant hand in indifference.

“You’ve got to….” He squeezed his eyes shut. “Destroy them, if you can. Those people deserve better.” The captives of Malfoy Manor. Avery, probably. Decades of casualties.

“Mm.”

He looked up sharply. “I mean it. It is grotesque.”

“I don’t have plans for them, as I don’t yet understand the magic. But it seems like a valuable resource, doesn’t it? The Ministry might lift their ban on using Inferi if they are sufficiently useful.”

Harry shuddered at this, but then he also nearly gagged. Voldemort frowned. “You _are_ poisoned,” he said. “Slow-acting, but it won’t dissipate. That they’d choose _this_ method to kill you….”

“And soul damage. Like last time.” It had been a mystery never solved, why the Humnerë had shredded his soul apart at the Ministry when every other offensive spell had been only physical.

A healer stepped in then – Gramercy, one of the healers who’d seen them this summer. She must’ve been warned that it was them because she looked distinctly unsurprised. “Gawain was right behind me. I’m only here for diagnostics. You’ll have to set the dog aside,” he said to Harry.

The same greenish diagnostic spell they’d typically use, throwing back runes and symbols that glowed before her face. And then Robards entered, before Gramercy had said anything. Peering over her shoulder, he asked Harry, “Have you always got soul damage?”

He shrugged. Robards had to know this already, didn’t he? The Aurors did. “Only when we’re apart.”

The dark, skeptical look from Robards indicated that he assumed nothing good about this. “We need memories,” he said. “And oral statements.”

They’d both extracted memories in the wait; Robards took the vials and then levitated them down the corridor. He looked between them; Voldemort began as Gramercy cast spells to stitch Harry back together.

He got an antidote just as Voldemort concluded a rather dispassionate account, all true as far as Harry could tell. “I don’t recognize the poison,” Gramercy said with a frown as she handed Harry a violet-smelling potion. “But Somatesque is broadly effective.”

“Thanks.” Still, he threw it back with a grimace. It tasted like perfume. And then Robards was looking at him with a particularly guarded expression. “Can Voldemort stay?”

He got it right, because Robards fairly ground his back teeth. “Yes.”

Huh. He supposed the rest of the DMLE were not so inured to Voldemort as the Aurors were. Anyway, pulling Moira back into his lap since the diagnostics were finished, he recounted the scene as best as he could.

It was embarrassing, in hindsight – he could’ve shielded himself better, he could’ve fought better, he could’ve taken out more of them at the outset. He also didn’t know what to say about his Patronus. Voldemort had cast it _for_ him, _within_ him. It probably qualified as possession. He attempted near-truth: “Then Voldemort gave me enough magic that I could cast a Patronus, and it protected me for a bit,” he said blandly. Perfect indifference from Voldemort.

“And the Patronus was…?”

So he’d heard. “A thestral, yeah. I dunno how new that is, really.” But Robards only wrote without questioning it further.

Rye, Moody, the lightning spell and the birds. “And then… Tonks,” he finished. “Will she be okay?”

Robards lifted his gaze from the page. “We have excellent healers,” he said, quite curt.

“Right. Yeah.” He tried not to shrink in on himself.

Robards was moving to leave, but paused with one last thought. “You haven’t got your glasses.”

“Uh. No. They were broken.” Why did this hurt? They were one of the few relics of his Muggle life, the time before. He should’ve crushed them into dust years ago. “Voldemort did a spell to fix my eyes, for now. Diagon Alley’s got an optometrist, hasn’t it?”

“Yes,” Robards said. Another suspicious look at Voldemort, and he left.

“Hm,” Gramercy said, looking at the diagnostic spell she’d shifted to one side. “You’re right, your vision is perfect. Don’t use it too often, or it’ll weaken your eyes.”

“I won’t. I miss my glasses.” He found that he fidgeted with them more than he realized and his lost hands were now tangled in his hair instead.

Gramercy’s spells had found precisely nothing wrong with Voldemort. “Well done,” she said, raising her sleek eyebrows. “What did you do to yourself?”

“Only cracked floating ribs. They were insignificant to mend.”

She found this a bit exasperating and a bit funny. Anyway, with a flick of her wand, she conjured a tray of potions, the usual. “We’ll check in in a bit, to see if the antidote’s progressed.”

“Thanks,” Harry said.

She closed the door behind herself. Harry let his head fall on Voldemort’s shoulder, exhaling deeply. It was around six p.m. but it felt like midnight.

“The Patronus…” Voldemort began, in Parseltongue.

“I want you to do it again,” Harry said decisively. “For yourself. D'you think, if you cast it while we were apart….”

He considered this. “I’ve always had other means.”

“It got me just enough time. That they don’t respond to most normal magic….”

But Voldemort was solemn. “Our connection is not symmetrical. I only gave magic to the Horcrux. It’s… generous of you, but I couldn’t cast your Patronus.”

“Then your own.”

His thin lips twitched. “Spoken with all the sweetness of an optimist.”

But their feelings were entangled too, and Harry could tell – whether Voldemort wished him to or not – that there was regret in this. Voldemort had told him before that he couldn’t cast a Patronus, that he’d left it behind with the magic of love, but that seemed so long ago, and he was so… rehabilitated.

“Don’t,” Voldemort said sharply. Harry was startled, only realizing afterward that that word had slipped into their thoughts. “I will never be whole. I don’t regret it. Certainly you shouldn’t.”

 _But I do_ , Harry would answer if the scene were any less tense, if he wanted to confront Voldemort with all the feelings he didn’t dare feel. He didn’t. Instead, pressing a chaste kiss to Voldemort’s jaw, he fished in his bag. “Read to me?”

They were nearly finished with _Dorian Gray,_ having read it at bedtime this entire past week. Harry needed the downtime anyway – having his soul wrenched around earlier, unsuccessful as it’d been, had been unpleasant, and now both poison and antidote had made him dizzy and light-headed. With the door closed, he pressed his thumb into his mouth as Voldemort picked up the new chapter.

A half hour later, when Moody threw the door open, he wouldn’t have looked more surprised to find them fucking. Voldemort slammed the book shut and Harry pulled his thumb from his mouth, as though they’d been doing something shameful anyway. “Voldemort. Out,” Moody bit out, furious, and Harry’s stomach plunged. “And take the – _dog_ , with you.”

He heard in his tone that he meant to say _the fucking dog_ , and somehow this immediately pushed him from anxiety to anger. “Don’t talk about her that way,” he said, his fingers curling into Moira’s scruff where she lay in his lap. “And Voldemort stays. He’ll hear everything anyway.”

It was reckless, he was reckless, and it only infuriated Moody more. “Ungrateful,” he snapped.

Even Voldemort seemed… well, not cowed, but compliant. Slipping from the padded examination table, he took Moira gently from Harry’s arms. “Do what he wants of you,” he said, in a normal tone, and it was only at the flicker in Moody’s features that Harry realized it was also in English.

Still, before Voldemort left, he paused in the doorway. “Alastor… I’d write a lasting treaty into tomorrow’s vows. This liminal role no longer serves me.”

“God forbid we don’t _serve you_.”

Voldemort was not a patient or gentle person, but he wouldn’t argue at the moment. With a last look at Harry, conveying something like _If he hurts you, I will kill him_ , he left.

Moody slammed the door with a spell, putting a silencing charm in place. “You know Parselmagic is _illegal_ ,” he ground out. “Specifically, you know that offensive Parselmagic is a felony. This was reckless. I can’t protect you from this. I won’t.”

“I….” A very bewildered _what?_ would only anger him further, but really, he had no idea. “Er. Yes, sir. Which part of it was in Parselmagic, though?” The beginning, when they’d swarmed him? He couldn't account for all of that. The Patronus?

Moody glared, disinclined to believe him. “Before Rye,” he said. “The one you _shredded_.”

At this, he flinched. “Oh. Yeah. It was Sectumsempra, I didn’t realize….”

“Parselmagic thrives on violence, on bloodlust, on anger. It is addictive and it will corrupt you, as it’s corrupted him.” He spat the pronoun. It did give Harry pause – he’d felt the thrill that Voldemort got from violence, and he’d never questioned _why_ before, but…. Maybe it wasn’t intrinsic to him. Moody went on in a growl: “It is dangerous in the same way the Unforgivables are dangerous. They weren’t made illegal on unfounded _fear_.”

Now Harry had to defend doing a thing he hadn’t known he’d done, which was frustrating. “I didn’t… _he_ didn’t. The only Parselmagic I’ve tried before are all the, uh, smaller spells. The neutral sort. And he never taught me. I never would’ve cast that in Parselmagic, but I didn’t realize I did. It all sounds the same to me.”

“Bullshit.” Moody had never taken a seat, preferring to stand too close, to glare into his eyes. “You’re perfectly adequate at speaking Parseltongue whenever you’d like.”

This was sort of true. The Aurors tended to ignore their conversations in Parseltongue normally, but Moody was seething. It was rather good of them to not have demanded English, Harry realized. “I can speak it when spoken to,” he said. He must have mentioned that before. “Or when I’m looking at a snake. But it doesn’t sound any different to me. And, uh, normally we’re saying quite boring things, that he’s telling me something of magic or about the Ministry that everyone else already knows. We’ll stop if you want, but….” It was one of their only safeguards against _spectacle_ , against having every word transcribed in the Prophet or Witch Weekly.

“It won’t matter, will it?”

Right. God, he couldn’t bear to see Voldemort go. “No, sir.”

Moody straightened his shoulders, recognizing how furious he’d become. “I can postpone a trial, if only to avoid chaos. A month, perhaps. Come up with a better defense than _you didn’t know_.”

Harry threw a hand in the air, frustrated. “I didn’t! I wouldn’t, if I’d known. Parselmagic always feels awful.”

“Good,” Moody said. “Let it be a deterrent.”

Realistically, Moody’s anger had more to do with Voldemort than with Harry himself, but it still sucked. “Sorry,” he muttered. “I mean, I’d avoid it for other reasons, too. I don’t want it to be so easy to hurt someone.” To _kill_ someone, approximately, if the souls had been alive in any meaningful way. “I don’t want to be that sort of person.”

And in that moment it felt so true and so significant. He had, if anything, lured Voldemort over to _his_ way of seeing things, whether truly or as a concession or an act hardly mattered now. Like tug of war, he’d dragged Voldemort over his own line into, if not Harry’s side, the vast empty center.

“You are,” Moody said, frank and uninterested. “You are the sort of person who has killed. What you choose to do in spite of that now….”

This felt awful. It was only on a technicality – that the souls sort of weren’t alive – that he hadn’t killed anyone. But he was the sort of person who _would_ kill, under the right circumstances. Every Auror must have heard the same from Moody. They’d only talked about it late at night in the war, what it’d mean if they killed somebody. What sort of person that’d make them. These conversations were only among the students, though – the adults had already come to terms with it. “I know,” he said at last.

At this, Moody cocked his head. “And the thestral?” For a moment he was only curious, not angry.

A short laugh. “I really don’t know. I hadn’t seen it before yesterday. I wanted to show Voldemort how it felt to cast, and I drew on the magic between us – the Horcrux’s magic, I guess,” he said. “I’ll try it again later, to find out if it’s permanent.”

Moody’s gaze snapped up. “That’s not what you said to Robards.”

There was nothing he could slip past Moody, but he was sort of grateful for it. “Because – our connection _scares_ him. It scares most people – and that’s before the public even finds out. I hope they never do. I used to feel contaminated by it. They’d never trust him.”

This, Moody considered. “Yes,” he finally said. “But Robards isn’t…. We need to know,” he said, frustrated.

“Sorry.”

A long sigh. “Tomorrow… I haven’t properly asked you. Do you _want_ to marry him?” His anger had quickly burned itself out, somehow, as he dropped his tone.

“Yeah, I do.”

A skeptical look at his firm, immediate response. “Think about it tonight. Without him.” His gaze was dark when he said, “If you do want out, it’s not too late.”

It was a… significant decision, certainly, but – “Thank you, sir. But I’m happy. _We’re_ happy. Really.”

“And a treaty?”

He nearly smiled. “Hermione would be angry with me if I didn’t,” he said lightly. “I mean, of course. I’d prefer it, if we could.”

“And what would that vow contain for you?” If, _if_ it were to get drafted.

“Oh.” Harry considered. “I think you know. I mean… if you write it, I’d rather you ask for everything. I’ll tell him I’m on your side.”

This measured response surprised Moody. But he _had_ been thinking of this recently, if only because of Hermione. “After we hear what _he_ wants…” Moody said, and it was not quite a promise but still filled him with hope.

“Thanks, sir.”

Again Moody shook his head, disbelieving and resigned. “Right,” he said, and it was a bit painful for Harry to watch the most principled man he knew give in like this. That the hero was marrying the villain represented failure on _somebody’s_ part, anyway. “We’ll draft it tonight.”

“Thank you.”

They’d ended in a much different place than they’d began. Neither had anything to say about it, so Moody moved to the door instead. “We only want to be done, you understand.”

He offered a faint smile. “Me, too.” Somehow this would also produce the most stable life for Harry, and for them all.

“Good.” And Moody pulled open the door.

But then Harry fully choked at the sight before them: a bit down the corridor, there’d been a single bench. Now, Voldemort sat on it, beside Ginny.

Harry let Moody out first but then he nearly ran to her. Voldemort had passed Moira to her, and then turned back to work, so now Ginny cradled the dog in her lap while looking quite lost.

“Ginny!” He reached her, immediately putting himself between her and Voldemort. “I’ll tell you later,” he murmured to Voldemort. “Or ask Moody, I don’t care.” Turning back: “Gin, I’m sorry….”

Ginny offered a wan smile. “My hero,” she said, nodding to his place between them. But then her expression cracked. “They won’t let me in yet. They said she’d make it but they won’t….”

“She’ll be alright, she’ll be fine….” Nevermind the warnings they’d gotten in battle, that they also needed to reckon with the possibility that they _wouldn’t_ be fine, but that seemed too horrible to voice now.

He nearly didn’t catch Moody and Voldemort slipping past them, to discuss the treaty elsewhere. “Vol. Hey.” He grabbed his sleeve, concentrating on saying this in English. “If you’re writing an alliance after all,” he said, “I want what the Aurors want.”

Voldemort’s look was nearly surprised. “Darling, I know,” he said, and it was sarcastic and sincere all at once. Harry smiled at Voldemort and let them go.

But Ginny was a mess, her shoulders hunching in as the grief inside hit. “I told Mum and Dad,” she said in a low tone. “With a floo call. They’re not pleased, but I don’t care. If she…” _lives_ was the word she couldn’t speak, “I’d want to stay in her flat for awhile. Make sure she’s convalescing. And I just… didn’t want for them not to know any longer.”

Her relationship with Tonks had been a secret to nobody but Arthur and Molly. “Sorry, Gin,” he sighed. “Is there anything I can say to them?”

She flashed him a very dark smile. “What, that _your_ love life is miles worse than mine, and they can accept it?”

His hand was on her back now; she was so soft and warm. “Nobody knows what to do with us,” he admitted wryly. “I didn’t expect… you know. They’ll come around. They’d better be happy for you.” As much as he loved Molly and Arthur, he couldn’t stand the thought of them making this harder. “Here, c’mere.” And she tipped herself into his arms, not crying but sniffling. With a flick of his fingers, he summoned a box of tissues.

The ward was quiet – Robards and Rye were gone, perhaps with Tonks, and none of the healers remained out here. But the silence felt charged and grim, even as Ginny’s breath slowed against his neck.

It was already a day of contending with loss, this life he left behind – his ex in his arms, the head of the Aurors angry at him. His Patronus – it was stupid to grieve his stag, which might not even be gone, but he was grieving it anyway. His sodding glasses.

“How did it happen?” Ginny asked lowly, after a long stretch. “They wouldn’t tell me that either.”

He had the sense that some of this should be classified, and he didn’t care if it was. “We were in Talacre. The north of Wales, we’d set up an anchor there.” He laughed dryly. “We’d gone to Cornwall every time before, but we changed locations for security. God.” He lifted his gaze to the ceiling. “You know, I don’t know how they found us. I didn’t know where we were going until I had the portkey.”

“You need to find out, if you’ll do this again.”

She was right – he had months of the shield, alone now, without Voldemort to slaughter anyone who might hurt him. “The Aurors will be on it, I guess,” he said. “But the Humnerë – the rebels – have their own, ah, undead army? They keep the souls they’ve killed, and they can animate bodies – shapeshifters – with them, for a time. There were a dozen of them. She did so well,” he said seriously. “Really, you’d be proud of her. I didn’t see when…” he made a vague gesture, “but it looked like – like glass had exploded. Not her face, mostly, but at her throat.” He wondered if they’d been _aiming_ for her face, though, unless they’d wanted to hit her jugular. “The Aurors had her immediately. They stabilized her like nothing.”

Her breath hitched anyway. Still, after swallowing, she asked, “And… Voldemort?”

“What about him?” He really thought he could compartmentalize his life; he didn’t expect Ginny to ask. “He fought well, too. For us.” _For me_ , more accurately, but that seemed a bit revealing. “He might’ve done something more for Tonks, but, er, we had the sense that they wouldn’t let him.” He did need to ask about the charmed knife sometime, as it looked like it had spells of battlefield magic cast on it. Mentioning it might alarm Ginny now, though.

But this got a faint smile from Ginny. “I dunno. Sometimes she talks about him – all this – as though it’s normal.”

Did she? That was a surprise. The Aurors seemed indifferent to Voldemort now, at least in Harry’s presence, but he couldn’t imagine they would ever be fully happy or comfortable with it. “Sorry about….” He gestured to the bench where they’d sat. “I hope he didn’t say anything horrible to you.”

Her smile became even more wry. “You can’t isolate him forever, no matter how much you’d like to,” she said, and there was a note of teasing in it.

“I’m a bit far off from bringing him to Christmas dinner, anyway. And he…” He wasn’t sure that _this_ wasn’t confidential, either. “It will take him a long time, to, I dunno, trust anyone. He’s really bad at people.” At least, at relating to them as anything other than minions, enemies, or refuse.

This got an actual laugh. “Your mass murderer boyfriend is _bad at people_.”

“Mass murderer fiancé,” he reminded her, and he was laughing too. But when they quieted, he tugged a lock of her hair over her shoulder. “Sorry, though, about your parents. They should be… really happy for you.” _Proud of you_ , he nearly said, but that would hurt too much. For a hideous moment, he wondered how his own parents would react, if they could ever find it in themselves to be proud of him. It was… perverse, the momentary relief he felt to not contend with a family.

“Yeah,” she said in a sigh. “You know, they took it really hard when we broke up. Sort of,” she added because it’d been a mutually foregone conclusion. “Not just because of… him, but they want a really different life for me than I want for myself, y’know? It’s fine for _Charlie_ to stay single and have his adventures abroad, it’s even sort of fine for Fred and George to put all their time into the shop, but their _daughter_ ,” she said with surprising scorn, “should be a _lady_.”

“Sorry,” he said again. He really hadn’t considered what it was like for girls. “They’d be lucky if you kept Tonks around, you know.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she muttered. “Really, it doesn’t.”

“It does.”

She looked into his face fully then – they were so close, and so close to this thing they’d left behind. He thought he ducked his head to press his forehead to hers, but then they were kissing, and it was soft and warm and familiar. They’d been one another’s sanctuary at one time – late at night, the bad days of the war when they were grieving and scared, they’d huddle beneath the invisibility cloak, whispering promises to one another in the dark. And now – somehow he still remembered it, the typical way his mouth felt against her plump lips, slicked as usual with a fruit-flavored lip gloss so he’d taste it for hours.

But then they pulled away, staring at each other. Ginny cracked a smile first. “Nah,” she decreed.

He was laughing again, and so was she. “It’s better like this,” he agreed. And in a way, it seemed inevitable, that nothing else would ever resemble his relationship with Voldemort – sex or not, love or not, he would’ve always had to contend with their connection in a way nobody else would understand. This was perhaps the ideal ending, he thought. How strange.

But he and Ginny remained close, her soft hands with neon green nails stroking Moira, who was typically more rambunctious but seemed to recognize this wasn’t the time.

What felt like hours later, the door to Tonks’s room crept open. Ginny was on her feet in a blur, dropping Moira on Harry’s lap, striding around the corner. “Is she…?”

“She’ll live.” Gramercy had shut the door behind her again. Harry drew behind Ginny uncertainly. “But it’ll be a long convalescence. We need Moody to see her first. Is he…?”

At this, Harry bit his lip guiltily. Gramercy was right, Moody should be here for his protégé, not off wrangling Voldemort once more for his sake. “No. He’s still out.”

“I’ll fetch him,” she said, stepping past them to reach a less secured part of the hospital. “We’re keeping her in stasis, for now.”

“Thank you,” Ginny said, and she just looked so unspeakably brave in that instant.

The minutes trickled on. They wouldn’t sit again. At last, the corridor’s secured door swung open –

Gramercy, leading not just Moody and Voldemort, but Scrimgeour as well. They wore grim expressions. And it was the Minister who passed Harry a scroll as he entered. “Read that tonight. If you’ve got questions, or you’d amend it – we’ll address it with the barristers in the morning.”

“Right. Thank you.” Even without opening it, the scroll’s case burned with magic in his hands. He looked to Voldemort, whose expression was only studied neutrality.

Moody was ahead of them all, pushing open the door to Tonks’s room himself. “Weasley?”

Her eyes lit up. “Coming, yeah.” With one last look at Harry: “Thanks,” she said. “Congratulations.” She ducked in behind Moody and Gramercy. Scrimgeour followed.

He and Voldemort were unexpectedly alone. “Home, then,” Voldemort said shortly. “We could only use a portkey on the ground floor.” He turned to lead them out.

Harry hadn’t yet set Moira down, and it was a good thing he hadn’t, because on the way out, they very nearly ran into Andromeda and Ted, approaching the secured door from the other side. “Ah,” Andromeda said as she took them in, somehow still elegant and poised in this moment. Behind her, Ted was a mess. “We were out of reach, we’ve only just heard….”

Voldemort held the door for them both. “She is inside,” he said. “Everyone is with her.”

“My poor girl,” Ted said, taking Andromeda’s hand to pull her in.

“By Asclepius,” Voldemort said as Andromeda passed them.

“By Asclepius,” she agreed in a murmur. A last look, mostly at Harry. “And congratulations on the wedding.”

This startled him a bit, but he supposed the Wizengamot all knew by now, at least. “Thank you.” Voldemort swept his robes up with something like a bow, Andromeda returned the gesture, and they parted.

Alone in the corridor now, Harry dropped Moira because she could keep up with them, and she’d sat very still for a very long time already. But then, looking to Voldemort, he asked tentatively, “The treaty…?”

“I gave up everything,” he said, and the bitterness in their Legilimency belied the neutral tone in which he said it. He was actually angrier than Harry had seen him in months, and just barely holding it back from him. “I will tell you….” He gestured to their surroundings. _Not here_.

But he clearly didn’t expect the glare that Harry shot him as they entered a lift. “You haven’t given up _everything_. You idiot.” And he was affectionate but also actually annoyed. “I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I want to give you a home, and a family, and a place to belong. Prat.”

A beat of silence. Then: “You’re right. I apologize.”

Sighing, he tangled his fingers with Voldemort’s. When they reached the ground floor, they didn’t even open the lift, but Harry picked Moira up and Voldemort pulled out his portkey, and they were gone.

 

Frozen grass and snow crunched underfoot as they landed in the garden. Moira was joyful when Harry set her down. But they entered the house in quiet.

He knew without asking that neither of them wanted to eat. He put on a kettle anyway, a ritual behavior that he hoped would set things right again. In any case, it’d delay his desire to pull out whiskey and drink until he couldn't see straight.

Voldemort had paused by the door to shed his cloak, and then unusually, his robes. Harry raised his eyebrows at the black button down and trousers – it’d pass for Muggle if not worn by such an inhuman figure. It accentuated just how fragile ( _breakable_ ) his body was. “Come here, love,” Harry said very gently, pulling Voldemort in by his waist as they waited for the kettle. “You were so good. I’m so proud of you.”

Voldemort took a half-step back, so Harry could see his dubious expression. “You haven’t seen what we wrote.”

“But _that_ you wrote it…. And you should just tell me what’s in it, if you could? I’m pants at contracts.”

A twitch of his mouth, at this confession. “Yes,” he said. “Have you got…?” Harry handed him his scroll; Voldemort shook it out.

“It’s a treaty sworn _on_ the marriage, technically,” he said. “Alastor found that slightly more palatable than swearing on your life, and I can’t swear anything more on my magic. It’s somewhat standard, of course – there is enough historical precedent. In order for you to sign on behalf of Britain’s safety, you’d need an appropriate designation as figurehead. So you’re now Harry James Potter, first among British citizens.”

His brow furrowed. “What does that mean?”

“Nothing. Only this. And I….” He sighed, and Harry felt real loss inside him. Of ambitions, an identity, _decades_ of striving. It wasn’t without grief. “ _The terms of surrender_ ,” he read out the bold heading before them with deep bitterness; a feeling that echoed in Harry because there was no reason for them to have phrased it as such except to humiliate Voldemort. Their first agreement, the one last summer that had confined them to the safehouse to begin with, had also been called a surrender – but that one _was_ , ending a war after the better part of a year. This was peacetime, and this time he wasn’t surrendering a war but his entire life. He paraphrased:

“I will not endanger, directly or indirectly, any innocent British subjects. Wixen, Muggle, Muggleborn, Squib. I won’t resist, manipulate, or fight any particular regime of the Ministry. I may never amass such followers as the Death Eaters again. I may not summon any of the Death Eaters who are left. When I return, I’ll be under a magical probation for a decade, with an impediment on any Dark magic – much as you once were – and various surveillance by the Aurors. And I will take a spot on the Wizengamot, as a representative of the Gaunt line among the Sacred Twenty Eight.”

Only the last of it caught Harry by surprise, so delighted that he actually laughed. Voldemort shot him an annoyed look, to find no sympathy for all the shit he’d agreed to. But all Harry could say was, “They’ll allow you back into the Ministry, then.”

“ _Allow_ me?” he said skeptically, lifting the kettle off the range and moving to the table. “It is _required_ of me. It was the only thing I asked for.” The ghost of a smile. “To soothe your anxiety, you know.”

“Bloody thanks,” but he was laughing. “Really – no – that’s brilliant. Thank you.” But Voldemort was obviously not so delighted as Harry. “What? I mean – the rest of it is a lot, you’re right, but… I don’t want you to have any of that back either. You haven’t got to go back to… _that_ ,” he gestured vaguely, “anyway. We can do it differently now.”

“ _That_ ,” Voldemort echoed, wry. “What might you call _that_ , Harry? What word is so impolite that you wouldn’t speak it so as to avoid embarrassing us both?”

Voldemort was antagonizing him, perhaps because he’d had to constrain himself with Moody for so long and had no other outlets. Perhaps he was making a point. Harry met his gaze. “Terrorism, maybe. Hatred, violence, bigotry. I’m not _embarrassed_ by any of it. Maybe you are. You probably should be. I just don’t want you to feel… trapped in that life.”

Voldemort’s bloodlust and volatility and madness did embarrass him, he’d gathered at least that much. But those were natural inclinations, and this was a political regime, and he didn’t know if any of that self-consciousness or shame extended so far. Honestly, the complexity of Voldemort’s feelings these days gave him a great deal of hope. He’d always had some doubt that Voldemort wasn’t beyond saving.

But Voldemort only shook his head, stirring his tea quite deliberately. “My sorting was a scandal, did you know?” He lapsed into a didactic, dispassionate tone that suited him. Harry wanted to touch him but they sat too far apart. “As segregated and elite as the Slytherin house is at present – current circumstances notwithstanding – it was infinitely moreso in 1938. It was unheard of for a child with no name, no parentage, no money” (somehow the powerlessness of poverty stung him most of all, as their Legilimency twinged) “to be sorted into Slytherin. It was the quickest sorting that year, of course.”

He smiled faintly. “Of course.”

“I thought I could earn my place among them – god, _above_ them, truly, where I belonged – by being better than them. It is to their shame that a child who had grown up in the Muggle world bested them in every class. I learned all of the wixen culture, its history, its identity. Even as everything was being stripped out for the Muggleborns’ sake,” he sneered. “ _Christmas_ , honestly. But I learned to speak like the old families, to master their words and etiquette and gestures and willfully ignorant sensibilities. In wixen culture I lived and moved and had my being,” he said with a quite dark smile. “Now tell me, Harry, did it make a fucking _moment_ of difference?”

The air between them crackled. Voldemort so often kept what he deemed the most dangerous parts of his mind away from their connection – his bloodlust, his bitterness, his self-loathing. All of these feelings now coiled in Harry’s throat. “No.”

“Very good. Ten points to Gryffindor.” And Harry rolled his eyes at him, and for a moment the atmosphere eased. But then: “You might imagine the slurs, the hexes, the bullying. _Mudblood_ was the least of it. And the ambivalence of it, the recognition that I’d have to appeal to _these_ people at every fucking turn. That I still wanted to seem to belong was… shameful,” he pronounced carefully. “I never would, though, really. Being the best was not the way in. Being _more pureblooded than the purebloods_ was not the way in. The first time any of them considered me worth anything was my second year. A sixth year had cornered me in the library, told me perhaps I could be a _pet_ someday, since I could never hope for a good pureblood to actually marry me. I hexed his mouth and nose off. He nearly suffocated. And then they stopped calling me a mudblood so frequently.” He took in Harry’s gaze with a crooked smile. “It’s not merely tactical, of course. Hurting people has always felt like… like how others explain new love. Exhilarating, obsessive, unmatched. Don’t ever believe I’m not a monster.”

“You’re not,” Harry said lowly.

“I am,” he returned, rather pleasant. But with a flicker of – anxiety? shame? – he said more solemnly, “I can cage it. _You_ can cage it. But… it will never be fully tamed.”

Somehow, that word had come up a lot. _Domesticated_ , its nicer variant. But primarily _tamed_ , because Voldemort himself and everyone around them thought of him as an animal, fierce and vicious and without reason. “I don’t really understand what it would be like to fear… myself,” Harry said carefully, because Voldemort did, in some complicated way. His own feelings, his own inclinations, his own capacity for violence. “But I’m sorry. It sounds wretched.” And _felt_ wretched, as little as he’d been exposed to.

He didn’t want to talk about it, even if Harry felt the fear and shame of his own madness (that word particularly was prominent between them) seething in his chest. Instead, shaking his head, he circled back: “They will only respond to force, yet _I_ am the violent one. They only had the social cache to make their violence invisible, that it’s expressed as dehumanization with plausible deniability instead of _vulgar_ magic. Even so… it was such a bitter, shameful, precarious existence. A different sort of precarity from mere poverty,” he said as an aside, “but perhaps worse.”

The teapot was empty. Voldemort summoned the nearest whiskey, pouring it into his emptied teacup without decorum. So did Harry. “It would always be a toxic relationship,” Voldemort continued. “After that, they gravitated toward me because it was the politic option. I surrounded myself with _them_ because it was the politic option. I’ve told you that it lent credibility to their views on cultural purity, that _even_ a halfblood saw the sense in them. In truth… it seemed the most viable ideology, to capture their hearts and minds. I would’ve taken on another if it were better suited. And then Grindelwald fell, and the Ministry continued to smother paganism out of our culture, and suddenly I was a radical. But the purebloods wanted such a sanctuary – oh, Harry, it was so easy,” he said, and his eyes glittered then. “That the boundaries of _their_ society were crumbling nearly made up for the fact it was my society crumbling as well. I knew it _better_ than they did, by that point. A few sweet words about their disenfranchisement, the mistaken path we’d been set on…. _Dumbledore_ was a rallying cry for our side as well as yours, you know. Another one who thrived on plausible deniability,” he sneered. “Regardless, they found the catharsis of open hatred, and my promises that I’d _take care of everything_ , an intoxicating combination. And somewhere within that…” he flashed his teeth, “I found that I quite _liked_ being a scandal. It was the only way in, bypassing their _fucking_ elite and thoroughly putting their gatekeeping to shame, so that they all might bow to the halfblood. And I would make them grateful for it.” A pause of consideration. “I feel nothing for the Death Eaters so much as contempt. I did not intend, ultimately, to ruin and kill so many of them, but neither do I regret it.”

Harry poured another drink as he weighed his words. He was _so_ vulnerable right now, Harry felt he could actually hurt him. Still: “You’re not the only victim. I get… this,” he made another inarticulate gesture, and then thought better and clarified. Sometimes Voldemort needed words put to his own feelings anyway. “I get that you’re hurt and angry, but you’ve also hurt a lot of people who have never hurt you. You’ve exposed a lot of _other_ people to being hated for their blood. It’s not….” But then his words choked him.

“It is the flaw in my narrative, yes,” Voldemort agreed easily. “I can’t account for them, but then, I am not claiming a moral high ground.”

And somehow, he left it at that, for Harry to inadequately grapple with. He swallowed whiskey too quickly, so it burned down his throat. “I think… you just need to leave revenge behind altogether.”

A short laugh. “It is so simple for you, isn’t it?” he said. “What then, my darling Gryffindor ingenue, of justice?”

“Fuck justice,” Harry said promptly. “I don’t care. Anyway, like you were saying, the people who decide what’s just or normal or legal or appropriate… I don’t want to be on their side. I want to be on the side of the ones they’re judging.”

It was a circuitous statement, but Voldemort understood, of course he did. He wrapped his long fingers tight around his teacup. “How is it,” he said, low and vulnerable, “that you grew up to be a hero, and I a villain?”

He offered a faint smile. “Dumbledore would have a lot to say about that.”

“ _Choices_ ,” Voldemort said scornfully. “We make choices as the person we have already become, what a useless tautology. But we digress. I _prefer_ to be a scandal. They need it, they deserve it, their smothering normalcy. I never would’ve risen in their society, had half the visibility and access to power that I do – _did_ ,” he corrected with a bitter sigh, “if I’d done it the polite way. They’ll say that I could have, but I couldn’t. The purebloods have never embraced a _meritocracy_. You understand why.”

Because then there’d be nothing special about purebloodedness anymore. Harry didn’t bother to answer. Instead – “Were you ever fighting for what you really believed?” He bit back the statement that he wished he had, that at least those deaths would be sincere. To think of them as merely opportunistic….

As usual, Voldemort didn’t have a direct answer for him. “What does anyone _really believe_?” he asked, skeptical. “We are legion. We are a hundred people in a hundred circumstances. Sometimes, I suppose.”

Voldemort had courted ideologies like he’d courted lovers – with an eye to ambition and advantage, and nothing left for sincerity or fondness. Harry stared into the amber whiskey. “Alright.”

Voldemort clicked his tongue. “I _created_ , Harry. I created myself. And it is all wasted now, to be set back in the circumstances that a gentler timeline would find in my twenties. I am not like them,” he said, sharply. “To find myself among them – beneath them – is _humiliating_.”

Something suddenly made sense. “Because you were wrong?”

He bristled. “That is what they’ll see, yes.”

This man. Proud and insufferable and so broken. Harry reached across the table, putting both his hands over Voldemort’s, curling his fingertips so the nails barely bit skin. “Voldemort. Tell me you were wrong.”

There was no word for the sensations that surged inside them. “No,” he said curtly.

“I won’t tell anyone. I just want to hear it.” Before Voldemort would refuse again, he added charmingly, “As a wedding gift?”

“You are _fucked_ , Harry Potter.”

His laughter cracked the atmosphere, if only for a moment. “Yeah.” But he held Voldemort’s gaze now. “Why? Why can’t you?”

“For your entertainment? You’re worse than Dumbledore.”

At this he actually pulled his hands away, affronted. “I’m not.”

“Then leave it.”

Entertainment was the wrong word. Affirmation, perhaps. To not take it on faith that Voldemort was at all… well, redeemed. New, complex feelings coiled inside Voldemort, ones he’d never experienced before Harry. _Empathy_ was possible, limited as it was. But redemption…. Harry didn’t know if he felt it or he only wanted to. He pushed his teacup away. “Fine,” he said. “Come to bed later?” This had felt like a therapy session and that was… fine, really, in spite of how much more Voldemort needed than Harry could give. But Harry wanted to be partners again now.

“Perhaps.”

Harry cast a look over his shoulder, one Voldemort recognized as disappointment. How funny, that it was a conversation begun with how _proud_ Harry was of him, and somehow Voldemort was more comfortable pivoting to disappointment.

This was the caliber of their arguments, though: with their Legilimency open, their anger would ricochet off one another’s, but it made them receptive to one another’s pain, too. It was… peculiar. The expanse of Harry’s emotions, that is. So many of them seemed painful, difficult, not worth it, and yet these humans didn’t close themselves off from such things. In Voldemort’s own case – he’d prod at these new feelings like a bruise. They were still Harry’s of course, as only an echo resounded within Voldemort, but Harry was receptive to this… exploration, insofar as he understood it. He did regard Voldemort as deficient if not fully broken. And some of these feelings made sense of the world, humans’ motivations and reactions and desires, in a way he’d never known before. This was an overly pleasant comparison, but – discovering these feelings would be like seeing in color for the first time.

The one novel, complicated, _fucking_ emotion that was undeniably his own, however, was the one that kept him up at night. Harry mistakenly thought it was nightmares, but he was kept quite awake with this insistent tugging on his ribcage, coiling of his stomach. Guilt? Remorse? Was it simply _love_ , as multifaceted as everyone swore it was? If there was anything particularly attached to this feeling, it was the memory of Halloween 1981. Predictably. Of course he regretted that night: it lost him the war, nearly killed him, thrust him into the twelve years of unending dispossessed agony. Morally… he couldn’t say. What he _did_ know was that it’d be unspeakably cruel to expose Harry to his own memories now, and it was simpler to keep them contained with his Occlumency in his waking life than in sleep. _Insomnia_. What a common, Muggle affliction.

He summoned his Panopticon as he poured another drink at the kitchen table. Harry would be awake tonight as well – he’d have to taper his use of dreamless sleep, if they’d reliably share magic while apart. Which was a given. Harry was the best resource that he had, he considered as he conjured ice. Dumbledore had believed that their connection had weakened Voldemort, when he took Harry’s blood in his veins; but in fact there were few ways they weren’t mutually strengthened by it. It would have been his strategy if he’d been aware of it, anyway.

With an audible groan he realized how much he _did_ owe Harry. _A wedding gift_ – a life debt, might be nearer to the truth. The way the pipes hissed, Harry must be in the shower now. Voldemort continued to flip through the Panopticon.

Nothing. Somehow, surprisingly, nothing. None of the papers had put out an evening edition. This meant news of the attack would break tomorrow morning, flooding the Ministry with journalists in precisely the way they’d wanted to avoid. Well. The Aurors’ diary also lay on the table, docile for now. The silence was… isolating. How unusual, to feel so responsible for the world’s welfare these days.

More whiskey. This body was impervious to common weaknesses, the less pleasant elements of drunkenness among them. So when the dizziness and sickness did creep up – sighing, he summoned two sobering solutions from the basement. Doing the washing up and letting the dog in, he moved to the bedroom.

Harry was sprawled naked in bed, as though he’d barely pulled the blankets up before falling asleep. The first nights without dreamless sleep were paradoxically like this – abrupt exhaustion, but then a night of waking up hourly. It had been a frustrating week, in that regard.

Voldemort took a sobering solution himself, leaving the other one on Harry’s bedside table. The boy’s hair was still wet, tendrils clinging to the back of his neck, and Voldemort ran a sleek lock between his fingers. He doused the lights.

Neither felt they had to talk when they were both awake in the middle of the night – it was tedious, mundane, personal. Harry had stopped asking what turmoil Voldemort faced in the dark. But tonight, hours later, Harry kicks and awakes with a start. “Urggh,” he groans into a pillow. “I bloody hate….”

He reaches instinctively for his glasses that are no longer there; his fingers instead find the vial. “Sobering solution,” Voldemort says, so Harry doesn’t have to light a sconce to read it. “We haven’t got hangover potions.”

At this, Harry rolls over, rewarding him with a smile for thoughtfulness. “Thanks.” He snaps off the vial’s top.

Long stretches of silence, their breathing slow as though mimicking sleep. The sensation of Voldemort’s ribcage being pulled apart by remorse-or-whatever sat in his torso as usual. Sometimes it feels as though a demon were climbing his ribs, making its way into his throat, suffocating him. It is –

A shift in his Occlumency. Harry makes a noise. “Sweetheart.”

Oh. It isn’t that his Occlumency had slipped, but that Harry himself had shifted it, lifting a corner of the barrier lay between them. Voldemort is moving to go. “Don’t.”

But Harry catches his shoulder, holding him steady and facing away so they don’t have to look at one another as they speak. “Will you ever tell me?”

“You don’t know what you’re asking.”

“I really don’t care. I just – it’d help to say it out loud, is all.”

Harry’s mind contains the word _confidant_ very visibly within it – one of his only ideas to be expressed in words, not feelings. Someone had told him that Voldemort was fortunate to have him as a confidant, in addition to everything else they were to one another. It is a role Harry apparently takes seriously, given the persistence with which he’s already prodded at Voldemort’s feelings tonight. In other circumstances, Voldemort might have considered it. “I am protecting you. Let me.”

Harry’s hand is on the perpetually-tense curve between his neck and shoulder, pressing his fingertips in. Having considered it: “Oh. My parents, then?”

The mildness of his words makes the sensations inside Voldemort redouble, until he’s nearly gagging on them. “In part.”

A soft laugh, witnessed only with the puff of warm breath against Voldemort’s shoulder. “I mean, there’s a lot to regret there. It ruined everything for you.”

That Harry would reach this conclusion for him is just… extraordinary. Voldemort does turn over at this, to meet the boy’s bright gaze. Harry looks a bit startled. “What?”

“How are you like this?”

Not why, but _how_. How has he not depleted his empathy and patience and goodness a hundred times over. How does he resist the constant impulse – before, Voldemort would’ve said it was universal – for revenge, measuring out justice? How, honestly, can he even bear to look at Voldemort, much less build a life together?

Harry takes his time in answering this as well. “I don’t know,” he says. “It doesn’t feel like any effort, just… natural.” He tips his head back to make very deliberate eye contact. “I wouldn’t be able to, without the Horcrux, though.”

“A Horcrux is magic based in isolation and hatred. You’ve merely smothered it.”

“Nah,” Harry says easily. “It’s made me a better person. _You’ve_ made me a better person.”

And then Harry aborts the next sentence even as the sentiment of it is still apparent in their Legilimency. It is approximately, _There is nothing beyond redemption._ Harry is self-conscious about saying such things, and Voldemort would not have a response to it anyway.

“You could tell me,” Harry offers. “Or… show me. It seems really shitty, whatever you’re feeling, and I don’t want you to do it alone.”

“You weren’t meant to witness this.”

A shrug. “Sometimes things bleed through. It doesn’t seem to matter how much Occlumency is between us.” He’s moved in, running his fingers up and down Voldemort’s arm, with the most delicate filigree of magic between them.

 _The power the Dark Lord knows not._ Harry transforms love into magic effortlessly, as though he were born to it. Voldemort thinks briefly that the world should thank Merlin Harry hasn’t put his talent to more significant use. Love is not good, it is powerful, and Harry… could be more powerful than Voldemort himself, if he’d like to be.

But the magic that Harry offers now feels different from what he’s offered before. Harry is generally giving him magic to refill his capacity for it, after it’s been drained away by the Ministry. And they are both a bit magically fatigued from the shield and from the attack, but that isn’t Harry’s focus. This magic is an anti-depressant, filling in the wrecked parts of his soul, lifting the vicious ache behind his ribs bit by bit. He wonders the relation between the two magics, but nobody but the Unspeakables would even partially grasp the question.

Harry is pleased at the incremental slackening of Voldemort’s tense posture. He trails fingers and magic along his chest now, carefully. “I won’t let you do it alone,” he promises, very soft.

 _It_. Redemption, restoration, remorse. He despises these feelings. He despises looking backward, re-assessing the choices he can’t unmake. “Dumbledore would be hideous about it,” he mutters. ( _It,_ he also retreats to the pronoun, as though he’s as self-conscious as Harry is about naming his own brokenness.) He feels ungrateful, to introduce such bitterness amidst Harry’s generosity, but it also seems like such a pertinent explanation.

Harry only laughs. “Thank god I’m not him, then.”

Quiet, quiet. Voldemort thinks he might be shivering, but it’s not worth commenting upon. Harry’s magic envelops him, seeping into his cold, dead flesh to animate his bones. In recompense and gratitude he eases back his own Occlumency, offering – or at least no longer hiding – some of the somatic elements of his grief. Harry remains quiet, recognizing that _discussing_ it also would devastate him. It is humiliating, how weak he is.

He flashes back to being twenty eight, in Dumbledore’s office, the scrutiny Dumbledore gives to his changed visage and his deepest desires. _In other magics you remain, forgive me, woefully ignorant_. He feels a flare of anger, and Harry looks up in concern. “It’s nothing,” he mutters.

But – Dumbledore. The only detentions he ever had were with the man, who wanted _referenda_ on Tom’s repentance and Tom’s soul and the state of their relationship, the cleverness by which he’d gaslight a child in believing he never bore him any ill will. Dumbledore hated him from the first, not that Voldemort minds being hated now, but it’s somehow the one festering wound from his past that will never close. Dumbledore lives in his consciousness in a way, and it makes him want to obliviate himself. Furthermore, it means his mind stages its own referenda on repentance and guilt and goodness. No actual disingenuous, clever, manipulative, _fucking_ headmasters required.

Harry has pulled back a bit, not in pain or fear, but merely to better look at him. He rubs Voldemort’s hands in his own, soft and generous and non-imposing. “I’m sorry.”

“No,” Voldemort says. Harry raises his dark eyebrows in question. “This is – perverse.” He can’t even vocalize the rest of the thought, that the person he’s hurt the worst should also provide emotional sanctuary from his guilt. Perverse.

“Oh.” At this, Harry _grins_ , somehow amused amidst it all. “Yeah, it is. I kind of like it, though.”

In order for Voldemort to ask if Harry even understands what perversity he meant, he’d have to name it. He can’t. Instead, he’s drawing an even more fragile, vulnerable, terrible sentence past the demon in his throat. “I owe you everything.”

An elapsed silence that feels decades long. Harry says hesitantly, what Voldemort had resisted earlier: “I am so proud of you.”

This time, he doesn’t dispute it. This time, Harry pulls him to his chest, holding him close, and Voldemort is stiff and awkward and unused to such affection, but Harry doesn’t mind. Voldemort doesn’t say anything because he _can’t_ say anything, but he offers up the wordless turmoil that is his ruined soul right now. And Harry doesn’t know what to make of it either, but he stifles his own reaction and presses a kiss to Voldemort’s forehead. There is magic in it, too.

 

 _Monday, February 8_. On Monday morning, Harry was awake early to look over the treaty one more time, in the light of day. With Moira still asleep beside him on the sofa, he went through it, using his wand to guide him over each word so he didn’t miss anything.

And really, it was an exceptionally permissive contract for Harry, saying little more than that he’d marry Voldemort in good faith, and do no harm to any Ministry officials. There was a pre-nup, that Moody had insisted on for Harry’s sake. It said he’d retain his earned and inherited wealth, that he and Voldemort needed to keep at least half of their respective wealth in separate Gringotts accounts, and that in the event of divorce there would be no alimony, but if there were children they’d split the cost of childcare equally. Moody had said it was standard; Harry found it very unromantic to be deliberating about divorce already, but he wouldn’t fight it.

But what the contract imposed on Voldemort. He was sort of right, he’d conceded everything in this treaty. And perhaps he owed Harry everything, but he owed Britain and the Ministry much less than that. He kept his magic and his involvement with the Ministry, but he’d signed away the entirety of his regime – dark magic, Death Eaters, political dissidence. Looking back over it, Harry saw why it was a cause for an identity crisis. He was denouncing the past fifty years of his life.

They hadn’t signed it yet – Voldemort had said it needed to be signed with a blood quill, in the presence of the Minister. But there were two neat lines at the bottom, with text for each of them. _Harry James Potter, First Among British Magical Citizens. Voldemort, Lord of Slytherin and the Noble House of Gaunt._

It was the first legal vow they’d had with one another. Harry had a vow with Snape to protect Hogwarts; Voldemort had a vow with Moody to protect Harry and the Horcruxes. They moved as allies through the world already, in many ways, so it was peculiar to see them framed as two opposing parties on the contract.

He’d never tell Voldemort, but that Moody didn’t make him sign with his birth name felt like a mild kindness and concession. Dumbledore would have made him.

In any case, there was nothing to which he objected, exactly. He did worry for Voldemort. So when he joined Harry downstairs a bit later, Harry caught his wrist to pull him close. “I shouldn’t have said I was on their side yesterday,” he said. It had left Voldemort very alone, and very powerless, and he regretted it now. “Is there anything I could ask them to change?”

Voldemort did give it a moment, his eyes raking down the expanse of the contract before Harry. “Are you not satisfied with it?”

“I mean, sort of.” He offered a faint smile. “You need me more than they do, anyway.”

Voldemort put the kettle on as he considered. “The restriction on dark magic,” he finally said. “You already know it’s not a cohesive category.”

“It’s dangerous,” Harry muttered. “At the Ministry in September, when I couldn’t do dark magic – thank god I had time for another spell when Sectumsempra failed, but it could’ve gone wrong.”

Voldemort’s sharp look indicated he hadn’t know this. “That was reckless of them.”

He shrugged. “So can I….”

“Just put a line through it. They’ve got a corresponding copy.” A pause, then: “Thank you.”

“Sure.”

 

Harry didn’t wear his nicest robes, but he wore robes nice enough to get married in. Somehow, he reflected, his lack of emotional response made him feel a bit cheated. He should be excited on his wedding day. Next year, then. When they’d stage a massive fuck-off political extravaganza. Today though, today would be nearly sedate.

He’d been at the mirror long enough that his reflection had grown bored and wandered off, leaving him with no idea of what his hair looked like. And then Voldemort came up behind him, taking him in. “What metals are you wearing?”

Harry couldn’t even use his reflection to look incredulously at Voldemort, so he turned around to do so. “Uhh….”

An incredulous look in response. “The binding ritual is ancient, delicate magic. You’ll need to leave your portkey outside the chamber. Pure metals are acceptable, but alloys will warp the spell. So could all of the protective magic on you, but there’s nothing to be done about it…. This ritual was historically performed nude,” he informed Harry, who had not grown any less dubious, “so you can be grateful for relative modernization, at least.”

He shuddered, albeit with a grin. “Um… the rings are platinum. There’s fastenings along my cloak, but I’d take that off. The nipple rings are whatever you made them out of….”

“Silver.”

“Mm.” He looked down at himself. “Good thing I haven’t got glasses, I guess.”

“Let me see your fly.”

“Oh god, I’ve got no idea.” He was pulling back the full skirts of the robe. And he did have proper trousers on, not jeans, but he couldn’t guess what the zipper was made from anyway.

Voldemort deemed them unacceptable, then went through the rest of Harry’s wardrobe and found nothing better. “This is stupid,” Harry said, sitting on the end of the bed. “We’re going to be late.”

A look over Voldemort’s shoulder, from where he was now considering his own wardrobe. “Darling, I would make you strip off your awful Muggle clothing in front of everyone if it were an impediment. Be grateful. And we’re not _late_. They are obligated to us, not the reverse. Here.” He handed Harry a pair of black linen trousers, with buttons up the front, after he’d charmed them a bit shorter and wider.

“Cheers.” He kicked off the offending article. “There’s a Muggle superstition, you know, of witches dancing naked under a full moon. Is this, uh, where it started?”

This elicited a smirk from Voldemort. “Someday we will properly celebrate Samhain,” he promised. “Dancing is the least of it.”

A little blushing and a little thrilled, Harry finished getting dressed.

 

He groaned when, taking a portkey to the Ministry, they found its atrium already crawling with journalists. He hadn’t had time to look at the papers this morning, having read the contract instead, but the attack on Talacre must have broken.

“Mr. Potter!” A Prophet reporter to whom they’d spoken at the Yule ball was not quite sprinting up to them. But Harry had been in the reporter’s line of vision and Voldemort hadn’t, so when he stepped between them, the reporter nearly tripped on her feet. “Lord Slytherin,” she said, recovering. “You must both be here to address the attack. Can you tell Prophet readers what happened yesterday?”

“We cannot,” Voldemort said curtly, moving to leave. He caught Harry’s hand in his own as though it were normal, pulling him along.

“There are rumors you’ll be going on a diplomatic mission to the rebels.” The reporter was stalking beside Voldemort anyway, a quill and notebook hovering before her. “To put an end to all of this.”

He fixed her with an icy stare, one that intimidated even Harry. “If you publish that, we will consider it an obstruction of international relations, and prosecute you accordingly. _Do not_.”

Somehow she was undeterred. “The public is scared. It seems out of everyone’s hands but yours. Is there anything you’d say to them?”

“No.”

Changing tactics: “Mr. Potter, are you joining him?”

The question made his heart hurt, because he wished he could. Jamming the button for the lift, he muttered, “No comment.”

“What about the Auror who was injured yesterday? Any comment on her?”

At this, Harry was weak, and turned abruptly. “Why? How is she? What do you know?”

The reporter flashed a smile. “What do _you_ know?”

“Harry.” Voldemort’s tone was softer, more patient than he’d typically be. “We’ll see Moody soon. Ask him.”

“Right.” And they stepped into the lift, with Voldemort’s wand out in case the reporter should try to follow them in.

They’d convene in the Minister’s office directly. Journalists weren’t allowed on this level, and Harry breathed a sigh of relief at the relative quiet as they stepped from the lift. “I wish I had a better relationship with the papers,” he muttered. “They’re just so….” A wave of his hand.

“They don’t respect you.”

“Well, no.”

A serious look. “People will only respect you if you act as though they must. That they are indebted to you.”

A bit of a sigh and a bit of a smile. “Yes, Lord Slytherin, _sir_. – That’s new, by the way. I didn’t know anyone already knew.”

“I’ve lived without my birthright for far too long.” He ushered Harry down a corridor, one of the ones with strange purple lighting from security spells. “I’ve let it on some documents of public record since. This contract will be the most prominent instance.”

“It’ll be _published_?” Harry said in horror.

A sidelong look. “A secret treaty would do no good for anyone, you recognize.”

“Neither would everyone knowing how your magic would be _gutted_.”

“Ah. Yes. We’ll fight for that, at least.” He let Harry into the Minister’s department.

Madame Dawson showed them to Scrimgeour’s office directly. “Mr. Robards has arrived, and so has Moody. The Minister’s barristers are present. The Wizengamot should be arriving shortly.”

Harry’s stomach dropped. The Wizengamot almost certainly meant Bowersock. It might mean Bright or Swinton or anyone else complacent in the abuse. He wanted to protest, and of course he couldn’t. Voldemort’s look indicated he knew precisely what Harry was thinking.

Scrimgeour and the Aurors stood as they entered. Handshakes and tea all around. When Harry usually receded in these settings, today he leaned in toward Moody. “How is she?”

“They haven’t worked out the curse yet,” he said, grim. “Some sort of necrotic damage.”

“No,” Harry said faintly. In the battle of Hogwarts, necrotic curses were some of the most dangerous – they spread fast, they burrowed deep, and they were often contagious. Professor Trelawney was currently wasting away of a necrotic curse in her lungs, and it was gruesome.

“Necrotic damage, creature magic. The idiot healers know nothing of treating Metamorphmagi, I ought to revoke their licenses for incompetence – it’s complicated,” he concluded. “Delicate. She’ll live, but not unscathed.”

“Oh.” It only helped a little. “Is there anything we could…?”

His thick brows shot up. “That the healers couldn’t?” he said doubtfully. “Keep an eye on Weasley. She’s been at St. Mungo’s all night, but she’s supposed to return to the castle today.”

“Yes, sir.” Poor Ginny. Still, with his Legilimency as open as he could make it, he shoved his question at Voldemort.

“There hasn’t been necrotic damage before,” Voldemort mused, pressing spindly fingers to his mouth. “The – Inferi,” because there wasn’t a word for them, though they were the opposite, with re-animated souls in temporary bodies, “have relied on more immediate damage. Or on occasion, soul magic. A progressive curse, however….”

“You’ll go nowhere near her,” Moody snapped. (And Harry winced, because this was his fault in involving Voldemort at all.)

His bloodied gaze only met Moody’s with some mirth. “I suppose not, then.”

The chime announcing an entrance, saving them all. They rose, and Harry ran an apologetic hand down Voldemort’s arm. A wry look.

Bowersock and Bright, for the legislative branch of the Wizengamot; Amelia Bones, for the judicial. This was not unexpected, but Harry’s breath still stuck in his throat. Bowersock abused Voldemort because he had no legal recourse, no credibility, no allies but Harry. Voldemort was leaving the country early in order to escape it. To all shake hands and fake collegiality was… horrifying.

The tea table around which they’d gathered was transfigured into a proper table, with a contract before each of them. Moody and Scrimgeour had written it of course, the barristers recognized its historical precedent, and Robards seemed familiar, but it was the first time the Wizengamot were seeing it. Quiet, as they read.

Madam Bones looked up first. “How did you imagine disseminating this?”

“We’ve already written the banns. The papers should run it all at once.”

“And Potter should answer for it, in your absence?”

“Hogwarts is a sanctuary, as always.”

“I don’t mind,” Harry spoke up. “People already send me loads of crap, I burn most of it.” A glint of amusement from Voldemort; silence from the rest of the table. “I won’t say anything sensitive to anyone.”

“And the Ministry’s response?” Voldemort turned the question back on them.

“Should there be one?” Robards, grim. All of the inquiries (and Howlers) about Voldemort had been going to the DMLE these days. “We tell them that your involvement secures the peace of our nation. People are unhappy, they’re not rioting.”

“Yet,” Bowersock said dryly.

Voldemort was indifferent. “Allow them to protest, at least. The ones who feel disenfranchised – they’ll take a channel they’re given.”

The table had tensed at this. “It is _dangerous_ ,” Robards said testily, “to give them such allowance.”

“People are weak,” Voldemort returned. “They want to be told what to do. They want _permission_. Give them a charismatic leader of a resistance. Nobody with any relation to Harry, obviously.”

The rest of the table considered this, but Harry quietly hated it. Did Voldemort know it was approximately what Scrimgeour had offered Harry once? A figurehead, with a veneer of political autonomy that still, in the end, supported the Ministry. They didn’t disagree in public, or he’d object now.

Robards shook this off. “Fine,” he muttered, pushing his contract flat on the table.

After that came a line review of the contract. So much of it was standard and historical, there was little to revise. There was an entire section in the traditional document about the wedding, consummation, and heirs that had been cut. (Harry blushed furiously at hearing this, but nobody else at the table seemed interested.) Voldemort’s exile was only alluded to here – it was, itself, its own agreement, and it needed to remain confidential anyway – so there was an argument about whether the rather vague phrase “upon Voldemort’s return” was legally binding. Harry drank a lot of tea, to have something to do with his fidgeting hands. They disputed the use of different variations of the contract; the respective titles Harry and Voldemort had been given; whether it should be signed before or after the wedding ritual.

But in the part concerning Voldemort’s probation (he sneered this word each time, until Scrimgeour shot him a very unimpressed look), Harry seized on his one objection. “You need to take out the bit about dark magic.” Since their copies were all linked, they’d already seen it struck through. “It’s dangerous.”

He wished that anyone in the room responded to him but Bowersock, who offered a cold smile. “Voldemort is dangerous.”

“Not like _this_.” He indicated the contract, but really, he could’ve gestured to Voldemort himself, beside him. “There’s already redundancies in this – he already can’t hurt anyone – it can only hurt _him_.”

Bowersock raised his broad shoulder in a shrug, and Harry thought he would kill him right then. “It is avoidable, isn’t it?”

“It’s unnecessary. I had the same restriction on, in September, and in that attack, if the timing had been wrong….”

“Parselmagic?” Bowersock asked innocently.

“No.” His voice rippled with anger; he lost ground on it. “And this isn’t about me,” he added lowly. He looked to Moody, to Scrimgeour. “I don’t know what you’d want instead. But this is just… dangerous.”

Moody wanted to say something scathing, but Scrimgeour answered first. “We’ll revisit it next year.”

His insides burned with anger and frustration and embarrassment. “Yes, sir.”

After that, there was little over which they were in disagreement. Voldemort was quiet, and while the rest of the room might have taken it for compliance and cooperation, Harry felt the loss that boiled inside him, too. Decades of his life, a hard-fought place not just among the purebloods but _above_ them. And… humiliation. He found it humiliating to present himself as so docile. Nobody wanted his remorse – nobody would even believe it – but his presence now implied that his regime had been a _mistake_. It was painful for them both, but Voldemort hadn’t let him this deep into his Legilimency before, and it felt important not to squander it. In the end, they were both quiet and solemn as the Wizengamot and DMLE fought around the table.

And then it was agreed upon. Madam Bones conjured a clean master copy, one that would be displayed ( _displayed_!) in the hall of the Wizengamot. Harry pulled a napkin toward himself to practice his signature, cursing himself quietly.

His name and Voldemort’s would be immediately beneath the contract, but then everyone else in the room would sign farther down. There was a gravitas to it. Scrimgeour took a blood quill from his desk, made of a phoenix feather, and passed it to Voldemort first. _Lord Voldemort of Slytherin_ , he wrote in angular script. Passing it to Harry: “Your full name,” he murmured. _Harry James Potter._ Their signatures beside each other looked… final.

Around the table, with Scrimgeour signing last. When he had, he looked over his glasses. “Excellent.” He dispelled it to some office of the Wizengamot. Handshakes and well wishes and congratulations and they departed.

Madam Bones fell in step alongside Voldemort and Harry. “Thanks,” Harry said, looking up at her. “For being our witness, you know.”

“You’re welcome.” She was quite cool in a professional sort of way, but her strawberry hair and dark eyes reminded him of Susan, and it made him ache inside.

There was no time, though – Voldemort needed to narrate what would actually happen at the wedding ceremony. “It’s performed by a priestess, of the Respite of Aphrodite. There is blood magic first. We’ll use a ceremonial knife to carve one another’s heart lines. Here.” Taking Harry’s hand, he traced the line in his palm. “And we’ll keep our hands clasped throughout her invocation. It’s in Greek,” he added. “We answer Aletheia in unison after each of seven invocations. We’ll burn rosemary and then recess in silence.”

He should have looked this up before, so he wouldn’t feel quite so lost. “Alright. I mean, thanks.” He found even that talking to Voldemort in English was just awkward and fumbling; or maybe he was just self-conscious about being together in front of other people in general. He wanted to draw close to Voldemort, to take his hand, but he couldn’t do that either.

They found themselves in a ritual space on the ninth floor – octagonal, with gems and runes dotting the walls at the cardinal directions. It was a small chamber, and Harry frowned at it. That, too, Voldemort understood. “It is esoteric magic, and meant to remain that way. It will never be a public ceremony.” He spoke lowly but his voice echoed off the angled walls anyway. They continued in, to an antechamber where a witch in robes of white and gold waited. “Iereia,” he said, taking her hand in a handshake but dipping low as he did. Harry did the same, hesitantly.

“What magic do you have on you?”

Harry dropped his cloak and his portkey on a table; Voldemort left his portkey and the knife normally concealed along his forearm. They had to leave their wands, though Madam Bones kept hers, which she held upwards at her solar plexus, its tip glowing gently.

The priestess lit ritual candles and placed focusing crystals on the cubic altar in the center of the sanctuary. “He’s told you what will happen?” she asked Harry directly.

“Yes.”

“Good.” And with a wave of her hand, she threw up a flickering ball of light, somehow plunging the corners of the room into darkness. It began.

Her Greek was chanted, rich and deep. A few lines until the smoke of the candles rose in curls and the focusing crystals seemed to glow from within. She produced an ornate knife then, obsidian blade with topaz in the handle. A chant over it, and she passed it to Voldemort.

He took Harry’s hand gently, pushing back his fingers. His heart line was long, curving along the entire width of his palm. The blade was enchanted, for it didn’t hurt at all when Voldemort carved it neatly. Before Harry even bled, Voldemort passed him the dagger, to do the same.

Voldemort’s hands were fine and cool. If Harry hadn’t looked for his heart line beforehand, he wouldn’t have found it. But he cut, just deeply enough to draw blood. The priestess took the dagger; Harry and Voldemort clasped their bloodied palms together.

A shifting of the focus crystals. The room was quite smoky now, and filled with herbal scents that Harry hadn’t seen lit. And blood, it smelled of blood but in a… comforting way. He could feel Voldemort’s pulse in his palm. His own heartbeat had slowed, feeling as near to a trance as he ever had.

The priestess lifted a new candle to the altar, a heavy one studded with jewels. It didn’t look like wax at all, but liquid gold as it burned. She fell into the vows. Harry caught little of it, _Aphrodite_ and _agape_ and _iereia_ , how Voldemort had addressed her. It felt natural, his lips moving of their own accord, when they answered in unison, “ _Aletheia_.”

The room changed with each iteration of the vow – the altar seemed to grow, the corners of the room seemed to recede into the darkness. He could no longer see Madam Bones even though she must still be here. He was inhaling sticky smoke off the golden candle before them. His breath was in time with Voldemort’s, and with their heartbeat.

Aletheia, aletheia. Truth. At the seventh vow, the room went dark. Harry inhaled the perfumed air too sharply.

And then there was the flare of a flame, a pinprick of new light before the priestess. She’d lit the tip of a bunch of rosemary off the gold candle, and now she passed it to Harry, in his hand not holding Voldemort’s. And then Voldemort reached with his free hand, wrapping it over Harry’s. As the rosemary burned, it seemed to clear the air of all other smoke. The room took its shape again, altar shrinking to size and corners drawing into view. The light of Madam Bones’s wand was now a glowing ball bobbing from the tip.

He wanted to touch Voldemort. Where their hands touched, already – it was warmth and happiness of sharing magic, but there was a buzz in it. They were both looking to the altar, the burning bundle of rosemary and their clasped, bloodied hands, but their souls felt more intertwined than they ever had before. It felt… safe.

The rosemary’s flame reached his fist but it didn’t hurt. He felt it falling to ashes, and then the darkness set in. A chanted incantation from the priestess startled him in the stillness. “ _Makarioi tekna tou Aphrodite_.” He felt the magic seal itself.

Voldemort’s hands shifted around his – not letting go, but drawing him forward. They recessed from the sanctuary, returning to the antechamber.

It was too bright and too… prosaic, in here. When Madam Bones entered last, shutting the door behind her, Voldemort dropped Harry’s hands to approach her. “Thank you, Madam.”

“You’re welcome.” She shielded the ball of light now, as though lighting a candle. “I need to take this to the Wizengamot. Good day, Iereia.” A sweeping gesture of her robes in the direction of the priestess, and she let herself out from a side door.

Harry had been careful that he wasn’t bleeding on anything, but it didn’t matter – the incision of his hand had already closed, leaving a perfect red line in its place. The priestess had nothing to say as she stored her crystals; Voldemort handed Harry his cloak in similar silence.

And then they could go. “Thank you, Iereira,” Voldemort said, putting a guiding arm around Harry’s shoulders. “Thank you,” Harry echoed. On the way out, Voldemort dropped a few galleons into a glass bowl at the door. It was charmed not to make a sound.

The weight of it, the joy of it, only fully settled on Harry when they’d stepped into the quiet corridors. “Hey.” He caught Voldemort’s sleeve, turning them facing. “Happy… what _do_ people say? Happy wedding.” He straightened, to kiss Voldemort decisively. And then there was the same amazing flare of warmth in their touch. “That is….” He trailed his fingers down Voldemort’s arms. “Magic.”

A quirk of his mouth. “Yes. I didn’t expect it. The magic seemed redundant, given the effects of the Horcrux. I assumed it’d be a formality, nothing more.”

“Mm.” At other points, he would’ve been disgusted with this – the Horcrux as a perversion of marriage. A few years ago, he would’ve clawed his heart out to escape it. Now, he only pressed himself along Voldemort’s side, sharing magic and warmth and love.

They weren’t needed in any other capacity in the Ministry – Madam Bones would report back that the matrimony spell had been successful; and the Wizengamot would file the treaty; and Voldemort would be quietly exiled. He didn’t – he couldn’t – he held off on this sadness for just a bit.

Not long enough. The journalists had all departed from the atrium, and thank god, but Voldemort drew him to the cordoned-off section from which they could portkey. “I need to stop at my father’s house,” he said. “And you need to return to the safehouse.”

Harry frowned at him. “Can’t I go with you?”

“No.” Seeing the rebellious look on his face – “I won’t be long. You need to let the dog out.”

The dog was fine. “What don’t you want me to see?” he asked, wondering faintly if Voldemort assumed he was still traumatized from being kidnapped there last year. Really, Voldemort hadn’t even tortured him. There were a dozen more traumatic locations in their past.

“No,” Voldemort said, gentle and amused because Harry hadn’t shuffled this thought to the private part of his brain. “It is not to protect you. I’ll tell you in time.”

“Oh, a surprise?” Deep sarcasm.

In response to his childishness, Voldemort retaliated with a supremely infantilizing gesture, pressing a mollifying kiss to his forehead. That is, infantilizing until he pressed his tongue to Harry’s scar, sending a bolt of magic straight down his spine. He might have groaned. “I’ll return within the hour.” Stepping back – _crack_! – he was gone.

Harry could hypothetically apparate after him – he sort of knew the geographic location of the manor. Instead, obediently, he flipped his portkey to return to the safehouse.

He let Moira out and then wandered the house. He’d pack for Voldemort if he had the slightest idea what he needed. He wanted togetherness; he wanted to be touched. The isolation of marrying and then immediately seeing Voldemort off to exile felt uniquely cruel. He ended up outside, casting glowing orbs for Moira to chase. She was getting quite coordinated.

At last, the buzz of a portkey, and Voldemort landed softly in the garden. He didn’t seem to carry anything, or appear any different at all. “Uhh…” Harry said.

“I took what I needed. You should be able to get in now, as well. I’ll leave you the coordinates. There’s nothing left but some books and my less useful potions instruments.”

He’d half-thought Voldemort had gone to burn it down for good. “Sure, yeah. D'you want lunch?”

He fixed him with a glittering look, wry and devious and affectionate. “I want to eat you out,” he purred. “Right here, if you’d like.”

Grinning, Harry grabbed his hand, pulling him inside.

 

The sex was… complicated. To begin it was amazing, both of them hypersensitive physically and emotionally. But then it became an ending as well, and Harry couldn’t keep that from his mind. He ended up with his face pressed into Voldemort’s shoulder, breathing deeply, both of them satiated and entangled and lonely.

But Voldemort didn’t have the emotional capacity – nor inclination – to wallow in grief for long. Rolling Harry off him with playful fingers in his hair, he asked, “You haven’t got to teach today?”

“Kingsley’s covering.” He only had an afternoon class, and Moody had decreed this yesterday, anticipating Harry would be busy. They threw on dressing gowns and went to make lunch.

“Can you tell me…. What can you tell me?” Harry amended when they’d sat down. “For now.”

Voldemort was pulling cold chicken from the bone with his long fingers, looking somehow elegant and not murderous. “Their territory will be warded. Likely with spells against outsiders – everyone but Humnerë affiliation, lugétër, their stray souls. If I am particularly unlucky, magic will be throttled there as well. That is, wixen magic. It’d be clever if they did, since they rely on creature magic anyway. And they are clever.”

“You said they haven’t got a leader.”

“Mm. They must. But they say she’s missing, yes.”

“Is it the same one you knew?”

“Yes.”

“Did you leave on, uh, good terms?”

This got him something like a smile. “I killed their werewolves and removed the diadem – a _pollutant_ , in their view – from their land. I left because I’d learned everything I could. And they wouldn’t turn me.”

“Oh my god,” Harry muttered. “Good thing.”

Voldemort seemed indifferent to the idea, now. “Would you brew potions this afternoon?” he asked.

“Sure. Yeah. What do you need?”

“There are potions of magic rejuvenation. They’re experimental, but not difficult. Perhaps blood-replenishing potions, fortitude….” His eyes were on the ceiling.

“Do you know how to brew Felix Felicis?”

He looked at Harry with curiosity. “Yes,” he said. “Do you? It takes a year.”

“Oh. Damn. We never brewed it,” he said. “I got some from Slughorn. We used it at… Hogwarts.” That is, the war. For Moody, the night he’d killed Mulciber. For Ron and Hermione, slipping into Hogsmeade to close the tunnel from Honeyduke’s. The last of it had been left for Harry himself. For… the inevitable.

Voldemort was only entertained by this admission. “How unsporting,” he purred. Harry kicked his shin under the table. “Though it has its uses.”

“Doesn’t matter now, anyway.”

 

They returned to the basement then. It felt good to work with his hands, Harry reflected as he diced toad liver for the blood potion. It made it easier to keep his mind steady. Across from him, Voldemort worked on the magic replenishing potion in silence.

They decanted six vials, at the end. And then Voldemort packed a judicious potions set, and an even more judicious set of books. “Here,” he said, pulling a leatherbound tome from his shelf, holding it out to Harry. More fiction, he could tell. They’d finished _Dorian Gray_ last night, in the stretches of wakefulness. He stepped in to take the book.

 _Richard III._ “I haven’t read Shakespeare before,” he said, somewhat apologetic.

“Good.”

Harry gave him a smile, running his thumb over the spine. Then: “What should we do with…?” He gestured to the bookshelves, to the remaining potions sets. “Or are the Aurors leaving it?”

“They are. Off the record, I will still have access to this house. It will be a last resort. Not on _principle_ ,” he added with some scorn. “But because I won’t be able to pop in and out of Humnerë territory. They’ll be at least a week’s walk into the forest.”

“What is it like? Albania.” He didn’t ask the question he should have – _How can you go back to a place of such trauma?_ Twelve years, dispossessed, in those same forests.

But Voldemort only gave him a wry look. “I’ll take you to far nicer locales, anyway,” he promised. Harry’s smile was shaky.

He’d leave well after dark, wrapped in the cloak that Harry had given him, camouflaging himself in the silvery night. They both stood in the cool garden. “Be good,” Voldemort said, pressing a kiss to Harry’s fringe.

To which he laughed, shoving him off. “Wanker. Don’t patronize me.” But then he stepped in again, kissing him properly – and the way their magic flared, it seemed a crime that they should be separated at all. “I love you, I love you,” he muttered against Voldemort’s mouth, to feel the thrill and pain and magnetism between them at those words. And they held onto each other for a long time, and then Voldemort let go, stepping back and apparating away with a crack.

Harry blinked at the spot where Voldemort had stood. Apparition wasn’t meant to be possible from the safehouse. But he supposed it was true, what Voldemort had warned the Aurors last summer – that he would only be as captive as he consented to be. At that, Harry had to smile.

He paced the house for a bit longer, collecting up bits of things he’d want. A lot of it, he thought, could be moved into Slytherin’s estate in a few months. The frame of the house was in place, last he’d seen it, and they said that it would be finished by June. He wanted Voldemort to come back to a _home_ , a proper one.

He had to come back.

He fed Moira and did some washing up and took a cleaning spell to every room. The sex toys were left in the wardrobe, under a disillusionment spell more for decorum than security. His reflection in the toilet’s mirror didn’t even bother walking fully into the frame, to look at the sad sack that Harry was. At last, he gathered up his dog and left.

Dumbledore’s office was quiet and dark – initially he found that strange, but most of the portraits also had frames in the Ministry, and could get their news there directly. He’d hoped to find the rest of the castle quiet too, with most of the students in the common rooms, but as he descended the six flights of stairs, that seemed to not be the case. He could hear the buzz of a crowd in the great hall. Had something happened? His stomach clenched. It was far past dinner, and the only times the castle was active so late at night was in crisis….

When he turned the corner to the grand staircase, there was an explosion of noise and color. The great hall was full, someone charmed a cascade of streamers over his head, and then people were leaping up, running up the stairs to meet him –

Hagrid got to him first, scooping Moira in one hand and then clutching Harry to his chest with the other. “Yer such a good lad,” he mumbled into his hair. “Dunno how you did it – it’s a better sight ‘an any of us could’ve hoped for….”

Harry gathered that the treaty had been made public, then. They’d dropped the banns in the Ministry floos themselves, and asked the Wizengamot to get the treaty to the press. He thought it’d break in the morning, seeing as all the journos had been at the Ministry at the time, but apparently all of the presses had pushed publication as soon as they got the news. “Right – we wanted to really – could you let me go?” he asked, trying not to sound irritated. He was set down, and his dog handed back. “Thank you.”

To no great effect, because the rest of the school had made its way before him, and his hand was being grabbed and shaken, and he was being hugged, and he was being slapped on the back, and a few people were pushing quills at him for autographs. He could only make out individual words, _happy_ and _grateful_ and _peace_ and _relief_ and _safe_ and _war_. Right. This was the cessation of their war, in a way. There hadn’t been a proper celebration last year. He moved his face until it felt like a smile. “Thanks – thank you – “ He didn’t even know if it was a response that made sense in context.

And then the crowds were sweeping him downstairs, to the head table. At last the students receded, and he could move through the crowd. “Ron! Hermione!” They’d been trying to reach him, and the remainder of the crowd reluctantly parted.

Ron and Hermione were at his side, Ron throwing elbows (“Let him _breathe_ ”) and Hermione directing the few students back to their – well, they still didn’t have house tables, but back down from the head table regardless. “What happened?” Harry asked, a bit shellshocked.

They both looked at him in concern. He clarified: “We got married and signed a treaty. How did everyone find out?”

“The papers,” Ron said, and indeed there was a flurry of newspapers along the tables – not just the Prophet but everyone they’d been in touch with had put out an evening edition. “This afternoon. The governors came – you should meet them – and Snape ordered a feast, and classes are cancelled tomorrow.”

Someone had pushed a fizzy drink in his hand at some point; he swallowed it liberally. What would they do without classes tomorrow, drag out this party all day? “Yeah – great – I hope they don’t want a speech,” he said, eyeing the room warily.

“Harry,” Hermione admonished, though she was smiling. “This is historic. _Generations_ have waited for this. Aren’t you happy?”

No, honestly. He knew it made him broken, that he wanted nothing less than to be celebrating right now. He re-placed the smile that had fallen off his face. “I am,” he lied. “I should go say something to the officials.”

McGonagall seized him on the way, holding a glass that might be nothing but gin. “Introduce me to the governors?” he asked her.

“You’ve made us all very proud today,” she said, somehow typically stern and besotted all at once.

So it went. He autographed a lot of the papers. He was slapped on the back quite a bit. His elbow hurt from vigorous handshakes. Remus cried in front of him.

It hadn’t felt this significant when they’d signed the treaty. Nobody in that room had been so gratified or impressed. He’d lost sight… that he was a hero still, that really his desperate love for Voldemort looked, from the outside, to be strategic. And he hadn’t realized that everyone _did_ hope for a final peace, that it wasn’t only Hermione’s pet interest that they swear on the wedding as an alliance.

(He did think he was quite gracious in not pointing out that Hermione had sworn off speaking to him just days ago.)

He drank and relaxed into the feast. Everyone fell off gradually, sending themselves to bed, until at last at midnight the heads of house shepherded the stragglers to their dorms.

And then he was left with Ron, Hermione, Hagrid, and Remus. (Snape had loitered for Remus, made a disgusted noise upon seeing he’d stay with Harry, and left in a huff awhile back.) Harry cast a hydration spell on himself subtly, thinking that Voldemort was in a dangerous circumstance to be secondhand drunk, before he took the firewhiskey that Hagrid poured him.

“What was it like?” Ron asked, with some trepidation.

That question always meant, what was _he_ like, but he pretended not to know that. “It was good. We signed the treaty first, and then the ceremony. And then he… left.”

Nobody seized on this; either they already knew he was exiled or they didn’t want to know. “I’ve read that it’s blood magic,” Hermione said. “It didn’t say how.”

He offered his hand, with his heart line still red. “Blood magic, yeah. She – the priestess – burned herbs and candles. The vows were in Greek. And it….” He hesitated, but it felt important. “It brought our magic closer together. We thought we were already too close, to have any effect. But it just felt… really good.”

The rest of them squirmed, but Remus offered a smile, weary as he always was. “It doesn’t matter what anyone thinks, or whether anyone approves, by now.” He seemed to speak more to the rest of them than to Harry. “It matters that they trust you. And as you saw….” He waved a scarred hand to gesture to the chaos of the great hall. “We do. Everyone has always wanted to.”

“I know,” he said, twisting his glass between his palms. “At some point, though, they’ll have to trust him, too.”

He hadn’t tired of being Voldemort’s – what? companion, buffer, guarantor, collateral. But neither was it sustainable. And while he understood why people tonight would celebrate his political gesture more than Voldemort’s, Voldemort had been right that he’d surrendered more. The Prophet referred to Harry’s _sacrifice_ repeatedly, which was infuriating, because Harry had gotten everything he’d wanted while Voldemort _had_ sacrificed, quite a lot.

Nobody wanted to engage this. Hagrid’s face had gone particularly dark. “Decades,” he muttered. “Yeh don’t know the extent of it. Jus’ because he’s harmless now….”

He didn’t want to fight with Hagrid. As he’d said before, Hagrid could hold more of a grievance against Voldemort than anyone. “Not just harmless. Helpful.” A skeptical grunt.

He wanted to go to bed. Drinking didn’t make him feel any better, and being around people made him feel decidedly worse. Pushing his glass away, he scooped up Moira from her nap on an adjacent chair. “I’ve got to….”

Reassuring babbling, he must be exhausted, what a long day, we didn’t mean to keep you. “Remus?” he said with hesitation as they all moved to leave, and he hung back, concern in his eyes – but then, that was always how he looked at Harry.

They walked alone in the direction of the dungeons, anyway. “He said he met with you, once. What did you tell him?”

A curve of his lips. “He said he’ll need the Albanian werewolves. And he might. Those areas are less, ah, segregated than Britain is. I couldn’t tell him much more. Really, Britain’s wolves have receded into insignificance recently, and there are no other ways to gain access to our… global politics,” he said doubtfully. “As it were.”

“Oh.” So no particular advantage there.

“I offered to go with him anyway – “

“Oh my _god_ ,” Harry interjected, horrified. Just imagining a meeting between Remus and Voldemort was stressful enough.

A patient look. “But he declined. He said you’d kill him if anything happened.”

He laughed, only because he was startled. For one, because he and Voldemort didn’t threaten death hyperbolically – it was too feasible. But also because… well, he and Remus sort of circled around each other, forever uncertain what their relationship should be. Remus was more of a colleague than a parent or mentor, but he was also one of his only connections to the past. To Sirius. Sometimes he thought he could make up for his regret that he’d never told Sirius he loved him by telling Remus instead. But this didn’t seem like the time. “Yeah,” he tried saying lightly. “But it was really good of you to offer.”

Remus lifted a weary shoulder in a shrug. “It seems that it’d be best for everybody if this were resolved quickly.”

“Yeah,” he said. And then they’d reached the corridor where they’d part, and said goodnight, and then he was blessedly alone again.

Moira was asleep against his chest, and he let her down carefully on a sofa as he entered his suite, summoning a blanket to drop over her. Then… what? He thought briefly of conjuring the Horcrux, to give him news and take his magic but… well, his tolerance for people was very low right now.

As he fell into bed, he realized that not one person at Hogwarts had said congratulations to him just as a matter of getting married. He’d best skip tomorrow’s papers, because if he heard _brave_ or _sacrifice_ once more, he would jump off the astronomy tower.

Of course he was a bit miserable because his magic was thoroughly separated from Voldemort’s right now. As though his soul were already damaged by being apart. _Pathetic_ , he thought darkly, as he doused the lights.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The dialogue between them in the safehouse is one of my favorite scenes in this story, I love it so much. Poor Voldemort, he's so bad at feelings but he is trying.
> 
> Allusions for Chapter 25:
> 
> “lived and moved and had my being” – Acts 17:28.
> 
> “more pureblooded than the purebloods” – Voldemort is paraphrasing a quote from historians about new citizens of the Roman Empire, who are “more Roman than the Romans.” That is, they do all the customs and know all the history and do everything perfectly and patriotically. Voldemort is more pureblooded than the purebloods.
> 
> “we are legion” – Mark 5, the story of Jesus casting out a group of demons.
> 
> All the Greek in the wedding ceremony: Iereia is priestess. Agape is love. Aletheia is truth. “Makarioi tekna tou Aphrodite” – Blessed are the children of Aphrodite.


	26. Chapter 26

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Voldemort finds the vampires, but it puts them both in danger. Harry casts a Patronus and receives a parcel.

_Saturday, February 20._ The days after that were madness. Harry was skipping breakfast to avoid the owls he’d been sent; Ron and Hermione had taken to throwing all the letters in a sack, in case he wanted to read them later. (No.) Some people sent wedding gifts, which he tried to find nice but mostly thought of as unnecessary, and those packages got forwarded to his Gringotts vault. All of the papers sent him requests for an interview every day, and Hermione had sent a delightfully dark note to Rita that all bugs in Hogwarts would be killed on sight. Harry granted none of their requests for interviews, and they re-ran the treaty and wedding announcement and wild speculation instead. At least he found time to go to Diagon Alley for new glasses, nicer wire rim ones that made him look like an actual adult.

Ginny was technically back at Hogwarts; but apparently only long enough to be in classes, before ducking out again. Harry had seen her once, and she looked tired. She said Tonks’s curse was complicated and insidious, made moreso by being a Metamorphmagus, and St. Mungo’s had transferred her to an esoteric magic ward. “Is she awake?” Harry asked hesitantly, “or….”

“Sort of,” Ginny said, and didn’t expand, and that seemed too much.

Finally, his magic and Voldemort’s were just entirely separated, for the longest they’d ever been since that had been a thing sort of in their control. They didn’t write and they didn’t find each other in sleep. Harry’s soul strained at the loss. He took a lot of baobab and drank a lot of kaval, and when he woke in the middle of the night because of a long slow withdrawal from dreamless sleep, it was excruciating not to retreat into their shared magic instead.

In those next few weeks, he ended up spending a lot of time with Luna. They had classes together and they were mutually worried about Ginny and Tonks, but he also gravitated to Luna as one of the only people with whom he could mention Voldemort freely. Ron and Hermione would freeze, with a particular look on their faces, whenever Harry said anything remotely about him; and that was exhausting. Hagrid reacted worse, as he should. Remus was quietly supportive but embroiled in his own tragedies. Luna offered, unprompted, that he was off the record until he said otherwise. They spent a lot of time by the lake, occasionally bringing the dogs, as Luna had filled his silences with quite chipper conspiracy theories.

The only other saving grace of this time was that he’d finally worked up the courage to dip into the memories he’d collected last summer. He’d avoided them before now, both because he had rather enough emotional bullshit to wade through, and because he couldn’t keep his reactions entirely separate from Voldemort. But the first thing he ever wrote in their shared diary, two weeks since Voldemort’s departure, was **_I’m looking at memories. I’ll keep my Occ. up if I can._**

He expected nothing in return, so when the page glowed with a response, his stomach flipped. _Good_ , Voldemort wrote, and nothing else.

His quill was clenched too hard in his fist as he wrote back rapidly, his writing going messy: **_Where are you? Are you safe? Do you need anything?_**

A pause. _I will find you tonight._

Thank god, thank god. Inertia and silence had been, he convinced himself, good news. But he’d been cold and anxious with the unbelief in it anyway. **_I love you_** , he wrote, to predictably no answer.

His Pensieve had been gathering dust since Riddle gave him the memories of Slytherin’s estate in December. But he was alone on this Saturday, having skipped a Hogsmeade day, and the faux-connection of the memories seemed ideal.

He picked one of Remus’s own memories first: a time after school but before Harry’s own birth, going by the date. The bits he saw reflected in the fluid looked like Godric’s Hollow.

Oh – not only was it Godric’s Hollow, it was a housewarming party. He was smiling immediately as he followed Remus in to a warm setting, sparkling streamers draped from the walls and ceiling.

The house was larger than he’d thought it had been – a large ground floor for entertaining, and at least a few bedrooms that he could see past the landing. He wondered if his parents had intended to have a large family. He could have had siblings.

The front door opened again, and Harry’s heart thrummed in his chest to see that it was Sirius, a case of beer under one arm and a young woman under the other. He didn’t know her – someone from the first Order, since her face looked vaguely familiar. “Wormtail was right behind us,” he muttered, flipping his hair out of the way to look over his shoulder. “He might be chatting up Meadowes already, I hope he is, I just thought he’d need the courage of a couple dragon ales first….” He pressed the case of beer into James’s arms. “Have Mum and Dad seen this yet?”

(Sirius called James’s parents Mum and Dad. Harry’s heart melted.)

“Yeah, they dropped off a dining room set this morning, let me show you – “

Harry didn’t follow them exactly, but made his way slowly through the home. It was large and… not exactly monied, but full of nicer furnishings than most eighteen year olds would be able to afford. In other ways though, it still looked like a student’s housing: papers and Quidditch gear stashed in corners, unframed posters and photos stuck to the walls with sticking spells, mismatched chairs dragged into the sitting room from all manner of sources.

Harry was compelled into the kitchen when Remus went, the boundaries of the memory nudging him forward. There were another half dozen people in here, most probably classmates. His mother was leaning against a counter, fizzy drink in hand, laughing as a woman with a dark cloud of hair recounted something. The other woman reminded him of Hermione, bright and animated with her voice climbing in passion, and he wondered faintly if his parents would have liked his friends.

There seemed no particular purpose to this memory, other than being the first time Remus had seen the house at Godric’s Hollow. It would have been a good place to grow up. He lingered, listening to a conversation about Quidditch. (1978 had been a good year for Puddlemere, about which Lily was thrilled and James was begrudging, so he would’ve grown up in a house split by Quidditch too.) And as Sirius fiddled with a record player, trying to enchant it to play Muggle records (“You’ve never heard Queen?” he demanded in mock-horror of the woman he’d come in with), the memory tugged at Harry’s shoulders to pull him back out.

He lifted his face from the basin, feeling much warmer and much less lonely. Those people hardly felt like his parents; they felt like people he could’ve encountered in the halls of Hogwarts. They were the same age; and their faces hadn’t yet developed the tension he’d see in them closer to their deaths, with the war properly on.

He siphoned the memory back into its vial, playing his fingers over the others. Deciding, he dropped the vial of post-NEWTs parties into the Pensieve.

 

And that was his afternoon. None of the memories were long and none were significant. He kept Snape’s memories off to one side. He kept Voldemort’s memories of Halloween put away entirely, concealed in the back of his wardrobe. Someday he might be brave enough to watch them.

The memories of Voldemort’s abuse were back there too, cold and vicious, seemingly fracturing his soul whenever his hand grazed the bottle. Trust, he was trusted with them, no matter how much he wanted to use them for retribution. Maybe he did care about justice after all. Anyway, that cache of memories, he knew he’d never touch.

For now he stuck to innocuous moments, warm days and celebrations and what other people had seen of his parents’ courtship. (Had Harry dated a vibrant redhead himself to mimic what he’d never known of his parents? He didn’t like the idea.) And so he was nearly okay when he went down to dinner, drawn down by the chatter of happy students coming in from Hogsmeade. He only stuttered to a stop when he unexpectedly saw Moody approaching the head table from across the hall. Rapidly cycling through all the possible reasons he could be here, Harry went to meet him.

Moody stood apart from everyone, surveying the crowd as they came in. When Harry approached, he only glanced over. “You weren’t in Hogsmeade?”

He did some quick calculations on whether this was suspicious behavior. “I think I’ve worn out its novelty,” he said.

A low hum, and then Moody turned to actually look at him. “Where is he?”

“Uh. We haven’t… talked,” he said hesitantly, because was that really the right word? “Since he left. He said tonight, we would. But he says he’s safe, anyway. Er, should I write you, when I find out?”

Moody’s face contorted. “A paper trail?” he grumbled.

“Oh. I guess not.”

Moody shook his head. “Don’t really need to know, assuming he doesn’t need us. Anyway,” he said, both eyes sliding from Harry’s face over his shoulder, “I’m not here for you.”

“You’re not?” Harry said, but then he turned to follow Moody’s gaze.

Malfoy, alone, also clearly coming from the dungeons and not Hogsmeade. “Oh,” he said faintly. “Is something… wrong?” Malfoy’s family couldn’t be any more dead. The Aurors had interrogated him about Avery and the Slytherins, but found nothing. There was really nothing more that could go wrong in Malfoy’s life, come to think of it.

“Didn’t Shacklebolt tell you? We can protect him in the Order better than out of it. He and I ‘re swearing Malfoy in tonight.”

Harry couldn’t help it, he sort of gaped. Kingsley had told him – warned him, really – but he thought Malfoy would never agree. And the entire Order didn’t need to be present for an initiation, but to picture Malfoy alone with two Aurors just sounded so… miserable. “Can I come?” he asked, the idiotic question out of his mouth before he’d considered it.

“You know damn well he wouldn’t want you.”

“Right. He wouldn’t. Is Snape going?” Harry hedged.

A bad question; Moody’s face clouded with it. “If Malfoy’s reluctant, he hasn’t got to do it.”

There was an ache in Harry’s stomach. This didn’t have to be his problem. “I hope… he does. And I hope it helps,” he said, very vague and useless. He stepped out of the way so Moody could fetch Malfoy.

Surveying the great hall: Ron and Hermione had come back with Ginny and Luna, and were now sitting down to dinner at one of the Gryffindor tables. Well, Hogsmeade weekends had a carnivalesque feel to them anyway, they may not even get told off by McGonagall for not eating at the head table. Harry went to join them.

Luna and Hermione had gone book shopping together apparently, so that was cozy, even if Hermione’s book was a traditional sort while Luna’s had pages that needed to be folded into origami before it would allow itself to be read. “Harry,” she said, glancing up with a smile. “Hogsmeade was lovely. Aberforth sends his well wishes.”

“That’s good of him.” He took a seat beside Ginny, bumping her shoulder congenially. She smiled back at him, a bit shaky.

“What occupied you this afternoon?” Luna went on, and Harry was entertained because anyone else (except maybe also Voldemort) would just ask, _What did you do today?_

“Catching up,” he said vaguely. “It was helpful. I heard there’s a pet shop in Hogsmeade now?” he redirected them. “Hagrid’ll like that.” And they settled into faux-normalcy.

 

Sleep that night would be a tricky proposition. He still woke up abruptly, from dreamless sleep withdrawal, and so Voldemort would have to… well, catch him, and hold him down in sleep. He pulled his Occlumency off as he fell into bed, feeling for the other end of the cord that ran between their souls.

He’d just relinquished his body when he felt his magic and soul caught up. Thank god, thank god. He offered his magic, without even assessing the circumstances.

There are stone walls and a single lantern overhead, such that Harry has an incredulous moment that Voldemort is somehow back in Azkaban. His anger flares –

“Stop,” Voldemort says severely, drawing back, pushing Occlumency between them again. “Of course I’ll explain. But I need….”

Magic. He can’t say it. Harry passes it off to him anyway. And somewhere in there Voldemort grasps that that was hurtful, snapping at him. He pushes a long breath from his narrow chest, speaking deliberately in lieu of apologizing. “I am in Albania. I traveled up through Greece, as I couldn’t apparate into the country directly at all.” Harry conveys surprise. An entire country, blocked off from him. “The magic…. It must have been done through the ley lines. Veins of magic beneath the earth,” he adds helpfully, not knowing Harry’s had a few conversations about ley lines himself recently, with regards to Slytherin’s estate. “I haven’t learned anything of the Albanian ministry yet, who would authorize such a thing. Similarly… my magic is being drained,” he says flatly. “Perhaps with ley lines, perhaps with wards. I’ve been walking the forests in which they resided in the ‘80s – “ the Humnerë or perhaps all the vampires, that is “ – and I’ve only begun to pull apart their wards. They aren’t the sort that would border any actual homeland.”

Months, it would take months then. But he is safe enough? Harry wonders where specifically he is now.

And Voldemort stands from the bed he’s conjured, taking the lantern from its hook. “A castle,” he says, moving from the makeshift bedroom down the hall, letting Harry see it through his eyes. “There are scores of castles here. I’ve enchanted the ones I use to be overlooked by Muggles, not that _any_ of them care for history anyway. This one was Ottoman era, more of a fortress layout, really….” And as he walks it, Harry sees it’s quite low and sturdy. Still partially furnished, though hardly with nice things. “Tramps and beggars would find refuge here,” Voldemort answers, at Harry’s inquisitiveness at the benches and chairs along the walls. “I… did, as well, last time.”

 _Last time_ means in his dispossession, and Harry feels how painful the memory is. How humiliating. _Good_ , he thinks fiercely. _You were safe. You are safe._

“Mm,” Voldemort says, doubtful nonetheless. “I’ve found little evidence of the lugétër here. But I’ve found none at all of the werewolves. I will need them. Regular wixies here… well, they’re peasants. They excel at household magic, folk magic. They are not powerful, or interested in power.”

By now he’d drawn to the staircase to the dungeons, and with a twist of his wrist made visible dozens of wards running into the depths. “It was satisfying to find that some of them persisted. But more of them….”

Given his work on the airspace shield, Harry could see it, the way the wards are eroding. Some of them have the settled look of old wards – those must be the ones left from Voldemort’s previous refuge – but some of them are bright and new like a barely-scabbed cut. There’s feathering around the edges where they aren’t properly closed or contained, and Harry is careful to keep his pity to himself but he will give Voldemort a _lot_ of magic. “Thank you,” Voldemort mutters, moving to fix the nearest ward.

His hands are deft, and they both feel the magic healing the fortress. “Will you be handling the airspace shield tomorrow?” Voldemort asks, because it’s been two weeks since Talacre and the attack.

Harry thinks in the affirmative. The Aurors are anxious about him, and they’re going to another new location. They never did find how the Humnerë tracked them down. Harry isn’t worried, and it irritates Voldemort, because he should be.

 _Thanks_ , Harry thinks dryly, and Voldemort is startled at this because he hadn’t meant to… transmit that thought particularly. They must discuss an ethics of politely disregarding each other’s minds, sometime.

“You are reckless,” he says, though not in anger. “It’s not even on _principle_.”

Harry offers the mental equivalent of a shrug.

Voldemort cycles ( _privately_ ) through all of the ways that Harry might be kept safe. He has blood protection from both light and dark magic, and half the Aurors’ department will be with him, and his wand is fitted with a mal detector. He would suggest that Harry demand his invisibility cloak back from the Horcruxes – have they still got it? The Slytherin students have all gone – but he doesn’t want to jostle Harry’s recollection of the locket at all. There are insidious patches of forgetting in all the places Harry once recalled the locket – _after_ the new year, after he’d confessed to losing it – and Voldemort can only assume the locket itself cast such a delicate spell around the contours of Harry’s mind. He hasn’t forgotten the diadem – he still spends _time_ with it for some godforsaken reason – so whatever quest the locket is on, it is alone. Voldemort is curious rather than worried, and Harry would be throwing fits if he knew, so he won’t. In the end Voldemort offers, “Bring the dog.”

Harry thinks an agreement – Moira was useful last time, recognizing the Humnerë even before the mal detectors. He doesn’t need a familiar, and if he had, the owl would have priority. ( _Hedwig_. When had Harry ever read the era of magical history in which Hedwig’s namesake resided?) But yes, he’d take her.

Voldemort steps back from the wards to examine their effects. This building has been a fortress to Muggles and wizards alike – and often at the same time, when Ottoman rulers brought on magicians who may or may not have been shams. There is value in restoration, though, and the castle is grateful to him for it. It hums around him, content to offer him sanctuary for the time.

As he climbs the stairs to the ground floor again, Harry thinks that Remus swore to tell him anything he heard regarding werewolves, but it’s been quiet so far. Greyback’s death has meant _apparent_ disintegration of the British werewolves, though that can’t be true. “He was internationally influential,” Voldemort adds to Harry’s thoughts. “Though perhaps not this far out. Typically the alpha who defeated him would take in the wolves who submitted and kill the ones who wouldn’t. That we haven’t seen this shift implies that he wasn’t killed by another alpha.”

 _I don’t know_ , Harry thinks dully, because he finds the werewolves so… foreign. Inhuman, in a way, the ones who live apart from the wixen world.

“Not everyone would like to belong,” Voldemort says. It’s not… discrimination, exactly, on Harry’s part, but there’s an underlying desire for assimilation in it. That he likes Lupin for his exceptionalism and domestication. But, in any case, if Harry should hear this at all, it should not be from Voldemort.

He’s standing at the front entrance now, and summons his cloak. “I need to go out. You may not join, this time,” he says, at Harry’s immediate request. “Later, when I know more of the magic in the area, you might.”

Harry asks – wonders – what he is looking for.

A quirk of his mouth. “Weaknesses.”

Harry is steadfast about this, if only because he recognizes that anxiety only damages them both. _Don’t leave me_ , he thinks, not about tonight but about their separation in the past fortnight.

“No,” Voldemort agrees. Really, these weeks have been dangerous, full of volatile magic. Some of the ley lines have attempted to erode him from the soul (as it were) outwards. Harry would find it patronizing to say it was for his own protection – certainly, one of the fiercest angers he’s ever felt was at Albus excluding him for his own safety – so Voldemort doesn’t say it. Instead: “I will find you, when it’s possible. I’ll need….”

 _Magic_ , Harry supplies again, as though this weren't its own weakness. _I will always want to give you magic._

He fights back the shame lodged in his breast. “Yes,” he says, instead of _thank you_. They keep one another alive. “Tell the Aurors what they ask, and nothing more,” he says, seeing that Moody had approached Harry that same day. “It does not matter.”

 _Alright_.

“Tomorrow,” he promises, because Harry would be too reluctant to part so quickly otherwise. “I will find you tomorrow. And I may be able to keep you asleep now,” he adds, because Harry still isn’t sleeping properly.

 _Thank you_ , Harry says, in utter relief, and then it’s not even difficult to untangle their minds, just delicate and methodical. Voldemort blocks off Harry’s psyche, holding him down in warm sleep. His presence recedes like the waves.

And then Voldemort sets out, casting a perfect cold disillusionment around himself. The forests are full of portals, he’s certain of that much from the wards, but he hasn’t been able to approach any of them. With magic that is still fresh and delicate, he is following the ley lines, eventually kicking off his boots to tread the frozen soil more carefully. Aggressive, untouchable magic boils in its depths, and even as he knows the land does not want him, Voldemort longs to touch magic so primordial.

But the ley lines shift as they recognize his intentions. They’ll protect their own. And tonight they lead him to the same useless brambles they’ve led him to for days – a trap, misdirection. He assumes there is a portal somewhere within the bramble that will deliver him somewhere unpleasant, but he is not without options, yet. He walks the ley lines, wondering how he might change their allegiance, as easily as he had changed the castle’s.

 

 _Sunday, February 21._ Harry was taken by five Aurors to Malin Beg, a seaside spot on the west coast of Ireland. (Not properly in the British Ministry’s domain or protection, but it was no more effort to extend the shield out here, and otherwise it’d pose a threat of land invasion to leave it unguarded anyway.) He brought Moira, who dug in wet soil all day. Nothing bad happened. Nothing happened at all. Herzog assisted in laying the salt and crystals, and pulled the edge of the shield taut for Harry to cast, and then Harry had five hours of nothing but casting. It would be excruciating if he hadn’t brought _Richard III_ along. He’d borrowed one of Voldemort’s spells too, to hold it open hands-free, so he sat perched on a high rock, wand spilling out Protego into the shimmering air as he read.

He’d also gotten word from the builders at the Slytherin estate: the house’s magic had stopped resisting them so stringently, so they could begin building the western wing, and would Harry like to walk the layout himself? Yes, he absolutely did; and with enough cajoling of Moody that Sunday, he was permitted to skive off his Monday morning charms and potions classes to join the builders.

 _Monday, February 22._ The air was damp and hung heavy over the fenlands when he took the portkey in. The estate looked nothing like it had when he’d last seen it – the original walls were enclosed in some sort of protective spell, but there was scaffolding of wood and wards outlining the rest of the ground floor. The exterior would all be in stonework, and there were vast pallets of smooth blue and green and gray blocks awaiting.

The foreman (forewoman, Harry revised as she approached) was an unexpectedly lithe witch named Tsakiris, who scarcely introduced herself before launching into a walkthrough. “The magic wasn’t as dormant as we expected we’d find, but you said you were repairing the wards? We secured them so the ground floor has been laid out. The kitchen must come first, because of the enchantments, so if you could walk the layout. It’d be more effective if he did it,” she said with a frown, “but… well.” The world knew Voldemort was abroad by now, if not where. “Mistletoe at the front entrance, powdered anthurium around the hearth, red salt where the floo will be….” She was striding ahead of him, gesturing without looking, and Harry had to nearly run to keep pace.

Tsakiris was not quite a patient teacher, but she wouldn’t entrust the task to any other builder. He was at least faintly familiar with these ritual elements from the airspace shield. They buried the herbs and outlined the floo in salt. It might have been Harry’s mind or perhaps the residual heat of the wards in the cold, but the house seemed… warmer. A place that would shelter them both.

Tsakiris had brought him back to the open space that would be the entry hall. “What are your wands made of?” she asked, studying the space for something he didn’t know.

“Mine’s holly. His is yew.” He hadn’t decided what he would do with the cypress wand yet, the one used by Riddle.

“Difficult woods, both of them,” she said in some dissatisfaction. “But we might find the groves of origin – for the door, or bannister, or mantelpiece. The greater the coordination, the greater the chance the house will accept you.”

“Uh, is there a chance that it won’t?” he asked nervously.

This got a faint smile. “Nearly none,” she said, and then she handed him powdered dragon scale to mark off the dining room.

As they worked, the builders were casting. And Harry felt stupid for not thinking about it before, that of course they wouldn’t be hoisting the materials into place like Muggles. But neither did they just levitate them into place. There was a lot of… negotiation happening, builders switching around stones until they were all beside others they’d allow near them, and some stones would struggle or turn the wrong way round. One, when a builder tried to use a sticking spell to keep it in place, launched itself at the wizard’s head, until he exploded it into dust in midair.

For some sick reason, Harry found himself grinning as he watched. The entire wixen world was barely-held-together chaos, and he felt so much affection for it.

“Blood magic on the cornerstone will be valuable, as well,” Tsakiris said as Harry pressed the last Diricawl feather where the sitting room would open into a courtyard. “But of course that comes last. This wing will take at least a month. Do you want to do anything in particular in the bedrooms above it?”

He had no idea. “Yes?” he hedged.

Tsakiris saw that he knew nothing. “The typical suite of protections, then,” she said. “We’ll have you back in a month. And he’ll be…?”

Harry’s stomach sort of clenched. “Probably not with me,” he said, and even as exacting as Tsakiris was, he saw relief in her features.

 

 _Friday, March 5._ Spring term turned out to feel infinitely more rushed and purposeful than the autumn had. Harry’s OWL and NEWT students had begun to care about their upcoming exams. Seventh and eighth years had begun fussing about post-Hogwarts life, careers and homes and such. (Hermione, having consulted Harry a great many times to ensure he still wanted to get a flat together, said she’d written some landlords and a real estate agent.) And the school governors had finally agreed to re-opening a dueling club. In spite of Snape’s threats, Harry was meant to be involved in it. He thought the governors might’ve reconsidered with all the Slytherins gone, which was shit. Or maybe they, like the rest of the world, felt a certain safety in Voldemort’s treaty.

The dueling club met in the evenings, on Wednesdays and Fridays. After dinner, they’d vanish the tables and clear out the great hall, occasionally adding pillows or dummies or replicas of weapons as needed. Much of the former DA stayed on hand to help. The Aurors assigned to the castle would stop in. As much as Camilla Brightbone disliked Harry, he’d nearly sweet-talked her into giving them a bit of the Auror training.

And then there was Malfoy. The other three Slytherins generally kept their distance from the dueling club – Harry wasn’t paying too much attention, but he thought they’d send one on as a scout each other, though never participating – but Malfoy had thrown himself into it. He only found out at this time that he had taken the DADA NEWT last summer as well, and gotten an O on it, so that was galling. What was even more galling was how good his footwork was, how precise. He must have learned from Bella. Harry found himself glowering a few times.

It was the first Friday of March, and they had about fifty students in the great hall that night – a good turnout, really. Harry was surrounded by third and fourth years, showing them a flame retardant spell. “Of course,” he said hesitantly, “to practice, you’ll need flames. I’ll, uh, stay around, shall I?”

The students paired off, with one side tossing a fireball and the other batting it away with the charm, in the shape of a shield. The magic would sizzle, creating ash on impact and making the air smell like lightning.

But after the fourth set of blistered fingers he’d healed (“Here, everyone gather up, you might as well learn Episkey tonight”), Harry was frantically rethinking the lesson. He had to teach them hand-eye coordination, really, because they were all quite miserable at it. But it had always come naturally to him. A born Seeker. “No, Vowell, you keep stepping _into_ the spell, you need to – “

“Here.” And then Malfoy was striding up to Vowell, grabbing her shoulders. “When he shoots, you pivot – no, the _other_ way – like that. Then turn the shield, so you’re not _behind_ it. Tanner, if you would?” He looked to the boy, his grip still on Vowell’s shoulders.

“Er.” Tanner seemed rather more reluctant to potentially set a teacher on fire.

“For god’s sake.” He looked to Harry. “Do _you_ have the faintest what I’ve shown them?”

“ _Yes_.” (Prick.) And, if only to relieve Vowell of her captivity, he stepped forward to demonstrate. “On three, then.”

He counted off, and at three, hurled a fireball –

And so did Malfoy. Colliding, the spells made an improbable noise of two pots banged together, and then exploded in a shower of sparks. “Oh – shit – “ Harry’s Protego shielded most of it, while Malfoy had the presence of mind to actually cast the flame retardant charm above them.

“Why would you assume _you_ were offense?” Malfoy demanded when none of the kids were on fire anymore.

“Because it was _your_ maneuver. You show them your little pirouette.”

“But if even a foolhardy, flailing _Gryffindor_ ” (this he said like an epithet) “could manage it, then certainly your students could.”

Somehow, at the phrase _your students_ , Harry snapped back to attention. “They are,” he said. “And they’re your students too.” His glare, he hoped, meant _We’re not going to undermine each other in front of them._ Lifting his wand: “Again? Uh, I’ll block.”

Malfoy looked – _disappointed_? His gaze had glittered a moment earlier as he spat insults, but now he too had remembered himself. He straightened his posture into something professional. “Yes,” he said. “You all – clear out, or Potter will trip on you. He’s quite useless on land.”

He got it the second time, swinging the shield of magic out ninety degrees to absorb the flame as he himself stepped out of the way. But his stance was too narrow, and Malfoy snorted when he was knocked sideways. “They’ll learn by example,” he said. “What did Professor Potter do wrong?” he addressed the students.

They all wibbled nervously, unwilling to correct him. “I need a wider stance,” Harry answered for them, fixing it. “Malfoy – Professor – do it again.”

“With pleasure.”

Thrice more, until Malfoy was satisfied with him. Then the students moved back into pairs, and Malfoy and Harry stepped aside to watch. Nobody set themselves on fire this time.

But Harry realized that he missed the – what? sarcasm, bitterness, competition – as well. That he was as disappointed as Malfoy that they had to maintain a veneer of professionalism. Looking over: “Want to go flying tomorrow?”

Malfoy arched an eyebrow without properly looking over. “With you?”

“Well, yeah. Bring a snitch?”

“Surely you already got a _project_ enough in rehabilitating him.”

“Wanker,” Harry admonished him. (A student looked over her shoulder at them, scandalized. He dropped his voice.) “I miss Quidditch. You must, too. We wouldn’t have to, y’know, talk.”

“And miss out on your sparkling wit?”

Harry grinned in response, to annoy Malfoy. “Around two, then?”

“Yes.”

 

That night, for the first time in awhile, diadem-Riddle spent time in Harry’s suite, his legs kicked over Harry’s knees in bed so they could share magic in touch. Riddle had the Panopticon; Harry, still exhausted and satisfied from the dueling club, only had _Richard III_ open in his lap, without really reading it. “I need to see the estate,” Riddle said, apropos of nothing.

Harry looked up. “You _need_ to?”

“Yes,” he said. “For which you should thank me. There are some quite antagonistic wards still present.”

Harry sighed. “You left them strategically, then?” Riddle smiled, never one to deny what Harry accused him of. “Look, if you just want to see it…. They wrote me last week, actually. The kitchen’s taking longer than expected, because the master bedroom will be built right above it and the wards….” He made a vague gesture. “I’ll take you tomorrow morning, anyway. Would you stay?”

“Yes.”

Having just heard the same crisp _yes_ from Malfoy earlier, he sort of smiled. “Right. Good.” Tucking his legs beneath him, he nodded to the Panopticon. “Any crisis today?”

He meant it lightly but Riddle gave him a scathing look. “Surely it’s your job to know?”

“Not yet. It will be.”

“The religious Muggles would burn us at the stake, if they could. Again.”

“Really?” He picked up the faux-newspaper. _Archbishop instructs boycott of magic-enhanced products_ , ran one headline. Then further down the page, an op-ed written by someone in a priest’s collar: _What is our moral imperative toward magic?_

“Their economy – their entire world – hasn’t been infiltrated by magic yet. But they flatter themselves by thinking it has.” Riddle had drawn himself upright now, voice low and visage serious. “Certainly the wixen economy would benefit by more points of contact – and really, that’s Voldemort’s idea but every investor in the wizarding world is behind it – but the _permeability_ makes the Muggles nervous.”

“We need….” _A committee_ , he nearly concluded, making his transformation into a Ministry sod complete. “A figurehead of a sort. Not me,” he added. “I don’t know anything about their religion. But some Muggleborn, who can talk about how it… it all goes together.”

“To promise that we wouldn’t take away their god?”

“Yeah.”

“Mm. I’m not sure we won’t,” he said, unimpressed. “It’s a rather different cosmology. Any fourth year could accomplish most of Christ’s _miracles_.”

Harry choked on laughter. Even if he wasn’t religious, he recognized blasphemy when he heard it. “I wrote to Moody once,” he said. “To say I’d be at any, I dunno, meeting or press conference or anything. He didn’t need me.”

“I should think not. A _meeting_. What, to negotiate whether their savior was a magician? What good would it do.” At Harry’s glare, he shrugged. “As with every era of persecution in our history, we may retaliate and then retreat where they’ll never find us. Harry, we _are_ gods in their sense of the word. It would shame us to negotiate.”

Somehow he had infinitely more patience for Voldemort than for Riddle. “Well, we live with them now,” he said with finality.

“You do,” Riddle said with utter distaste, and Harry only just avoided strangling him.

 

 _Saturday, March 6._ That night, he awoke in a pool of his own blood.

Riddle had slept beside him, had shaken him awake. His face didn’t have the same snarky lines in it – there was something _fearful_ in the way Riddle looked at him, and that made everything so much worse.

Harry was still bleary, disoriented. Probably woozy from – christ, as his hands slipped over his own torso, he found much more blood than he’d expected. The cuts weren’t deep, but they covered his entire torso. Some ran parallel, some criss-crossed. He hadn’t lit the sconces, preferring not to see the damage too clearly. “I need to go to the hospital wing,” he said faintly, grabbing a robe that he didn’t mind bleeding on.

Riddle was at once helpful and collected, casting analgesics and a temporary bandage charm to staunch a bit of it. “I am coming.”

“Why?” Harry said blankly, pulling on his trainers.

Riddle glared and didn’t properly answer him. “Don’t be stupid.”

Oh. It had never even occurred to him that Riddle could possibly give a shit about him. Even as dizzy as he was, that thought bewildered him for a moment. “I guess it’d cause problems for you if I died,” he said at last, so they didn’t have to _talk_ about it as well. Glare intensified.

So with Riddle disillusioned and casting a Mobilicorpus to make walking a little less excruciating, he’d probably make it one floor up to the infirmary. “And if I pass out,” Harry said, “just leave me. The castle will be awake in a few hours anyway.”

“Stop talking,” Riddle said.

The pain was warm and deep, radiating toward his fingertips. Before they went, he asked softly, “Do you know what happened?”

“No.”

“Does it hurt you, too?”

A pause, as though only just considering it. “Yes.”

“Huh.” He’d apologize, but it wasn’t exactly his fault. And even as thoroughly as he understood the physical and mental connection between himself and Voldemort, Riddle’s place in it was still quite mystifying. He shrugged, to his own distress.

Nearly at the door, Harry had the last minute brilliant thought to grab their diary. Trying not to get too many bloody fingerprints on his wand: “Accio – ”

Something went hideously wrong: first there was a warm surge of magic, and then a _ripping_ sensation deep in his soul. His teeth clenched as his vision went white for a moment, and he heard his wand clatter on the stones.

Riddle’s hands were on him for the first time, grabbing an elbow before he fell to the floor. “We need to go,” Harry heard his voice.

“Fine, yeah.” He tasted blood. His wand and the diary were being shoved in his hands, and Riddle was pulling him out.

The way they went – Riddle still with a hand on Harry’s elbow, pushing open doors – would not have passed any scrutiny whatsoever if they’d been seen. Disillusionment was at least as much about behaving inconspicuously as it was about being invisible. But the corridors were quiet anyway. Harry tried not to bleed too much on the flagstones.

The hospital wing had alarmed wards on its doors, for obvious reasons. “I’ve got it,” Harry muttered, reaching for the frosted glass door. “Lavender’s keen, she’d notice you. You should go.”

Riddle let him go, a little too abruptly, and Harry gathered that he was offended. “Sorry, thanks,” he added, his mind quite muddled by now. “Thank you.”

“She should fix your magic first. You’ll never heal without it.”

He’d had this suspicion too, that this was a cursed wound of some sort, not something to be cured with household magic. So his own magic would be foundational. “Yeah,” he said, and let himself in.

All of the hospital beds were empty, and the wing was dark. He let himself fall on the nearest bed, knowing Lavender had been awoken by the wards anyway. Sorry, Lav.

And indeed, a moment later, the door of her suite creaked open. “Hello?” Her steps were decisive across the floor. “Oh – Harry – “

She was casting diagnostic spells even as she strode toward him. His robes were clinging to him by now and so he peeled them open, since now was not the time to be shy. “I woke up bleeding,” he said. “And my magic….”

Most of the diagnostics manifested as swirls of light and color that made no sense to him, but Lavenderr’s face went serious as she surveyed them. “Lie back,” she said, conjuring a few potions. “The blood-staunching spell – I’ll need it off.”

Oh shit. Harry probably couldn’t cast Finite right now, so it really beggared belief that he could’ve cast Riddle’s spell to begin with. “Could you take it off?” he asked, knowing at least that Lavender would have no idea what to be suspicious _of_ , anyway.

She did, her forehead knitting; and then she cast a couple spells of her own. They sizzled on his skin, making him hiss, but both he and Lavender knew that didn’t mean to stop. They’d both endured worse.

But her spells of stabilization were slipping off, less effective if not totally ineffective. “What….”

“It. Um.” Harry felt he only had the strength to explain if he let his eyes fall closed for a moment. “Sometimes – recently – Voldemort and I have shared injuries. His bruises show up on me. But it’s never even hurt before. It’s never been _this_.”

“Stay awake,” Lavender said, and he had to force himself to look at her. How strange that he didn’t have the benefit of adrenaline, this time. “So… he did this?”

“God, no,” he said. “Someone did it to _him_.” As more of the blood was siphoned off his torso, the marks that were revealed looked more like claw marks. “I think… he was tracking down werewolves.”

Lavender’s expression didn’t change, but it was hideous to say it to her anyway. “The full moon was a few days ago,” she said. “And lycanthropy can only be transmitted by mouth, anyway.”

He held back the hideous statement _I wasn’t worried_ , but really he was too muddled to even think that far. “They’d just want to kill him. Or maybe me. Anyway, our magic….” He made a gesture that didn’t at all capture _Our magic is so intertwined, you can’t properly cast on me alone._

“Harry.” For the first time, her expression slipped. “That sounds dangerous. Is the Ministry – whoever might work in that sort of magic – looking at, er, separating you?” She handed him a potion.

“No,” he said, knowing it sounded stupid. “It’s important, really, that the Ministry doesn’t care about him, but won’t let _me_ die, anyway.” He offered a faint smile. “He’ll be able to heal himself, and that’ll be better for me. Until then, could you just, uh, glue me together?”

Wrinkling her nose at the request, she passed him another bottle.

 

He’d have to sleep in here tonight, but Lavender said he didn’t have to go to St. Mungo’s, anyway. The injuries hadn’t pierced any organs, hadn’t really done anything but surface-level damage and blood loss. She said he was lucky; he hoped Voldemort had been similarly so. She ended up casting a spell not dissimilar from gluing him together, really – it was a lightweight membrane-type spell that wrapped around his torso, pinching all his healing cuts closed. “There’s nothing I can do for your magic,” she said. “It will replenish itself in a few days. I’ll find you a specialist if it doesn’t.” Stepping back: “Do you need anything?”

“Just leave a light on,” he requested. “I’ll sleep soon.”

Her disapproving noise reminded him of Madam Pomfrey, and he smiled a bit wistfully. Lavender left.

But then he was alone, reaching for the diary rather haphazardly. **_What happened?_** He wrote first, then, feeling like a berk, wrote below it, **_Are you alright?_**

Nothing. The silence fueled the worst sort of paranoia, that Voldemort was dying or incapacitated or captured. He’d said the Humnerë would drain his magic. Or if it was werewolves – he didn’t quite know how creature magic worked, but they’d have similar abilities, right? Or something. He considered first asking Hermione to look it up for him, second to ask Riddle, and third to go look for himself.

It might be quicker to find Voldemort in sleep, but of course he was too anxious to sleep. Baobab, he needed baobab to settle his stupid, worried mind.

Lavender hadn’t yet fallen back asleep, so he didn’t feel too bad for knocking on her door again. “I left you dreamless sleep,” she said when he asked.

“It, um. I can’t. It’s complicated.” Even though it wasn’t, really, but he’d distressed her enough with his connection to Voldemort already.

“Mm,” she said, taking out a key to unlock her massive cabinet. “Is he going to kill you, then,” she asked, only half-wry, “one way or another?”

“We’re keeping each other alive,” he said, “in a lot of different ways. I like it, really.”

Lavender’s pursed mouth indicated how crap she thought his values were. She handed him the baobab anyway. “Do you want to be awake for breakfast?” she asked. “You’d probably be fine to go, if you’re careful.”

He nearly said that was fine, he had nothing to do this weekend but _be careful_ – but no, that wasn’t right. Malfoy, he had to go flying with Malfoy today, and it felt like too hard-won an agreement to go back on. “Sure, thanks,” he said graciously, mentioning nothing of Quidditch.

He tossed back the baobab with a glass of water in bed. Voldemort still hadn’t written back, and he tried not to gaze at the blank page before him for too long, imagining what it could mean. Slumped against the pillows, he found himself weirdly wishing for Riddle’s presence beside him. His magic helped; but Harry was also just bad at falling asleep alone these days. Instead he slid his thumb in his mouth, pushing at their connection.

Sleep happened all at once, unnaturally. And then, thank god, he was in Voldemort’s consciousness. It hurt them both, but he was alive, and Harry’s relief ameliorated something.

Voldemort was in… a church? A large space with high ceilings and intricate windows. “Yes,” he said in an undertone. “No longer in use. This entire country is filled with ruins.”

 _Are you alright?_ Harry thinks rather desperately.

Quietly Voldemort peels back his robes. Even in the faint light of the distant sconces, they can see the bloodied incisions down his torso. It looks worse than Harry’s, maybe because Voldemort is so much thinner and more fragile, or maybe just because Harry feels more concern for Voldemort than he does for himself.

And then Voldemort catches his question of who did it, whether it was werewolves or some other clawed monster. “No,” he says. “A curse. Perhaps predicated on creature magic, but they never touched me.” A pause. “How did you know?”

 _I woke up bleeding_ , Harry thinks. _Less than you, though_.

He hadn’t expected any particular reaction from Voldemort – they’d both been in peril so often, it didn’t even seem interesting. So he is startled at Voldemort’s sudden _anger_ , so intense that Harry would’ve scrambled backwards if they’d been together. _Stop, stop_ , he is thinking in a panic as their soul is set on fire.

He can’t stop. For all of Voldemort’s immaculate control and self-determination and power, anger still consumes him. “You need to be kept alive,” he says, biting out his words in staccato. “I should’ve been able to keep you safe.”

Their connection is closer than either of them understands, much less is able to control. Voldemort is… guilty, and worried for him, and shamed at his own vulnerability, and he can only express all of this in anger. Harry’s own feelings recede at realizing it. _I’m alright,_ he thinks. _The diadem woke me up._

“How fortuitous,” Voldemort says darkly.

_Lavender used this spell like a membrane, you should…._

“I have,” he intercepts the thought. “The effects of the curse haven’t made themselves entirely apparent, but I won’t bleed out.”

_Do you still have your magic?_

“… No,” he says. “Or, not much of it. Blood loss itself may drain magic, it might be a curse, it might be the ley lines resisting me. You don’t either, then,” he says flatly.

_Let me give you what I’ve got._

It is indicative of just how wounded Voldemort actually is that he doesn’t immediately dismiss this offer. “You won’t need it?”

_Not more than you._

“Don’t do anything dangerous this week,” Voldemort mutters.

Harry can promise nothing, he thinks with some amusement, but then he’s pressing open their Legilimency, passing along the flickering bit of magic. Voldemort conjures and drinks one of the potions they decanted, the magic replenishing ones, and otherwise he would’ve saved them for more dire circumstances but not if the void is also killing Harry….

Behind them, the door bangs open.

Voldemort is on his feet immediately, quick and reckless so he’s bleeding again. Harry shoves magic at him now – it will be their survival if anything will.

“Old magic is here,” a silky voice says. The person is alone, so it seems, and instead of a wand they wield a staff of some glinting, boiling metal. Harry wants to study it but Voldemort’s looking elsewhere, examining the space for exits. It’s a small church relatively, and empty, with only the entrance through which the Dëshmitar has just walked through.

( _Oh_ , Harry thinks faintly. The coven leader, the one presumed missing. There was nothing distinctive about her figure – she could’ve been a Dementor really.)

“Older than us, you imagined?” she adds, striding forward, flipping her hood back. She’s ethereal but not pretty, with pale eyes and a complexion not unlike Voldemort’s own. Long hair glitters like her staff. Voldemort throws up a shield as she approached; with a motion like batting away a fly she destroys it. “It’s unusually _brave_ of you to return. Unusually brave of you to believe you could destroy us, either.” Another motion to bat away Voldemort’s spells – ones that would destroy the church, pop the windows, rip open the wards so that he might escape.

“They said you were missing,” he says. It is a distraction, even as he casts a spell that isn’t quite Apparition. She wrenches the power from him.

“I was _gone_ ,” she says, with something like distaste. “They really ought to have more faith than that, no?” And then she pulls the wards in closer, and the walls with them. Harry is drained and so is Voldemort; they could feel the tremors in his limbs.

They can’t kill each other, and that makes the entire situation more volatile. Voldemort’s spells are meant to impede her – swirls of water and smoke between them, objects flung in her path. Each of them she dismisses with a wave of her staff. “This land _loves_ me,” she says, “in a way you’ll never know. They intend for you to die here.”

At last his magic fails entirely, and Harry is trapped, and he thinks they’ll both die. Without any Occlumency, this thought reaches Voldemort, and he nearly chokes on it along with the Dëshmitar’s words. “Presumably,” he agrees, even as he shoves at Harry the thought, _I’m sorry, nobody would say anything so ruthless to you_. Harry feels faint. “And you, Lady?” His hand reaches back, grasping a pew for stability.

“Kill you?” she says with scorn. “No.”

“You don’t need me for anything else, certainly.”

“Mm.” A tug of her lips. “You have no leverage, anyway.”

“No,” he says. “Nor any real investment. I thought we’d parted ways a very long time ago.” By now, his wand hangs by his side. The Dëshmitar has encased the church in a shimmering bubble, containing him in foreign magic.

“We knew you’d returned in your dispossession,” she says.

He lifts a shoulder minutely. “Of no use to you.”

“Not without a soul, no.”

His lips barely move in a smile. “I’ve done without,” he says. “I am made of little more than borrowed flesh and an inability to die.”

She steps in now, gaze glittering. “You are an interloper to immortality,” she says. “You may yet be useful, and I have advocated to keep you here. In part for your magic, but also as a curiosity, the human who’s touched immortality,” she says. “But then I heard you’d already been made one, by some quite powerful men. Your allegiance to the British Ministry these days is admirable.”

Voldemort shoves back his disgust, and all the implications of what she knows. _How did she know?_ “You are the patriot.”

“Mm,” she says appreciatively. “Yes, I am. I’ve grown impatient with opportunists, anyway. This land’s magic curves toward me as flowers toward the sun,” she says – and, to demonstrate her point, apparates them both in a _crack_ , landing lightly in a clearing. It shimmers with the same magic of imprisonment. “It seems that your Ministry finds you more valuable alive than dead, and I’m inclined to agree. For now, at least.”

“They won’t rescue me. If you have followed me so carefully, you’d know that I’ve been exiled.”

“Harry hasn’t.” She looks mischievously into Voldemort’s gaze – _past_ his gaze, really. “Hello, Harry Potter. The savior. We’ll, mm, extract you soon.”

No. No, no, no. He forgets himself, angry and panicked and violated, and his abrupt feelings engulf their mind painfully. Voldemort bites back a hiss of pain. And in that moment the magic beneath them rises in a wave, smothering them both –

Voldemort only has a moment. _I love you_ , he thinks fiercely, without the fear that usually accompanies it. And then he pulls at the last magic that remained between them, the strand enabling their Legilimency. A snap like a rubber band in their soul, everything going dark, and Voldemort throwing himself toward a weak spot in the undulating magic – Curses hit him in the back painfully – An explosion – Bloodied darkness –

 

Harry sat bolt upright, a horrid cry escaping him. His chest hurt. No, his _soul_ hurt. They’d never been so forcibly separated before. But as he watched his own body in bed anxiously, no new injuries bloomed on his skin. It didn’t quite soothe him, but it was better than nothing.

He didn’t sleep. He gripped the diary tight in his lap as he deliberated what to tell the Aurors. _Whether_ to tell the Aurors. The comment that they were hoping for Voldemort’s death still stung viciously.

In the end he cast Auxilio, to relay what he’d seen. Rye and Squire were on the grounds this week; they could determine what to do with the information.

But the Aurors didn’t come. Harry sat in anxious quiet, waiting for them. Voldemort didn’t write but Harry didn’t expect him to.

It must have been twenty minutes before the door swung open. Squire let herself in. “Potter?”

“Yeah. Uh.” She already looked imposed upon, robes rumpled and face flushed. “Is everything alright?”

“Now,” she said grimly. “There was a tapestry in the Slytherin common room that caught fire. The wards contained it, but it was an unusual curse.”

His stomach twisted. “It was supposed to be finished.”

“Was it?”

He hadn’t expected the bitter suspicion he heard in her voice. He blinked at her. “Because the Slytherins are… gone? Anyway – I saw Voldemort.”

Squire set her jaw and shoulders straight. “You saw him.”

“In sleep. It’s a thing… I thought you should know what happened.”

So he recounted everything he’d seen, from waking up bleeding through Voldemort with the Dëshmitar, to their abrupt separation. “I haven’t gotten any more injured,” he said, gesturing to the cuts that climbed up to his collarbone. “So… he’s alive. I think.”

“Mm.” She’d taken out a portfolio where Aurors recorded case notes. “We won’t go in for him.”

“No.” He wouldn’t want them to try. “But we didn’t know, ah, the politics of it all over there. They said the coven leader had gone missing before.”

“Fine,” Squire said, writing the last of her notes. When Harry gave her a look of unpleasant surprise, she shrugged. “I’ll pass it along to international affairs. Did you expect more?”

“I guess not.” Even still he strained with fear, that he wanted to rescue Voldemort himself. The fractures of his magic and soul made it all seem dire. “Thanks,” he muttered, releasing Squire so he could be alone.

Lavender authorized him to go for breakfast; instead he walked gingerly back to his suite, praying he’d find the Horcrux there. The dungeons smelled of smoke and it made him jumpy. Smoke smelled like battle, the association was just too strong.

Abzu let him into his corridor. As soon as he entered, Ron and Hermione’s door swung open. “Harry!” Ron hissed, eyes wide. “What happened – you were gone when they evacuated the dungeons – “

If he told them what all had happened, they might talk him out of flying, which would be the only saving grace of this miserable day otherwise. “I’m fine. Uh, nightmares,” he said, because that sounded personal enough and Voldemort-related enough that they wouldn’t pursue it.

“Oh, Harry,” Hermione sighed as she came up behind Ron. “Nothing real?”

“I’ve already told the Aurors. They’ll handle it.” Harry was reaching for his own door. “Sorry – I haven’t slept much – but I guess nobody did – “

“Oh,” Hermione said, waving him off. “Yes, go, go. We don’t mean to keep you.”

He opened his door cautiously, in case Riddle should already be in there. But the room was clear, as he’d left it. The blood stains on his sheets were ghastly. Instead of summoning a house elf to bring new sheets, he got nearly all of it out with Scourgify, just before falling back into bed.

 

The false windows charmed on his wall were bright when he was awoken by the door opening. At first he panicked, that nobody should be able to open the door but him. But – of course – Riddle let himself in a moment later. He gave Harry a look of faint disgust at still finding him asleep.

“What happened?” Harry asked, before Riddle could say anything. “You left and then I hear the dungeons caught fire.” He sat up, throwing the blankets around his bare shoulders.

“Mm.” He dropped Harry’s cloak over the back of a sofa. “Yes.”

“… Well?”

An arch of his brows, and he said nothing. Harry hissed air through his teeth. “You know more than any of them. D'you know what it was?”

A pause, that made him anticipate Riddle wouldn’t answer at all. Then: “No. Not exactly. It was some sort of old magic. A triggered ward, perhaps.”

“Right.” It could have been happenstance, but after all the previous aggressions against the Slytherins…. His stomach hurt. “Uh, will you go out again?”

“Yes. I had to return to give you magic.” He gave Harry a reproachful look.

“Oh, have you? Cheers.” He moved to give Riddle space on the bed. “I gave mine to him,” he said, and then he had to recount the dream to Riddle.

He was quiet when Harry concluded. “She was important to me, at one time,” he said. “I learned more about dueling from her than anyone. To have her attention again now….” His hair, loose today, swung over his shoulders as he shook his head faintly.

“Can you do anything? For her. Him. Whatever.”

“No.”

Sometimes Riddle was so obliging, he forgot when an arse he fundamentally was. “Right,” he said, moving to get up. He had enough magic that he didn’t feel like dying anymore, at least. “See you tonight, then?” He moved to get dressed in the bath – an unnecessary modesty, but one he’d insist on anyway. When he emerged again, Riddle was gone.

Lunch was somber and scandalized – most of the news of the fire had properly spread over breakfast, so only unreliable gossip and speculation was left. Harry took a seat beside Ron. “Alright?”

He shrugged, picking at the toastie before him. “Slytherins are here, at least. They weren’t this morning.”

Harry scanned the room until he found the tight cluster of Slytherins near the back of the hall. Zabini, Bulstrode, Greengrass – and Malfoy, who should properly be at the head table, but nobody would say anything to him now. He seemed to feel Harry’s gaze too, because he looked up only briefly, making cool eye contact. In Malfoy parlance, the look indicated their game was still on.

Harry had to dodge concerned questions from Hagrid, Remus, and (bizarrely) Slughorn. He’d brought the rest of his Quidditch gear out, shrunk in a pocket so that after lunch he went straight for the locker room.

It had been too long, he thought as he trimmed his broom. He’d been hopelessly busy, and sometimes he felt something like resentment toward Quidditch, that he’d been cheated out of a seventh year playing. As he ran broomstick polish around the handle, the locker room door swung open.

Malfoy, barely taking him in. “You are barbaric,” he said as he passed, scarcely glancing at – well – the jerking off motion Harry was applying to his broom handle.

“Look, there’s not many ways to handle such a….” The phrase _phallic object_ died on his lips, but it didn’t matter because Malfoy was already among the Slytherin lockers at the far side of the room. Dammit.

They moved without talking. Harry brought out a snitch, unlocking the equipment shed with Ginny’s key. Malfoy took the case immediately.

He let it go while they were still grounded; they kicked off after a five second head start. The abrupt motion of kicking off, and the wind pressing his uniform against his chest, made some of his wounds open wetly. He refused to show it.

The day was crisp, if colorless. The snow was melting off the grounds in patches, making the ground wet and shimmery. He did a couple loops, forgetting Malfoy and the snitch for a minute. It felt really good.

And then they settled at about the same altitude, scanning the sky for the snitch. Harry’s skills were rusty, and he was fidgeting on his broom, running rolls and dives until Malfoy snapped, “Settle down.”

Harry grinned at him as he hung upside down like a sloth, dangling one hand into the sky. “Make me.” It was childish, but… he hadn’t had many opportunities to be childish recently.

Malfoy rolled his eyes at him, but then his gaze snapped behind Harry’s head. He dove right for him, and Harry might’ve squawked like a chicken as he threw himself out of the way. “Are you kidding, you shit – “ But Malfoy hadn’t been feinting, and he was already gone. Swearing heartily, Harry dove after him.

But it was useless – Malfoy had seized the snitch fifty feet below him already, holding it up so it glinted. Harry descended in a lazy spiral, trying not to be hurt at his stupid failure. “You never said what you’d give me when I won,” Malfoy called up. His cheeks were flush, and his face looked brighter than it had in… well, months probably. All year.

“What I’d _give_ you?” Harry repeated in incredulity. “I dunno. Maybe I’ll stand on the high table and recite a poem about you. What’re those fancy poems called? Elegies? Requiems?”

“Those are for the dead, you complete oaf.”

Harry shrugged, content in his middle class background for the moment. “What do I get if I win?”

“Potter.” Malfoy still had the snitch clasped in his hand, its feathers poking out. “You’ve already lost.”

“Best of three. Or best of… whatever, we’ve got hours. I don’t want to….” He made a vague gesture toward the castle. He’d only brood and worry and angst on his own, today.

“Mm.” Malfoy pitched the snitch over his shoulder casually; they both let it go for the moment. “If I win, I get the Black tapestry from that wretched house. And if you win… I’ll graciously take the tapestry of nasty purebloods off your hands.”

“Oh.” Sirius had already been burned off; he had no emotional attachment to the rest of it. “Only if you take the portrait in the front hall, too.”

A flicker of a smile. “Aunt Walburga and I _commiserated_ ,” he pronounced. “About how shit the world has become. She’d be a good one to drink with. I hardly know all the family secrets, yet.”

Harry shuddered. Then, hopefully: “Take her house elves, too.”

“Like hell.”

He shrugged. Worth a try. “Did you know that house?” he asked in curiosity. “Your mother….”

“For a time. I was young. You can _have_ the house,” Malfoy added in distaste. “Everyone’s antipathy has warped its magic so much, it’s a wonder it hasn’t smothered you in your sleep.”

Harry quietly thought that Kreacher would get to it first, given half a chance. But Kreacher worked in the Hogwarts kitchen now, and there was no love lost between them. Still, he blinked at Malfoy. “You’re joking?”

An incredulous look. “Of course houses can turn on their occupants. Or help them, too. You saw how the castle, well, assisted your side.”

Harry didn’t bother to remind Malfoy that it was _his_ side too now, if he’d been sworn into the Order. He was right, anyway – the castle had bricked up strategic entrances and accessible windows; the rooms shuffled themselves to disorient Death Eaters; and the staircases trapped them a few times. “We didn’t know if it would,” he admitted. “Because Voldemort’s… he’s,” he amended reluctantly at Malfoy’s flinch, “got founder’s blood. We thought it might choose its allegiance with him instead.”

“Wonder why it didn’t,” Malfoy said, but a bit dully, and they had to get off this conversation now.

“So,” Harry raised his eyebrows, “for Auntie Walburga then?”

“Potter, don’t be a twat.” And then Malfoy shot off into the sky, once more leaving Harry to chase him.

They spent the afternoon out there, even after Malfoy had thoroughly kicked Harry’s arse and gloated about it liberally. Watching the way he flew – Malfoy had always been more precise than Harry, but now he was reckless, making dodgy (and in some cases, _definitely_ non-regulation) moves to grab the snitch, twelve times of sixteen. It was humiliating. But it reminded Harry oddly of what Voldemort had said of Bella, why she was the most dangerous —that after Azkaban, she fought like she didn’t care if she lived. Malfoy may not want to die exactly, but a lot of his precision and poise had been eroded in the past year.

They went in only when it’d gotten too dark to play any longer. Harry was unsticking his shirt from his chest as they entered the locker room; when he shrugged off his outer robe, Malfoy happened to look back, and hissed. “You idiot. You reckless idiot.”

Oh. Looking down at himself, he’d bled through his undershirt quite a bit. “It’s nothing,” he muttered, summoning a towel so he could undress in the showers.

“That is abhorrent,” Malfoy said, and he looked rather strained at the sight of blood, honestly. “Did… he do that to you?”

Harry nearly laughed. By the tone of Malfoy’s voice, he’d assumed it was some hideous sex thing. “No. Someone did it to _him_.” He cranked open the tap.

Malfoy didn’t pursue this, but showered at the other end of the row. When Harry was stepping out, towel wrapped all the way up his chest to conceal both his injuries and nipple rings, he asked casually, “Next weekend?”

“You haven’t got anything else I want.”

He turned so Malfoy could properly see his eyeroll. “Right. Pick up Aunt Walburga whenever you want. Good luck getting her off the wall.”

“Sweet talk and diplomacy. Two things you supposedly excel at.” Malfoy too threw on a towel (a _monogrammed_ one, the prat). “But Gryffindors never had had finesse, have you?”

“Just my boyish charm,” Harry said wearily, and it was sort of true. “See you at dinner.”

 

That night, they congregated in the Gryffindor common room to properly celebrate Ron’s birthday, which had been a few days prior. All the eighth years had gathered, even the Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs; and Ginny brought down some of the lower years. Harry hadn’t expected to see Ginny at all – she’d been gone even more often than he was – so he lifted his chin in her direction when they had a moment. “Alright?”

Ginny sighed, tipping back an indecent amount of fairy mead. “She’s out of St. Mungo’s for now. She still goes back for outpatient work. It took her voice, but they don’t think it’s permanent.”

Guilt crawled along his insides. He hadn’t gone to see Tonks in the past month, since the attack. “Sorry,” he said. “Does she need anything…?”

“You know, she might.” Ginny looked very seriously at him. “What would he know of whatever this magic is?”

“Uh. He knows a lot. But we got the sense… she wouldn’t let him near her. Smart, really.”

Ginny scowled. “Reckless,” she said. “She’s relying on nonverbal magic now of course, and it’s not helping. She’ll never heal if she’s depleting all her magic on such simple things.”

  
“Oh. Yeah.” He wanted to tell her about Voldemort that morning, that the last thought he caught in their mind was that they had to remain separated, that it was hardly worth it to imperil Harry for only a bit of magic. But saying all that again sounded exhausting. “I could ask him,” he lied.

“Just what the healers might have missed. They still don’t even _understand_ the curse, they’ve just confined it a bit.” Another swallow of mead. “Moody’s over a lot. And the rest of the Order, when they can.” She looked up again. “You can’t show me how to share magic, can you?”

“Uh. Hm.” He set down his whiskey. “I could try. I don’t think it’d hurt.”

So they experimented for a quarter hour at least. It looked like they were holding hands in a remote corner of the sofas, which was likely scandalous, (Harry was a married man, he thought with something like hysteria) but everyone was rapidly getting pissed anyway.

He showed her a few times first. “There’s runes too, I’ll write them out for you, but you should start out just feeling it. It’s like wandless magic,” he tried out, “only you’ve got to keep your magic… undefined? So it doesn’t feel like a spell at all. I always get this slack feeling in my forearms….” And then he pressed a bit of magic into Ginny’s hands. “Can you feel that?”

She frowned. “It’s a bit like chocolate.”

He hadn’t made the comparison before, but – “Yeah, it is.”

“But it doesn’t feel like magic.”

“I’m definitely not just giving him nice feelings.”

Shrugging, Ginny pulled out her wand, shooting off a few sparks. “I don’t….”

“Again,” he said decisively. He really wanted this to work.

But another stretch of experimentation, and while the anti-depressant bit of shared magic was consistent, they couldn’t actually use the magic _as_ magic. Hermione had approached with curiosity, seeing the apparently unbelievable sight of them doing something somewhat studious. “It’s thermodynamics,” she mused as Ginny threw her hands in her lap.

Harry stared; Ginny squinted. “Sounds Muggle.”

“It…. If it is, it’s only because wixes are so incurious about the natural world,” Hermione said. “The laws of thermodynamics say – well, that making useable energy is more difficult than runoff energy. Heat in their case, but perhaps this sort of benign magic in ours.”

“Voldemort really does use my magic.”

Her lips puckered, because she still disapproved of it all. “You’re rather exceptional, though. I’ve never heard of sharing magic otherwise – except in other horrid circumstances like possession, or the Imperius.”

Harry was fairly frustrated because he and Ginny had been having a good time alone as well, and he just didn’t want to defend Voldemort tonight anyway. “Alright,” he shrugged her off. “Gin – I’ll write. I will.” No need to add that contact was unreliable at best; they all already knew. He threw back his whiskey.

Within a few hours, they’d charmed on a radio, shoved the sofas against the walls. Everyone was wildly drunk. Juniper, the Gryffindor prefect, had come down to chew them out, and when she saw it was the eighth years she’d shrunk back a bit and Hermione cast a hasty silencing charm around the common room to contain their chaos, at least. Ron had a bright orange fizzy drink in hand and a crown on his head. It was a good look for him.

Padma had smuggled in a bubble pipe, and near the end of the night they all fell before it. “Ah,” Ron sighed, after blowing a rather talented cherry-tinged bubble high in the air. “You all are the greatest. How is our year just the greatest?”

They were all similarly drunk and sentimental (with the possible exception of Harry, who drank often enough with Voldemort to have a bit more of a tolerance), so murmurs of agreement ran around the circle. “Seamus would’ve blown up something in the hearth by now,” Ron went on, smile a bit wistful as he dropped his head backwards on the sofa.

“Susan was going to be a healer,” Justin said, with a similar look. “She would’ve fixed us back up.”

“Assuming she didn’t think we should all learn our lesson,” Lisa added.

This was… hard, and good. The memorial wall on the fourth floor meant a lot, to acknowledge the months they’d spent in the war, but they rarely talked about it as well. “I dunno if the Aurors want me,” Ron went on, fiddling with his glass, “but the weaponry we got to work on….” He nodded to Ginny, who’d been involved too. “I’d be happy doing that again.”

Apparently this was news to Hermione, judging by the look on her face. But she only said, “I wrote to Neville recently. About uni, you know. He said they’re lifting fees for them. All of them.”

Lisa and Terry, their Ravenclaws here, nodded. “It’ll be good for us,” Lisa said. “Use the Muggle money… they’ve throttled us for so long.”

This was not a great sentiment about Muggles, but nobody was in a position to argue, exactly. Hermione fiddled with her glass. “It’ll open up teaching positions, research…. I still haven’t decided where I’m going. Singapore and Switzerland both have good arithmancy programs.”

“They’re both so far,” Ron murmured unhappily.

“You know we’re getting a place together,” she fake-chided him. “I can floo between them. Actually,” she brightened, “I’ve found a few by now. Mostly in Muggle neighborhoods. They’ve all got enough space to have people over, too. So….” She gestured to the room at large.

“So you’ll have us all over to celebrate leaving?” Ginny asked, only half-serious.

But Hermione nodded, so sincere. “Yeah. We will.”

Bubble pipe, mead, a burning liquor-potion only called Shatter (produced by Lisa, who’d always been good in potions). The conversation moved on but Harry was a little anxious, that Hermione hadn’t mentioned that he’d live with them too. He didn’t _have_ to, he’d have Voldemort’s estate, but in the interest of having his cake and eating it too…. He slid over to Hermione. This was awkward. “So, the flat….”

She’d been staring into her glass but looked up at him now. “I’ve got four options. They look really sweet. I’ve put in inquiries for floo installation if we get one, so you can get to London and Ron can get… wherever he’s going.”

Harry nearly melted in relief. “I didn’t know if I was still invited,” he admitted, though he could’ve easily said nothing.

Another sort-of disapproving look. “You’re always invited,” she said, “in anything we’re doing. Don’t be ridiculous.” Pause. “Do you still _want_ to live together?”

“Yeah.”

“Does _he_ want you living with us?”

“I don’t care,” Harry said, even if it was clearly a lie. “I’ve got a place with him too. I can do both.”

She tilted her head. “You never did tell us where it was.”

Oh. Well. It was far enough along, and already a good number of people – mostly the Aurors – knew. “We’re renovating the Slytherin estate.”

He couldn’t read the expression on her face, but it seemed closest to shock. “And Moody… let you?”

“Sort of, yeah.”

“He’s going to build himself a _fortress_ there.” She wasn’t happy with him, but she always got a little fierce when drunk. “Ancestral lands, in the middle of nowhere – they’ll never touch him again.”

“They’ll get plenty of chance to – “ _touch him_ just seemed so remarkably grim, “see him everyday in the Wizengamot. It was in our treaty. The one sworn on the wedding.”

This did not placate her; she squeezed her eyes shut briefly. “Voldemort in the Wizengamot,” she muttered.

“What? He’s doing good work! The money for university was his, isn’t it?” (He said it rhetorically though he didn’t exactly know; but Voldemort had a hand in all the educational reform these days.) “He’s changing things for good. In education, and trade, and transit, and money.” He didn’t understand everything Voldemort proposed for legislation, but it was a lot. “And he’s become really… important to them. Accomplished.” She looked unconvinced. “You’ll never trust him, then?”

“No,” she said flatly. “Someone doesn’t just drop _murderous tendencies_ like piano lessons. He will always have an ulterior motive. And… some people are just too far gone.”

“You seemed so happy for me, last month.” This hurt a lot. He thought the wedding had changed things.

“ _Relieved_ , I was relieved. That he’ll be a bit more… confined, in any case.”

He didn’t know what else to say to her. Hermione was brilliant, and brilliantly logical, and he could never tell her everything he believed about love or redemption. Even when she’d found Magick Most Evil with its passage about the healing capacity of remorse, she’d been incredibly dubious and dismissive. He swallowed his disappointment, accepting this disapproval as a constant in his life. “We’ll have a life together, you know. I want to have Christmas parties. I want to have one another’s kids over.”

Hermione arched her dark eyebrows. “Kids?”

He assumed the skepticism was about him and Voldemort, not herself and Ron. “Yeah. Not soon. We’ve both got a lot to do first.” _And he says I’m too young_ , which honestly felt a bit galling at the moment but whatever. “But someday, yeah. Won’t you?”

Ron chose the very worst moment to drop onto the couch beside Hermione, flushed and grinning. “Won’t we what?”

“Have children,” Hermione said in a brittle voice.

“Oh yeah. Loads. Maybe not as many as my parents,” Ron said at Hermione’s look.

“And then we’ll let them go over to the _Slytherin manor_ for a play date?” she hissed.

It took Ron a bit to catch up. “Harry, that place is in ruins. And probably infested with snakes.”

“I’m fixing it. Well, I’ve hired people to fix it,” he amended. _And I’ve kept the snakes, but we’re really alright with one another’s company now._

“Sounds… complicated,” Ron said, scrunching his nose up. He was quite drunk.

“It’ll be good enough to live in before school is out,” Harry said. “I designed it with a bunch of historians, we brought in preservationists and archaeologists, so it’s all accurate….”

Hermione’s scorn had melted into mere amazement. “When did you have _time_?”

He flashed her a smile. “It’s been a busy year for everyone.”

“Still.” She shook her head. “He’s so…emotionally ill-equipped to be a father, Harry, honestly. What would _you_ imagine children raised by him to be like?”

“It’s okay if they all end up in Slytherin,” he said resolutely. “We want Parselmouths anyway.”

Frown. “Are you getting pregnant? Yours probably wouldn’t be genetic. Even if he’d like an _heir_ for Slytherin’s line.”

Harry hadn't considered this, whether Voldemort was worried about literal bloodlines. He’d never said anything to indicate that he was. “We’d adopt. There are entire Parselmouth communities – we stayed with a witch who took in war orphans, mostly – “

“Mm,” Hermione said, likely biting back some commentary about how Voldemort had left Harry a war orphan.

He went on, ignoring this. “It’s a long time from now, but – if our kids are at Hogwarts at the same time, I’d want them to be friends. Even if mine are all Slytherins. Wouldn’t you?”

“Yeah, mate,” Ron said before Hermione had formulated an answer. “’Course. I just hope they’ve all got your nose.”

Harry loved Ron so much sometimes.

 

He stumbled into his room somewhere around one a.m. The Aurors had been less interested in his curfew recently – actually, since the wedding, whatever that meant. Maybe they knew Harry wouldn’t follow Voldemort out of the country. Not if it would hurt him.

He found the diadem on the mantel, Riddle gone for the night. But then, he found their diary warm, a notifying spell that meant Voldemort had written him earlier. He was not nearly so pleased as he was guilty. He flipped open the diary.

_I am out, and staying in a fortress in Greece. It is secured, and I am fine. I hope you’re also healed._

_Your magic isn’t worth the danger to which I exposed you. You recognize this, but you are their target as much as I am, if not moreso. They are intrigued by your Horcrux and the degree to which we share magic. The Dëshmitar believes you might be either useful or fascinating, and not merely as a lure or ransom._

_If the Aurors can offer any more security to you, they should. I don’t currently have any way to destroy her, and you’re not safe until I do._

Harry was drunk enough that writing back might not be the best idea, but he’d do it anyway. **_You idiot_** , his quill scored into the parchment. **_I still want to give you magic. You’ll still need it. Do it somewhere safe next time, though._**

 _Not tonight,_ Voldemort wrote back promptly. It startled Harry and then gratified him, to have some indication that he was alive and present. His chest felt funny.

 ** _Not tonight_** , he agreed. And he wanted to add a bunch of anxious things, to ask about wards and protective spells and healing potions, even just things like whether he was warm or if he’d eaten, but – well, Voldemort felt suffocated when he was cared for too much. Skipping a line – **_I saw Ginny tonight. We talked about Tonks._** No answer, but assuming Voldemort was receptive, he went on. ****_She’s not getting better, because she’s using non-verbal magic for everything. She can’t talk. The healers haven’t found much. Can you do anything?_  
  


A pause, one of thoughtfulness, he assumed. _She seemed adamant, and Moody moreso, that I’d do nothing._

**_But anything I could tell them to try._ **

_They might have been casting in Vampiric._

Harry sighed deeply. **_Is that another language?_**

_It is used only in casting, and yes. The Aurors must forge some bonds with a vampire if they’d like to dispel it._

Shit. At the moment that a vampire coven was attacking Britain, it’d be a hard sell to tell the Ministry to befriend some vampires. **_Slughorn knows one._**

_Estranged from his coven for taking up with a human. But you should ask him, anyway._

Right. He might as well. **_Ginny wanted to share magic too. I showed her, and she could feel it, but not use it._**

_That is generous of her. Magic generally isn’t compatible between wixes, however._

Generally. He probably only didn’t mean themselves. **_When is it?_**

_There are positive, neutral, and negative outcomes. The most likely positive matches are along bloodlines. Within marriages, to an extent. Other circumstances with no connection, rarely. It is not dissimilar from blood transfusion._

He’d have to tell Andromeda, then. Or… Malfoy? The entire Black family had been devastated, really.

 ** _Thanks_** , he wrote back. **_I’ll tell her_.**

The other favor with which he’d been entrusted was one he’d never know how to ask for – that Remus wanted Snape released from the Dark Mark. It would be Remus’s birthday soon; perhaps he’d ask as a gift. But not tonight.

 

 _Sunday, March 7._ None of the Gryffindors made it to breakfast on Sunday morning. But Harry had to. Downing a hangover potion and casting hydration charms on himself like the irresponsible teenager he was, he had to meet the Aurors to go cast the airspace shield again. And while this assignment had always sort of been intended as a punishment – for him and Voldemort alike – it had only begun to feel really punitive now. He was missing the Quidditch match between Gryffindor and Hufflepuff for this. He brought his book and dog along, a bit sulkily.

He arrived back at Hogwarts just in time for dinner – and before he took his place at the head table, he dropped into a chair beside Ginny. They must have lost, because the team was scattered – they never really liked to talk about it afterward. Anyway, Ginny poked at a pilaf as she read a late piece of post with her other hand. “Hi, Harry.”

“Not a great game, then?”

She shook her head. “I’m taking the Chasers out to drill alone next week. We need practice. How was… wherever you go these days.”

He made a face. They’d returned to Malin Beg, and he’d read _Richard III_ while Willoughby cast sparrows for Moira, and it was all fine but he missed Quidditch a lot. “It’s alright. I wrote to Voldemort last night,” he said, dropping his voice a bit when the two fourth years across the table looked scandalized. “He said… they might’ve been casting in Vampiric. Creature language,” he said at Ginny’s raised eyebrows. “It can only be dispelled in the same language. And to share magic – sometimes it’s in bloodlines. Sometimes it’s random. You could try, but – he said there could be negative effects, too.”

“Hm.” There was a distinct slump in her shoulders. “Thanks.”

“Tell her I’m sorry. This is….” He floundered for a word. “I’m just sorry.”

“Not your fault,” Ginny said a bit tonelessly. Then, looking up with a small smile: “And she and I never got to pass notes in class. We write now, even when we’re together. It feels like catching up.”

He smiled back. “If there’s anything….”

“Yeah, yeah,” she waved him off mockingly. “The savior. Actually – “ her off hand made a fist, crumpling the edge of the mail she’d been reading. “Are you staying here for Easter? Mum and Dad want me home, but it’d only be to lecture me.”

He winced. “I’m staying here,” he said. “I mean, I think I’m not allowed out anyway.”

She gave him a pitying look. “Right.”

“We’ll do something for Easter. You deserve… not that.” He wanted better for her. She was a generous partner, and she deserved better. With a wry look, she shoved the crumpled parchment back in its envelope.

 

The final thing he needed to do before the end of the night, he’d been avoiding for a very long time. He needed to see if he could still cast his stag patronus. The fifth years were about to begin reviewing for OWLs in earnest, and while he didn’t expect any fourth years to manage a Patronus, it’d be good to introduce it before the end of the year anyway.

He pulled out their diary that evening. **_Keep your Occ. up_** , he wrote. **_I need to cast a patronus without your magic._**

No answer, but he hadn’t expected one. He poked at the magic in his soul but he could no longer reliably tell where his ended and Voldemort’s began. He drew his wand. “Expecto Patronum!”

He’d been thinking of Christmas, of the unexpected beautiful gesture of Voldemort decorating the safehouse in lights and candles and a tree. His patronus exploded from his wand – he looked for antlers –

The thestral spread its wings as it emerged, cantering a bit across his suite before it returned to him. “Hi,” he said, feeling that one shouldn’t be rude to their patronus regardless. “Here, let me…. I need to try again.” The thestral tossed its mane as he dispelled it.

A different memory, one that had nothing to do with Voldemort. The other half of Christmas then, the day with the Weasleys, their unconditional warmth and acceptance and love. “Expecto Patronum!”

The thestral erupted from his wand again, quicker this time if anything. “I’m not getting my stag back, am I?” he addressed its deep dark eyes.

Again, with his Occlumency as rigid as he could manage. Again, going through any number of old memories. Again, with the memory of conjuring the stag for the first time itself. Each time, he found the thestral looking back at him. “Alright,” he said, a bit shaky as he lowered himself onto a sofa. His magic was gone but the thestral remained, approaching him mildly. “Alright,” he said again. “Hi.”

Would it even be appropriate to _mourn_ his stag? To think, that he’d never see it again, never summon it to his side in battle or fear or difficult moments… it did hurt. He wanted to keep parts of his _self_ separate from Voldemort, if only for sanity’s sake. And maybe an emblem of his father whom he’d never known was no longer the ideal marker of the rest of the person he was, but it could’ve been… a phoenix. A hippogriff. Hedwig. The thestral was just so undeniably… _Voldemort’s_.

Maybe that was more important, that in a way Voldemort had a patronus.

He couldn’t maintain its presence, though. “I’m showing you in class tomorrow,” he said to the thestral. “If that’s alright.”

It would scare some of his students. He should tell Hagrid beforehand, so he didn’t have to find out in the moment. The last time he’d shown the fifth years the Patronus it had been a stag, so – this would invite speculation and intrigue, anyway.

He thought of Lupin dispelling his boggart before the class, how exposed he must have felt. He thought of every instance in which Snape had sent his doe to the Order, or into battle. It was… _brave_ of him, really, and that wasn’t a word he especially liked applying to Snape. They all bared their souls. Magic forced the issue.

Dispelling the thestral for a final time, Harry walked to the mantel, picking up the diadem against his better judgment. “ _Hithgalach_.” He dropped it into the fire.

After watching the Patronus emerge so many times, it felt surreal and funny to see Riddle step from the flames in a queerly similar motion. He arched his dark brows. “What?”

To straight off ask for magic seemed a bit inhospitable. “I’ve been… well, you know,” he said, because Riddle lived within his soul too, in a way. “Trying out my patronus. I’m showing it in class tomorrow.”

“You’d like to disentangle yourself from him, long enough to have your stag back and avoid a _scandal_.”

Cool, unimpressed, cutting. But not wrong. “Could you?” Harry asked. “I don’t understand all the ways we’re together, but it’s not like he’s consumed me.”

“Hm.” Riddle had moved past him, into the center of the room that still buzzed with dispelled magic. “It seems you’ll just have to be a scandal.”

He offered a smile, wary as it was. “You’d like that. This would be the least of our scandals. I really am just asking… if there’s any way to see the stag again. I didn’t expect to…” _lose it._ The words seemed melodramatic.

“It is only a manifestation of your magic. Do you also get sentimental when your spells burn out?”

“It’s not the same at all.”

“It is.” Riddle had found the cypress wand, tucking it in a pocket of his robes. He seemed ready to leave. “Why long for what’s both past and impossible? You’re only hurting us both.”

Strangely, Harry didn’t know if he was included in the _us_ , or if Riddle meant himself and Voldemort. It didn’t matter. “But the entire point of a patronus is looking back into your memories. Of course it’s in the past, but that doesn’t make it worthless.” He wasn’t certain that was Riddle’s accusation precisely, but it was close enough. “I understand,” he said carefully, “why you’d want to discard everything.” Childhood, memories, his own name and face. “And there are bits of my life that I could never find a good memory within. But you must…. Could you cast one for your OWL?” he asked, realizing that the diary had been in the end of his fifth year. Myrtle had died just a few weeks prior. Riddle had already cast the Horcrux then.

Surprisingly, Riddle sort of smiled. “Merrythought was a mawkish sort. She knew of my _tragic_ upbringing. She knew there was a war on in the Muggle world – had no idea about what, nobody could bring themselves to care – and I was the only Slytherin affected by it. She never expected that I’d be able to cast one.”

“Could I show you – “ He was holding out his wand, as he’d done for Voldemort.

Wordlessly, without Harry even seeing his wand move, Riddle had disarmed him. “Haven’t you done enough?” he asked rather flatly. “You’ve already saved him. I am a great deal less charmed by you.”

“Give me that.” Harry snatched his wand back. “Nevermind. Go….” He made an impatient gesture toward the door. “Whatever you’d wanted to do tonight.”

“Yes,” Riddle said, unbothered by Harry’s anger. He let himself out. And Harry wondered, if Voldemort ever reclaimed that bit of his soul, it would be anything like the loss of his stag, a pseudo-abduction if not murder. At the moment, he’d hardly be sad to see him gone.

But part of his dislike of Riddle, he knew, also came from his own dis-ease. There was a persistent feeling within him, that he had only just escaped becoming so bitter and vicious himself. While this was nothing new – Dumbledore had noted the parallels of their lives, the diary had, and Voldemort had when Harry could coax him into such a conversation – his patronus tonight had deeply underscored the matter. They’d both _survived_ , but they should have the same capacity for hope, for optimism, for human connection. Harry should only be as able to cast a patronus as Riddle was.

His mother’s gift, saving him again and again. He wondered whether his original patronus shouldn’t have been a doe instead.

 

 _Monday, March 8._ He arrived at breakfast before Hagrid the next morning, which gave him time to steel himself. At least, he thought it did, but then there was an envelope from the Ministry awaiting him, as an owl ate a piece of ham it’d pulled from the serving dish itself. Well.

He cast a severing charm across the top – he’d picked up the habit from Voldemort, and it was better than a letter opener. Just from the bit at the top, he didn’t recognize the letterhead. He set aside his coffee to properly unfold the parchment.

 _Muggle Liaison Office,_ it said at the top. The entire department needed to rename and restructure itself, but Harry had the sense they hadn’t yet had the time, putting out fires as they were. And this, he saw as he skimmed the letter, was a fire.

The department head was an anxious yet condescending wizard named Emeric Winston, whose demeanor was well-suited to the department’s previous task of Obliviating Muggles and very poorly suited to the relationships they were now supposed to be forging. Harry had only been introduced once and gotten a couple more brief letters from the department; Voldemort had been confident that Winston would be out and the entire office changed before Harry finished the school year. He’d said rather darkly that the MLO had been where incompetent Ministry employees had been shuffled in the past, and _that_ wouldn’t help the Unification along now.

But now Winston had written to invite him to a meeting next week. _Pre-emptive_ , he’d written, even though it assuredly wasn’t. They needed to address their stance toward Muggle religion, which had not gotten any better recently. _We anticipate coming to a full, respectful understanding_ , Winston had written. Harry sort of sighed. At least it was a private meeting and not a public one, so nobody would be privy to the implosion this would be.

People trickled into breakfast. Harry caught Hagrid’s eye, moving to take a seat beside him. “’Morning,” Hagrid beamed at him. Harry managed a smile.

“Hagrid – listen,” he tried, very uncertain. “Will you be in class today?” He, like the rest of them, had to miss classes for other responsibilities around the castle sometimes. But Hagrid made a noise of assent as he picked up the teapot, so Harry had to go on. “We’ll be reviewing the patronus spell. Because….” _Gryffindor courage._ “I wanted to tell you that my patronus has changed. I haven’t got my stag anymore.”

Hagrid had been faintly concerned; now his eyebrows drew sharply together. “But i's so _yours_ ,” he said.

Harry braced himself. “My patronus is a thestral now.”

Hagrid wanted to shout – not _at_ him necessarily, just in a general sort of shock. He did have the presence of mind to set down his teacup before he crushed it. “They’re good animals,” he said, with some doubt. “But they’re not for you.”

“Seems they are.”

“How long?”

“A little more than a month, since I first cast it.” Since he and Voldemort had cast it together, but he’d omit that if he possibly could. “Nothing – _traumatic_ happened,” he added, because that was the typical circumstance in which someone’s patronus changed. “And I miss my stag but I like the thestral too. They were really good to have around, last year.”

“Was it that?” Using thestrals in battle. Hagrid’s gaze nearly implored him to not have changed for Voldemort.

He could have lied. “Probably not. But… it makes sense, now that I’ve had some time to think about it. That the rest of my life has been about, y’know, death anyway.”

Hagrid shushed him fiercely. “Don’ say that. It’s not like that anymore.”

Harry didn’t have to die anymore. Everyone in his life no longer had to brace themselves to eventually mourn him. “I know,” he said. This was going so badly, and wouldn’t become any less awkward if he’d speak the truth they both already knew, that Voldemort had changed his patronus. “I wanted to tell you first, though. Because… you know why,” he said awkwardly, because he was still pants at telling anyone he loved them. “And because you might be the only one in class who’d recognize a thestral.”

“Yeah.” Hagrid had picked up the teacup again, even if now he was only fiddling with it. “Right. See yeh in class.”

Hagrid and Hermione both. He felt so off-kilter these days, having disappointed them.

 

His charms and potions classes in the morning were low stakes, now that he’d decided against taking the NEWTs. But Ron was still taking the one for charms, so as they reached the point in term where the class would be revising, he’d gotten anxious. “I can charm any bloody object you want,” he muttered, gazing down at his notes. “But _people_? Harry, the examiners look about to keel over anyway, I don’t want that on my conscience.”

But Flitwick had stressed that in, “well, precarious circumstances,” charming a person would be infinitely more effective than charming an object. Ron had quietly muttered that Flitwick had never seen Ron charm a crossbow – even though he _had_ , and he’d told Ron it was impressive magic, and that he’d write him a letter of recommendation to the Ministry’s tactical division. Anyway, Ron was sulking when they moved into pairs, and then Flitwick called out, “Let’s review the suggestion charm!”

Harry nearly choked on his laughter. He’d never be able to tell Ron that he’d gotten good at the suggestion charm with Voldemort, making each other desperate to piss. Ron was accepting, but not _that_ accepting. “I’ve got it,” he said anyway, catching Ron’s eye. Now to focus on casting a suggestion other than piss.

As with everything he learned recently, though, he was doing things a bit off the books. “Uh,” he said, picking up his wand. “I’ve always done it with touch. I like it that way, it’s precise.”

Ron’s brow furrowed. “What, like putting your wand on them? You really haven’t got to.”

“No, I mean – here, give me your hands.” He and Ron hardly held hands, but if it’d help him grasp this for the NEWT, he was happy to do it. Just as he’d shown Ginny this weekend.

Ron was hesitant too. “Seems like it’d be powerful.”

“I’ve done it a lot, though.”

“With him.”

“Yeah. It’s probably near enough.” He took Ron’s hand, pressing their palms together. “What d’you want to feel?”

“What do you make _him_ feel?” But then Harry sort of snorted and Ron went deep red. “You know what, surprise me.”

It took him a long moment to gather his magic, focus it appropriately. “On three,” he said. “I’m giving you a feeling, you tell me what it is.” He counted off, and then silently willed the spell from his core, up his arm and down Ron’s, flooding Ron with feeling.

He looked confused and then concerned. “It’s… warm, I guess,” he said. “Uh, can I let go?”

“Not yet. Think about it.”

So in earnest now Ron was considering his own state. “I guess the feeling of being utterly lost’s mine. And the one of being hopeless… or….”

Harry made a face. “Shut up.”

“Hm. I don’t think I was so thirsty a minute ago.”

Harry grinned, dropping his hands. “That’s it, yeah.”

“That’s really… subtle. I didn’t feel anything change at all.”

“So cast it like that. You can go slow. Again?” Harry offered.

“Give me a better one.”

Grinning, this time Harry shoved confidence into Ron’s soul, not even subtly. And then Ron was grinning too. “The things you do with magic,” he said, shaking Harry off so he could cast it himself.

“I haven’t used it for anything real, y’know,” Harry said. “I wish we had. It might’ve ended things less violently.” To just crush the Death Eaters psychologically, kill morale, rip away their faith in Voldemort’s ideas…. Instead the entire war had been merely physical. He had the sense that Voldemort was not satisfied with this any longer, either.

“Maybe a throwing net with some sort of panic attack on it. Or a taser… curses work better than charms in a current, but if it could be stabilized….” He was looking up at the ceiling now, rubbing his long nose in thought.

Harry smiled at the sight. Just as war had been good for Neville, it’d also been good for Ron, who had always been pragmatic and tactical. “Let’s get the suggestion charm down first, before _plotting_ anything.”

Ron’s smile was self-deprecating. “Right, yeah.” He picked up his wand.

 

When they went to lunch together, meeting Hermione from her arithmancy classroom, Ron was still brimming with ideas and the confidence Harry had cast on him. “Of course, we could put memory charms in objects, something they’d pick up on their own, so… poof! They forget they’re fighting altogether,” he gesticulated.

Hermione looked at him coolly. “I’d rather we didn’t have another war again soon, actually.”

He first looked like a kicked dog, then went angry. “What, and I do?” he said.

“It seems like it,” she retorted. “You think it’s all so _exciting_.”

“I had to watch Seamus die!”

At this, Harry’s heart stuttered. Ron hadn’t told him this before. It had happened in the same chaos in which Voldemort had taken Harry from the battlefield, but he’d only found out much later. He was a diplomat, but not for these two. The best he could do was steer them into an unused corridor. “Here, why don’t we – “

“Just let me be good at something for once,” Ron said to Hermione fiercely. “You’ve been saying it all year, that I _need to figure out my aptitude_ ,” (his voice went high in a cruel impersonation) “but then you criticize it all. You can’t be better than me at _everything_ , but it makes you so insecure when you’re not!”

“Insecure!” She’d gone red in the face.

At one point, Harry would’ve tried to mediate. He knew from experience that it’d never work. He edged away, and left them entirely.

This was for the best, as it turned out, because the post awaiting him at lunch was sort of a shitshow. He still got the occasional love letter, and hate mail, both of which he promptly tossed into the hearth behind the head table. But then there were two more: a Ministry envelope, and a thick parcel. He severed open the Ministry’s letter first.

 _Department of Society and Event,_ said the letterhead. Oh. He had written them, at Voldemort’s request, to begin planning the official wedding ceremony. The massive one. The political one. He unfurled the parchment.

_Dear Lord Slytherin and Mister Potter,_

_We offer our warmest congratulations on your matrimony. For an occasion as significant as yours, we have assigned a full staff for event coordination. Be assure that our Department offers only the most traditional, historically accurate events, out of respect for our magic and culture._

_Enclosed are informational materials, including samples of all written material to be distributed. Please advise when you or your public relations staff would be available to meet and discuss your options further. We would be happy to collaborate with any public relations firm, personal assistants, legal representatives, or advisors with whom you have a professional relationship._

_Thank you for your correspondence and confidence in the DSE. We are honored to be entrusted with such a momentous occasion. We ensure excellence, care, and civic pride in every event._

_In Merlin’s Name,  
Penelope Clearwater_

Beneath that were her office and personal addresses for owls or floo. She wrote that they could be in touch at any time. That she’d work with their _PR_ _team_. Harry was not at all important enough for this treatment.

He shuffled through all of the enclosed material – it was slightly more sedate than the wedding mags Ginny had given him, but also not so different. Glossy brochures with photos shot in gauzy dreamscapes. Sample invitations – one in lace that curled around his fingers, one with a liquid gold filigree at the edges, one with an illustration of flowers blooming in the corners. It all felt like sensory overload.

He certainly didn’t care. He’d write to Voldemort but his inclination was to say whatever the most traditional and imposing option they had would be the one he’d want. He wondered if Penelope would just go along with this answer.

The larger parcel he reached for a bit hesitantly. A few people had sent him the _bloody_ Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes erotica to be autographed – per Hermione’s suggestion, he’d always sent them back with a gracious note that nevertheless said he didn’t endorse any of the merchandise – but this was the wrong size. Definitely a book, though, as he hefted it up.

The cover was a sort of lavender. And then his stomach curdled as he lifted it from the parcel completely, to find a photo of Dumbledore on the front. _The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore_ , by Rita Skeeter.

“You fucking monster,” he breathed, dropping the book to his lap so nobody in the great hall would see it. Inside the front cover, a note was folded:

_Harry dear –_

_The release date is this Friday. You should come to the launch party at Flourish and Blott’s that night; I’ll get you in personally. Regardless, I thought you would appreciate an advance copy, so you might be prepared for everyone who will inquire about it! I know you had a very special relationship with your headmaster (see chapter 40 and following), but do keep an open mind. Even you might appreciate it._

_If you advise how I may reach the Dark Lord, I would be happy to send him a copy as well. He, too, figures prominently into the plot._

_Congratulations once more on your nuptials, and may your relationship be less tumultuous than Albus’s relationship with Gellert. (You will see what I mean by chapter 16.) Do be in touch with any thoughts or concerns!_

_Yours very sincerely,_

_Rita_

He was so angry that his clenched hands were crumpling the parchment. Fucking, _fucking_ woman. He thought she’d mildly changed after being blackmailed – after running Harry’s exposé in fifth year – after being on the side of right for once. But no, Rita was on the side of chaos. He might be too angry to eat any longer.

But then Remus dropped into the chair beside him. “Alright?” he asked mildly, no doubt seeing the flush in Harry’s face. Looking over the Ministry's pamphlets for their wedding: “Ah.”

“Not that.” He swept them all aside, glitter and lace and all. “Nothing. It’s rubbish.”

“Alright.” Remus was pouring lemonade, waiting for Harry to go on in that soothing, non-judgmental way he did. Sighing, Harry dropped the book before him.

“Ah.” Somehow, Remus didn’t look surprised. “We thought she’d release it closer to his death. But it seems that current circumstances will re-ignite public interest in such political courtships.”

“Oh my god,” Harry said weakly. He hadn’t put it together – that Dumbledore himself was the only one who’d compared his relationship with Grindelwald to Harry’s relationship with Voldemort. The rest of the world, though, if they read this book…. “You already knew about it?” he asked.

A faint smile. “Rita’s tracked down every person who’s publicly involved with the Order. She’s bothered quite a few of the faculty, too. Actually, would you mind if I warned Severus? It might, ah, complicate his life for a bit.”

Shit. Right. If Rita had catalogued everything she found scandalous about Dumbledore’s life, Snape’s trial would be in there. It might even be prominent. Flipping to the index: _Snape, Severus_. A very long list of page numbers, and at least one entire chapter to himself. Fuck.

Remus hissed air through his teeth. He wasn’t easily irritated, but he was seething now. “Irresponsible,” he said shortly. “As though our world isn’t precarious enough right now. As if _Hogwarts_ isn’t precarious enough.”

“She said the release is on Friday.” If only for them to brace themselves.

“I need to find him,” Remus muttered, looking around for Snape. For a moment he was so distracted. Then, remembering himself, he looked back to Harry. “You haven’t got to engage it, you know. She’s never treated you well. If there are particularly… egregious things, you might take her to court for defamation of character.”

Perhaps he did need a PR manager after all, because that sounded exhausting. “Maybe,” he said, doubtful. “Uh, should I warn the portrait?”

Lupin was first surprised, then charmed. “You might,” he said, “if it’d be helpful to you. Certainly – the portrait,” he said, in a way that implied _Albus_ had been on his lips first, “has his own sources. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’d tried to interview it, honestly.”

For some reason he was horrified by the idea of interrogating the portrait, since she’d never gotten anywhere with the real Dumbledore. “Right.” He couldn’t help himself, he was flipping through the pages now. Stopping deliberately, he asked, “Would you come to our wedding next year? On the spring equinox.”

“I was under the impression that it was a highly political event.”

“It is. It’s going to be awful. Look at this.” He took the Ministry brochures in a handful, putting them before Lupin. “But I at least want… everyone there. Real people, not just politicians. And reporters,” he sighed, his nails curling into the cover of Rita’s book.

“Real people,” Lupin said, amused. “In that case, I’d be delighted to attend.”

Harry was momentarily cheered. “Thanks,” he said. Finally he pulled a tureen of soup toward himself. “We’re reviewing the patronus charm today,” he said conversationally.

Lupin ducked his head encouragingly. “You’ve been more effective at teaching Expecto Patronum than I’ve been.”

Harry snorted at this obvious falsehood. “You were brilliant,” he said. “It’s my favorite spell.”

A careful pause, then Lupin said, “Moody mentioned that your patronus had changed.”

Oh. He supposed that wasn’t confidential. It certainly wouldn’t be when he cast it in class today. “Yeah,” he said. “A thestral, now. I miss the stag,” he said a little awkwardly, because Lupin might find it to be a loss too, in a way. “But I really like the thestral.”

Another careful pause, then Lupin said, “It suits you.” Harry gave him a tentative smile.

 

In order to cast a patronus for class though, he had to deeply compartmentalize Rita’s fucking book. He had just enough time to run back to his suite, taking a swallow of kaval to settle all the snarled feelings inside himself. Then, thinking that Voldemort deserved an explanation for what a mess he’d been today, he reached for their diary.

**_I hope you’re safe._ **

**_Did you know Rita Skeeter wrote an exposé about Dumbledore? It looks awful. She wants to send you a copy._ **

**_It really doesn’t fucking help. Hogwarts has so many problems already, and Dumbledore’s already dead._ **

**_It is going to ruin Snape’s life to have his trial brought up again. It might hurt Lupin or Hagrid too. And Rita wrote that we’re both in it._ **

**_Lupin said people will care because they’ll compare us to Dumbledore with Grindelwald._ **

Once more, he was angry enough to be scoring the parchment, his thoughts fragmented. **_I have to go teach how to cast a bloody patronus now._** Another swallow of kaval.

But then the parchment glowed with magic in response. _I will find you tonight._

**_Are you alright?_ **

_Yes_. A pause, then skipping a line: _You will not be, if you read Skeeter’s book_.

**_Damn. I want to ask you about it, anyway._ **

_Go teach, Harry._

One last swallow of kaval, and then he did.

 

He was fortunate that teaching made him happy. It kept him busy, anyway. Knowing that if he was anxious about casting a patronus, he’d be less likely to be able to, he plastered a smile on his face. (“Performance anxiety,” he nearly joked to the class, before remembering that they were all fifteen and still easily scandalized.) And then his thestral cantered around the room, drawing as many confused looks as curious ones. “This is a thestral,” he introduced it casually. “They’re invisible to most people, but they pull the Hogwarts carriages.” The only reaction he got from Hagrid was a determined look at the floor.

Rita’s book became a loathsome obsession for him that day. After taking off the dust jacket, he brought it down to dinner – Ron and Hermione were still furious and avoiding each other, so Harry was alone anyway. Ready to hate Rita, he opened it to the dedication.

 _To truth, transparency, and a better wixen world than the shadows in which we now dwell_ , it read. For fuck’s sake.

The book was nine hundred pages, and fifty chapters. He had a chapter (“The Boy Who Lived and the Man Who Lied”) and so did Snape (“Twisted Allegiances: Severus Snape and the Death Eater Trials of 1982”). But long stretches of the book were devoted to Grindelwald – “The Flaxen-Haired Youth,” “The Greater Good,” “Dumbledore’s Greatest Mistake,” “The Duel of 1945.” He didn’t like seeing this in Skeeter’s book – knowing there was at least a grain of truth in it granted credibility that he didn’t want it to have. Still, morbidly curious, he flipped to “The Flaxen-Haired Youth.”

A photo of a mischievous young man winking at the camera looked back at him. He was… attractive in his confidence, Harry thought for a split second. Their history classes had never gotten far enough into the twentieth century to study him, so he only had the faintest idea what had made him evil. Pushing aside his dinner, he read.

_By 1867, Gellert Grindelwald had been expelled from Durmstrang for dark and dangerous magical experimentation. Seeking respite from the scandal, and perhaps from legal repercussions, Grindelwald sought out an understanding relative abroad. In June, he moved in with his aunt, noted historian Bathilda Bagshot, in her picturesque cottage in the sleepy Godric’s Hollow. Of course, his wasn’t the only family secret to reside in Godric’s Hollow._

_Bathilda recounts how well Gellert got on with the young Albus Dumbledore, just out of Hogwarts with his whole life before him. They were both bright and ambitious young men, dedicated to the pursuit of esoteric magic that would change the world._

_“Did you know back then?” I ask Madam Bagshot in our extensive interviews. “That Gellert would go on to become what he did?”_

_Bathilda considers, her wizened mouth going tight. “No,” she says at last. “He was troubled – bored – acting out, as young people will. But we never imagined anything so dark in him.”_

_“Do you blame yourself?” I ask gently, leaning in to place a hand over hers. She is silent. So I continue: “What about Albus? He had his own darkness – as you so poetically put it. Back then, could you have imagined he’d be caught up in his later scandals?”_

_“No,” Bathilda says once more. “He was a few years older, full of promise. Even then, everyone believed he’d change the world.”_

_It was a belief that many clung to throughout Albus’s life. Regardless, I plunge onward. “You believe that he was a bad influence on your nephew, then?” I ask sympathetically. “The older man, a bit of a mentor figure, a bit of a bad boy himself.” Bathilda can’t bring herself to say it. “What do you wish you could have done differently?” I inquire, steering her toward gentler topics._

_Her face is lined with decades of regret. “If we’d known,” she tells me, “we would’ve had a responsibility to do something about it, wouldn’t we?”_

_(Eerily, this charge has similarly been leveled at Dumbledore with regard to his treatment of the young Lord Voldemort; see Chapters 28-30.)_

Abruptly, Harry choked. He’d seen Voldemort in the index, and expected him to be a topic in this hideous book – but if Rita had uncovered _Tom Riddle_ , Voldemort might actually kill her. He’d certainly want to. He flipped back to the index.

 _Riddle, Tom Marvolo_. _(See also Voldemort, Lord.)_ Shit. How did she even find this out? He’d been so thorough about scrubbing his childhood from public consciousness. Of the people who knew – Hagrid, Slughorn, Flitwick, McGonagall – none of them seemed motivated to be informants of any sort.

He couldn’t distract Voldemort with this – but it would be more distracting for him to find out in the papers, he reasoned. Sighing, he fished for their diary in his bag.

How to phrase it? **_Tom Riddle is in her book. I don’t know how she knows_** , he wrote, bracing himself for the emotional response. Guiltily, he flipped back to the chapter on Grindelwald.

The following page had a photo of them together, a sepia shot of Gellert gesturing wildly as he spoke, and Albus listening with a hand pressed to his mouth, as he’d still done all his life. It was… confusing and a little embarrassing, to find both of them attractive. They were his age, though, and the ease in their postures and brightness in their eyes were just… nice. And knowing what he already knew, Harry was looking for the indication that Dumbledore was taken with Grindelwald. When had he fallen in love? Was there evidence already in this photo? But when Gellert noticed Harry’s scrutiny, he grinned back cheekily. Albus didn’t look at him.

He read onward. Dumbledore had never mentioned he’d lived in Godric’s Hollow. Even if James’s and Lily’s house hadn’t been inherited, perhaps his grandparents still lived nearby? Dumbledore could’ve been their _neighbor_ , how peculiar. He read, through Gellert’s and Dumbledore’s politics, their excitement for a pure, efficient, proud, traditional world. _For the greater good._ He recognized the phrase from the times people – mostly Voldemort – had archly quoted it, but he hadn’t known what it’d meant. Dumbledore’s politics wouldn’t be so far from Voldemort’s. He’d warned them of exploitation and paternalism toward the Muggles, but Harry hadn’t realized how… proximate those feelings had been for him, once.

He’d been one of the first people into the great hall for dinner, and now he was among the last to leave. He had to spend the evening preparing for class tomorrow, and he deeply didn’t want to. It was embarrassing to give Rita’s book the time of day, but… Dumbledore had died still a mystery to him in many ways. It wasn’t that he felt personally betrayed or entitled, exactly, but that he’d aligned himself with Dumbledore very publicly, a number of times. _Dumbledore’s man._ He’d still be asked to account for Dumbledore, in a way.

He glanced back at their diary once more before he left. In neat Parselscript, Voldemort had written, _I have nothing to say about her book. It will make you miserable._

That was obvious, but still: **_I want to ask you about it. Not tonight._**

 _Not tonight,_ he wrote in agreement. _Tonight, I’d only like to get you off. Go to bed desperate._

He grinned and blushed at once. Even in Parselscript, and with nobody nearby to read it, the line still felt stark. **_I will._**

He had to put Rita’s book away for awhile. He hated himself for having opened it at all. Conjuring a pot of tea, he unenthusiastically began on his runes homework.

It was nearly time for bed when there was a knock on his door. Ron would have knocked harder, so it must be Hermione. He charmed it open.

She blinked at him from the doorway. “May I come in?” He nodded; she entered. She was clutching a portfolio to her chest. “I’ve heard back about a few different places to live,” she said. “If you’ll still…?”

“I still want to live together,” he said firmly, because he’d had to reassure them about a half dozen times, and _they’d_ had to reassure _him_ about a half dozen more.

“Well – good.” Somehow this surprised her. “So I’ve got four altogether, I’ve lined up walkthroughs with a realtor this weekend but I thought you might discard some straight off. So – “ She held out the portfolio.

He scooted over so she could sit beside him as he looked through it. It was immaculately organized, of course. “Two are in cities, two are in villages,” she said. “Since we’ll be working in London, we could just go out there as well. I asked for homes and flats large enough to have people over, I know it’s important not to lose touch after school….”

The houses for rent were old and sturdy but not without charm; the flats were compact but had enough magical enhancement to fit everything they’d need. “That one’s already got a floo, see?” She pointed at a photo. “The rest we might install, or we could apparate nearby.”

“You’ll need a floo to get to Singapore,” he said.

“Right, well.” She tucked her hair behind her ear. “I don’t think I’m going to university.”

“What – but you were made for uni,” he said, startled. “What did Ron say to you? Honestly.”

This got a smile. “It’s not him,” she said. “Sorry you had to see – that,” she waved her hand vaguely, “earlier. Ah, we both struggle with uncertainty. But I realized, everything I’d like to do is about advocacy. Not magic, not theory. It’d be irresponsible to be in school while… everything happens.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Everything?”

She hissed air through her teeth. “You’ll make me say it?” she said. “If Voldemort gets any sort of power – conventional, legitimate power in the Wizengamot – then I need to be involved too. In Muggleborn rights, presumably. Perhaps just Muggle rights. It seems they’ll need the advocates.”

This stung, since Harry was sort of personally responsible for the Muggles. “Sure,” he said, keeping his tone mild. “It’d suit you. Uh, the Muggle Liaison Office is being restructured right now, but there’d probably be a job for you afterward….”

A tight smile. “I don’t want to work for the Ministry,” she said. “If anything, I should work _against_ the Ministry. I’ll look at law school eventually, but not right off. The Unification is happening too fast.”

God, he hoped it was. The religious Muggles had been the only snag so far. He had this feeling that if Voldemort could neutralize the Humnerë and get on the Wizengamot, everything else after that would go smoothly. Still, it felt like the entire Ministry was just holding its breath for now. “Have you told McGonagall?” he asked. “Or Madam Bones?” He was pretty sure Hermione was still in contact with her.

“Yes,” she said. “They’ll support me. Professor McGonagall worked for the Ministry once, she knows some people who fell away because… well. Some of them are lobbyists now. I’ve been able to contact rather a lot of people. I’ll have a short-term apprenticeship for the summer.”

“Good. That’s really good.” He looked back down at her portfolio. “You both should be the ones to decide about the house, too.”

“Would you come look with us this weekend? You haven’t got the shield.”

He didn’t, but he sort of hoped he’d go flying with Malfoy again. Still, he gave her a smile. “Yeah. Of course.”

Hermione was moving to go. Then: “Oh my god.”

He looked over at her in alarm. She was holding the dust jacket of Rita’s book like it was the molted shell shed by an insect, empty and loathsome. “She is awful,” Hermione snarled, and all the quiet of the night dissipated. “Where is it? Have you burnt it?”

“No,” he said, reluctantly. “It’s out in a few days. It’s really rubbish,” he said – even though it wasn’t exactly, just horrifically sensationalist. “She sent me a copy because… well, we’re in it. Voldemort and me. Like a warning,” he said with a tepid smile.

“I hate her,” Hermione muttered. “And you need to stop giving interviews to her. She made a mess of your time at the Yule ball.”

“I _was_ a mess,” Harry said fairly. “I dunno, champagne makes me a sop. She… this book will cause chaos, but there’s nothing to it, it’ll all blow over.”

This time Hermione’s snarl was wordless. “You should be worried,” she said. “I want to read it.”

He did too, though. It was embarrassing. “This weekend,” he said. “When it’s been released and everything’s exploded.”

“ _Ugh_. It’s only that Azkaban is so inhumane, it’s not ethical to send anyone there, otherwise – “ She made an impatient gesture. “I’d write a rebuttal for you, if you’d like.”

He couldn’t help it, this was charming. “Always an advocate,” he teased, and then he got up to let her out.

Alone. He let out a deep sigh. **_20 minutes_** , he wrote in the diary, moving to get ready for bed.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Allusions for Chapter 26:
> 
> Sirius listening to Queen is an homage to [Hauntingly, by ObsidianPen](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7582462/chapters/17252554).
> 
> How Voldemort interacts with the Dëshmitar is inspired by [The Crown of Mètis, by Megii of Mysteri OusStranger](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/6939995/1/The-Crown-of-M%C3%A8tis).


	27. Chapter 27

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Voldemort and Harry can slip into each other’s minds for sex or something like it. Tom reads Rita’s book. Voldemort travels to Aphrodisias in search of magic.
> 
> (Friends, there is so much porn here. At least the entire first half of the chapter, and then passages in the second half. I’m extremely shameless but even I am ashamed of this, even though it's also my favorite porn scene in this entire fic. Sorry/you’re welcome, depending on how you feel about all this.)

It had been a long day. Seeing Voldemort in sleep might be its only saving grace. As he settled among his blankets, he was desperate to piss. The weight in his stomach was nice, making him move carefully. He wasn’t quite bent double, and he wasn’t quite holding himself, but it was uncomfortable and exciting all at once. They hadn’t fucked in sleep in a long time.

Also, tonight he skipped the nappy. He wore them to bed fairly regularly, as its own sort of comfort and because Riddle bluntly told him he refused to wake up in a wet bed, the nights he slept beside Harry. But Voldemort quite liked seeing Harry in a wet bed. What he felt in their Legilimency didn’t exactly translate to words, but Voldemort found it something close to _sweet_ , or _charming_. Neither of them had ever been innocent, but it was nice to pretend.

He fell into bed on his back, avoiding his swollen stomach. He did have a hand between his legs by now, holding his cock though flannel pajamas. Lights out, soother in his mouth, and a gentle probing of their connection. He fell asleep unnaturally quickly.

It took a long time for the darkness to resolve into a scene – Voldemort was in an empty bedroom set high on a hill, lighting candles to throw uneven light on the walls. “Harry,” he greets him in a voice not so quiet as deliberate.

_Are you safe?_ Harry thinks. As thrilled as he is to see Voldemort – or whatever, to be in his presence – he can’t put him in danger. Putting everyone in danger for the sake of a fuck, Snape’s accusation at one time, bubbles up from his consciousness unbidden.

Voldemort makes a noise. “I am quite safe,” he says. To answer what would be his next question: “I am in Turkey. I won’t….” He sighs. “I couldn’t enter the Humnerë territory directly. It was probably stupid to imagine I could force my way in to begin with. The magic that protects them is esoteric. But they travel widely. And I found some magic suggesting _portals_ of a sort. It’s clever.”

Harry thinks not quite in words, of the clearing in the Black Forest where they’d brought Nagini.

“That location was mine before it was theirs. But yes. Remote locations, all connected with a sort of webbing,” he struggles to find the right word. “Not dissimilar from the floo network. If I find a weakness in one, I may access them all.”

Harry is impressed by this, honestly. Not the magic itself but that Voldemort uncovered it at all.

He snorts. “I’ve hardly breached their system yet. The magic is most volatile on the new moon, so if I’m unlucky I will have to wait that long.”

Harry doesn’t mean to pass along the thought _Good, at least you’ll be safe for another week_ , but he does.

“Yes.” Voldemort doesn’t sound happy. And then he’s gently peeling back Harry’s memories, getting to what he had seen of Rita’s book. “How garish,” he says of the cover. “He would be thrilled.”

_I don’t think he would be_. But Harry lets him in, pulling up everything he’d read that day. He gives Voldemort awhile to sift through it before thinking, in a rather plaintive way, _Is it true?_

“You knew of Grindelwald before this. Dumbledore’s spoken of him.”

Harry has to be careful with his words now, and think them exactly, but he doesn’t even know what words to use. He discards _bigot_ and _racist_ from the back of his mind. Supremacist, he lands on. Unflinching, but it carries less of an accusation yet. _Was he really a supremacist?_

“Ah.” Voldemort is drawing his legs up beside him on the bed. “At one point. He’d never kill the Muggles, but it seems our birthright to run their world. We are equipped, capable, powerful. It’s not an exceptional position to hold.”

_Don’t_ , Harry thinks in a wretched way. He doesn’t even know if he can refute this currently, but he doesn’t want to hear it.

“You should – if you must read this book – at least finish it before you fall into despair.” This is mocking but then he goes quieter: “And really, you should ask anyone else. I could never justify him.”

_It needs to be you_ , Harry thinks with surprising force. _He could’ve saved you._

Harry’s thoughts after this are jumbled but not incoherent: that if Dumbledore believed _that_ at one time, he should have recognized it in Riddle as well. Whatever changed Dumbledore’s mind ultimately might have also changed Riddle’s. The bitterness and supremacy and idealism, twisted as it may be. That even if it’s imperfect, Dumbledore should’ve been able to draw him aside, to tell him such politics are not appropriate or _cunning_ or anything else. That even if the Muggles may be a less capable sort of creature, we can’t hold these feelings about them because – because. _What changed?_ Harry thinks at the end of this thought. _Why did he change?_

“I don’t know,” Voldemort says. “I don’t know how anyone could say but Albus himself.”

_He was already on the Muggles’ side when you started school._

“Yes.” A sigh, because Harry won’t let this go, even though Voldemort has already told him everything. “I only wanted to fuck you tonight,” he laments. “You need to choose between sex and talking about Albus, because I refuse to do both.”

Harry wonders if he can ask Voldemort again later this week, after he’s finished the book. “Yes,” Voldemort relents, “but I’d hardly have any further insight. We were not _confidants_.”

_You could’ve been_ , Harry thinks with regret. His next thought is wordless, but it’s a recollection of what Voldemort had told him once before, that Dumbledore hated Riddle for reminding him of Grindelwald. Perhaps too, Harry feels, reminding him of himself.

Voldemort fights back anger and disgust at this idea. “I’m not,” he says. “And we deserve not to be compared with our abusers. For the moment, _leave it_.”

Harry shrinks. He doesn’t mean offense, he’s just unsettled and in the midst of renegotiating his relationship to Albus. Still, he doesn’t apologize. _Let me give you magic._

“… Yes. Thank you.” Voldemort should probably apologize, but he doesn’t. Harry recognizes it anyway.

It’s quiet, and the previous tension recedes. Voldemort leans back against the headboard, toeing off his boots and unbuttoning the top of his robes. Harry wonders faintly where he is. “Sel _ç_ uk,” he says. “Outside Ephesus. I’ve been here before. Turkey is filled with ancient magic. You’ll like it.” And Harry goes delightfully warm at the promise in that. “This,” he gestures to the room, “is the summer home of a British archaeologist. It’s hardly an imposition.”

_Magic or Muggle?_

“Quite Muggle. I established wards straight off, and I’ll remove them before I go.” Harry _worries_ about him in a way nobody has done before, and sometimes it is charming and sometimes it is smothering. He will never adapt to it. “What do you need to do tomorrow?”

Harry’s a bit confused. _Nothing?_ he thinks. He’ll teach, and he’ll go to runes class with Malfoy. _And therapy in the afternoon_ , he thinks as an afterthought.

Harry is overburdened this year, in his multiple roles as teacher and student and diplomat and… whatever he is to Voldemort, professionally. It’s clear why he begged off NEWTs. Still, Voldemort raises his eyebrows at the last of it. “Therapy?”

Harry had assumed he’d mentioned it before, so they’re both momentarily confused. _Like talk therapy. A few times a month. Hogwarts brought on a psych, so everyone in the war…._ He lets that thought trail off. _Everyone pretty much forced me, but I like it now_.

And for once it’s Voldemort who can’t quite formulate his thoughts. He has his own distaste for doctors, but that is irrelevant. To think of Harry as still being so broken that he’d seek out professional help in putting himself back together…. He can’t imagine Harry would have anything to talk about but him, that every hideous bit of his life originated with Voldemort.

_Don’t_ , Harry thinks sharply, because they just can’t keep their thoughts apart anymore. _Everything’s complicated. It’s not all about you. I like it. And I like her. A squib, she’s really smart._

This helps an infinitesimal amount. A squib. Perhaps she’s not involved with wixen history and politics. Perhaps she knows nothing of him. The squib guards at Azkaban had only the faintest knowledge of Voldemort’s regime – they only knew him as the prisoner taken out regularly by the Ministry.

But it’d only be a matter of time before the squib psychologist learns who Voldemort _is_ , what he’s done, why it’s fundamentally fucked that he and Harry are in a relationship now. And if this psychologist has any investment in Harry’s well-being – and she’d really better – the only reasonable thing to tell Harry is to leave him, to get out from what must be Stockholm syndrome or some other maladaptive coping mechanism. Harry would leave him, if he had any self-respect. And the thought is horrifying. To have his horcrux and source of magic wrenched away would be excruciating, but also simply… Harry. The same guilt that lodges behind his ribcage aches now, and he is so filled with pathos that he’d tear his skin off.

_This hurts_ , Harry protests, drawing his magic back a bit. _I can’t tell…. What?_ he thinks at last, because he’s exposed to the sentiment without the thought, and it must be disorienting.

He shakes his head. “Nothing,” he murmurs. “I apologize.”

Harry cycles through some defenses of therapy, while already recognizing that Voldemort isn’t upset by the therapy itself. _I like it,_ he thinks. _Putting words to feelings, so I can sort them out._

(He has literally gotten better at thinking in words than feelings in sleep now, and Voldemort wonders irrelevantly if it’s related.)

_Come with me someday,_ Harry thinks. _Or go on your own. It’s really normal._

At this, he actually lets out a dry laugh. Harry wants to put him in therapy. He already takes baobab twice a day – a mood stabilizer given to him by the healers, that they’d insisted upon once and he’d never stopped. It gives him clarity of thought. “The doctors to whom the orphanage sent me at nine years old thought me too far gone then. You won’t fix me now.”

Normally they both flinched away from this sort of conversation, how _fucked_ Voldemort was, mentally and emotionally. Voldemort found it embarrassing, Harry found it awkward and pitiful. To plan out a _mental health regimen_ now is… hideously optimistic.

But Harry is an optimist, and once again he will not let it go. He thinks in explanation that Voldemort should come to demystify the process, to hear the way Harry speaks of him. _I like it_ , he thinks finally, when Voldemort is not forthcoming. _You can’t take it from me._

This unexpectedly twists something inside of him. He’d taken enough from Harry, he wouldn’t –

Harry _pulls_ this thought from the back of his mind, turning it over in his own. It’s an impatient gesture, and a non-consensual one, and Voldemort feels momentarily violated at having his mind ripped open for examination. “Don’t,” he hisses, slamming his Occlumency back into place because it’d always be dangerous, opening himself to another, and it’d only ever hurt, and when Harry recognizes what a broken monstrosity he is, he could only ever leave –

And Harry shoves magic at him then, to stave off what might have become a panic attack. It is humiliating. No words, from either of them. Harry wants to hold him; he’s devastated that he can’t. Gently he’s pulling back their Occlumency, and Voldemort allows him to, and he’s not even examining Voldemort’s broken psyche now but just giving him back love. It hurts, in a good way, like prodding a bruise.

_Start over_ , Harry thinks, when their magic is properly healed and stable. _This has gone so wrong._

“It has,” Voldemort mutters, shoving all of these embarrassing feelings away. “Would you still like to fuck?”

_God, please._

A curve of his lips. “I’m taking over your body tonight,” he says. “Just a bit. But you’ll wet the bed tonight, and it will make you rather delicate tomorrow.” _Delicate_ meant accident-prone, not entirely having regained his control.

Harry’s mind flutters through the implications of this. He thinks that he was already desperate when Hermione had come over unexpectedly that night, and it was rather panic-inducing to wonder if it showed, how badly he needed to go as she sat beside him. He’s worn nappies in the castle only a few times, and he’s wet himself a bit deliberately only a few times, and robes are just infinitely forgiving, which made him devious. Still, he’s got to _teach_.

“I only thought you should be warned,” Voldemort says. “I haven’t _asked_ anything.”

At this, Harry warms as though blushing. _In front of everyone_ , he thinks. _What do I say if I’m caught?_

“Really, by now nobody should be surprised.”

His psyche is still curled on itself in excitement and humiliation. _I can’t_ , he thinks, the somatic equivalent of a whine.

“Safeword?” Voldemort prompts. “Or are you struggling because you enjoy struggling?”

Harry is amused by this assessment. _Just whinging_ , he thinks quite cheerily, and then his magic blossoms open in receptivity.

Voldemort is reaching for Harry’s body first. Possession between them is slippery but not unpleasant, and he’d like to share in his sensations tonight. He presses Harry open, until he can feel the rise and fall of his chest, the arch of his back. Experimentally, holding Harry still in sleep, he runs Harry’s hand down his body. Harry squirms.

He is desperate to piss, having waited like Voldemort had asked. His thighs are tight together, and he’s vigilant because he’s not in a nappy tonight like he is so often. Instead, Voldemort dips his hand between his legs, to find him in soft flannel pajamas. “Good,” he murmurs, and Harry’s embarrassed and thrilled again. He touches too lightly to get him hard, nevertheless appreciating the tiny shudders elicited.

“How shall I fuck you tonight?” he asks lowly, pulling their mind toward a dark space for fantasy. And then he’s carding through Harry’s ideas, his desires. It’s a bit difficult because what they both want is to be together physically for sex, but Harry is also uninhibited in this realm of fantasy.

He wants to fuck at Hogwarts, he thinks. In front of Hogwarts? Perhaps, as he’s got a thing for both public sex and public humiliation. He wonders if Voldemort can make him hurt, really, but not so much that he’d wake up. Harry thinks quite casually that he loves pissing himself, and Voldemort loves being pissed on, as though this weren’t a confession Voldemort had not yet made to him.

“I do,” he says, to seize upon the secret. “Please piss on me.” In his lap, most of the time, or curled around him in sleep. Voldemort has obvious reservations about identifying with such a submissive act, but it’s unmistakable anyway. “When we’re next together, you must hold me down and force me. Don’t ask any longer.”

Harry is entertained, delighted, charmed. He will have the perpetual suspicion that Voldemort only humors him, and he’s always so happy to be proven wrong. In any case, Voldemort has slipped his robe from his shoulders, undoing his fly to put a hand inside. “Hogwarts,” he says, to steer Harry toward a fantasy.

_Detention,_ he thinks. _I’m desperate to piss and I can’t leave._

“Who gave you detention?”

_You?_ Harry thinks with deep hesitation. He still believes he can _hurt_ Voldemort, with something so innocent.

So Voldemort clicks his tongue. “Are you asking or telling?” he chides.

A bit exasperated, Harry seizes the unfolding fantasy. _You do. Professor. After I was out past curfew._

He lets ideas percolate between them for a bit. He’s slid Harry’s hand down his stomach too, to the place where it hurts to touch, and his panic is giving a certain urgency to the night. They both like it.

He is touching himself with his eyes closed when he pulls them properly into the fantasy. “It’s quite late when I am walking the dungeons, setting the last of the security spells.” The setting is shadowy and still. They feel very alone.

Harry takes a moment to determine what should be done with his cloak – realistically he wouldn’t be out past curfew without it. But he is cheeky and confident and terribly flirtatious with Professor Gaunt (they both stumble over this bit, but it’s fine, it is) so when his footsteps echo in the corridor, he slips off the cloak with a guilty grin. “Sorry. Good evening, Professor.”

“Being forthcoming won’t actually lessen your punishment.” A pause, and then because Harry is _his_ , his student and his responsibility in spite of not being a Slytherin, he asks, “Why are you up?”

Harry shrugs. “You know.” Because he imagines that even in this alternative timeline he’d be unsettled, restless, damaged. “I heard the mermaids are most active this time of night.”

“That is true,” he says. “Unfortunately all the windows into the lake are in the opposite direction from my office. Come.” He would still wear dark and dramatic robes if he were teaching, and they swish along the floor now. “And I will take your cloak.” He holds out a hand as they walk through the dark corridor.

Harry hands it over reluctantly, the silver fabric slipping between his fingers. “It’s important to me.” (Voldemort sees in Harry’s memory that Crouch once took his father’s map from him, and that anxiety echoes now.)

“I know,” he says. They walk abreast, because Harry would know the way to his office, because he would be in there for both mentorship and mischief often enough. “Who among the faculty knows of your cloak?” Voldemort asks, folding it neatly before him. “I can’t imagine they all find your troublemaking so charming.”

Harry grins at him again, teasing now. “So charming as you do?”

It would be unprofessional to roll his eyes at a student. “Apparently.”

He lets Harry into his office. This time it’s decorated in dark woods and esoteric gadgets, the sort Harry’s seen in the headmaster’s office. Voldemort imagines a coat rack into existence, dropping Harry’s cloak on it. He’s pleased to see that Harry imagines his desk to be immaculately clean. He’ll bend him over it tonight, anyway.

Harry drops into the chair across from him. His legs are held tightly together now, but Voldemort doesn’t yet comment on it. (In real life, he kicks Harry’s legs apart, so a surge of desperation overcomes them both.) Even in this world, Harry groans minutely. “What?”

“Nothing. Sir.”

He sits behind his desk, spelling a quill and detention slip into existence, what he recalls they look like from his year as Head Boy. “It’s not the first time you’ve been out past curfew,” he says, looking down to pen Harry’s name at the top. Harry takes the moment to _squirm_ , and it’s wonderful.

“I can’t sleep sometimes. It helps.”

He raises his eyebrows. “I have been told you’ve had a great many _adventures_ after hours. Aided by that magnificent cloak.”

“No adventures tonight,” Harry promises. He’s openly shifting in his chair now.

“No dragons to liberate? No secret chambers to explore?”

Harry blinks at him and then laughs, surprised he knows about the dragon. (Of course he does, he was approximately there and approximately responsible for the bloody thing.) “Not tonight, sir.”

He reaches for the same light, concerned, avuncular tone the most invested of his professors used for him, the same nights he was out past bedtime. “Anything troubling you, dear boy?” The words don’t fit in his mouth. It would’ve been a perpetual masquerade of caring, if he had become a teacher.

And Harry takes a moment to think, because in this time his life must be less tragic or precarious. “Not quite,” he says at last. “It’s all just happening quite fast, is all.”

(Voldemort gathers from Harry’s memories that his classmates are all one edge about the future now, even if Harry himself is personally alright. Voldemort would not let him not end up alright, anyway.) “It is,” he agrees neutrally. This will end up as a real conversation if they pursue it any further, and they’ve gone off-track already tonight. He slides the detention slip across the table. “Nevertheless, your choices have consequences. Shall you serve detention now?”

Harry finds this funny. It’s midnight, in this setting. This is illicit. “Now?”

“It seems efficient, since we’re both awake at this hour anyway.”

Harry leans forward to take the detention slip, and then gasps. Voldemort lets a trickle of piss run down Harry’s thigh, here and in bed, and he is blushing deeply. He sits up straight so he’s no longer bent at the waist, and his hand makes a motion as though to hold himself, before he deliberately pulls it away. Again, Voldemort puts on a look of mild, approachable concern. “Are you alright?”

“Yes.” His teeth are gritted. He doesn’t elaborate and once more, Voldemort doesn’t pursue it.

“What sort of detention should you serve?”

Amusement. “I get to choose?” Voldemort makes a gesture as though he’s being generous. “I don’t know,” Harry says, because all he wants is a shag but it’s against the rules to just say so. In this world, Voldemort is responsible and Harry is a student and everything between them must remain unsaid.

“Should you write lines?” Voldemort offers. “Or file paperwork? Horace always needs potions bases brewed….” In real life, then, he withdraws Harry’s control just enough that a warm spurt of piss hits his pajamas. He gasps again, thrusting a hand between his legs openly as he doubles over in his seat. “Ah,” Voldemort says, raising an eyebrow. “Have you got to urinate?”

The professional dispassion twists something inside Harry. This is inappropriate, it’s embarrassing. In bed, his hand is clutching himself through his pajamas, and another spurt wets his palm. “Yes, sir – _ah_ ,” and he’s jumped up now, to avoid wetting the upholstered chair. “May I use the loo?”

“Unfortunately, no.” There’s no real reason why he shouldn’t be able to, but Harry would’ve been heartbroken if he’d said yes. “We should choose a detention rather quicker to get over with, then, shouldn’t we?” He moves to conjure a paddle but then rethinks it. “Would you hand me the paddle along the wall behind you?” he asks solicitously.

Harry turns, imagining it into existence. Though his legs are still held very tight together, he’s regained a bit of control for now. He is still blushing furiously. “Fine,” he says, taking up a beautiful lacquered wood paddle with leather cord around the handle. His teeth are still gritted, and Voldemort must suppress a smile as he hands the paddle over the desk.

“Excellent.” He stands. “If you would undress?”

“Um.” His hand clutches his robe closed. “I’d rather not.” They can both feel his wet pajama bottoms where they cling to his crotch and thighs.

“We’ve done this before. You’re not surprised by the request?”

Harry has a fleeting thought that if he’d been paddled by Voldemort – _Professor Gaunt_ , as it were – throughout his time at school, he might well have caused even more trouble than he currently does. “It’s not that,” he mutters. He is leaning in to the burning shame – in real life, their relationship had settled into shamelessness too long ago, and so this is piquant.

“Would you rather write lines, then?” Voldemort is polite, obliging. Harry will have to seize what he wants because Voldemort wouldn’t insist on it.

“No.” He imagines the slow torture of losing control while writing lines, the slow drip of piss deafeningly loud on the floor beneath his chair, and it’s wonderful. But it’s not what he wants tonight. A breath. “I’m just sort of… wet.” And he gathers all his courage, slipping his robe from his shoulders.

Underneath, he imagines he’s in pajamas, likely the same one he’s got on in bed, in soft blue flannel. Since he’s wet himself while sitting down, the stain stretches across his hips. It’s not much. Harry’s stomach is in a humiliated knot, being looked at in this way.

“I didn’t realize you were in such a quandary.” Voldemort wants to touch him, and he absolutely can’t. It’s maddening. “I expect better from the first years. Could you not find the toilets? They do move around at night, down here.”

Harry shakes his head. “No, sir.”

Voldemort is privately curious – it’s a convenient plot point, but Harry’s fantasy turns elsewhere.

“I just waited too long. I… like waiting too long.”

Oh. His fetish has not manifested in their fantasy as it does in reality, before. Deciding it’d be unprofessional to pursue this, Voldemort instead steps around the desk. “Then I suppose this detention will also be a lesson in choice and consequence. Take off your pajama bottoms, as well.”

Again he’s mortified. “Can’t I leave them on, sir?”

“Only your pants. As you know.”

“I’m not wearing pants,” he mutters, going a deeper red. “And you can’t….”

Can’t strip a student naked in his office, no. “Then I suppose you’ll have to take extra to make up for it. Fifteen, altogether?”

“Yes, sir.” And Voldemort’s pulling chairs out of the way, and Harry’s hesitant to turn around because the back of his pajamas are much wetter than the front. Voldemort clucks in concerned response, to feel the new rush of Harry’s humiliation, but then Harry straightens his shoulders and places both hands on the desktop.

“A bit lower. You _have_ done this before. Here,” and Voldemort moves his legs apart with a kick between them. Harry hisses. In bed, he’s still on his back, and a long trickle has just run down his balls and arsehole. “Oh, Harry,” he says with sympathy as a wet patch blossoms on his inner thigh.

“Just – do this. Please.” He’s full of barely-concealed panic and open shame.

He measures first. It doesn’t really matter – they may imagine it hits as hard and hurts as much as they’d like, but Voldemort is perfect in everything he does. Swing – _thud_ into the wet fabric. Harry imagines that it stings with the moisture, and he takes a half-step forward into the desk. His stomach twinges. “One.”

Voldemort waits as Harry positions himself. As though they must make small talk between, he asks, “What does it mean, you like waiting?”

“Just hit me,” Harry says through gritted teeth.

He obliges. Whoosh- _thud_. “Two.” Again his body is driven into the edge of the desk, at just the wrong height. He throws his legs together, but a thin trickle rolls down the back of his thigh.

“Put your hands back on the desk,” Voldemort instructs, and casts a sticking spell on them. “So you might not have to reposition yourself each time,” he says as though he’s done Harry a favor. _Whoosh-thud._ Harry draws a shaking breath.

“What does it mean?” Voldemort reiterates.

“Nothing.” Harry would sooner piss himself in front of anybody than put his fetish into words.

“I thought we had enough of a rapport,” Voldemort says, still light and concerned. “Would you have found a toilet, in the end?”

“Sometimes.” Harry wishes for Veritaserum – not something they’ve involved in roleplay before, but Voldemort notes it – so he’s not liable for his words.

“Sometimes you _won’t_ find a toilet?” Harry squirms. Whoosh-crack. He tries to straighten, straining against the sticking spell. There’s a short _hiss_ against wet flannel, that is hideously audible. “Then, you might have urinated in a corner somewhere?” he pursues innocently.

“No.” He’s impatient and desperate and rather near tears.

“Harry, I’d really like to understand first,” he says, sweet and utterly concerned. “Would you wet yourself, then? I’ll give you one stroke for one answer,” he offers.

Harry wants to die. “Yes. Sometimes.” _Whoosh-thud_. The back of his thigh shimmers with moisture again.

“Was this then pre-meditated?”

“No! Not like this.” _Whoosh-thud._

“You didn’t – in part – hope you’d be caught? Certainly that’s the _thrill_ of not merely weeing on yourself in your bedroom.”

The word _weeing_ hits Harry’s libido, because he finds childishness to be deliciously degrading. “No, sir,” he says. He braces for a blow that doesn’t come.

“I do not believe you.”

He makes a frustrated noise in the back of his throat. “Then _yes_.” _Whoosh-crack._

“Have you wet yourself in other circumstances?”

“Yes, sir.” _Whoosh-thud._ He hasn’t braced himself this time, and it surprises him. “Oh, fuck – “ A dark spot is spreading down his thighs. He can’t stop until it’s reached his knees. “Oh my god,” he breathes.

“Apologize.”

“For what? – Oh. Sorry for using that word in front of you, Professor.” _Whoosh-thud._ He’s ready for this one.

“If you enjoy urinating on yourself,” Voldemort says, “you must be enjoying this.”

His arse is stinging hot but the rest of him prickles with the same blush. “I really didn’t mean for it to happen like this,” he mutters. _Whoosh-crack._

“Do you find it sexually gratifying?”

“Are you allowed to ask that?” Harry says in incredulity.

“We have particular dominion over our own students,” Voldemort says smoothly. “Hence this terribly dated punishment, of which I’m still quite fond.” _Whoosh-crack._

“Yes, sir. I mean – yes. I find it gratifying.” He fumbles with the formal word. _Whoosh-crack_.

He can’t reach between Harry’s legs to show professional care and concern for his erection, not yet. Instead, he asks, “Have you wet yourself in class before?”

“Yes, sir.” _Whoosh-thud._ That one, landing on the curve below his arse, stings him, and he kicks involuntarily. It is precious.

“ _My_ class?”

“I don’t need another reason to be distracted in your class.”

He lets a punishing moment of silence elapse. “Try that again.”

“No, sir. I haven’t, um, gone in your class.” _Whoosh-thud_. Harry’s entire lower half is burning by now. He’s still so desperate.

“Where else, then?”

“Uh. Quidditch. The locker room showers. By the lake. Walking back from Astronomy. Not a lot,” he says upon hearing himself. “Just sometimes.”

“Of course,” Voldemort agrees. _Whoosh-thud._

Harry straightens, as much as he’s able. “Sir? That was fifteen.”

“Hm.” Voldemort could not be less interested. “ _Down_ , Mr. Potter. Or the next one shall hurt.”

“I can’t,” Harry says, panicking a bit. “I really can’t hold it any longer – “

_Whoosh-thud_ , and Voldemort doesn’t hit as hard but since Harry’s standing, it stings badly anyway. With a tiny cry he puts his elbows back on the desk, arse out. _Whoosh-thud_ , bouncing aloud the thickest part of his arse.

“What had you planned for tonight?”

Harry squeezes his eyes shut briefly. “That I’d stay out as long as I could, and then try to get back to my dorm before – “ His shoulder makes a jerking motion.

“Say it.”

“Before I’d wet myself,” he forces himself to say.

“Good boy.” _Whoosh-thud_. “Have you involved anyone else in your paraphilia?”

“God, no.”

“Ms. Weasley doesn’t know?”

“No.” _Whoosh-crack_. There’s another brief hiss of liquid, and Harry shudders. “Please let me up.”

“You would be disappointed if I did,” he says. Harry’s glance over his shoulder says that he is right. “This seems like a rather significant secret to keep. But I suppose robes hide a multitude of sins.”

“Yes, sir.” _Whoosh-crack_. Another hiss, another shiver. “I can’t,” he says in a whine.

“Would you like permission to relieve yourself here?”

It’s sincere but Harry shakes his head. “Let me up,” he says. “I want to kiss you.”

“You are a student.” Voldemort does not let him up.

“Not for long,” Harry says, clever. He unsticks himself from the spell that’s imaginary anyway, while trying not to disrupt the rest of the fantasy. His pajamas are hanging heavily on his legs, and he grimaces as he steps in. “I get to kiss you,” he says firmly, “for taking the extra blows.”

He is pulling the paddle from Voldemort’s hand, dropping it behind them before swinging Voldemort against the desk. And he lets him, because Harry’s moments of domination are great and too few. “I might get you wet,” he warns wryly.

His kisses are warm. They were sloppy in the beginning, but they are practiced now, as they know how their bodies fit together. At first he’s dry and chaste, as though he is a student breaking his first boundary, but then he pushes his sweet tongue between Voldemort’s lips.

They don’t kiss enough, he reflects faintly. To accentuate a point or to bookend sex, but they’ve never dwelt on the act. He also moves carefully, as though they’re doing something illicit.

“I’m going to piss on you. Urinate on you,” Harry says, with a slight eyeroll, to maintain their fantasy. His legs are on either side of Voldemort’s, and he slips his legs forward so their pelvises are aligned. “I want to touch myself through wet pants, and you need to as well.”

He means for real. Voldemort briefly takes stock of his own body – sprawled in bed, hand between his legs, just as Harry is. “Piss on me, and I will.”

“Alright.”

He’s leaning in, kissing Voldemort again, because it’s easier when they’re not watching each other. Voldemort seizes control of his body in bed, emptying his swollen bladder at last, and Harry gasps against his mouth. There’s the spread of warmth in their laps, soaking in and running over their legs. Before Voldemort is too hard, he pisses into his pants too, feeling the stream against his fingers. He offers the sensation to Harry; Harry’s hips bump against his own furiously.

He is pissing hard, so that it splatters on the floor beneath them. Voldemort’s dropped a hand between Harry’s legs, pressing the wet fabric against his balls and arsehole. He’s pulled his robes back, but his trousers here are thick and expensive, and the weight of soaked fabric sits heavy in his lap.

“Go here, too,” Harry murmurs. He’s become deliberate about it now, since the first impossible surge has passed.

Voldemort hesitates. “That wouldn’t be….”

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Harry says, though there’s a smile in his voice. “You won’t pretend to piss for me?”

This is fair. He’s already actually wet the bed and is now palming himself through his warm pants. He summons all the feelings of giving up, giving in. His trousers are already so saturated, only the brief glimmer of a stream at his crotch differentiates it. “There you go,” Harry coos, running a thumb over the glistening wetness. The head of his cock is too sensitive, and he jerks.

Harry has not quite finished; he can tell only because he inhabits his body so thoroughly, but he’s too hard to go. “I just wanna rub myself off,” Harry says, and then his hands are at Voldemort’s fly, shoving his trousers to his knees. His pants cling perfectly to his cock, and he’s still pissing, and Harry is delighted to watch. He is _gratified_ , and the feeling between them is worth it.

And then he’s pushing up against Voldemort, his erection stiff within his soft pants. He’s grabbing Voldemort’s hips, guiding their pelvises together desperately. The material between their cocks is warm and saturated, creating just the right kind of friction. It’s messy, they’re both wild, and Harry’s felt a bit out of control all night already. Their mouths are everywhere, licking and biting, as Harry first hoists Voldemort onto the desk and then climbing up after him. He’s still straddling Voldemort, sliding so Voldemort’s erection rubs behind his balls, over his arse. They’d decided against properly fucking in here – it’d be an empty sensation, while only wanking or fingering themselves in bed – but Harry’s weight on top of him is still massively erotic.

And then Harry’s moving in a chaotic way, struggling to get his pajama bottoms off. Voldemort catches his flailing hand. “You haven’t got to remove them,” he reminds him. “Just – wish them off.”

“You’re ruining it,” Harry complains, but then he’s naked on top of Voldemort, his erection deep red and curved against his stomach. He wishes all of Voldemort’s clothing away a moment later, and the flare of happiness within him at seeing Voldemort’s strange, pale, inhuman body is just… lovely.

Harry is playing his hands along Voldemort’s torso, then dipping low to grab his hips. “The times you fucked between my thighs, I want to do that to you.”

“Intracrural,” Voldemort supplies.

Harry rolls his eyes at him. “ _Intracrural_. What d’you want?”

“Stay low, I’ll get off on your stomach.”

“’Lright.” And Harry’s conjuring lube, smearing it along Voldemort’s thighs. He pants hot breath against Voldemort’s collarbone, dipping to press erratic kisses to his jaw. And Voldemort holds him close, to hump at his toned stomach, his sodden pants still providing friction. They gasp and groan with every motion. It is good to be held down and fucked by Harry, who is such a charming mess right now. He keeps his thighs tight together, making himself as supple as possible.

They’ll come together, their psyches are so entangled. Neither of them can breathe or see straight. Harry is thrusting hard against him, hitting the base of his cock and his balls each time. Their fingers curl into one another’s flesh, and their mouths gasp hotly, and their cocks quiver with each touch.

“Ahh – “ Harry’s eyelids flutter closed with a final thrust – they arch into each other – a thick flood of come runs down Voldemort’s thighs, as he spurts his own load across their torsos. Heat pours off them but Harry collapses on top of him anyway, laughing.

The desk is leather-topped, and before Harry rolls off him, he expands the surface with a spell. They’re both boneless and satiated right now, anyway. Still, as Harry settles beside him, looking at him with impossible fondness, his hand is fondling Voldemort’s softening cock, finding the mess he’s made of himself. “Good,” he murmurs, propping himself on an elbow to take in the sight of Voldemort so defiled. They both really like it.

Most of the dreamscape room has disappeared with inattention, neither of them concentrating on maintaining it. Sconces burn above them, there’s still bookshelves and a floor, but all the flourishes of the office are gone. Voldemort thinks it back into existence, because this fantasy is… a window into another life. He’d been so full of fury at Dumbledore’s dismissal that he’s never simply grieved the loss before. He’d tell Harry that he turned his back on normalcy and respectability and love as soon as he was able, but it wasn’t entirely voluntary. He wonders if Albus ever regretted it too.

They’re lying side by side, sticky and still too hot to touch, but Harry has propped his head on Voldemort’s shoulder. “I do,” he mumbles.

“Hm?”

“I do regret, that you couldn’t have this.” He waves a lazy hand.

“Of course you do. How much simpler your life would be if I never pursued dark arts.”

Harry offered it as a confession, but there’s hardly anything surprising about it. Harry openly pities his younger self sometimes, which is uncomfortable. Albus gave him a project before his death, delving into Voldemort’s past, and it’s so… _Albus,_ to force his childhood back on him through Harry.

“It was so I could, I dunno, understand you well enough to find the Horcruxes?” Harry says sleepily. In this world, there is no real difference between thought and speech. And while Harry isn’t actually able to sleep inside this dream world, both his body and mind are loose. “But then there were ones that weren’t. That he showed me the orphanage, but you would never go back. So I dunno.”

“He weaponizes my past, so perhaps you were meant to defeat me with it instead.”

Harry shudders faintly. “I don’t know what he means to me anymore,” he says. “I’ll… figure it out. You haven’t got to.”

“Mm.” He pushes Harry’s hair, damp with sweat, off his forehead. Harry practically mewls at the touch.

They half-sleep, not bothering to transfigure the desk into a bed. But in real life, they’re both still touching themselves, having ruined the beds and their clothes. So their libido burns bright in here too. Harry’s got his hand on Voldemort’s pants, at first palming the sodden fabric and then vanishing it entirely. Voldemort raises his eyebrows in question.

“I’m going to piss on you,” Harry says, in the spirit of _don’t ask, tell_ tonight. “Without clothes on, I mean, for once. How do you want it?”

Ah. Harry is thrilled and accommodating to explore a kink of Voldemort’s. He’d learned to choke really well, really quickly, as though to make up for lost time. Now, this expansion into watersports will captivate him.

Voldemort props himself on his elbows. “Tell me what to do,” he says. “You won’t hurt me.”

Harry bites back something like, _But it’s your fantasy_ , because so is bottoming for Harry right now and he understands that. “Just stay there,” he says, and slips from the desk. He wished them both dry and clean and then he’s moving to the end of the desk where Voldemort’s legs dangle, pressing his knees apart so he can slip between them. “D'you want to be tied up or anything?” At Voldemort’s exasperated look – “What? This is new. A little new,” he amends with a smile because he’s pissed in Voldemort’s lap a hundred times, but that’s always involved nappies or clothing or _accidents_. “I just want it to be what you want.”

“I trust you,” Voldemort says, and it’s only about Harry’s ability to get him off but it still sort of hurts anyway.

“Good,” Harry says briskly, fixing his posture. He has charisma and innate leadership, and Voldemort _wants_ it. Harry flashes him a smile. “Lie back,” he says, “with your hips and… good.” He’s propped Voldemort up slightly, so his hips are higher than his head. He is looking down his on bony figure to where Harry stands between his legs. “Chin up if you don’t want your face wet.”

“I do,” Voldemort says steadily.

Harry looks surprised and then delighted. “Alright. And keep your hands at your sides.” Voldemort puts his palms flat on the table.

He’s only just soft enough now, his cock in his grasp. “Here you go, love.” He begins pissing on him, the arc of his stream hitting just above Voldemort’s navel.

It runs down his sides ticklishly and trickles upwards toward his solar plexus. Harry is casual and confident, even if the relief they feel suggests he’d still been quite desperate. “I’d wake you up like this,” he says. “Every morning. Do you like that idea?”

“Yes.” His breath is shallow once more. It feels good physically, the warmth sliding over his belly and Harry’s shared relief and the swell of his cock again. But it also…. How could humiliation and trust ever feel like the same things, he thinks faintly.

Harry’s free hand reaches down, takes Voldemort’s cock. “You’re already hard for me.” Statement, not a question.

“Yes.”

“Maybe I should put you in a cock cage sometime?” Harry asks innocently. He’s still got the one Voldemort made for him, stashed in the back of his underwear drawer. “So you’ll be a little more grateful to get off.”

His cock twitches in Harry’s palm. “You should.”

Harry sweeps the warm stream upward, hitting his narrow chest. “I’ll have a morning wee on you every day,” he returns to the idea. “And after I’ve come on you, I’d rub it in and just expect you to _leave_ it, so you can smell me on yourself all day.”

Involuntarily, his hips pound upward at the idea. “Please,” he says, and Harry’s laughing at him, delighted in finding Voldemort to be as depraved as he is.

And then he stops the spattering stream, from where it’d run over his nipples. “I’m finishing in your mouth,” he says, stepping alongside the desk and running an affectionate finger along his jawline. “If I go slow, would you swallow?”

He’d love to swallow. “Yes.”

“Good,” Harry beams at him. And then he presses the tip of his cock beneath Voldemort’s cheekbone, letting an experimental dribble spill out. Voldemort gasps and Harry loves him in that moment.

He drags his cock downward, wetting the side of his face so it runs down his jaw and neck. When he’s at Voldemort’s chin, he slips one finger between his lips to open them. He places his cock on Voldemort’s tongue, letting urine trickle down it.

He is swallowing precisely, perfectly. He only imagines that Harry tastes like the faintest salt, and so it’s warm and mild and simple. “There you go,” Harry murmurs, his free hand rubbing at Voldemort’s shoulder and neck. “You’ve been so good tonight.” He shifts so his stream goes right into Voldemort’s throat, and he’s swallowing and swallowing, sinking into the repetitive motion.

When the last trickle hits Voldemort’s tongue, Harry steps back and Voldemort makes an incredulous noise, reaching for his hips. “Of course I’ll suck you off.”

“Only if I can too,” he says, trailing a hand down Voldemort’s torso. At last he transfigures the desk into a bed, climbing on. He’s swallowed Voldemort’s cock hungrily, _so_ determined to make this perfect, but then he squeal as Voldemort drags his tongue in a circle around his arsehole.

The second time is a slower and deeper arousal, as they lap at each other’s cocks, fondle each other’s balls. Voldemort bucks when Harry curls a finger inside him. They are so impossibly open, their magic boils, so only the best sensations remain. They could melt into one another.

They’ll come together again, their arousal coiling around one another’s. Harry’s a bit rough, bobbing around his length with abandon, and Voldemort’s fingering him to drive him equally wild. They are _competitive_ if not with each other, and… there is potential there. Harry catches this thought and hums in amusement, but the reverberation makes Voldemort’s eyes about roll back.

Rough, reckless, and just desperate to get one another off. Neither of them breathe properly, their entire bodies heaving. There’s the twinge of pre-come, and Voldemort snakes his tongue around Harry’s head to lick it all away. Harry’s thumb plays right at his tight entrance, opening and closing and teasing. And when Harry’s close – when they both are – Voldemort pulls Harry’s balls gently from his body. They plunge into one another’s mouths, spurting warm come, and they are swallowing and lapping and tonguing until they’re both helplessly quivering, laughing, kicking in tiny motions. This orgasm recedes slowly, and neither wants to be the first to pull the other from his mouth.

Harry rolls off him. There are no words, but easy and breathless laughter. They sprawl, sweaty, across the sheets.

After a time, Harry lets out a laugh. “Dammit,” he mutters. “I meant to come across your stomach.”

“And rub it in, leaving me to wear it all day. Yes.”

Harry looks up with a grin. “You liked that?”

“Clearly.”

“Mm.” He moves in, pressing a kiss to Voldemort’s shoulder, the nearest part to him. “Was it good, then? You haven’t got to like it, but I thought – “

Voldemort presses a hand to Harry’s babbling mouth, and replaces it with a kiss. “It was perfect,” he reassures this self-conscious, flushing, senseless boy. “Thank you.”

An eyeroll. “You’re so _very_ welcome,” he says in a posh tone, but then he’s laughing again.

“I’d like to switch more often.”

“Yeah,” Harry says. “I would, too.” Pause. “I’m glad it wasn’t… too much.”

Voldemort is so clearly bad at relinquishing control of any sort, his fetish could be nothing else. “You won’t hurt me.”

“Right.” Harry stretches and then curls around Voldemort. It’s too hot to touch, but they do it anyway. “I can’t sleep here?” he asks, already knowing the answer.

“No.”

“D'you need anything?” At Voldemort’s look Harry makes a noise of amusement. “Not _here_. For real. If the Ministry needs to know something or the Aurors need to do anything or…. I dunno. Anything.”

“Ah. No.”

“’Lright.” And then he fails to move, burying his face in Voldemort’s shoulder to inhale deeply. “Can we do this tomorrow?” he barely raises his face to ask.

“If nothing productive happens prior.”

“Well. Then I hope that nothing does.” Pause. “Sorry. I know you want… something to happen. What’re you doing until the new moon?”

“I will search for the portals. This is also an area of ancient ritual. It was an interchange of culture, so the magic that remains is unique. Syncretic.” The frown on Harry’s face indicates he knows none of this. “Archaeology,” Voldemort says. “Approximately.”

“Oh. Wicked.” He’s roused himself to sitting; so has Voldemort. “I should go,” he says. They’re both exhausted anyway.

“Get out on your own,” Voldemort says, because it’s important that he’s able to. “Try apparition, with the mentality of occlumency.”

Harry grimaces. “That’s awful,” he says, but he holds out his hand and his imaginary wand pops into it. “Apparating in the nude,” he remarks, since he’s vanished all his clothing. “It feels very scandalous.”

Voldemort is unabashed in watching him get up. His body is nice, and nicer for the fresh scratches and bruises Voldemort has just put on it. He’s so full of – what feels a bit like pride, and bit like protectiveness, and a bit like warmth. It must be love, and it feels as dangerous it always has but not in a treacherous way. He catches Harry’s hand before he goes because this is important, Harry would tell him it is important not to jettison these painfully new feelings. “I love you.”

Harry normally gets soft and soppy. This time, he laughs. “One good shag,” he teases. “Well, two. I love you, too. See you tomorrow.” He turns on the spot, and his magic recedes with him.

Voldemort cleans up before slipping out of the dream space. It’s the principle of the thing.

 

_Tuesday, March 9._ Harry was a fucking mess that morning, but he was also glowing. Perfect, it’d been perfect. There should probably be repercussions for slipping into each other’s magic so thoroughly, but it only saves them both, being filled by one another’s soul.

He is so proud of Voldemort.

He was still half-awake, still curled among his pillows, when he felt a patch of wetness grow along his inner thigh. Goddammit. Slumping back into bed, he let go thoughtlessly, re-wetting his clammy pajamas and sheets. Voldemort had said he’d be _accident-prone_ today, which was… both awkward and thrilling. But the story they’d told each other last night, of Harry nearly getting away with secretly wetting himself in public, still went straight to his cock. He would wank himself stupid today. Reaching down, he rubbed himself hard through his pajamas.

It took about a dozen times casting Scourgify to get himself and the bed clean. There was no point in properly changing the sheets when he’d probably just ruin another set tonight. The thought of doing this again made his heart flutter, which was hilarious. He had a _crush_ on his _husband._

Anyway, Voldemort wasn’t fucking kidding about needing to piss today, because while brushing his teeth, there was an immediate, excruciating desperation, that he only just averted by being in the toilet already. Hissing air through his teeth, he pulled out the nappy bag, preparing about a hundred silencing and discretion charms.

Ron and Hermione were at breakfast before him, having apparently made up since yesterday. He was still a bit wary upon joining them, but they seemed fine. “Hi,” he said, sitting.

They looked up at the same time, and did approximately the same double take. Ron’s ears went red. “You’re, uh, looking a bit banged up, mate.”

“What?”

Hermione cast a mirror charm before him, with a flick so vicious that it would’ve broken his nose if she’d been any closer. “Who did you shag?” she hissed, furious. Farther down the table, Professor Vector and Professor Nyx glanced over and promptly decided they wanted no part in this.

The mirror revealed enthusiastic bite marks and hickeys along his neck and collarbone. They were only just beginning to bruise, so the low light in his bath hadn’t illuminated them. With a short laugh, he pulled out his wand, casting Episkey wordlessly.

“Harry!” Hermione was not mollified. “What – “

“It’s nothing,” he said.

“It’s not _nothing_.”

“I don’t ask how you shag!”

Going red, Hermione cast a furious bubble of silence around them. “Because ours isn’t a matter of national security!” she hissed. “You can’t jeopardize your _marriage_ – oh god – is there a fidelity clause in your vows? Harry, this is really bad.”

Hermione was angry but also panicking, so he had to relent. “It’s just him. We, uh, share dreams?” Or mindspace or something, he could ask Voldemort what it was called but it was probably unprecedented magic anyway.

“Dreams don’t leave bruises.” Because Hermione was classy, she didn’t say _hickeys_.

“These ones do. Sorry, I’ll check next time.”

“That is….” Ron was struggling for words. “That’s really weird, Harry. Is it good?” he asked too casually.

Harry’s face went hot, but he was also still so pleased by last night, he’d have a hard time not smiling. “We can do anything we can imagine,” he said, and picked up his coffee cup to hide his shit-eating grin. And then they were both blushing harder than he was.

 

He had sixth years in the morning, drilling on shieldwork. He’d explained everything he could – he even diagrammed footwork on the board, fondly thinking of Wood diagramming Quidditch plays – and now they’d paired off.

Harry was partway through walking around the class, correcting grip and stance and wandwork, when a sudden surge of desperation hit. He hoped none of the students heard his quiet gasp, or noticed the way he shifted his legs. Moving his face into a neutral expression, he said to the girl before him calmly, “Elle, cast to the edges of the shield, the middle will fill itself in….” And then another surge of desperation. He moved away.

Could he leave the classroom? The nearest toilet was a floor down – on Tuesdays the castle liked to put the boys’ and girls’ toilets on alternating floors. His students were casting shields against stinging hexes, nothing truly dangerous. Still, he couldn’t just….

A drop of piss hit the nappy. He panicked. Striding toward the front of the classroom, he threw himself behind his desk, picking up a book as though to look something up. Twenty minutes, if he could just sit still for twenty minutes to the end of class, he could run out. The passing period was only fifteen minutes before the first years arrived, but that was fine….

Of course he couldn’t make it that long. A second-long stream escaped him, making the nappy wet. His students were all engaged. In the interest of not thrashing and squirming obviously any longer, he took a breath and gave in.

The accident, even though it felt like he was bursting, wasn’t even a lot of urine – a hard stream of perhaps ten seconds, and then he was empty and just horrifically relieved. He’d just gotten away with that. God, he’d just wet himself in class. The fantasy he told Voldemort last night felt as though it had just manifested. Feeling delightfully perverse, he chose not to cast any cleaning of drying spells on himself, leaving the nappy bulky between his legs. As Voldemort had said, a robe would cover anything. He returned to instruction.

The passing period was not enough time for a wank, but he did capitalize on the empty classroom, letting a bit more go in the nappy in privacy. His lower stomach was tense with arousal. The times he’d worn the cock cage under his clothing had been a sexy physical reminder that he’d conceded his sexuality to Voldemort. Voldemort had taken his control and left him with this delicious, mortifying reminder in its place. He could leak all day, leaning into the idea that he’d been forced into the public humiliation. Voldemort had been right last night too, that some part of him wanted to get caught. He weed hard before class, scourgifying the nappy at the end as though it had never happened. Harry hoped he wasn’t too flushed when his next class filed in.

Unfortunately the first years were just being introduced to defense law, so it was a lecture, they were looking at him the entire time, and he had to not squirm too much as he waited. As soon as the clock chimed for lunch, he left the classroom at a brisk pace, skipping the toilets nearby so he could return to his suite.

He nearly skipped down the corridor to his suite, shoving his hand against the door to open it with his magic. He couldn’t wait, he couldn’t –

Slamming the door behind himself, he slumped against it, letting go. The nappy immediately swelled between his legs as he pissed, his eyes shut tight to entirely give in to this feeling. It had _hurt_. Even if he liked being desperate, there was always pain and panic in it at the end. He sighed in relief as the last trickles ran under his balls, wetting his arsehole and stirring arousal within him.

“For fuck’s sake.”

Harry’s gaze snapped up. Tom was perched on a sofa, book in his lap. His eyes glittered as he surveyed Harry. “Shall I leave so you may have a wank in private?” he asked. “Or would you rather I _watch_? As your students did.”

It was obnoxious, having the Horcrux yoked to his soul so he could keep no secrets from Riddle. He didn’t move yet; the nappy would slosh if he did. “No, you can stay,” he said with false casualness. “I’m not getting off until tonight.”

“How romantic.”

Harry entered gingerly, dropping his bag on the end of the sofa and excusing himself to the toilet. Cleaning charms and then a cream to prevent a rash. He pinned a new nappy in place, with new discretion spells. There.

Of course Riddle was still there when he exited; he’d only hoped he wouldn’t be. “What are you doing?” Harry asked, since he was immersed in a book. “I thought you’d be out.” As he was every morning Harry let him manifest.

Riddle held up Rita’s book. “Quite salacious,” he said. “And it’s kind of her to give you an advance copy.”

“I don’t know why, other than to be an arsehole,” he said. “She can’t think I approve of it.”

“Your relationship with Dumbledore seems quite complicated these days, though,” Riddle said.

“Not publicly, though.” He’d crossed the room, shelving his teaching books and preparing for his Transfiguration class this afternoon. “You’re, uh, in there too.”

At this, Riddle’s face darkened. “I know.”

“Have you read it yet?”

“No.” He indicated his place in the book with his fingers. “There are a hundred years of scandal to get through first, Harry, patience. Granted, I’ve known most of it.”

Harry pressed air through his teeth. “When you do – could you tell me what she’s written about you? I haven’t gotten to it, but I want to warn him.”

“A book report?” Riddle said dryly.

“I think you’ve got more of a right to read it than I’ve got,” Harry said, and he was honest about that. “He’s started using Gaunt recently, did you know? And Lord of Slytherin. I guess one of them led back to… you. Rita’s got a source.”

“Hm.” Riddle was flipping forward. “I will read it.”

“Brilliant. Thanks. Uh, I’ve got Runes tonight, I’ll be back late, d’you need anything?”

A gently concerned look. “What would I need from you?”

“Nevermind,” Harry muttered, dropping his runes text in his bag. “Bye.”

 

The unit in Transfiguration was on alchemy, which was quite good and fun even as a lecture. When they were each given a bit of copper to experiment on – even after McGonagall said they’d probably accomplish nothing – he ended up around a table with Luna, Lisa, and Daphne Greengrass. Daphne had moved to join Lisa – the Slytherins and Ravenclaws were typically more civil – and grimaced as Harry sat down. They’d only interacted a few times in class prior; like all the Slytherins, she was practiced at avoiding him.

“So,” Luna chirruped, “I wonder what’ll happen. Harry, try a refining spell perhaps? I think I’ll put a current through mine. Lisa….”

“I want to see if I can turn it straight to gas. Daph?” She looked over. “Try some runes, maybe?”

McGonagall had been very mysterious what she anticipated would happen in the process of experimenting, but she’d said the table that managed a positive outcome first would get an extra five minutes on the next exam, so they were all cooperative for the moment.

They cast goggles charms on themselves and pulled on gloves. Lisa began a section for notes from each of them.

They saw quickly why McGonagall warned them about the process of experimenting: all of the results were dramatic; most were explosive. “You see why there have been so many casualties in the search for the philosopher’s stone,” she said when she’d scrubbed the air clean of copper particles. “Copper is one of the least reactive metals for this sort of work, mind.” Looking around to ensure each of them was in one piece: “Carry on.”

Harry’s legs were already crossed tightly. He would not piss himself in front of his peers – and _girls_ , at that. He got up from his seat. “Bored?” Daphne asked. It was the first time she’d spoken to him.

“No. Uh, loo. I’ll be right back.” He tried to leave casually, but as soon as he was alone, he moved to a brisk stride. He could feel his stomach being jostled.

He dove into the loo, his hand reflexively slipping into his fly – and of course his fingers hit rubber, the thin pants that covered the nappy. Fuck him, he was going to – Into a stall then, to fumble with his clothing.

But so close, his bladder gave out, emptying into the nappy as soon as he’d shut the cubicle. He could only jam a hand to his mouth, letting it happen. Each time, his urgency and relief felt orgasmic all on their own. He spread his legs as the cotton bulged, a puddle beneath his balls absorbing too slowly. “God,” he muttered, his head swimming.

He wanted to wank. He wanted also to wait for Voldemort, to hand off this infuriating arousal he’d dealt with all day. He pressed out the last of his stream, and took a long moment to appreciate the wet heat that swaddled him. _Fetishist_. Fishing his wand from his pocket, he cleaned up.

Returning to the classroom, he fell accidentally in step with Snape, coming grimly down the nearest staircase. “Sir,” Harry nodded.

“Too good for class?” Snape asked, but he was clearly… what, distracted? There was not the typical amount of bile in his words. Curious, Harry followed him back to the transfiguration classroom.

Minerva was right inside the door, so Snape drew her out. “If we could see Ms. Greengrass?” he asked in a low tone.

Fuck. Nobody ever wanted the Slytherins for anything good. Harry let Minerva in first, so when he approached the table, Daphne was already packing up.

Lisa had shoved her notes aside. “I’m coming too.”

“Stay, Miss Turpin,” McGonagall said rather sharply. God, something was not alright. Daphne left, with Snape beside her. Lisa didn’t take up her notes again.

The rest of the class hadn’t noticed, or hadn’t wanted to get involved. Lisa, Luna, and Harry sat in a tense knot, alone in the implications, for a long moment. Then Lisa said, “Harry, Lisa thought that if we cast different spells on the same block simultaneously….”

 

He saw Sabita in the afternoon. He ended up venting to her about Rita’s book. She was just so _petty_ , and he honestly found that worse than being evil. At least Voldemort had always ruined his life with a purpose. When he said this to Sabita, it sounded dumb to him but she didn’t laugh, instead cocking her head thoughtfully. “Mm,” she said in something like agreement. “Was Dumbledore ever petty?” she asked, because they’d circled their relationship for weeks now, and Harry didn’t yet have words for it.

“… Not to me.” It wasn’t _petty_ to leave him in an abusive home, merely negligent. It might have been petty to bar Tom from spending the summers at Hogwarts, though. It might have been petty to set fire to his wardrobe, everything he owned, as though _punishment_ was what he’d needed then, not love and stability and freedom from his constant fear of never having enough. Calling him Tom, as he’d already told Dumbledore, was petty. “To Voldemort. Well, Tom. I just… humiliating someone isn’t how you _win_.” A breath. “I’ve got to say something to Rita. I don’t want to protect Dumbledore, but everyone else this will hurt….” His hands were in tight fists in his lap.

 

Dinner. Hermione telling them she’d confirmed showings on all four homes she wanted, and gotten permission and portkeys from Auror Willoughby. They’d go Saturday, which meant Harry had to cancel his Quidditch date with Malfoy. Damn.

And then he had ancient runes. Malfoy had told him he was a child and an embarrassment for how little attention span he had for theory, but then acquiesced so Harry was working on practical magic the first half of class and translating boring _boring_ ancient passages the second half. It was fair, even generous.

Malfoy nodded him in when he arrived. “I can’t do Quidditch. Saturday,” Harry let with promptly. “Sorry.”

“Were we going to?” Malfoy said coolly.

“I thought so,” he said with a confused look. “But we’ve got appointments to look at homes now. Hermione and Ron and me.”

“Charming.” Malfoy did not give a shit. “Stand… there.” Harry edged into place; Malfoy raised his wand to manifest the wards around him. “They’re in an older dialect. Good luck.”

Harry squinted down at the runes dotting the glowing wards. He didn’t even recognize some of the symbols; he wouldn’t know how to translate and disarm them. “Are you shitting me,” he muttered. In obvious pity, Malfoy threw a book at him.

It was slow. It was the tedious sort of written work he moaned about, except Malfoy had made it into one of the practical bits, so good pedagogy on his part, at least. He dragged a desk over in the middle of the wards, writing out the new runes on some scratch paper. The first time he counter-measured a ward and it didn’t explode, he realized he’d been holding his breath.

“Why aren’t you living with him?” Malfoy asked into a protracted silence, sometime later, as Harry was untangling a bunch of wards like fairy lights.

He looked up through his fringe, surprised at the question. “I am,” he said. “But, y’know, it might be hard to convince people to visit. We wanted to have people over. A post-Hogwarts group. You can come too, if you’re not an arse.”

The tiniest quirk of Malfoy’s mouth. “When am I ever not an arse.”

“A brilliant question. …Where are _you_ going, after this?” he asked tentatively, because they could only handle civility for five minutes at a time. “Unless you’re staying on to teach again next year?”

He raised a shoulder in indifference. “I might. Might leave.”

There was a tone of finality that indicated he didn’t only mean leaving Hogwarts. “Where?”

“I do believe you’re stalling now, Potter.”

He had set the book aside; he picked it up now to sketch a few runes. “Have you got family abroad then?”

He cringed as soon as he’d said it, since the implication _You haven’t got family here any longer_ was just barely unstated. Malfoy didn’t react. “No,” he said. “We’ve got business holdings abroad. I might to live on our winery in Lorraine.”  


Harry snorted. “Of course.”

“Oh, piss off, you’re restoring a manor on ancestral land, you’re more pretentious than I am.”

Harry filed away his surprise that Malfoy knew this – but Malfoy was first to know any intel passed around the Ministry. “Come see it sometime,” he said. “Make your house proud.”

“I would honor my house by keeping cunning, strategic distance from _him_.”

Harry shrugged. Honestly, Voldemort was not a very great threat these days – killing someone who’d displeased him would just be unprofessional and unbecoming for a member of the Wizengamot. But it wasn’t his place to convince anyone not to fear him. He returned to the runes.

An hour into class, he needed to piss. Again. Some of these wards were woven together, and the door was an impossible distance away. He didn’t want to ask Malfoy if he could go, but his thighs were already held tight together. Really, his entire lower half felt fatigued from being tensed, all day. He was sucking the inside of his lip as he wrote out runes.

A long drip, and he abruptly straightened. His back was to Malfoy by now, but the faint noise behind him indicated Malfoy was doing homework of his own. His bladder throbbed with need. He knew he’d have a difficult time stopping if he started to go.

But then he lost control for a longer moment, with heat blossoming into the front of the nappy. He _couldn't_ … but there were discretion spells and privacy spells wrapped around his hips. Only his reactions would give him away. It was a contradiction in terms to force himself to relax, but he parted his legs casually and ducked his head, looking at the runes. He gave in.

He had pissed himself in Malfoy’s presence once before – over the summer, by the lake – but that had been rather more incidental. As he pissed a steady trickle, he rolled a ward between his fingers as though testing it. He also listened for Malfoy. If he were caught –

The surge of arousal at that thought was wholly unexpected, and he did make a tiny noise in the back of his throat. He made as though to clear it, raising his wand to draw a rune. The cotton between his legs was thick and heavy by now, pressing up against him. He wanted to push himself into it, humping the fabric desperately right before Malfoy –

No. God, no.

But he’d gotten hard in very short order, after having been in a state of some arousal all damn day. And then his cock really was pressed tight against the steaming cotton. And movement would be friction.

He held the book tightly in front of himself, willing away these feelings. These was a complex knot of wards before him, so he could just stay right here, sorting out which of them were currents and which were explosions and which was a fucking glitter bomb because Malfoy had _one_ in every fucking class. He sketched a few runes, peeling back the thinnest wire.

His hips jerked on their own when he shifted, the head of his cock scraping the fabric and his balls pulsing in the puddle that remained between his legs. He… was going to come very soon. That, he couldn’t be so discreet about.

He looked back down at the wards. He created at least one explosion per class. Looking as though he were struggling with some adjacent wards – one definitely a classroom-sized explosion – he subtly brought them together.

_Bang_! His knees slammed to the floor with the impact and he stayed there. The movement was enough friction to push him over the edge and he slammed a fist to his mouth, his hips spasming only once as he shot a thick load into the front of his nappy. Hunched over, he let the orgasm course through him, making him warm and loose. He could feel Malfoy’s presence and it made it better; it was weird and he didn’t fucking care.

At last he lifted his head, taking in the classroom. Malfoy had put a shield up so he was untouched, but a great stream of glitter in green and gold had shot out of the explosion. Harry started laughing at the absurdity of the scene. Getting up gingerly and wishing he could cast a discreet Scourgify on himself, he stood. “Oops?”

Malfoy was unimpressed. “You did that on purpose.”

“Of course I didn’t.”

“I _watched_ you.”

His words set Harry’s exhibitionist thoughts aflame once more. “I didn’t recognize the other ward.”

“So you jam them together? No – Potter – why. Cast a Patronus.”

“What?”

“Do it.”

His magic was warm and loose; it was almost obscene how easily his patronus shot forth from his wand. Malfoy beckoned the thestral forward, addressing it clearly. “Tell the Aurors: don’t investigate the explosion on the fourth floor. My student is an idiot.” He sent it out the door, and Harry watched until it was gone. “Now – _what_ – “

“I’ll clean it up, it’s fine.” The glitter was all in a pile and he didn’t want to get close, because even magic couldn’t get stubborn glitter out. Really, any spell aimed at the middle of it produced great clouds of glitter, so he had to Tergeo from the edge inward.

Malfoy was disapproving, but Harry hadn’t outed himself at least. He cast a silent Scourgify later when Malfoy’s back was turned, and then it was like it had never happened.

 

He arrived back to his suite very late and exhausted. Riddle was out, but Rita’s book sat on the coffee table, a page of notes folded into it.

Oh. Across the top: _I’ve already written to him. You can’t fix this_. Raising his eyebrows, Harry summoned their diary, flipping to the back to find the last page in two inks and the same handwriting.

_She begins with Hogwarts. I am a brilliant Slytherin halfblood but she does not name our parents. There was “speculation now recently confirmed by the Dark Lord himself” that we are of Slytherin’s blood._

_She writes that our relationship with Dumbledore was “uniquely contentious,” since the rest of the faculty adored me. Her argument is a mess, as she does not want to sympathize with either of us. She does write that we fought about love. There is at least the implication that he understood what we were, and that he should be held accountable for not intervening or warning others._

_He did warn Slughorn apparently, that we were “overly invested in the pursuit of darker magics.” She doesn’t specify when, but he wouldn’t speak to Dumbledore about it. Harry should warn him that the press will want him now, too._

_She knows of the diary but not the Chamber. She doesn’t know how Warren died. She doesn’t name Horcruces._

_She does know of the Defense post. She writes that the second time was “the last chance” Dumbledore had, to save the world if not us directly. He must have told her this himself for some hideous reason, as she reproduces the conversation._

_She concludes with the implication that Dumbledore is culpable in part for us. It is the only conclusion she can promote. She does draw parallels to Grindelwald, though thank Merlin she does not imply any attraction. He should be sent a copy, as well._

And that was all. Voldemort had only written back _Thank you_ , neat at the bottom of the page. Harry pressed air through his teeth.

He hadn’t yet read the notes Riddle had left for him; he turned back to them now. _She writes that Dumbledore had always planned for you to die. It is not because of the Horcrux, only her understanding of the prophecy. You need to decide now whether you’ll publicly defend or denounce him._

There was a bookmark deep into the tome; it was presumably where the bit about Harry began, but he didn’t flip to it. Setting everything aside for the moment, he went to get ready for bed. He had to put his face under cold water for a very long time to steady himself.

Finally he brought the book and diary to bed with him. **_Are you alright?_** He wrote. Nothing.

Reading Rita’s book would rile him too much to sleep, but he’d read it anyway. Back to Grindelwald and that entire doomed relationship.

He’d read for perhaps an hour when the diary beside him warmed with magic. _I want to see you._

He smiled. **_I want to see you, too. I don’t know if I can sleep._**

_Take kaval and lie down. I’ll do the rest._

He took up the jar of kaval by his bed, tipping it back. He didn’t quite throw the book down, but set it down very hard anyway. Arranging his blankets, he doused the lights.

It took a long time before their magic even brushed against one another’s. Longer still until Voldemort could sufficiently grasp Harry’s mind, pulling him under. It was like being drowned, but in a pleasant way. Harry held his breath, going under.

The darkness remained unresolved before his eyes, as though he’d just come from a bright room. Of course he couldn’t blink it away because it wasn’t his body anyway. Voldemort was… where _was_ he? Somewhere outdoors, in a brisk cold.

“Aphrodisias,” he supplies. “The amphitheatre is beautiful. Look.” And he’s casting a fiery orb, sending it upwards and outwards, so Harry can see he’s sitting at the top of a hundred rows in a semi-circle, steep over a semi-circular stage. There’s the sound of glass on stone, and Harry sees Voldemort raise a bottle of liquor to his lips. He is already a bit drunk.

_I love you_ , he thinks, because it’s commonplace but also he’s concerned. There’s more Occlumency between them now than there typically is. Voldemort holds his anger as far from Harry as he can, but it still heats every other emotion within him. Harry’s uncertain whether they should talk about the book. He’d have nothing to say that would placate him.

“You couldn’t.” A longer drink. The liquor tastes of fennel, burning the inside of his mouth. “I wouldn’t want you to.”

_Will it be dangerous?_ Harry thinks. Irritating Voldemort is one thing, but endangering him is another.

“It is _invasive_ ,” he pronounces. “It is undermining. It is fumbling into some quite fragile relationships she doesn’t understand.” Harry wonders which; he hisses air through his teeth. “The Wizengamot would take any excuse to deny me legitimacy or access. How perfectly cyclical, to be the _mudblood_ surrounded by powerful purebloods who don’t want me there once more.”

Harry thinks to himself – but of course they’re too connected now for that – that _Slytherins_ might be the problem. Pureblood supremacy is the problem. Whatever insecurity drives them to this bigotry is the problem. But _Tom Riddle_ is not the problem.

“Just leave it,” Voldemort mutters. “We’ll accomplish nothing productive tonight.”

Harry gives him love, magic – the same thing.

Voldemort draws the fiery orb back to himself, catching it in one hand as he stands. “The magic here is impressively whole,” he says, walking out of the amphitheatre and down a steep hill to show Harry more of the site. “It was a Greek site from antiquity. Mixed use, Muggle and magic, though that distinction didn’t quite exist like that then.”

People made temples to love, Harry thinks faintly.

“They made temples and votives and art to everything. The theories of where wixes originated are… unsubstantiated, but I’m inclined to say the world was magic first, and Muggles emerge out of generations of squibs.” He turns, studying the site. It’s vast, a dozen foundations of buildings over a mile. “Having sex with Aphrodite’s priestesses in her festival was an act of worship.” He turns toward a great cluster of columns.

A thrill goes through Harry. _Really?_

“You have no idea how distracting you were today.”

He is pleased and blushing all at once. _I was so bloody horny all day_ , he thinks ruefully.

“Mm. Wait. I want to see it.” Harry thinks this is perverse, and he hums again in agreement.

He dangles the fiery ball of light high in the air as he enters what was once the Aphrodisian temple. The foundation remains, cracked though it is, and columns dot the edges. “There is magic here,” Voldemort says, and casts a lumos in infrared to make his point. The millennia of spells glow in a palimpsest along the stone, some falling like raindrops and some swirling like Amortentia’s steam and some pulsing in deep jewel tones. It is beautiful.

Voldemort conjures a deep armchair, hilariously anachronistic, and drops himself upon it. He swallows another mouthful of liquor. “How was your day, Harry,” he says in a final sort of way.

_Let me show you._

A shrug. “You come near enough to Legilimency these days. Do it yourself.”

Harry objects strongly: experimenting on someone’s mind is not testing out dueling curses together. And Harry’s asleep and Voldemort’s pissed, neither of them in a great position for something requiring such control.

So Voldemort relents, carding through Harry’s memories of the day. He doesn’t even pull them into a physical space, they’re already too sensitive, there’s no time. His hand is on his cock as he dips into his thoughts: the prickles of humiliation to feel the nappy beneath his robes, being distracted and desperate all day. At the first time he slipped in class, surrounded by students, blushing furiously – Voldemort’s hips buck, shoving his cock into his own grasp.

Harry’s lost in the memory too. _I felt so marked_ , he thinks in a daze. The weight of the nappy felt quite like the cock cage, in the end, secret but so present and so humiliating and so arousing. He was only forced into the nappy in a functional sort of way, but it was enough, it was more than enough. He’d always left his nipple rings in as a constant reminder, but really only worried about them in the locker room. This had felt infinitely more scandalous.

Voldemort’s cock is out and he’s stroking it with precise motions. Harry is probably hard in his sleep. They watch his desperation before the first years, staying deliberately composed as he lectures. Running through the corridors, his bladder jostling. Letting go completely as soon as he’d reached his room. Riddle’s gaze on him, wry and unapologetic.

Voldemort bucks again, at the relief of it, the tiny shivers as Harry pressed out the last of his piss. Going hot when he’d realized the Horcrux was there to witness it. _There’s more_ , Harry thinks darkly, pulling him to that evening.

Runes. Crossing his legs, feeling panic most as he got desperate. Malfoy’s gaze on him – that it’s just the two of them, that he’ll be caught, he _should_ be caught – And every time he and Malfoy are together he sort of can’t think straight, which is stupid –

Harry tries to interject something here but Voldemort pulls them deeper, his feelings manifesting as unbearable tightness in their stomach. The relief of letting go, the visceral embarrassment, coming in Malfoy’s presence –

Voldemort arches, and the echoes of orgasm push them over the edge. Come hits his thighs, running over his fingers as he pulls the memory of Harry getting off to himself greedily. They pump and pump, then their mind is blank.

Harry stirs first. _I don’t want to fuck Malfoy_ , he thinks rather defensively.

Voldemort is reaching for his wand, to clean up. “You haven’t got to.” Harry is indignant at this; Voldemort’s lips curve in an indulgent smile. “Really, there aren’t many discreet ways to indulge your fetish for exhibitionism. Or perhaps it is a fetish for getting away with it? Well done, in any case.”

Harry thinks the entire day has been perverse, but Malfoy the most so. He is protesting far too much; and he appreciates _antagonism_ in his attraction anyway. Voldemort only tips his head back, looking to the stars unspoiled by light pollution. He lets Harry’s indignation burn itself out.

And it does and then Harry is weightless and careless, as he always is after sex. Not that that properly counted as sex. They might have another go, but not yet. He dips back into Harry’s thoughts.

_Oh_. Harry pushes the morning at him, breakfast with Granger and Weasley. They’re looking at him in horror, then Granger is furious, then they tell him he’s _bruised_ from last night’s sex. _Were you?_ Harry thinks when realizes what Voldemort has seen.

“I haven’t seen my reflection today,” he murmurs, bringing the light close and casting a mirror charm before himself. Tilting his head backwards, there are purple bruises along his throat and collarbone. “Mm. That is…..” Unusual? Unprecedented? Impossible? “Not magic I know.”

_I told them we could do anything_ , Harry thinks. Well, that explains Granger’s grimace.

He leaves the bruises. They’re an attractive shade of purple, and he’s always in a glamour around people here anyway.

Harry is curious what he’s done with his time today. “I’ve been on-site. Here,” he clarifies. “The ley lines are buried too deep here to trace, but typically there are ancient markers where they lie. A temple, a gate, a statue,  fountain…. Humans have always believed in magic. Ancient Greek didn’t have a word for religion, though they had gods and miracles. It was all….” He makes a broad gesture. “The wonder of the world. Which makes it quite _stupid_ that the religious Muggles are kicking up such a fuss, as though it doesn’t come closer to proving their worldview, that magic exists.”

Harry thinks a bit wearily that he’s been asked to join a meeting with the Muggles later this month. There is nothing to say to them, and they only want their feelings soothed.

Voldemort makes an amused noise in the back of his throat. “When have you become so cynical?”

And then Harry is apologetic, though obviously Voldemort meant nothing by it. “Ask your Muggleborn friends,” Voldemort says more helpfully. “Not Granger, surely?”

_No_. He cycles through the Muggleborns he knows. They’re all a quite secular lot. _Maybe I’ll just tell them Jesus was a wizard_ , he thinks at last.

Voldemort shakes his head, something between impatience and wonder. “I can’t abide their religion.”

Harry finds something surprising, and it takes a moment to untangle their thoughts. Oh. He thinks that Voldemort spent quite a lot of time among religious Muggles in childhood, and that is true. Had he had any bad experiences with them?

“No. Surprisingly. The matrons who attempted to _fix_ me pursued medicine – what psychiatry was at the time – instead of religion. I don’t know that I preferred it. St. Anne’s Cathedral was always open. I could never touch the pipe organ, but they allowed me to play the piano in off hours.”

Harry is instantly charmed and fascinated. _I want to hear you._

“I’m quite sure I’ve forgotten it.”

_On purpose?_

That is, was the piano among the parts of his childhood memories he’s discarded. “Yes,” he says, and for the first time it feels like a loss. Perhaps he’s sad, perhaps Harry is just sad on his behalf, it really doesn’t matter.

Somehow, his life seems to be circling back to his childhood more often these days. It felt like retribution, that he must reckon with everything he’d left behind as though this is all a near-death experience.

And then Harry thinks quite clearly that he’s being melodramatic.

He slams his Occlumency into place, instinctively, hurting them both, before he realizes and pulls it back again. While he does not want to answer the charge of being melodramatic – he might be – he dips back into the conversation. “We might offer the religious ones something.” They’d bought their peace with the airspace shield to begin with, anyway. “I assume they rather _like_ having a new, shadowy enemy, for recruitments’ sake. But if they’d like to say otherwise… then we create myth,” he says. “ _Some_ of their saints and prophets must have been magical. Perhaps don’t begin with Christ.”

Harry’s skeptical but really this isn’t his forte anyway. _Maybe_ , he thinks.

Voldemort is becoming cold out here. “Let me show you one final thing,” he says because Harry needs to sleep and Voldemort needs to go, eventually. He is up again, vanishing the armchair and taking the light with him.

They walk to the front of the site, and Harry’s slightly suspicious that this is a tourist site. “It’d never be so preserved otherwise,” Voldemort says. “It is _still_ important to both Muggle and wixen history, mind.”

He’s approaching the museum in which they keep the artifacts. _Don’t steal anything_ , Harry chides, and it takes Voldemort by surprise.

“You care about art?” he says. “Or history, or museums.”

Harry’s feelings convey _sort of_ , that art locked away by rich people in private is being smothered. He had positive memories of a few museums on school trips. Mostly… he doesn’t know, he thinks. He’s never known Voldemort to steal out of spite, at least.

Voldemort hums as he disengages the security at the door. “I will take you to the National Gallery someday,” he says, because Harry loves roleplaying a life of quiet domesticity sometimes. And indeed, his magic flares in a pleased sort of way.

They pass through most of the museum, eerily shadowed by the low lighting in nighttime. In the rear of the building there’s a vast sort of warehouse, with reliefs arranged around the edges. Voldemort fixes the light above himself. Harry is curious.

“Rome conquered the world,” Voldemort narrates in a low tone. His footsteps echo across the space. “A swath of it, anyway. And they celebrated the conquests with portraits of all the nations they now owned. And more significantly, they made reliefs of the conquests. These pieces….” And he’s before a wall of reliefs. “The emperors, the gods – it’s all the same, to imagine there are forces in the world who supported their power. I brought you here, however, for the _conquered_.” He stops before a particular relief, a man with his knee on a conquered woman. “Claudius, conquering Britannia,” he says. “Hard fought, and a triumph. There’s one other one.” And he moves. A relief: a male body stands over a woman, bent and bound. “Nero conquering Armenia. I have wondered – I still wonder – why the artists showed their faces. It would be so much simpler to dehumanize them. They are only captives.”

Harry is contemplative, looking at the woman Armenia. She is exposed and fallen. His empathy and bloody need to help people is _hurting_ them right now, it burns so bright. “Do you _identify_ with the victims?” Voldemort asks in wonder, though, that seems wrong.

_No. Sometimes_. He’s been bound and conquered by Voldemort too, but he pushes that memory away before it could further injure them. _Do you?_ he thinks carefully.

Voldemort makes an instinctive noise of distaste, and Harry’s disappointment nearly scalds him. “No,” he mutters. “Never. There are others. The dying Amazons. The dying Gaul. There is such _pathos_ for their enemy, and I don’t understand why.” He steps back from the reliefs.

He expects Harry to be soft and pitying – he’s braced for it – but instead Harry is rather skeptical. _Are they merciful?_ he thinks in a sardonic way. _How sad, to have conquered another country. They could’ve not done it._

Harry is feisty and blunt tonight. He quite likes it. “We’ll see the dying Gaul regardless,” he says, because some part of him also likes making these promises to one another. He has gone unspeakably soft. “It is in Rome.” Harry is delighted.

They are slow to untangle themselves. Harry worries for him as usual. He worries of the shitstorm this week will bring from Rita. He worries about the magic Voldemort pursues now. Neither of them wants to get off again, otherwise Voldemort would give Harry another orgasm just to sleep. He catches this thought and he’s deeply entertained by it. Then he lets Voldemort pull them apart.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Allusions for Chapter 27: 
> 
> The reliefs at Aphrodisias – Aphrodisias is an ancient Greek archaeological site in modern Turkey. These reliefs were designs displayed on the outside of the Sebasteion, the temple complex dedicated to Aphrodite and the emperors. The Roman Empire had a lot of imagery of them conquering other nations, and the specific reliefs Voldemort discusses here are the [Emperor Claudius conquering Britannia](https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2570/3768411515_4226455f4a_b.jpg) and [Nero conquering Armenia](https://c1.staticflickr.com/7/6063/6025597909_29a1a85dd6_b.jpg). These both get used to discuss how gender, violence, and imperialism are paired in ancient art.
> 
> He also names statues of [the dying Amazon](http://www.silkstocking.nyc/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/DyingAmazon2.jpg), and [the Dying Gaul](https://www.ancient.eu/img/r/p/500x600/205.jpg?v=1485680519). It is fascinating to see these figures who are supposed to be the enemies of the Roman Empire depicted with such humanity, is the point here. (The other point is that I love ancient art and don’t get to talk about it enough.)


	28. Chapter 28

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daphne receives bad news, Tom leaves to find the Slytherins, and Harry wavers.

_Thursday, March 11._ There was nothing to do about Rita’s book but wait. Remus had warned Snape. Harry had lingered after Potions on Wednesday and warned Slughorn, which had gone _very_ badly, and now Slughorn wouldn’t make eye contact with him. He was furiously recounting what he read to Ron and Hermione; he even told Ginny and Luna a bit in class. And then Luna twirled her hair and said, “It’s rather brave, though, to write such things about Lord Voldemort.” And then Harry wasn’t speaking to her for at least a day.

But Thursday was awful. He was in Transfiguration again in the afternoon, sharing a table with Luna, Lisa, and Daphne once more. They were still on alchemy, this time trying to magic the different forms of the copper. And then there was a tentative knock on the doorframe, even though the door was open. This time it wasn’t Snape, but Slughorn looking very grave.

Before he’d even entered, Daphne, McGonagall, and Lisa for some reason seemed to already know what the emergency was. Daphne had never even unpacked her bag, so she grabbed it as she stood. Lisa had moved to join her. And McGonagall didn’t even say anything to the two of them, only beckoned them into the corridor.

Luna chewed a fingernail as she watched them go. “Such discord these days,” she said. “Maybe we should launch our own Unification program. I never liked being confined to the house tables, to begin with.”

“That’s a good idea,” Harry agreed, thinking through it. “But, uh, it’s a bit late.”

“Is it?” She was sloshing the liquid copper in its container, waiting for it to cool from the last spell. “The Slytherins could rejoin us, still. That’s what Astoria said.”

He looked up sharply. “ _Astoria?_ ” Daphne’s sister, who had vanished from the castle at the new year with the last of them. Oh god.

Luna nodded. “She came back. I only overheard. They had to take her to St. Mungo’s. Professor Flitwick went to see if there were any charms that would help.”

Help with _what_. If she’d been imprisoned, if she’d been attacked – The Humnerë had killed Avery right off, he’d barely made it into the castle, so it couldn’t be that…. “D'you know how she got in?” he asked, but Luna shook her head.

When McGonagall returned, her mouth was set in a thin line. “Please return to your dorms immediately. Classes are cancelled for the rest of the day.”

The rest of the class had been a little less aware of what’d happened, so they broke out in anxious murmurs. Nobody was brave enough to directly ask McGonagall what was wrong, so they all shuffled out with their heads low.

 

Back in his suite, Harry paced. The diadem was manifest and out, and he’d likely know more than anyone. He didn’t want to wait. If the castle was on lockdown, Riddle might not be able to get back in anyway. He pulled the diadem from the fire for a few moments and then dropped it back in, so Riddle would re-manifest before him.

He did, and he was immediately furious. “You selfish child,” he hissed. “Your _curiosity_ is not the most important thing. There are more pressing issues to which I must attend. Give me your wand,” he demanded, holding out his hand. “So I might retrieve mine.”

“Please tell me what’s happened.” Harry wasn’t yet angry in turn. “How did she get back in? You said you closed the entrance.”

“She came in through the grand entrance, as any student would. Not dead, very injured, without much to say about the fate of the other Slytherins. We’d left them in a safe location. We might still salvage her memories.” He spoke in a clipped, impatient way, then stepped in. “The longer you delay me, the more you’re hurting the remaining Slytherins. Give me your wand.”

“We’ve got to tell someone,” Harry said desperately. “If they’ve cracked your security spells, then the Slytherins would be _cornered_. You’ve got to – “

“There isn’t time for this.” Riddle’s face was dark and serious. “Your wand, or I’ll go without.”

“I’m going with you.”

He made a noise of utter disgust. “They don’t want you. This doesn’t concern you.” Seeing that Harry would still fight with him, he turned on his heel, striding for the door.

“Tom.” Harry dashed after him, slamming his hand to the door before he’d opened it. “For fuck’s sake. Here. I bloody hate you.” He shoved his own wand at Riddle. Without a word, he disillusioned himself and exited.

 

He paced, he chewed his nails. He wrote a few lines to Voldemort, but there was really no reason Voldemort would know anything. Harry was not the sort of restless that a wank would fix, or a nappy, or anything else perverse. He settled onto his bed, opening _Richard III_ before himself, but he didn’t have the focus to read it. Hating himself, he reached for Rita’s book instead.

He was at the duel of Dumbledore and Grindelwald. Grindelwald had taken over parts of Europe, mostly eastern Europe, and had sabotaged some cities that refused to join him. It had been a drawn-out fight, from his first invasion of Hungary in 1941. It looked nothing like the Muggle war: wixen towns were isolated generally, and Grindelwald had waged a siege on a number of them to break down their barriers. The footnotes had a bit about magical projectiles, that he’d have to tell Ron about sometime. Anyway, the British Ministry was slow to get involved – really, the Muggle war had disrupted people’s lives enough – and it was controversial that any non-military figure should get involved. At least Rita said that was the official reason Dumbledore didn’t act until the beginning of 1945. “ _But it seems clear, from our modern vantage point, that his hesitation was anything but politic. After so long apart, how could he bear to face down his erstwhile lover – and under such difficult and public circumstances?_ ” Gritting his teeth, Harry read on.

 

That night, instead of having dinner in the great hall, the students would eat in their common rooms. And the staff and faculty would take dinner in a dungeon meeting room, near many of their suites. They were all somber as they gathered.

Of course, half the faculty was out – with the Greengrass sisters or at St. Mungo’s or with the governors or at the Ministry. It was to Harry’s surprise that Malfoy arrived, coming from the other direction. He didn’t make eye contact.

Really it was all the junior faculty here, and nobody had been entrusted with any particular knowledge. Harry held what he knew from Riddle very close.

That afternoon, he’d read as much of Rita’s book as he wanted to. There were other better sources for the first war with Voldemort, where he’d stopped. And he wasn’t exactly pretending the war away, but maybe he could be furious with some of the things Voldemort had done much later. And he flipped through the chapters ( _chapters_ – only three, but still) about himself. Dumbledore had manipulated him, meant for him to die, et cetera. Strangely, for a book ostensibly written to capitalize on his own new and dramatic relationship with Voldemort, their relationship wasn’t named anywhere in this book. The last she’d written of Harry portrayed him as a weary child soldier in the second war, much too young to be responsible for so much. She didn’t even write how the war ended. Harry had a suspicion she’d try to get these matters in a later exposé, about him or Voldemort or both. God help them.

Anyway, Hermione was on the other side of Ron, so Harry passed the book over. “Here. You’ll hate it.”

Her lips went white from being pressed together so tightly. “She is _awful_. We don’t need discord right now, we really don’t.”

Ron looked at it dubiously. “You can’t believe it? What she’s written….”

It was fairly galling that what he knew of Dumbledore’s life was in there, mostly accurately, if in overwrought prose. “The people who want to believe her will believe her.”

Hermione was looking through the index. “She’s going to – well, not _ruin_ – but she’s going to annoy everyone with this.”

“Luna said it was brave,” Harry said, and Hermione snorted incredulously.

“Snape,” she muttered. “Slughorn. Fudge has got a lot – I’m not surprised. Oh, so has Scrimgeour. And most of the Aurors. Have you written Moody?” she asked, barely looking up.

“The Order all knows, Remus said. It’s been a long-time project of hers.”

“Wonder if she got any interviews out of them,” she said darkly, clearly thinking of Dung. “Oh – Malfoy – “ she looked across the table at him. “Your dad’s in here.”

He’d been looking at a book himself, pointedly not interacting with the Astronomy and Herbology professors beside him. “What?”

And that opened it up, Malfoy and Lyra and Gale all looking at this book now too. “It comes out tomorrow,” Harry said reluctantly as Hermione passed it to Malfoy. “Rita just….” A wave of his hand.

“Loves you,” Malfoy filled in.

“Obviously not.” He watched Malfoy leaf through it. “The Ministry will have to answer for it, the Order will, the governors….” He hoped they’d be warned. “It… wouldn’t close the school by itself, but with Greengrass….”

Malfoy looked up sharply. “You know nothing, Potter. You shouldn’t know _that_.”

“We were in Transfiguration together.”

Malfoy shrugged, and found the pages where his father was mentioned. “It’s nothing,” he muttered after a moment. “His time as governor. It doesn’t matter.” He shoved it back over.

Ron picked it up with the same morbid curiosity. “D'we need to… find her again?”

Threaten her, blackmail her. Harry couldn’t quite mention Azkaban in mixed company and it was _such_ bullshit that he kept Rita’s secrets while she profited off his. “No,” he said. “She invited me to the launch tomorrow night, though.” At the skeptical looks around the table: “I’m not _going_. Friday is for the dueling club, anyway,” he said lightly.

“I hope so,” Ron muttered.

 

When they were finishing dinner, Malfoy got Harry’s attention by kicking him under the table. “Ow, what the hell,” he glared.

“We’re having class tonight,” Malfoy said. “In your suite if we’ve got to. You are still on the _third year_ curriculum.”

Only in the history and theory bits; but he couldn’t deny it. “Shouldn’t you… be somewhere?” he asked. The Slytherins tended to huddle at these times.

“No.”

“Right. It can’t be my room, though,” he said. The Horcrux in the fire would raise questions.

“It won’t be mine,” Malfoy said. “The Slytherin common room would be empty.”

“I wouldn’t be contaminating it?” he asked. Malfoy rolled his eyes at him.

 

A run back to his suite, where thank god Riddle had left his wand, even if he himself was absent again. Then to the Slytherin common room. He’d expected – well, Blaise and Millicent, the last of the Slytherins, to be there. It was silent, however. Malfoy didn’t offer an explanation, but rearranged some furniture with a flick of his wand. “We’re doing it the other way around tonight,” he said, not dignifying Harry’s snort with an acknowledgment. “You draw the wards, I will dismantle them. Use the proto-Germanic runes from last week.”

“Oh. Sure.” He’d gotten good at dismantling them, but creating them was a different sort of thought process. He flipped open his book.

Malfoy got bored very quickly, and stood. “You have fifteen minutes to make something adequate.”

He might do better work under less scrutiny anyway. “Fine. …Why, where are you going?”

“I am in high demand these days.” He left.

So Harry constructed a little obstacle course for him. Or he _began_ to anyway, but the first time he reached for one of the security wards on the dungeon wall, so he could anchor his own smoke ward to it, it sort of disintegrated in his hand. “What the fuck,” he muttered, moving back from the threadbare wire along the wall. He didn’t recognize the rune, it was quite old and faded, but he could patch it back together with a little magic.

But it happened thrice more as he spun his web of wards in a corner of the common room. When Malfoy re-entered, Harry actually grabbed a frayed end of a ward to show him. “Look at this. Is this _normal_?”

Malfoy was very unmoved. “You should know how to fix that.”

He did it with his fingertips, twisting the magic back into place, and for a moment Malfoy’s face lost its skeptical look. “This is… mental,” Harry said. “How long has it been like this? The wards aren’t decaying all over the castle – “

“Actually they are,” Malfoy interrupted. “Though they decay at a greater rate in the dungeons. Just don’t touch them. Why were you touching them?”

“How long?” He was grasping for other wards along the wall, pulling until they faded into view, bright orange and green wires. “Was it the war?” Voldemort had never entered the castle, but loads of the Death Eaters had. It would be an obscure offensive measure, but….

“How would I know?”

Harry looked at him seriously. “I believe you, that the Slytherins are being… terrorized, or whatever. Intimidated. Have you told someone?”

“ _Yes_. For god’s sake.” He stepped in, glaring down at Harry’s own wards. “Are you distracting from your shoddy snow rune?”

He glared back, dropping the broken wards pointedly. “It’s not snow, it’s rain.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Let’s see, shall we?” Poking it with his wand, he snapped one of the security bonds.

A load of wet slush buried them both.

Harry laughed in shock; Malfoy made an intensely irritated noise. “ _Evanesco_ ,” he said from the other side of the slush pile. Looking at Harry: “Now all your wards are wet. Did you waterproof them?”

Goddammit. “No,” he muttered, no longer so amused. Some of them were melting; one was sparking. Cursing under his breath, he vanished the lot.

Malfoy’s hair was still damp, clinging to his forehead. “Do it again.”

There was time, anyway. But he kept getting shocked by the fraying wards protruding from the wall.

 

 _Friday, March 12._ By Friday morning, the houses had been cleared to enter the great hall. Astoria had been recognized as a student when she had entered through the great entrance. It was a relief to not confront another security risk, but frustrating that they’d learned nothing new.

Friday morning was also the beginning of the book-related deluge. The newspapers had gotten review copies from Rita, and the reviews were hideous. They all _believed_ her, generally. They were all desperate for scandal. God knows why. There was so much that was so fragile already, they didn’t need political strife now.

The reviewers mentioned him too, and that was even more awful. “Dumbledore’s alleged plans for Potter shed light on his recent and abrupt political allegiances,” said _The Unexpurgated Gazette_. “The relationship between Dumbledore and Potter was in some regards, central to the second war. This will change the stories still being narrated about what the war meant,” wrote _The Galleon_. Fuck it all.

So all the papers owled him, and sent owls for Voldemort addressed to him, and they (the letters, not the owls) all got levitated into the hearth. Beside him, Hermione frowned at the mass of burning parchment. “I’d help you write something,” she offered. “To, well, defuse things a bit.”

“They don’t deserve it,” Harry muttered, shoving away the final owl.

She gave him a sympathetic look. “Our world is just too small, I think.”

Their world was too _fragile_ , was what it was. He’d strangle Rita when she next approached him.

 

 _Saturday, March 13._ They were awake early on Saturday, to go look at homes. Hermione had a very large portfolio with photos and notes already. “Go put on robes,” she admonished them both when they came to breakfast in jumpers and jeans, and she wouldn’t let them eat until they’d changed.

She’d stayed within England, “as even just traveling across the borders can be a bit of a bother.” And she’d asked Harry if they should be closer to any of the airspace anchors in particular – and Harry didn’t really know, but she’d booked a viewing at a home partway between the anchor at Cornwall and the Burrow, in a wixen village called Bloom’s Crag. But the other three homes were all in Muggle areas – though she’d promised there were Apparition points nearby and they’d be allowed to install a floo. The Aurors had already arranged portkeys, that would depart from Dumbledore’s office so they trudged up the staircase that morning.

The realtor was a wiry young man named Rudyard, who met them outside the first flat they’d see, on the outskirts of Leeds. “Ms. Granger,” he said, seizing Hermione’s hand. “So good to meet you in person at last. And….” He swiveled to Harry and Ron, and the momentary surprise at recognizing Harry was unmistakable. Still, they both graciously pretended he didn’t know who Harry was, letting him introduce himself.

Wixen real estate was as chaotic and surprising as everything else in their world. Rudyard cast illusions of furniture inside. “Something modern but still cozy, perhaps?” he asked with a glance at them. _Pop_ , and contemporary furniture shimmered into existence. “Or a bit more traditional?” _Pop_ , and furniture that looked straight out of Grimmauld Place filled the room instead, smothering the small space. “Two bedrooms, a half bath, and let’s look at the kitchen….”

Second was Ipswich, and a similar blocky beige flat. “Culture right outside your door,” Rudyard said, gesturing to the dull door on its windowless wall. “Young people these days, we like to spend our time _out_ , and certainly you can in this charming locale.”

Harry learned that Muggle homes could have their space expanded by five or ten percent, and wixen homes even more. (“Of course, make that work for _you_ by shrinking everything you’ll put in storage first.”) He learned that even if they’d rely on magic full time, they should get the water and electric running anyway. (“Not that we’ve got to hide anymore,” Rudyard had said with a sidelong look at Harry, “but the Muggles get anxious. And the electric companies get a bit tetchy,” he said with a chuckle.) He learned that it’d take a good amount of time to install security wards – longer in the Muggle homes than wixen ones, Rudyard said, because electricity interfered with so much magic.

The third was a house in Hampshire, in a Muggle village. “This one’s got the most common space,” Rudyard said, letting them in. “And a lot of light.” He cast illusions of furniture. “The kitchen’s a bit small as a trade-off, but still quite workable. And the landlord’s a sweetheart.” He drew the curtains, to a scene overlooking a field. “There.”

“Could we go upstairs?”

“Yes, yes.” He shepherded them up. “There’s a second half-bath up here. Make things a bit easier, getting four people out the door in the mornings.”

Silence. They all sort of blinked at him. Harry realized that he’d been fishing for something about Voldemort the entire time. The idea that Voldemort would live _here_ , as _roommates_ …. Harry was biting his cheek to keep from grinning. “It’ll just be the three of us. I’m staying here part-time. He,” (he had the grace not to name Voldemort) “has a home already.”

“Ah,” Rudyard said, and rather than look embarrassed he seemed just deeply relieved. Harry was sort of used to that reaction by now. Still, when Harry and Ron climbed the stairs, Ron breathed to him, “What the hell.” Harry grinned.

The fourth home was the only wixen dwelling they’d see, in Devon. “It’s had a diverse range of occupants,” Rudyard said as he let them in. “The last couple here was claustrophobic, so – lots of space! You couldn’t expand the rooms any farther, though, before you’d damage their structural integrity.” He was drawing the blinds, rapping at the walls and sills. “The security wards are still in place – you’d have to refresh them – and it’s already connected to the floo,” he beamed at them.

This was the only home they left to also see the surrounding village: a wixen settlement of about fifty people. “Which is a lot, for us,” Ron added at Harry’s skeptical look. Harry quietly wondered if Voldemort was incentivizing population growth in some way, because they were so tiny and fragile now.

When they parted, Hermione told the realtor that they’d talk it over and be in touch with offers within a few days. And Harry quietly thought he’d stay out of the way, that really this was a decision for Ron and Hermione.

But at the end, when Rudyard had seen them out, and left them on the street to portkey back, Harry instead reached under his robes, to his throat where he'd hung his _other_ portkey. “D'you want to see the Slytherin estate?”

They both looked near-shocked. This portkey was open ,though – Harry hoped it wasn’t a transgression of Moody’s trust in him, to use it with other people – so at last he twisted it open and the three of them took hold.

It’d been a few weeks since he’d seen the estate himself, and the progress they’d made on it was glorious. The east wing, with the kitchen and dining room and pantry connected to the cellar was about finished, with glowing fuchsia wards wrapped around the walls to preserve them. There would be an entire corridor of bedrooms above it, including the master bedroom, and shimmering charms marked out where the walls would be set.

The west wing, where they’d just begun, was made of large spaces. A room for social events (a _ballroom_ , Harry thought, feeling like a twat) was just off the entry way, and mostly complete. The space behind it would be a library. Both rooms extended to the floor above, creating vast and impressive spaces. Ron and Hermione were quiet as Harry walked them through, with just enough comments to explain what they were looking at.

“We’ll need the space to host, like, Ministry functions,” Harry said as they stopped in the sitting room just behind the entry way. “But also… to have regular people over. Voldemort can stay out of the way,” he promised at their looks. “We’ll have birthday parties here. We’ll have a Christmas eve dinner. I dunno, anything.”

“You’ve given him so much,” Hermione murmured, though he couldn’t make out her tone.

“Yeah, I have.” When he concentrated, he could sort of feel the contented buzz of the house around him. It had been alone for far too long, as well.

“Are you sure.” Ron bit his lip. “Ancestral land is really powerful. They say the magic’s shallow in the ground here, too. It’s going to make him…” _invincible_. He didn’t say it, and looked away when he added, “Dunno that anyone would be safe, coming around here.”

He didn’t know how to make anyone believe that it was over. That he’d – sort of – delivered Voldemort out of the cycle of violence, that he was promised a different sort of life now. “It’s in our vow,” he said. “Not the part that was made public.” The Ministry had at least been agreed on that, that making specific claims about the magic Voldemort could and couldn’t use would be a security risk. It was underwhelming, but. “And… he doesn’t want another war either. Everyone is tired.” _And he wants to keep me safe._

He’d said these things to them before; perhaps they landed differently standing in the midst of the home Harry would give him. “Right,” Ron said. “Alright.” He was gazing upwards, where a swooping staircase would lead to an open mezzanine.

But it was Hermione who cast the same staging spell that the realtor had cast for them all day, filling the rooms with the illusion of furniture – not far off in aesthetic from Grimmauld Place, dark and traditional. Harry about melted to see what could be their home. “He’d better be grateful,” she said, raising her dark brows at him. “So, _so_ grateful. He will never be able to make it up to you.”

But Harry was taking half-steps back toward the east wing, to see their kitchen, their dining room furnished. “He is,” he agreed, with a glance back to see if they’d follow. “And so’s everyone else.” He still got letters daily about how _brave_ he was, what a _sacrifice_ he’d made. It was tedious.

But all those feelings receded when he stepped into the kitchen again, glamoured with the showcasing spell. They’d planned it as a large space, with a hearth in warm stone. An island stood in the center, where they could also install a wet bar. He moved to the dining room. It already invited holiday dinners. He could make this home irresistibly warm and welcoming, with Voldemort or not.

Ron and Hermione trailed behind him. “It’s really nice,” Ron said. “Have us over sometime.” Harry smiled at him.

 

But when they arrived back at the castle, taking the portkey back into Dumbledore’s office, they were all immediately seized by containment spells, and dragged forward. “Where were you?” Camilla Brightbone hissed, barely taking off the spell enough for them to answer. Behind her, Bragg and Squire were incredibly unhappy with them.

Brightbone had given them the portkey to look at homes to begin with. Maybe there’d been a trace put on them, that they couldn’t deviate from where they’d said they were going. Harry stepped forward to shield his friends. “I took them to the Slytherin estate after,” he said. “I wanted to show them what we’d done with it. Sorry.”

It was unfortunate that none of the Aurors present were Order affiliated. Moody, Tonks, and Kingsley uniquely cared about Harry’s happiness, and might have softened at this. This lot only glowered. They cared about Harry’s safety, yes, but happiness no.

“We needed to find you,” Brightbone bit out, “because we’d just extracted Greengrass’s memories. She meant to _collect_ you. Her mind was… fragmented before we pulled her memories, but she’d been tasked with _delivering_ you.” She said the word in disgust.

“Oh my god,” Harry muttered, shoulders slumping. “She’s dead, then?” A curt nod. “They… Voldemort thought Avery might’ve been a lure. For me.”

Glare. “You didn’t mention this?”

“It was only a guess. You know they were interested in our magic.” Because when he’d seen Voldemort with the Dëshmitar last week, she’d said as much and he’d repeated it to Rye when she came to take a statement. “But Greengrass wasn’t like Avery, was she? He was… cursed already,” he said awkwardly. “His soul or his body had already been captured, anyway. When he arrived. Was she?”

“That is confidential.” Another intense look. “And you shouldn’t know any of that.”

“Sorry,” he said again. “I’d stay in the castle, but….” The airspace shield needed him. The Ministry needed him.

Brightbone raised her gaze past him, to Ron and Hermione. “Weasley, Granger. Go. Bragg will escort you to the dungeons.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Hermione’s voice was very small.

And then Harry was sat down between Brightbone and Squire for a terrible conversation. “What else do you know?” Brightbone asked, hideously unimpressed with him. Neither of them were the good cop, he thought.

It was the closest he’d ever come to telling them about the Horcrux. Tom knew more of the Slytherins than any of them, including Voldemort. But by now, he was reluctant to turn the Horcrux over not just because he’d get in more trouble than he’d ever been in in his life, but also because he feared they’d kill it. Destroy it, whatever. And then Harry would be the only one left. “I know the Dëshmitar wants me,” he said instead. “She hadn’t said anything about the students. Or about Hogwarts, really. I don’t know how she would’ve found them.” He sucked his lower lip. “If I could do something about them, I will. They can’t… I can’t let anyone else die for me,” he said, his tone too low and deliberate so his voice didn’t shake.

Both of them gave him dark looks. “You couldn’t give them what they want,” Brightbone said.

His life, his magic, his Horcrux, his relationship to Voldemort…. She was right but he was desperate to believe he could somehow save them. “There must be some protection…. I’ve got protection from dark magic because of Voldemort. If they were protected by our blood….” Really, hadn’t the Horcrux been manufacturing some blood protection itself? Slytherin’s blood had to count for a lot. Protection from a Horcrux had to count for a lot.

“The Slytherins who remain are not the most vulnerable ones,” Brightbone said.

Right. But then he blinked at her. “They’re all underage,” he said. “You can’t trace them?”

“… No.”

Fuck. So they were either without magic, or they were in a place surrounded by magic – that the trace was more geographic than individual, so Harry had been blamed for Dobby but Voldemort had said he’d been relatively free to use magic in any of the mixed use spaces of London. (“ _Not_ the orphanage,” he had said darkly. “Which had surveillance spells on it as soon as Albus arrived.”)

“I could ask him for ideas,” Harry offered, “or if he’s heard anything more from the Humnerë. He’s… still looking for a way onto their land.”

“Give us your book,” Brightbone said instead. “I’d prefer to ask him directly.”

Voldemort had left the Aurors’ diary behind specifically because they weren’t meant to have any contact. He was in exile, after all. “Right,” Harry said. “Uh, it’s in my suite, d’you want to…?”

They walked him down directly. They _flanked_ him, whether they meant to or not. When he reached his suite, he hesitated. “Would you wait a minute?” Abrupt nods from them both.

The diary was on his bedside table. Picking up a quill, he flipped it open. Writing in English, which felt unnatural now: **_Another student is dead. They found in her memories that she’d been sent for me. The Aurors want to ask you about it. I’m giving them the diary._**

He sat there for a minute, even if it was wildly unlikely that Voldemort actually happened to see it immediately. When nothing happened, he took it to Brightbone.

She held it gingerly. “Are there any spells on it?”

“Uh. An awareness charm, so it’ll grow warm when we’ve written. Infinite pages. The older parts will fade after a few days. That’s it.”

She paged through it skeptically. “Thank you.”

“When can I have it back?” He was first going to ask _Can_ I have it back, but that was too terrible a question.

“After he’s been useful to us.”

“Right,” Harry said again. And then he had to let them have it. They let themselves out; he knocked on Ron and Hermione’s door.

They let him in solemnly. “Sorry,” he muttered, taking a seat beside Ron on the sofa. “I didn’t know it’d go like that.”

“Are you alright?” Hermione asked, a bit timid.

“Yeah.”

Determined to move on, she pushed some floor plans and furniture catalogues before them both. “We were going to look at furniture, now that we’ve seen all of them. Muggle furniture can be bought straight away, but if we want any magical pieces, they’re typically special-ordered. And, ah, you might think about the same for the Slytherin estate. Have you got a floor plan?”

Special-ordered magical furniture. He had the sense that he’d never not be behind in his knowledge of the wixen world. “What sort of things? Like your clock?” he asked Ron.

That got a fond smile. “Nah, Dad made that one. Like… if you want a bathtub that changes size. Or curtains that draw themselves, or dining tables that change shape to fit people in. You know.”

“I _don’t_ know,” Harry said, greatly amused. His interest now piqued, he took the catalog.

 

It was nice. It was simpler than Harry had thought – Ron and Hermione had enough money from teaching, but generally not more than could afford the most basic furniture. When Harry tried to say he’d buy them anything, they waved him off rather violently. “You’ve got a house to fill,” Ron said, sort of horrified and sort of impressed.

He smiled. Showing off the Slytherin estate for the first time had felt good. It demystified a lot of their life together, anyway. He’d ask them again, sometime in the future, if they could picture coming over for dinner eventually.

An hour in, and now they were mostly looking at the catalogues just for fun. “A dresser that sorts your clothes by color,” Ron said. “I’ve got a colorblind cousin, I should tell him….”

“Wardrobe that you could install a floo inside,” Harry said, pointing to it. “A bookshelf that reads off the titles to you. A staircase that turns into a ramp – Huh, wonder if that’s what the dorms have got.”

Hermione got to her feet. “Can I put on a film?” she asked them both. “We’re doing the Muggle concept of fantasy in class this week. What they think of magic, you know. I wanted to show some bits of films but I couldn’t decide….” She’d pulled out a box of VHS tapes. “Ron, you haven’t seen these before, either.”

“Maybe I’ve been watching them without you.”

She rolled her eyes. “Maybe you would, if you stopped watching Die Hard every weekend.”

He broke into a grin. “But it’s so good. Harry, have you seen Die Hard? We should put it in.”

“Oh, was that a fantasy?” Hermione chided.

“… Yes?”

She gave him a lovingly exasperated smile. “Princess Bride?” she asked, holding up one box. “Or Labyrinth?”

They ended up watching Labyrinth. Harry got the impression that he and Hermione blushed at the same moments when Bowie was on screen. The entire film was fun. Even if he’d had the sense that as he was hopelessly behind in wixen culture, he was _also_ hopelessly behind in Muggle culture. How embarrassing.

So everything was okay again by the end of the afternoon. And while he’d expected dinner to be a solemn affair in light of Astoria, everyone was as cheery as ever. He had to assume it was being kept quiet, this time. It might have been for the best, but it still felt bad. And of course, all the Slytherin students were absent.

He really needed to do something.

 

That night, before bed, he manifested the Horcrux. Riddle already knew what he wanted, because Harry had been worrying about it all evening.

“Do you know what happened to her?” he asked Tom, carefully.

“No. Not yet. Is her sister still here?”

He hadn’t seen Daphne since Thursday, but then, he hadn’t been looking for her really. “I’m not sure.” Drawing air through his teeth: “This isn’t… you can’t do this alone. Let me say something to the Aurors.”

“The _Aurors_ ,” (he said it with stunning contempt) “hate these children as much as they hate their parents. What do you think that would accomplish?”

“They’d be safer. Wherever they are now – “

“They are in a secure place,” Riddle interrupted him. “Astoria must have left. God knows why.”

“Would you tell me where if I swore not to repeat it?” It felt stupid, bargaining like this, but he was desperate.

A cold smile. “ _You can’t do this alone_ ,” he mocked. “And no, I couldn’t.”

“You can be bound by oaths, I know – “

“They are under Fidelius,” he interrupted curtly, “and I’m not their secret keeper.”

“It’s not enough,” Harry said. “You – I don’t want to see them _die_ anymore. Is that what you want?”

“They will die free.”

Harry looked at him, aghast. “You are a monster,” he breathed. “You can’t….”

“I’m going to see them,” Riddle said. “The remaining Slytherins. They need me more than you do.”

“You need to get the other students back.”

Riddle’s anger flared – Harry felt it as he felt Voldemort’s own emotions, even if this was fainter. “They aren’t safe here.”

“Why?” Harry demanded. “Whatever was… happening in the dungeons, the eighth years have been _fine_ for months. And we can do something, anyway. I’ll sleep there myself if I’ve bloody got to.”

“The dorms are still cursed,” Riddle informed him. “The eighth years have slept elsewhere. The castle itself is _malevolent_ ,” he hissed. “As it attacked the Death Eaters in the war, it is now attacking their children. Perhaps it’s been cursed, but perhaps it is only vindictive. It is probably safest to no longer sort students into Slytherin.”

Harry was actually taken aback. Riddle had been angrier than anyone about the moratorium on Slytherin students. He was _still_ angry. If he believed now that it was right…. “Then we’ll give the students dorms elsewhere,” he said decisively. “We’ve got space. The Room of Requirement would take them all, if nowhere else could.”

Riddle glared. “What an ignorant suggestion,” he said. “ _The castle hates us._ ”

“It doesn’t.”

“You know nothing,” he said sharply. He was moving to pick up his wand, fastening his cloak tighter.

But Harry stalked after him to the door. “Nobody should have to die for me,” he said, and his tone was caught between fury and devastation.

“Greengrass made a stupid decision. So did Avery. I need to see the Slytherins.” He peeled Harry’s hand from the door.

“No.”

He gave Harry a hideously impatient look. Then, without saying anything, he grabbed Harry’s throat and pulled at his soul.

It was excruciating, plunging him into instant pain and panic. “You shit, I – “ His mouth was thick with tears, and he was fumbling for his own wand. But then Riddle shoved him onto the nearest sofa, casting a temporary paralysis spell as he left. And by the time Harry had fought through it, he was gone.

“Oh my god, _fuck_ you,” he muttered to the empty room, mopping up his face. He could’ve followed Riddle – presumably if he weren’t going to the Slytherin dorms, he’d go to Malfoy’s room. Instead, Harry put on kaval to warm as he had a shower. He needed to find Voldemort in sleep tonight.

\\\\\\\ ////

 _Sunday, March 14._ Before breakfast, he sent a Patronus to Moody, asking if he was free today. “It’s important,” he’d said, but didn’t add anything else.

Moody’s own Patronus, a falcon, returned to him immediately, bearing a scroll. (He’d assumed Harry wouldn’t be alone, and this was more secure. Nobody else had yet trained their patronus to carry notes, and he’d forever grumble at them that the most common security breach is carelessness.) They’d meet at Grimmauld Place after lunch. Harry would miss the Quidditch game _again_.

He was actually too much of a mess to eat lunch as the time approached, so he was breaking off bits of a chocolate bar as he packed a bag. He was very near to finishing _Richard III_ , even as he dropped it into his bookbag. He should’ve asked Voldemort last night what he should read next.

Riddle hadn’t returned since last night. He hadn’t seen any of the Slytherins at breakfast, but Sunday mornings were often the castle day for a lie-in, so maybe that wasn’t foreboding. He approached the fireplace, where the green flames still glittered around the diadem. And he was actually a little hesitant to touch it, after that _twat_ shoved a panic attack on him last night. Maybe he wouldn’t realize what was happening, for long enough.

Oh. And Riddle had the cypress wand with him. Well, Harry could retrieve it later, wherever he’d drop it now. He picked the diadem out of the flames, shrunk it with a spell, and nicked his own hand for a pinpoint of blood. “ _Surripio_.” It dissolved into his finger. He slung his bag over his shoulder.

 

Grimmauld Place was quiet when he flooed in. The glowing wards around the fireplace indicated he was alone. He went to put on tea.

He hadn’t told Moody whether he should come alone or not. He’d decide for himself, anyway. But Harry didn’t want it to be Remus, and he didn’t want to have their confrontation in the kitchen. He hadn’t been here since November, when Moody had confronted him with his own childhood memories. Somehow, he was still raw. So when he’d poured tea, he paced the house with it, and passed through the front hallway. The portrait of Sirius’s mother was gone, and he breathed a sigh of relief. Presumably Malfoy had taken the tapestry from the drawing room, too. Good. That had never been Harry’s family. It’d scarcely been Sirius’s.

He ended up in that drawing room anyway – it was near enough to the floo and front door, however Moody would arrive, and it was the right size, and there were now very few fragile or flammable or throwable things in there.

Moody would _hate_ him. He couldn't think about it, or he’d lose his nerve. He curled up at the corner of a sofa, pulling out his book.

The spells by the front door chimed. Harry stood, but based on the footsteps through the house, Moody already located him through the walls. He stayed put.

Moody’s face was deliberately neutral as he entered, even as tight a grip as he had on his staff. “Potter,” he greeted. “What did you do to Walburga?”

He sort of smiled. “Malfoy won her in a Quidditch scrimmage last week,” he said. “The tapestry, too.” He raised his chin to the empty spot on the wall. “No, really…. I asked him to take them. It’s his family.”

“Only surprising she let him. Good.” He limped in, taking a seat on the sofa opposite. “What? If it’s about Skeeter, we can’t do anything about her either.”

Oh god, that already felt so long ago. “No. That’ll be… fine. Voldemort’s not happy that she’s published, uh, his childhood, but it won’t hurt him. It’ll hurt Snape. And Slughorn. And probably a lot of the Ministry.” Since one of Rita’s persistent motifs was how ineffectual every Minister had been compared to Dumbledore. Somehow Fudge wasn’t even the worst of them.

“Yes,” Moody said, but he was unmoved. The Ministry wasn’t Harry’s problem and they both knew it.

So Harry couldn't wait any longer. Standing, he took out his wand and sliced a line beneath the diadem on his finger. “ _Expiscor_.” He slipped the diadem off and returned it to its size. “This is… the worst thing I’ve ever done. I’m sorry.” He felt Moody’s gaze on his back as he approached the fireplace. Before he cast the spell, he turned back. “You can’t destroy the Horcrux,” he said, and his voice shook a bit with emotion. “I don’t care otherwise, but don’t destroy it. He’s got none left.”

“What is this, Potter.” Moody’s voice was now cold.

“I’m sorry. _Hithgalach_.” He dropped the diadem into the fire.

Everything happened at once – Riddle sprang from the fire, shoving Harry out of the way. Moody was on his feet, casting a barrage of spells. The security spells of the house had all been tripped, so entrapment and paralysis spells fired off around them. Riddle _ran_ , unencumbered by the spells, and Moody and Harry had to run after him.

He didn’t have footfall or weight or breath unless he wanted to. The tracking spells wouldn’t properly work on him. He couldn’t be held. But he couldn’t disappear and he couldn’t escape. They sprinted two flights of stairs, into the dusty and unused part of the house.

The clang of weaponry down the corridor. Long ago, some member of the Black family had collected swords. Moody and Harry had their wands before them as they burst into the makeshift armory.

Riddle had pulled a gleaming sword from the wall, and was _casting_ with it like a staff. The _bombarda_ spell glanced off them both as they threw open the door. Plunging the sword backwards then, Riddle smashed out a window with the hilt. “No – Tom – you idiot – “ Harry ran forward.

Tom held the sword out to stop them, to keep them back. “He’ll _kill_ me,” he hissed, gesturing toward Moody. “Did you ever think otherwise? If you _trust_ him so much, why did you keep this secret for so long?”

He only wanted to maximize damage on the way out. Moody had cast a shield before both of them, but Riddle was now edging toward the window. “You won’t get out,” Harry said. “You’ve got no idea how secure this house is.”

“For humans.” He threw the sword at their shield – and then he ripped apart Harry’s soul once more, as though crushing his heart – Harry cried out, wilting to the floor – Explosions of Moody’s spells above his head –

He felt the house’s wards being ripped open. This was startling; the house had always been rather distant and suspicious of Harry, but he could feel its magic now. As he was scrambling to his feet, he murmured, “Don’t let him out.”

A sizzle, as the wards first mended themselves and then encircled Riddle’s hands where he was tearing them open. And Tom was better at wards, but Harry had control of this place, for once. He wiped off his face, looking up to find Riddle in impromptu shackles along the wall, glowing bright as he cast ineffectual spells. He tried not to smile. “I hope you feel stupid,” he addressed Riddle coolly, stepping forward to pull the shackles off the wall. The house’s magic pulsed against his fingertips, and he gave the wall a pat like a good dog before pulling Riddle’s hands off it. “And bloody be _careful_ , or you’ll kill yourself. I made a vow with Voldemort last night. That you’d cooperate in finding the Slytherins.”

Riddle looked honestly surprised with him for a moment. Then he smirked. “Well done.”

“Oh, piss off. Come here.” He was gratified to find that the shackles held together as he yanked them forward, the complex magic of Grimmauld Place warm in his touch. “He can’t go that far from the fire,” he said to Moody, who had stepped back but not lowered his staff. “We should….” He kicked the fucking sword out of the way as he crossed the room, pulling Riddle behind him downstairs.

He was quiet, he was sulking. Harry had the sense that Riddle was not yet used to being in trouble, and he was taking it badly. “In here.” He shoved him on the same sofa, sitting beside him. Riddle felt very much like his responsibility.

Moody entered behind them, staff still pointed at Riddle, in Auror’s stance. Riddle fully surveyed him for the first time. “Who took your leg?” he asked, half-mocking and half-curious.

“Not you.” He dropped into a seat nearer the door. “None of yours.”

“Pity.” Riddle looked to Harry. “Alastor didn’t trust me even – well, a few years older than I am now. When I returned to England at twenty-eight and established my own order. The Knights of Walpurgis, what would become the Death Eaters. He was the first to recommend _surveillance_.”

He probably wasn’t yet tangible enough to strangle. “Then I haven’t got to introduce you.”

“No,” Riddle said.

But both of Moody’s eyes were on Harry, as though his magical eye could also see lies. “Where’s the other one?”

“Other what?” Beside him, he felt a flutter of… something in Riddle. Whipping around. “Other _what_?” Smirk.

“We sent you to Hogwarts with two Horcruxes,” Moody said, his voice strained. “The diadem, and Slytherin’s locket. _Where is it_?” By now he’d looked to Riddle.

“Oh my god.” It felt like vertigo, his buried and destroyed memories surfacing at once. “What – what the _fuck_ – “

Riddle said nothing. Harry tried to decode his spluttering for Moody. “They – someone – made me forget it altogether. And they took it. Last… year? Last autumn?” He laughed at another abrupt recollection. “He was supposed to teach me _history_.”

Moody blinked at this. Then: “Let me see.” He was taking up his staff.

“I…. You can. But I told Voldemort once…. I must’ve lost it before forgetting it? And he looked through my memories. It was over Christmas holidays.”

Before Moody Legilimencied him, he looked over at Riddle. “Where is the locket?”

And while Riddle was under no obligation to cooperate with Harry, he _was_ compelled by the new vow to answer Moody. “Avery took the locket in November,” he said. “And Harry’s memory was erased. That was the last time I saw it.”

“ _Avery_?” Harry marveled. “But why? And why not you, if he wanted the Horcruxes?”

When Riddle took too long a pause, Moody snapped, “Answer him.”

“Avery had no use for Horcruces. This was before the Humnerë,” he added, in case that would be the next question.

Harry slumped against the stiff cushion. “I can’t _believe_ … ugh,” he concluded. “You didn’t say anything?” Riddle raised a shoulder in an elegant shrug. The two Horcruxes disliked each other, Harry knew, but he thought he might not share that with Moody. Everything was volatile enough.

“Where are the Slytherins?” Moody was entirely focused on Riddle.

“They’ve been moved a few times.”

“Where are they _now_?” he ground out.

“I’m not the secret keeper. I couldn’t be,” he said simply.

Moody would strangle him. “Who is?”

He looked like he was struggling to hold back his answer. “Millicent Bulstrode.”

Harry actually choked. But why should he be surprised? She must’ve stayed back at Hogwarts to shepherd everyone else out. All the eighth years had.

“We’ve questioned her, multiple times. We’ve questioned all of them multiple times. With Legilimency. With Veritaserum.”

Riddle tried making an indifferent gesture, but his hands were still bound by the house’s magic. “Slytherins,” he said. “They’ve taught themselves Occlumency, the better part of this year.”

Moody was gritting his teeth. “What could you tell us?” he asked. When Riddle gave him a skeptical look, he added: “This is the most pleasant way we’ll get information out of you. Take advantage of it.”

“Just kill me,” Riddle snapped. “Fiendfyre will do it. So should Sectumsempra. You will anyway.”

Faster than Harry could even track, Moody had grabbed his staff, plunging it forward. “Legilimens!”

Riddle had thrown his hands up as though to physically shield his face, which was a funny reaction. And Harry meant to grab him to hold him down, but the Legilimency affected him too, a sort of echo that pulled his mind apart. While he’d expected it wouldn’t properly work on Riddle, as he was nothing _but_ memory, the magic felt like cutting through cool water.

Moody was deft in his magic, immediately seizing the thread of memory attached to the Slytherins, and _pulling_. Months, he’d spent months with them. In their dorms, or…. Harry choked when he saw Slytherin’s chamber. The eighth years were _apparating_ out of the chamber, taking the younger students with them. Some had bags slung over their shoulders; some had nothing at all. They all looked exhausted. In the background, Malfoy’s voice drilling them in low tones. Daphne giving them the most useful spells. Millicent handing them a written note, that’d burst into flames immediately after they’d read it. Blaise was handing new wands ( _how_?) to them, the ones worried about being traced.

Flashes of other locations – how had he done that, could he leave the castle after all? – and secret passages, damp cellars, tangled forests. The memories of the sanctuary protected by Fidelius were just out of Moody’s reach. He glowered in frustration, letting the spell disintegrate.

“I opened the chamber,” Harry said when he could think properly again. “I showed it to Kingsley. It was crumbling. Also – were they _apparating_?”

Another struggle for Riddle, another thing he didn’t want to disclose. “That was a protective spell. There is a password – in Parseltongue – to clear away the chamber’s rubble. And yes, because the anti-apparition wards don’t extend that far underground. Why would they?”

“I – “ Harry was more furious than Moody for a minute. “You knew that and you didn’t _say_ something? You bloody – I asked you so many times!”

Riddle actually shushed him, the absolute twat. “You didn’t want such a burden. It’d destroy you inside.”

“ _Fuck_ you.”

Riddle’s eyebrows went up. “I saved them,” he said, quieter. “I tried, anyway. I have – truly – been bound by the same vow that ensures their safety.”

“You’re not,” Moody cut in. He’d been unusually quiet, too furious to speak probably, but also observing how Harry interacted with Riddle. Harry was responsible for him as much as Voldemort, really. Anyway, with a clever twist of his staff, he conjured Harry’s vow. “Potter signed this, that you’d be on his person or in his suite at all times. How did you _defy_ it?” He bit out the word.

“The _diadem_ had to remain in his suite or on his person,” Riddle said. “The proper Horcrux. I am….” Another gesture, impeded by the glowing shackles. “Take these off,” he demanded with a growl of frustration.

“No.” Harry was unrepentant.

Riddle looked back at Moody. “I’m but an echo of the Horcrux. I wasn’t entirely unaffected, but I am more properly bound by the vows Voldemort has made than anything to do with the Horcrux.”

“He’s got a dozen vows on him. And they’re switched all the time, for security.”

Riddle grimaced. “I know,” he said darkly. “Otherwise, we are not closely identified. We’ve been separated for quite a long time. We can feel grievous injury, but nothing more subtle.”

It was then probably Voldemort’s vows that made Riddle’s spells ineffective upstairs. He couldn’t harm any member of the Ministry. He was actually fucking lucky that it didn’t take his magic altogether, because that was Voldemort’s repercussion for most of the vows’ transgressions.

Somehow, this also suited Moody. He didn’t trust any of them, but at least Riddle was as confined as Voldemort. “He swore on the wedding vow that he could never amass _followers_ again,” Moody said. “If that was your intent….”

A dark smile from Riddle. “Why would it be? I won’t survive. If I am quite lucky, he re-integrates me into his broken monstrosity of a soul. More likely the Horcrux will be properly destroyed. Have you got an Unspeakable on Horcruces yet? It seems prudent,” he said as an aside. “Only… don’t leave me.” His voice dropped a bit, and some measure of pity twisted inside Harry. “The Horcrux, as an artifact, is a prison. I spent forty years trapped inside it. Aware, in some sense of the word, the entire time. I will – _never_ – forgive him.”

Moody hadn’t known this, hadn’t expected it. Harry was still horrified by the idea. And while Voldemort had told him that proper Occlumens only conveyed emotions they wanted others to see, Riddle’s pathos was… deep. Difficult. As he’d been so reluctantly sympathetic to Riddle in the pensive with Dumbledore, he felt so peculiarly torn now. But his loyalties were already ambiguous, and he couldn’t advocate for Riddle now. He remained quiet.

Moody was less charmed. “You deserve prison,” he snapped.

Tom clicked his tongue. “So does he.” And Harry about slapped his hand over Tom’s mouth, because this was not the time for cheek. If there were ever time for cheek with Moody.

But Moody’s face snarled in distaste. “He does,” he said. “I haven’t endorsed any pardons. I wouldn’t pardon you. What investment have _you_ got in this?”

“The castle, the house of Slytherin, the name of Slytherin. I know you hate how _loyal_ Slytherins are to one another,” he said lightly. “But you’ve forced them into this, the insular community they keep, in condoning anti-Slytherin bias.”

“We’ve done no such thing,” Moody bit out. “And don’t say a word about bloody _bias_.”

Tom shrugged. “Until you understand, you’ll never get them back.”

“Please don’t,” Harry said to him softly, before Moody could respond. He’d never once experienced Riddle as selfless, but his own distaste for the Horcruxes had colored his expectations, all year. “Don’t…. I believe you, that you were doing what was best for them. If you want what’s best for them, let the Ministry get involved.”

Riddle was quiet, before reaching up to tug a lock of his hair teasingly, as Voldemort did. For once Harry suppressed the urge to knock his hand away. Tom smirked. “Not only the savior, the _optimist_. Have you always been so enamored with authority?”

“Tom.” He turned to fully face him on the sofa, trying to keep his feelings steady. But to get through this awful conversation – he should’ve seen it earlier. Voldemort cooperated as long as there was dignity in it. He believed in the grace of a worthy opponent. This was wrong, they were both trying to _fight_ , to get their way with force. He’d broken wards by adding magic instead of pulling it away; he’d tamed Voldemort with treatment better than he deserved. It was itself a sacrifice on Harry’s part, to forego justice. But there was magic in sacrifice. He pulled off the shackles. “You’re better than I’ve treated you. I’m sorry.”

Tom blinked at him, undone by the abrupt shift. “I am not.”

“You are. I’ve… survived off your magic, sometimes.” He didn’t look to Moody, didn’t explain what that meant. He hoped he’d recognize it anyway, that Riddle would stabilize Harry as Harry had stabilized Voldemort. “You didn’t have to. And you didn’t have to save the Slytherins – whatever the _hell_ you manufactured to get them out,” he added. “They do still need you.”

Riddle was quiet, thinking. Harry’s knees were pressed into his thigh, and he didn’t dare move them, because they could subtly share magic like this and it made them both a bit more pliant. “You can’t arrest the children,” he said to Moody. “You’ve _failed_ at giving them homes after you’ve taken their parents away. What did you assume would happen next, to a house of scared orphans?” His voice grew loud at the end.

Moody was unimpressed. “We don’t arrest children.”

A skeptical arch of his eyebrows, but he didn’t pursue it. “And you need to lift the ban on Slytherin sortings. It has further demonized them.”

“You know that would be the governors’ decision.”

“ _Fix it_ ,” Riddle said through gritted teeth. “Everyone knew it’d give rise to this discrimination.”

Moody actually rolled his eyes at this. “Your Death Eaters survived off a persecution complex. They won’t do so again.”

“The castle itself has been turned against us.”

“No.”

He sneered. “No individual could drive them out. No single curse, either. You have never taken your opponents’ motives seriously.”

“They’re not _opponents_ ,” he snapped. “They’re children. We’re responsible for their welfare. The castle won’t survive if it gets out that _another_ student’s died this year. There are already threats.”

Riddle struggled in his response; Harry only felt his ambivalence. “Perhaps it’s for the best,” he said lowly. “The castle’s been cursed. It is disintegrating around them. The Slytherins first, but it would spread. I’ve repaired what I am able, but the wards are corrupt. They’ll continue to malfunction.”

Moody still wore a skeptical look. “The wards always decay. They’re not _cursed_.”

“What destroyed the house tables?” he challenged. “Your _specialists_ never found it. The Room of Requirement flooded on Halloween. The Slytherin common room caught fire last week. If you had bothered to ask the Slytherins why they were fleeing, they’d tell you of nights they woke up to the room smothering them, walls closing in, ceilings cracking so the lake water runs in. A hundred instances of the wards sparking or crumbling or catching fire. The entire castle’s full of them, but primarily they are in the Slytherin dungeons. It is – _negligent_ to tell us we are not targeted.”

There was no longer a mocking or indifferent edge to Riddle’s voice. Harry had never heard him so _sincere_. Neither had Moody. “The Slytherins are in more immediate danger than the castle,” he said.

“I couldn’t bring you to them.”

“Could you take us to the eighth years?”

“…Yes.”

With a final sort of gesture, Moody picked up the Horcrux’s contract he’d set before him. A flourish of magic, and he tore it in half. “You’re coming back to the castle. Both of you.”

Harry didn’t know what he still offered to this situation, except some amount of mediation. He’d take it. Anyway, he’d packed a bag with the expectation that Moody would never let him set foot in Hogwarts again. He threw it over his shoulder now as he stood.

Riddle was quiet, his eyes dark and mouth set. Harry edged toward him. “I’m taking the diadem,” he said, because it might be disconcerting to just be snatched from the fire and dispelled. “You can be… back at Hogwarts.” A short nod.

He carried the diadem into the floo. While he and Moody were alone now, Moody wasn’t speaking to him. He didn’t deserve it, anyway.

To Dumbledore’s office. “Here,” Moody said shortly, because the floo wouldn’t work as a container for the diadem. He conjured a firesafe basin on Dumbledore’s desk. Harry dropped the diadem in, casting the manifestation spell. Riddle didn’t look pleased to find himself in Dumbledore’s office.

But then he stepped toward the nearest wall, curious at something. “It’s pronounced in here, too,” he said. “Worse than when I last saw it in December.”

His fingers traced the wards, and with a tug, he revealed dozens of wards, in planes and cords, criss-crossing the office. Harry and Moody instinctively stepped away from the walls, because the wards all looked _awful_. They were fraying, faded, sparking. Moody actually hissed through his teeth. “The space’s been neglected, but not like _this_ ,” he muttered.

Riddle shot him a look. “I won’t try to further persuade you. It is tedious. But the castle is _mine_ , built with my blood, and I still feel its soul in a way nobody else will.” Rolling a ward between his fingers, he fixed the fraying bits.

“Tom?”

Riddle immediately went tense, before looking back to Dumbledore’s portrait. The magic of revealing the wards had attracted many of the portraits, most just peeking over their frames, but Dumbledore had come to the center of his portrait, hands braced on the frame. “Albus,” Riddle greeted him. “What is destroying the castle?”

A quiet pause. “I had hoped you would know.”

Tom’s laugh was dry and unamused. “I’ve spent the better part of the year on it,” he said. “The castle has revealed everything to me before. It conceals itself now.”

“That is… uncharacteristic.”

“Yes.”

Moody looked unpleasantly surprised at how calm Dumbledore was. “You didn’t _know_ about the Horcrux?” he glared at the portrait.

A faint smile. “I knew Harry possessed the artifacts. I never knew – or indeed, even suspected – that it could be so… lively,” he said, with a wry glance at Tom. “I assume, Alastor, you’ve enlisted Tom for something quite serious?”

“Astoria Greengrass is dead,” he said bluntly. “After a few days of the same infection that killed Avery. What we could recover of her memories, she’d been sent back here for Potter. We need to find the Slytherins before the Humnerë kill any more of them.”

“A tragedy,” Dumbledore murmured. “Her sister only arrived back an hour ago. Brightbone walked her out.”

Moody made a grinding noise in the back of his throat. “We need to go,” he said, using his staff to pivot toward the door. “Listen at the Ministry, would you?”

“Of course.”

Moody shoved them out too quickly. Riddle also seemed to see the urgency, but Harry didn’t really. The eighth years had had all week to run….

The Chamber was nearer than the Slytherin dorms. The castle was quiet – outside, everyone was at the Quidditch game. They let themselves into the girls’ toilets.

Riddle went ahead of them expertly, his shoulders tense and straight. “ _Open_ ,” he said into the sink, and the stone ground apart familiarly. Before the inside began to crumble, though, he spoke again: “ _Salazar, protect us._ ”

The rubble swept itself away, into a ramp – no, a sweeping staircase, as it took form. Harry made a noise of surprise. “How – Is that _your_ magic?” It seemed too grand for any one person to cast.

Tom gave him a dark smile. “Salazar will never be truly gone, as long as there remain those who are loyal to him.” He stepped into the passage. Harry drew his wand before following.

It was a slow descent that they took too quickly, especially on the loose and slick steps. The air was foetid, and their light barely seemed to cut through it.

Riddle took them in the opposite direction from the basilisk, toward a channel of smaller tunnels. While the basilisk had dwelt in an open space, this corridor had rooms and niches carved into it. Harry gaped. “Did you _stay_ down here?”

“It was intended as a fortress,” he said, “and has been put to the purpose. Magic here – _my_ magic – is as fluid as the room of requirement. I wished bedrooms into existence, summoned food, books from the library….” He opened a heavy door before him to reveal – well, not just a bedroom, but a dorm, with four beds. And it made Harry desperately sad to think that even within the space of the chamber, the eighth years would still share a room for security.

“Where are they?” Moody said sharply behind them.

A wry glance backwards. “The Quidditch match?” Tom suggested. When Moody snarled, he said, “I’ll need a wand.”

“No.”

“You’re welcome to cast _Hominem_ yourself, but you’d best duck the explosion it creates. Any surveillance spells cast by outsiders, really. Look.” A hand on the doorway, lighting up the wards that ran along the walls. They were frayed, though less so than in Dumbledore’s office. He indicated the strand, that Harry could read himself, holding runes that ensured an explosion with any seeking spells cast by non-Slytherins.

Moody’s fury had worn itself out by now, and Harry just wanted this to be over. He passed Riddle his wand. “Please find them.”

He cast Hominem Revelio himself. But when it came back with one glowing green orb, both he and Moody tensed. Riddle strode off in the apparent direction immediately, saying over his shoulder, “They are never alone.”

Corridors upon corridors. The sconces on the wall flared to life as Riddle crossed them, as though greeting him. It was disorienting – larger and more sprawling than Malfoy Manor, but all identical, without any spatial orientation. Riddle might’ve felt Harry’s thoughts, because he offered, “It was built to be complex. Slytherin would never fight if he could escape. It was to his advantage.” He cast _Hominem_ again, re-directing themselves.

Not that he needed to – a moment later, there was a _shriek_. “Intruders! Out, get out!” a voice said, its voice bouncing deafeningly off the stone. Harry never could’ve located it, but Tom could, and raised Harry’s wand high as he ran.

Around three corners, and then – _Myrtle_. They nearly ran through her. “Tom, there are – “ And then she squeaked, seeing Harry and Moody behind him.

“Where are they,” Riddle said flatly.

Somehow, in that moment, Myrtle was brave. “No,” she said, glaring at him. “You’d… you’d turn them over? Just kill them here now,” she addressed Moody. “I’d quite like the company.”

“Warren,” Moody said, face hardening. “This time, we’re doing more to save the students we can. _Where_ – “

Tom still had _Hominem_ before him, indicating they were through the corridor behind Myrtle. He began to step through her when she uselessly planted herself before him. “They said I couldn’t let anyone in. Even _you_.”

This gave him pause. “They’ve never kept me out before.”

“They said you were _compromised_.”

“Clearly,” he muttered, and then walked through her.

She tore after him in a shriek, but of course she couldn’t stop them. “Sorry, sorry,” Harry said to Myrtle anyway as his head passed through her stomach.

She’d flown off to sulk somewhere when Tom reached the final corridor. “This should be….” He held out a hand into the darkness before him – the walls slammed inward and he only pulled back in time. “Good.”

Harry had jumped back at the crush of stone on stone. “Is it?”

A look from Riddle. “There are traps in both directions. The Slytherins know how to use the ones to keep everyone else from entering this chamber. Only I can remove the ones triggered by anyone apparating in. I told you, I closed the exit they used after Avery’s death.”

Moody looked at him sharply. “Avery was fifteen. He apparated in?”

“ _Avery_ was already dead, and his body temporarily housed a Humnerë soul. But yes, it likely came in here.”

 Moody snarled. “The danger you put the castle in – “

“I _know_!” Riddle shouted back, incensed. “I fixed it. Stand back.” With a vicious gesture, he ripped open the wards here, dismantling the traps in a practiced way. The walls closing in, gas, incineration, amnesia, dread, blood boiling…. It was the most guarded corridor in the castle. Harry wondered what the other side of traps looked like. “There,” Riddle said shortly. Before he entered, he turned to hand Harry’s wand back to him. “You may need it.”

“Thanks.” But he followed nonetheless.

Quickly they crossed a corridor, one that was dark and downward-sloping. The apparition wards themselves must be deep, if they had to go even beneath the chamber.

And then they were in another cavernous space, with twisted pillars and walls of igneous rock. It was open, and _Hominem_ glowed brightly before them, but Harry didn’t see anything….

Moody spotted him first. “ _Malfoy_.” And he was moving to this heap of dark robes behind a pillar.

But Tom sprinted in, and so did Harry. He’d missed Malfoy the first time because the hair spilling out from his hood wasn’t platinum, but stained dark with rusty blood. Beneath his blood-stained face, he was already so pale.

Tom was on the ground beside him. “Rennervate. _Rennervate_. Draco?” he asked when he flinched.

Malfoy’s eyelids fluttered. “Tom?” Then he squinted up at the scene. “Oh. It’s you.”

“You’re splinched,” Riddle said, peeling open his robe and vanishing his sodden shirt. A hiss from them all – the wound ran from his navel to this collarbone, as though he’d been gutted.

“I fucking know.” Malfoy’s voice was raspy but still undeniably his own tone. It made Harry feel a little better, honestly. “We were moving too fast.” His wand was in his hand, but he flinched when he tried to move it. “When Potter… whatever he did to you. We waited for Daphne. That’s it.”

“You were with them,” Harry said to Riddle.

“Of course. My wand is in the common room. No, stay _there_ ,” Riddle added when Malfoy again tried to get up.

He didn’t stop. Moody, pulling out an emergency kit, had now also knelt beside him, and Malfoy shuddered away violently.  New blood ran over his stomach, yet he spoke through clenched teeth, “I’d rather die here than in Azkaban, or before the Dementors. Let Tom finish it if you won’t. And make Potter look away, he’s the sensitive sort.”

Moody’s jaw worked as he doused gauze in a potion. “You’re not dying, and you’re not under arrest. You do need to go to St. Mungo’s.”

“No – just – “ He struggled to raise his wand again. “I won’t die like you let my parents die,” he snarled at Moody. “I’ll do it myself if I’d bloody got to – “

He’d made the wand motion to apparate when Riddle snatched the wand from his hand. “Stop talking,” he said. “And stay still.”

He sagged against the floor. “I thought they’d find a way back in,” he murmured. And Harry’s heart broke more, to think of Malfoy bleeding alone in the dark, hoping desperately that the Slytherins would return for him. His wild, desperate demeanor was understandable.

Moody had spelled gauze down his torso, and was adding a glowing butterfly splint on top. “Take – “ He’d pulled out a blood-replenishing potion. Malfoy couldn’t hold up either his head or hand, so Moody passed it to Riddle instead. Sliding a careful hand beneath Malfoy’s head, he tipped the potion into his mouth.

But Riddle could use magic in this space in _natural_ ways, ways that the chamber would never react to anyone else. He’d vanished all the bits of blood, and he had just conjured a plane of magic beneath Malfoy that’d serve as a stretcher. Orbs of light dangled over him to illuminate what Moody was doing. And then he laid a hand on Malfoy’s forearm, so Malfoy just made a noise of surprise and then relaxed into it. “What are you doing?” Moody snapped, in between casting healing spells through the bandages.

“It’s raw magic. It will heal him.” He did not add that it was meant at least as much to settle Malfoy, curbing a panic attack that was clearly building, even as groggy as he was from blood loss. Still keeping his hand on Malfoy, he summoned a bag he’d dropped nearby.

“Don’t open it,” Malfoy said sharply, sitting up so both of them had to push him down again.

“Take it with you,” Riddle said, looping the strap around Malfoy’s wrist, securing it with a sticking spell. “When you’re able, alert the others. Tell them – they can’t leave. Not as long as the Humnerë want them.”

“No,” Moody said sharply. “We can offer them a more secure location. Not the castle,” he said at Riddle’s look. “Or tell Bulstrode to let us in, if she’d rather stay. Assuming they are somewhere _habitable_.”

“They are,” Riddle said.

But Malfoy was alert enough to be looking up at them both, and his face was just the epitome of disbelief. “We trusted you,” he said to Riddle, and he tried to pull out of his touch, but he had neither the strength nor leverage. “I see why _he’d_ benefit from giving himself up to the Ministry,” (the pronoun as he always spoke it, for Voldemort) “but why would you? What could they possibly give you?”

Oh. Malfoy _understood_ the Horcrux, exactly what it was. Harry found this both horrifying and fascinating; Moody apparently did too.

“Nothing,” Riddle said evenly. “They’ve offered nothing. But Astoria shouldn’t have died. She was better than that. I thought I’d done better.”

Moody’s glance was skeptical. He knew Riddle could be charming; he’d never be persuaded otherwise. But Malfoy took this in. “Daph’s not alright,” he muttered. “She said Astoria would never leave.”

“I don’t know what happened,” Riddle said. “They’re all bright enough to stay away from trouble.”

“I know.” Malfoy was unhappy. Harry wondered if he’d been friends with Astoria or Avery.

Moody moved to put away his supplies. “As much as I can do here,” he said grimly. Immediately Harry was stepping in, happy to be useful for one moment as he offered Moody a hand up. And Riddle was levitating the stretcher carefully – without a wand, which was unlikely and so impressive. Moody took over the spell with a look. “We can apparate in here?”

“Yes.”

“You both need to stay here. Go wait in Dumbledore’s office. I don’t _care_ ,” he said at Riddle’s tiny noise of protest. Looking to Malfoy: “Should Snape be sent? Slughorn?”

Malfoy’s lip curled. “No.”

“Andromeda?”

“No.”

“You’d rather be alone.”

“I _am_ alone _,_ ” Malfoy stressed, and even lying down and half-dead from blood loss, he was withering. “Don’t make me see them.”

“Fine. Also.” With his free hand he conjured something – Harry’s diary. “I wasn’t entirely surprised,” he said dryly. “We would have asked soon enough what it meant, every time he wrote _ask the Horcrux_.” He handed it back to Harry, who was gratified and in utter disbelief. “We’ll talk about how bloody _irresponsible_ this all is later.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Dumbledore’s office,” he reiterated, and then he raised his staff, apparating them both. Harry had found he was holding his breath, and only let it go when they’d seemed to apparate successfully.

Riddle mopped up the last of the blood, and turned to go. “You’d never find your way out.”

“I wouldn’t,” Harry agreed, and moved to follow him.

They were quiet nearly the entire time. Near the entrance, Riddle said, “I need to go to the dungeons. For my wand.” Harry only gave a short nod.

They were quick. Riddle didn’t cast a disillusionment on himself, but the castle was still empty. He did, however, reveal all the wards crossing the dungeon, so the common room glowed. Even at a glance Harry could see how many of them had decayed into something useless or dangerous.

Up six stories then, to Dumbledore’s office. “ _Open_ ,” Riddle said to the stone gargoyle, and it jumped aside. Harry made a noise of mild disbelief. “Parseltongue is the castle’s skeleton key,” Riddle reminded him. “Slytherin left his magic everywhere, to provide for his descendants.”

“I managed to get in enough trouble already,” Harry demurred.

All of the portraits had left or gone back to sleep. Albus’s own frame was empty, and they were both relieved at it. Fawkes was gone. Harry took his typical seat before the desk; Riddle remained standing.

“Hey. Thanks,” Harry said after a minute, trying to catch Riddle‘s eye. “I don’t know what I can do – what you deserve – “

“Neither you nor the Aurors can offer anything I _deserve_.”

“Can anyone?” But Riddle only gave a faint shake of his head, so Harry dropped it.

Opening the diary, he found that someone had been _translating_ it, pages of notes folded inside. They didn’t go very far back, but far enough to learn the incriminating parts. Voldemort had warned him once, that of all the worldwide Parselmouths, someone would be willing to work as a Ministry translator, to crack their secret language. They must have found one. So this was annoying, if not as revealing as stealing Harry’s fucking memories last time.

Riddle was looking through the office, pulling open all the drawers and cabinets. “He had a pensieve in here once,” he said. “He must still, to have shown you my _childhood_ ,” he said in a prickly way. Before Harry could answer him, he was pulling open the correct cabinet.

Harry blinked at him. “Uh.”

“I spent more time than I would have liked in this office. He had it then too, since Dippet couldn’t climb so many stairs and took the silver suite on the first floor.” Riddle had lifted out the pensieve, but he was actually interested in the memories stored behind it in vials. “Have you seen these?”

“I don’t want to.” Presumably most were Dumbledore’s private memories. He’d be better off without them. Inking a quill, he flipped to the last page of the diary.

The tinkle of glass as Riddle slid vials forward. Harry ignored it as he wrote a few lines to Voldemort (how to even explain this day?) but when he heard a noise of frustration, he whipped around. “Get _out_ of there,” he hissed. “He’s dead and the entire world has already got all his scandals. What do you _want_?”

“I want my memories back,” Riddle bit out. “However he obtained them, he doesn’t deserve them.” He shoved another set of vials, and then drew his wand. A summoning spell on the portrait. “ _Albus_.”

It took a long moment, then he stepped into the frame. “Tom?” he frowned. “The Ministry remains quiet, I’ve heard nothing of the Slytherins there. Certainly you’ve discovered something?”

Tom sort of gritted his teeth, obligated to be an informant for a moment. “They got out, except Draco, who was splinched. We were sent here to _wait_ , for Moody to return from St. Mungo’s.”

“Dreadful,” he murmured. “His peers gave him more stability than he’s had all year. I assume you did also.”

“Not quite,” he said, dismissive. “Where have you kept my memories?”

The portrait paused to take in the question. “You’ve found the pensieve,” he said with a glance.

“Yes.”

“You know I can’t account for everything of my living self,” he chided gently. “Particularly not so close to the end. But it seems likely that they would’ve been nearest the front. I was preoccupied with nothing more than your Horcruces before my death.”

“They’re not here,” Riddle said flatly. He was pulling out stands now, delicate vials hanging from metal rods. Most were labeled. _Hogwarts_ , _War, Trials, Ministry_ , and so on. There was one for Voldemort, but even just peering at it, its memories were all from the first war.

“Anyone taking the floo has access to this space, but they are generally accompanied by an Auror or faculty member. Only Severus has access to all of the material.”

“The cabinet was unlocked.”

“That is troubling,” he agreed. A pause, long and thoughtful. “I’ve not yet read Rita Skeeter’s book – I haven’t persuaded anyone to hold it up, page by page, to my frame,” he said with a bit of cheer. “I am told your time at school plays a part in it.”

“ _Yes_.” He braced his hands on the desk as though he’d like to strangle someone. “I’ll kill her,” he said lowly.

Dumbledore clucked his tongue. “You will not. You should be quite angry with her, however. I am, on your behalf.” Tom glared, unconvinced. “I assume she broke in to seek out appropriate sources – though _how_ is itself a captivating question…. Have you asked Harry for those moments?” he asked Tom. “They wouldn’t be of precisely the same quality – I mean no offense, Harry – but you may find them illuminating nonetheless.”

“You’ve missed the point utterly.”

“Have I?”

Riddle didn’t answer, instead returning the vials to their place. Then: “Are you with any portraits also at St. Mungo’s?”

“Not the Aurors’ ward, where Alastor doubtless would’ve taken him.”

“Then I don’t have any need of you.”

“May I stay anyway?” It was a very polite request in his own office.

“This isn’t detention. You may go.”

He didn’t, of course. Riddle paced to the bookshelves, and with great clarity of purpose pulled apart the Muggle Studies books, reaching behind them. Magic uttered, and he reached deeper back, emerging only with a dusty bottle of pixie-made champagne.

“Voldemort possesses my library on Horcruces currently.”

“Does he?”

Dumbledore lifted his bushy eyebrows. “Harry brought them to him. He was, I believe, looking for a mechanism to reclaim your portion of his soul.”

“It’s _my_ soul now.”

“And you’d look for such magic?”

“Not here, apparently.” He set the champagne bottle down too hard.

“Oh, do open that. It would be a waste otherwise.”

Helpless to mediate, Harry had instead tapped the corner of the desk, conjuring tea and a tray of sandwiches. God bless the house elves, because now that the day’s adrenaline had worn off, he was famished. So surprisingly, Riddle picked up two teacups, transfiguring them into champagne flutes. “On such a joyous occasion?”

“I believe it is.”

Riddle’s expression made clear how disgusted he’d be with whatever Dumbledore had to say – something of cooperation or growth or peace. Perhaps even redemption. Perhaps, as Harry had so unnerved Voldemort once, he’d even say how _proud_ he was of Tom. Instead Tom cast a sabering charm on the bottle, tipping champagne into both glasses in silence.

“D'you want the books?” Harry asked as he took the offered flute. “Unless he took them abroad – I don’t think he did – they’d be in the safehouse.”

He considered it. “Yes.”

“Alright. Uh, if Moody ever lets me go outside again.”

“Yes.”

Tom drank; Harry wrote. Voldemort wasn’t there currently, but he rarely was in the middle of the day. Albus was still _there_ for some reason, as uncomfortable as they both were with his presence. He’d hurt them both. It made Harry feel a little closer to Tom, anyway, to share this simmering discomfort.

**_They got out. They realized something was wrong when the Horcrux disappeared. (They know what he is. Who he is. I don’t know.) I guess I’m happy they had warning. But Astoria Greengrass shouldn’t have died, and nobody knows what happened yet._ **

**_Malfoy got splinched, really bad. Moody took him to St. Mungo’s. I don’t know what will happen to him next. He said he’d rather die than go to Azkaban. I wish there were something else. I can’t make the Aurors promise any of them will be okay. They’re all so alone._ **

**_He sent us to Dumbledore’s office to wait. His portrait is here now. He doesn’t know anything new. It might just be to annoy the Horcrux, honestly. Nothing has happened at the Ministry yet._ **

**_What happened to the Horcrux books? I saw them last at the safehouse, are they still? He wants them._ **

**_I don’t know what happens to the Horcruxes after this. Moody hasn’t even yelled at me yet, but he’s furious. There only hasn’t been time. I know it was dangerous. I know you didn’t expect me to keep him around so much as I did, either. If he destroys them, it’s my fault. I’m sorry._ **

A sigh, and he threw back the cold ( _cold_? The bottle was fogged. Magic.) glass of champagne. Looking up, he found Riddle perched on the edge of a sofa, a thick book open on his knees. Even at the age of twenty-five-ish, there were deep scores of thought and concern across his forehead, deep between his eyebrows. He’d cast the replication charm on the champagne, which degraded the quality a bit but still made for a very drinkable drink. Harry poured for himself, and levitated it to him. “Tom.”

Eyes up without moving his head. “Thank you.” He scarcely looked as he cast the spells to pour a glass of champagne. It was really fucking impressively, actually.

Full of food and alcohol, Harry wanted to sleep. He hadn’t slept much that night – first the time with Voldemort, then the general anxiety that gnawed at him afterward. He picked up the diary, moving to the adjacent sofa from Riddle. “D'you want…?” He held it out.

“No. Thank you.”

He left it before them, in case Voldemort wrote back. Then, propping his feet up, with a pillow behind his head, he pulled out _Richard III._ It was… complicated, the entire book. He recognized the charismatic anti-hero in Voldemort. And since Voldemort wasn’t an absolute moron, presumably he recognized it in himself. But he was at the night before the final battle now, when Richard dreamt of all his victims. He’d lose; Harry was already certain he would lose and that he’d die, and he didn’t understand what it meant for Voldemort to give him such a book. He’d been Dorian Gray as well, and he’d been John Milton’s Satan, and they had all _lost_.

Had Voldemort himself lost? Had Harry saved him from it? Then there were the Slytherins, cowering and fearful without having done anything. Then there was Riddle, forced to be useful. (Though really he’d been useful all year, he’d just been an arsehole about it.) He’d been seething at Harry earlier but had somehow settled into the shame of it all now. The Slytherins would _survive_ at any cost, while the Gryffindors would uphold their principles at any cost. They may never understand one another.

So he was careful with the book, heart aching for Richard in spite of everything. Still, he smiled when reaching a line Voldemort had quoted before, even if he hadn’t know it was a quote at the time:

> _Conscience is but a word that cowards use,_
> 
> _Devis’d at first to keep the strong in awe._
> 
> _Our strong arms be our conscience, swords our law._
> 
> _March on, join bravely, let us to it pell-mell;_
> 
> _If not to heaven, then hand-in-hand to hell._

And then he died a brave, complicated, inevitable death. And the dead are buried, a new king installed, the world set to rights. And Harry… wanted something other than justice these days. He didn’t know quite what.

He broke the silence after a long spell. “Could you take a message to the Slytherins?”

Riddle looked up. “They don’t want to hear from you.”

“Tell them I’m sorry. Not, like, that I’m sad for them. But that this is my fault.”

“It is,” he said bluntly. “You watched Voldemort give their families up so easily.”

“I know.” He’d asked Riddle a hundred times if he could do anything for the Slytherins, and always been promptly rebuffed. “ _Could_ you go see them? If you’re useful to them, if they’d want you there….”

A clench of his jaw. “As an Auror required me to stay here, I’m obligated to _stay here_. It is dangerous for you to take so many vows when you don’t even understand how they work.”

“I do. But….” He blinked. “I need to ask you something.” _Alone_ , was the implication. Without the surveillance of Dumbledore or any other portrait.

Riddle pulled out his wand, casting a delicate veil of silence over the portraits. He seemed unsurprised that Harry would request this. “They’ll report tampering at the portraits’ other locations soon,” he said. “What is it?”

“I left you at the Slytherin estate alone,” he said. “A lot. I left the _diadem_ there a lot. You said the vow only kept the diadem in my suite, but…. How did you do it?”

A tug of his mouth. “Very good, Harry.”

“Don’t,” he said. “Why doesn’t the vow matter?”

“It does. It did,” he said. “This is another question with which you shouldn’t burden yourself.”

“I don’t care, I need to know. I’ll tell Moody to ask you instead if I’ve got to,” he threatened. “It’s not as though I can be in more trouble.”

“Yes, you can,” Riddle said darkly. “And… vows are powerful, but not as powerful as ancestral magic. The magic that was punitively drained for breaking the vow was more than replaced by Slytherin’s blood magic on his ancestral land.”

Whether it was true, it was plausible. “They aren’t _there_ , are they?” He’d asked it before in jest but meant it now.

“What an inane question. It seems you should better understand how the Fidelius works.”

He wouldn’t even see the house, much less enter it. “Right. Alright.” Tom raised his wand, stripping the silvery charm. None of the portraits had even seemed to notice.

He passed the time by holding the Panopticon before his face, without really reading it. Too much of it now was about Rita’s book, about Dumbledore, about Grindelwald. He was half-chewing his thumbnail, half-just sucking his thumb. He was hideously restless.

After a time, Riddle sighed. “Merlin’s sake,” he muttered, moving to the sofa where Harry sat. Picking up Harry’s legs, he slung them over his own lap. The physical contact felt like a reprieve, so Harry made a tiny noise of gratitude. “Just stop. Your anxiety is useless.”

“Maybe.” He flipped to the Quibbler’s Interworld Politics section – that is, the Muggles – and tried to read. It nearly worked.

They’d been in Dumbledore’s office for at least a couple hours when the floo hissed and Moody stepped out. Both Harry and Riddle stood quickly, with Riddle shoving Harry’s legs out of his lap. They may not have looked guilty.

Moody took them in. “Good,” he muttered.

“Alastor?”

Moody turned to look at Dumbledore’s portrait behind him. “You’ve heard?”

“Yes. Of course.” Dumbledore set the book he’d been reading out of the frame.

“Malfoy will live. It didn’t reach his organs.”

“Excellent. Would he return? I’d very much like to speak with him.”

“Dunno that he’d want to,” Moody said. “On either count.”

“Offer it to him, at least?”

“Sure. He couldn’t say where he’d go otherwise. It would be… monstrous to make him return to the manor.”

“The castle should be a sanctuary for any who need it.”

(Beside him, Harry heard Riddle make a tiny noise of protest. The castle hadn’t been his sanctuary. It hadn’t quite been Harry’s. They both resented it.)

“He says he won’t return to the other students, if it’d endanger them.”

“Tom?” Albus looked past Moody.

“Yes?”

“Would you persuade them? If you have any investment in Slytherins, purebloods, or Hogwarts itself, you’ll see the value in it.”

It was blatantly manipulative, and Tom was not pleased. “What do they come back to?” he asked them, openly bitter. “The student body hates them. The _castle_ hates them. How many of them have you left without families? This _is_ the most stable circumstance that most of them could have.”

“What might change their minds?” Dumbledore asked.

But Riddle looked at Moody. “Give them their parents back.”

His face snarled. “You know we couldn’t.”

“Someone could.”

He shook his head, his tangled hair swinging over his shoulders. “I’ve done this alone,” he said pointedly, “because it won’t get out. So it won’t be subject to the _vast_ illegality of it all. But I can’t reverse judicial decisions. You know that.”

What a strange, tense, awful group of co-conspirators. “Trade prison for house arrest,” Harry offered. “The Muggles do it. There must be spells.”

“ _Spells_. There’s no legal structure to provide it.”

“There is,” Riddle said, drawing his shoulders straight with a surprised glance at Harry. “Establish a new Order for them. You know the extent of their obligation. Control them that way, but it’s legally autonomous. A pardon in exchange for being sworn in, with stringent vows of belonging. The orders were _meant_ to avoid legal scrutiny to begin with.”

Moody’s eye rolled over him. “You hadn’t yet established the Knights of Walpurgis.”

“No. But I knew I would.”

“And… we’d re-establish it?” Moody said, deeply distrustful. “We needed to _scatter_ the Death Eaters, not organize them.”

He raised and dropped a shoulder. “Forbid contact with Voldemort. With anyone registered as a terrorist. Forbid them from ever uttering a word about Muggles again, if you’d like.”

A silence. Dumbledore’s hand was pressed to his mouth in thought. Moody’s magic eye rolled upward as though to search the sky. Then, Moody said, “I’ll bring in the Minister.”

Immediately, Harry’s chest loosened, relieving him of fear he hadn’t known he was feeling. But Tom was not so gratified. “I’ll get them back if I am freed,” he said bluntly.

“Freed.”

“To live autonomously. That I won’t be destroyed, imprisoned, or abandoned.”

Moody’s jaw worked. “And what of Voldemort?”

“He has nothing but contempt for me. He abandoned me at my creation. Our magics may be too different or too _hostile_ to be integrated properly. I would never stop struggling against him.” He said all this simply, but they all heard how disastrous it’d be, to give Voldemort back a rebelling soul. “He’ll survive on whatever Potter has rehabilitated in him. It would be enough.”

It wouldn’t be, though. That his magic was fragile and easily drained – and it was fine for Harry, he’d give Voldemort magic indefinitely, but Voldemort wouldn’t _accept_ magic indefinitely. “Can I write to him…?”

“I am not asking permission,” Riddle said. “Unless you think Malfoy has a better chance of persuading them, you need me to get them out.”

“What would you do with freedom?” Dumbledore asked, softly.

He made a noise of disgust. “Must a life be useful to be a life?” he asked. “I’d leave Britain, anyway. Voldemort could establish his _regime_ without me.”

“You know the vows that would still bind him,” Moody said.

“So do you. What would you still suspect me of?”

The scars on his face twisted deeper. Then, looking to Dumbledore, “Is Scrimgeour in now, by chance?”

“I believe so.”

“Tell him to come, alone.”

Dumbledore disappeared from the frame. Moody limped to the set of sofas, dropping heavily on one. Harry and Tom took another together. Somehow, they felt like one another’s responsibility.

The diary was still open on the coffee table; Harry scooped it up. But then he made a noise, because Voldemort had written back while he’d been distracted.

_That Avery’s death was so quick and Greengrass’s so prolonged seems a most significant detail. They have developed this magic. Since souls to them are something like a common resource, they might gain further control with every particular affiliation – that they further grasp the magic of purebloods, or Slytherins, or Hogwarts students. It seems most likely now that they want magic affiliated with the castle to find you; and the fearfulness of the Slytherins made them an opportunistic target. They need sanctuary more than you do._

The idea was hideous. The consumption of every soul making them stronger and smarter, better adapted to… well, their goal. Breaching the castle and taking Harry. This felt awful. “Uh, I’ll read it out,” he said when he saw both Moody and Riddle looking at him. “Or, Tom, you should? I haven’t translated from Parseltongue before.”

The whoosh of the floo, and Scrimgeour stepped out. He only faltered briefly as he took in the scene. “Ah. Riddle.” He stepped forward to offer his hand. At the arch of Tom’s brows, he said, “The Aurors have always been quite informed of Voldemort’s life. Of course I recognize you.”

“Hello, Minister,” Tom said coolly. Harry summoned a new tea setting as the rest of them sat. And when Dumbledore returned, he crossed the frames to settle into an empty portrait adjacent to the sofas.

Moody narrated the day to Scrimgeour, who listened quietly as he typically did, his crooked fingers pressed against his chin. He’d been aware of something to do with the Horcrux, as suspicious as Moody in the way Voldemort referred to it. Nobody really looked at Harry. The chamber, Malfoy, the hideout guarded by Fidelius. Then Riddle picked up his proposal to get the students’ parents back, revise their sentences, and restore something good and safe in their lives. “Voldemort just wrote,” he added, picking up the diary gracefully. “With speculation about the Humnerë. Here.”

When he read it out, Harry felt miserably visible and burdensome. They’d gone from a world in which Harry was the first person to be protected, to a world where people probably needed to be protected from _him_. He looked hard into his teacup, feeling ill-suited for this meeting.

“’They need sanctuary more than you do,’” Tom concluded the passage. He dropped the diary, still open, on the table before them.

“Like Dementors,” Scrimgeour muttered. For Harry and Tom’s sake, he said, “We don’t – _quite_ – know what they do with souls after consuming them. But it seems they all have some measure of access to the mind once contained.”

“And on Halloween,” Harry said, reluctant to say it because Scrimgeour had watched Auror Proudfoot die in the Manor that night, but it was important. “They could only pretend for a few minutes. And the glamour broke down that fast, too. Avery probably wasn’t much longer. But Greengrass…?”

Scrimgeour and Moody shared a look. “We’re not at liberty to say,” Scrimgeour said. “But yes.”

It was really bad, if they could maintain disguises for days, now. It was more insidious than Polyjuice. People wouldn’t trust the Slytherins if they returned, and that’d be devastating. They needed to get them back.

Scrimgeour looked seriously to Riddle. “You’d get them out? And back here,” he clarified. “For now.”

“If they benefit from it.”

Moody bristled. “Their safety – “

“Isn’t sufficient,” Scrimgeour cut in, because he was a Slytherin too, even if he rarely presented himself as such. “Then their freedom and their families are contingent on one another’s. We will reverse the prisoner’s dilemma,” he said with a faint smile.

“You’ll give them an Order, then.”

A nod. “Azkaban will never close,” he said. “The population is too scared, of the prisoners and Dementors alike. But… you are correct, that this is the most expedient alternative.” He looked again to Moody. “I’d establish it myself, unless Robards should?”

“No. But he’d want to be there.”

“Of course.”

Up to this point, the room hadn’t been _comfortable_ per se, but they were at least united in the same goal. Then, Scrimgeour turned back to Riddle. “And after that, you’ll go free.”

“Yes.”

Hesitation flitted across Scrimgeour’s features. “We have disagreed – well, since learning of the Horcruxes – what should be done with them. With you. There’s a general disagreement about whether it is more beneficial to keep Voldemort magically weaker or more emotionally stable.”

“And what do you believe, Minister?”

“That he shouldn’t reclaim them while still incurring soul damage, at least. It would be wasteful.”

“He doesn’t deserve me,” Tom said sharply. “He’s abandoned and exploited me. I will never abdicate my magic to him.”

The room had gone tense at his brittle words. Harry wanted to reach over to Tom, put a hand on his arm, something. He wanted to apologize for Voldemort, as he’d done to everyone else.

It was Dumbledore who spoke now, and wasn’t that funny, because it was clear that the only person Tom hated as much as Dumbledore was Voldemort. “It seems rather likely that Voldemort would agree with you.”

Tom looked up at the portrait. “Does it,” he said flatly.

Dumbledore didn’t acknowledge his tone. “He is persistent in escaping his past,” he said. “He would be as relieved.”

“Yes.”

But Moody’s shoulders were drawn up, angry at them both. “It is _evil_ magic,” he hissed, at Dumbledore. “It never should’ve existed to begin with. The Ministry can’t condone it.”

Tom didn’t fight this. Instead, he said to the room: “I want a vow.”

“This is monstrous.”

“Would it hurt the _Ministry_ more,” ((he said it with utter distaste) “to keep a Horcrux, or to have lost an entire generation of Slytherins?”

Riddle’s strength was in not being properly human enough to really face consequences. He couldn’t be hurt, couldn’t be imprisoned except inside the artifact. Even vows were only partially effective. To manipulate the Ministry like this was… brazen.

“I wouldn’t give up the students,” Scrimgeour said, rather mildly. “We should’ve taken more drastic measures much earlier.”

And Riddle was clearly suspicious whether Scrimgeour was actually on his side, but he met his gaze. “Yes.”

“Is this,” he gestured to the basin where the diadem now burned, “the only magic for your existence?”

“I’ll find others.”

“And – forgive the question, but there was another.”

Riddle’s smile was dark. “The locket was taken from Harry months ago. Avery had it last. It hasn’t been destroyed. And it would be bound to the same vows as are we all.”

“Hm,” Scrimgeour frowned. But then, raising his wand, he conjured a scroll. “Then the vow should be expansive.”

He’d conjured a portion of the wedding vow as a template. Leaving the non-aggression clause, taking out all of Voldemort’s legislative responsibilities, adding an ability to trace Riddle if they so chose. Raising his quill to the top of the contract, he added the primary clause: “If Tom Marvolo Riddle recovers the missing Slytherin students to the Ministry’s custody, he is granted the freedoms presented in this contract.”

They wrote that breaking any of the non-aggression clauses would drain his magic. They wrote provisions for the new order of Death Eaters, that their sentences in Azkaban would be commuted to local imprisonment and surveillance. Riddle wrote in that he wouldn’t be obligated to Voldemort. (And none of them really knew if the distinction between Voldemort and Tom Riddle would hold legally, but intention counted for something, at least.) And finally, a non-disclosure, limited to present company, the legislative and judicial heads of the Wizengamot (so, Bowersock and Bones respectively, and Harry was sick to think they’d never get Bowersock out of their lives), Robards, and Voldemort himself.

“Albus, did you leave a blood quill in here?” Moody asked, clambering to his feet.

“Oh, I must have. A far more interesting question, however, is whether a Horcrux can bleed.”

“If I want to.”

Harry had heard this from him before, but the expression on everyone else in the room was nearly funny.

Scrimgeour signed first, then passed it to Riddle. Their signatures glittered beside each other. When he slid it to Harry, he looked up doubtfully. “Uh, should I be signing?”

“Please,” Scrimgeour said. “You’re implicated in the non-disclosure. And really, your blood may bind Voldemort, or as near to it.”

Right. He signed.

Moody was last. He wore the same look of grim resolve he had at every contract with Voldemort, and he gripped the quill very tightly as he signed.

When Scrimgeour took it back, he looked up at the portrait. “Albus, I wish you could sign this as well,” he said, and Harry reflected how much better their relationship had gotten after Dumbledore’s death. Strange how _good_ Voldemort and the war had been for so many people.

But Dumbledore’s smile was wry. “On the contrary, I look forward to the day that I am thoroughly irrelevant to your politics.”

He hummed. “Not today.” Vanishing the tea tray, he was the first to rise. “You’ll go now?” he asked Riddle.

“Yes.”

“From the Chamber?”

A mocking arch of his brows. “You’d like to see it?”

“Only as a matter of personal curiosity. If you’d please.”

He could’ve insisted on it; Riddle was as bound to cooperate with him as with Moody. But Scrimgeour was better at dealing with Voldemort, that pride and dignity and importance would get his cooperation, and force would get nothing but hostility. It was so simple. And so Riddle nodded his assent.

“Potter, go with them,” Moody said. “And then… go to your room. The sort of trouble you’re in defies legality, for now.”

“Uh, are you sure?” He’d sort of accepted that he’d be expelled and sacked, all in one go.

Moody glared. “Yes,” he said. “I need to find Robards.”

“Before you do, Alastor,” Dumbledore said behind them, “may I have a word?”

Moody’s blue eye examined the portrait as though he could discern its intentions. Then: “Yeah.”

So they departed. Harry shoved his diary back into his cloak pocket. He’d have to find time later to inform Voldemort of it all.

With Scrimgeour’s hand on the doorknob, however, Moody hissed. “They’re just coming back in,” he said, gazing though the floor. “Don’t – “

“Here.” Drawing his wand (the cypress wand, the one Harry had told Moody was for him, and his look now was awful), Riddle dropped a perfect Disillusionment over all three of them. It was unfair, really, how attuned the magic of the castle was to him. “It will be simpler in the chaos.” They went.

Students streamed in, brisk and chattering from the Quidditch match. Riddle took the lead, weaving their magic through clusters of students perfectly. Not even the portraits, typically better at surveillance, seemed to notice them.

When they entered the girls’ toilets, Riddle sealed up the door behind them. “ _Finite_ in Parseltongue,” he told Harry. “No idiot students should wander in.”

Scrimgeour made a noise of protest. “Parselmagic,” he ground out. “I can’t condone it.”

“I cast the Fidelius in Parselmagic,” Riddle said, unrepentant. “I’ve repaired many of the castle’s wards in Parselmagic. The castle has an affinity for it. It has provided protection that the magic of humans cannot.”

They’d closed the sink behind them last time, so Riddle opened it again. He even translated for Scrimgeour afterward, as though he were utterly obliging. Back down the curving staircase.

Scrimgeour was shocked, and gratified, as they descended. “How did you find it?” he asked Riddle in quiet tones, as though reluctant to disrupt the stillness of the cavern.

“I walked the castle. I compared blueprints. I asked the snakes about crevices a human might overlook. The castle has always _loved_ me,” (his tone in that word half mocking and entirely sincere) “and drew me to my birthright. Here.” He gestured toward the dark corridors.

“You never returned,” Scrimgeour said. “Do you know… what will happen to you later? In the first war, we secured Hogwarts, assuming it would be a valuable target, but you never attacked it.”

“Good,” Riddle said shortly. Scrimgeour looked rather surprised. “History deserves respect. Magic deserves respect. It is _shameful_ that Voldemort would sacrifice so many purebloods for his own safety,” he said viciously. “It’s shameful that he pursued such obvious violence over subtlety. He has been _sulking_ ,” he said with disdain, “that the armistice undoes so many of his accomplishments. But really, his means were always desperate and vulgar.”

It was as passionate as anything he’d said today. Magic – Slytherin’s magic, the magic of Riddle’s birthright – swirled around him, and he was poised and confident in _belonging_ for once. He strode the corridors such that Harry and Scrimgeour had to keep pace, and his eyes glittered when he looked back at them.

“I’d expected he’d keep you on as an ally,” Scrimgeour said.

A sneer. “That’d be clever of him. No.”

It was forever surprising how much antipathy the Horcrux had for Voldemort, Harry thought.

But Scrimgeour was thoughtful. “If you are invested in the castle’s magic… what do you intend to do with the diadem?”

“Until I’ve studied the magic, I couldn’t say.” He glanced over. “You’d keep it here?”

“Founders’ relics are sacred. You’ve seen Gryffindor’s sword in Dumbledore’s office.”

“Yes.”

“Really, if the locket is ever uncovered, it should be displayed as well. To impress the history of Hogwarts on the populace would… help.”

“With what?” Riddle said sharply.

“To keep it open in spite of the casualties. It was already precarious in the aftermath of the war, and moreso after Avery’s death. We’ve kept the death of Greengrass quiet for now, but that won’t hold much longer.”

“Hogwarts can’t close.”

“I agree.”

“But it’s unsafe as it is.” To demonstrate, he skimmed his fingers along the stone wall, revealing fraying wards.

“Yes,” Scrimgeour frowned at this, even after Moody had already warned him about the extent of the damage to the wards earlier. “If it would hold through the end of the term, we’d bring in specialists in the summer. Particularly if we couldn’t convince you to stay on. Or if Voldemort hadn’t yet returned.”

“What has _he_ done for Hogwarts?”

“Peculiarly, very little.” They’d fallen into step by now, awkwardly, letting Harry trail them. “He is very invested in it. But his legislation has focused instead on primary and higher education.”

Riddle frowned, dissatisfied. “I’m not surprised that the castle abandoned him.”

In the war. Perhaps altogether. He was right, Hogwarts should have allied itself with Voldemort before now – it seemed so obvious, seeing how _responsive_ it was to Riddle. Harry was a bit sad, seeing the natural affinity that existed between them.

And how strange and sad, that Riddle felt more antagonistic toward Voldemort than toward the Aurors.

Scrimgeour thought so too, and he was careful now. “You’ve preserved the castle this year, then,” he said. “Thank you.”

Riddle didn’t answer, but gestured them to the sloping corridor at the end of the chamber. Scrimgeour’s breath caught as they entered into the vast space.

“I cast apparition charms – uni-directional – on the chamber, so nobody could re-enter this way. The corridor is trapped for any intruders. The magic is strongest… here.” He stepped among the pillars, not far from where they’d found Malfoy earlier. “You’ll find your way out?”

“Yes.” Before Riddle had reached for his wand, Scrimgeour had stepped in. “Tom,” he said, extending his hand. “Thank you. Good luck.”

Tom’s look was utterly skeptical, but he did take Scrimgeour’s hand. Then, lifting the cypress wand, he apparated out.

Harry and Scrimgeour took a long moment before leaving. “This should be displayed, in some way,” Scrimgeour said, looking up at the twisting pillars. “It might even be used. There are so few mementos of the founders any longer….”

Harry couldn’t imagine having classes or dorms in this wet, eerie place, but he hummed in polite agreement.

“You’ll write to Voldemort?” Scrimgeour asked. “He may be in touch, of course, but if you’d explain the preliminary bits….”

“I’ll tell him. I’ll copy out the contract.”

“Good lad.”

The way back was simpler this time, and they emerged in the toilets. Harry was suddenly self-conscious about using Parselmagic to get out, even if Scrimgeour had already known.

He apparently thought about the same. “Before we part – Rye has been advocating for you quite strongly,” he said. “On the basis that the Humnerë bodies were never properly alive, thus were not killed by Parselmagic. We are not pursuing that charge, anyway. If Moody hadn’t already told you.”

“Thank you, sir. Uh, he hadn’t told me.” Moody couldn’t even keep up with all the stupid and illicit things Harry had done recently, he thought better than to say. “Here. _Finite Incantatum_ ,” and he got it right in Parseltongue the first time, and the door swung open.

“Do you need a Disillusioning spell?”

“No. Thank you.” The buzz of the great hall nearby indicated dinner had just begun.

Scrimgeour nodded. “I – well, I hope we will be back for the Slytherins shortly.”

“I hope so, too.”

The Minister saw himself out. Harry couldn’t imagine being around his friends right now, explaining the day. So he didn’t. He had a lot more to write Voldemort, anyway.

 

Not that his self-imposed isolation lasted long. Later that night, there was a banging on his door. He shoved Voldemort’s diary and the Panopticon both under his bed. “Yeah?”

“Let us in,” Ron said from the other side of the door.

Sighing, he got up. And it wasn’t just Ron and Hermione but also Ginny and Luna, all looking at him with grave concern. “Harry,” Hermione said in a half-grasp. “We thought you’d disappeared along with the Slytherins.”

“Oh, you know, then,” he said a bit dully, but he held open the door to let them in.

They crowded around him on the sofas, and it felt nice and smothering all at once. “We brought you chocolate,” Luna said. “And honeybirds, and fizzing whizbees, and cacao dandelions, and butterfly scones….” She had produced an improbable number of sweets bags from her pockets.

“And sandwiches,” Hermione said with an exasperated look at Luna, fishing out a foil package. “So you don’t die of insulin shock. Really, when you didn’t show up to dinner…. The students had concocted all sorts of stupid rumors.”

“Not just the students,” Ron said.

An eyeroll. “Students and faculty alike.”

“They thought you’d finally run off with Malfoy,” Ginny said helpfully.

“I don’t want to run off with Malfoy!” But he’d already bit into a flaky honeybird and everything seemed a bit better already. “He…. Uh. I don’t know how much I can say. Or should say.”

“Terry said he saw the Minister leaving this afternoon,” Luna said.

“He was right, then.”

Luna’s eyes bulged slightly. “Are you in trouble?”

He actually laughed. He still hadn’t recovered from an entire day of bracing to be expelled. “I’m always sort of in trouble. And, uh, yes? I will be. It’s fine,” he assured her.

“Have you smuggled the Slytherins out yourself?” Ginny’s tone was light, as though this were ludicrous.

But Hermione was watching his face too closely. “You did,” she breathed. “Oh my god.”

Hermione’s perhaps worst trait was how quickly she ruined any moment of light or ease, because they now all looked horrified again. Harry swallowed the food that had gone to ash in his mouth. “I didn’t,” he said. “But I found out how they did it. And… not exactly where they were going, but it’s some place under Fidelius.”

“That’s really advanced magic,” Hermione frowned. “Did… they cast it themselves?”

“I can’t say.” Literally, he could not name the very existence of Riddle right now.

“It’s alright, that’s alright,” Ron cut in, before Hermione latched onto this mystery like a pit bull. “Sorry, mate. I’m sure they’ll be okay. They’re lucky you said something.” He wanted Harry’s happiness more than he wanted to know, and Harry was infinitely grateful. “Here, want to come over? We’ll put on… what’s that one with the dragons, Hermione?”

“Jurassic Park. And they’re not dragons, they’re _dinosaurs_.”

“Ooh.” Luna’s eyes lit up. “I’ve heard of them. I thought they were only a Muggle myth, though.”

“Yeah, please,” Harry said, getting up. He cast Accio to summon his diary. “Voldemort,” he said at their looks. “In case he needs… anything.” Earlier he’d written that the diadem had already been promised its freedom, and Voldemort hadn’t yet written back. It could go badly. He hoped it wouldn’t.

The five of them decamped across the way to Ron and Hermione’s suite. Harry ended up nestled between Ginny and Ron, piles of Honeyduke’s on the coffee table before them. He sank deep into the cushions as Hermione set up the VCR.

But they were only about a half hour in when his diary warmed against his ribs, where he’d put it in his inner pocket. He tried not to jostle Ron too much as he pulled it out. “Sorry,” he muttered, feeling like a distraction. “It’s probably not an emergency.” He flipped it open.

_I would prefer to keep the Horcrux extant, of course. The Ministry would not. They still believe that immortality is monstrous. I assume they wouldn’t be content to let it go._

Not an emergency, then. Taking out a quill, he scribbled, **_I’m with friends now. Tonight?_** Which meant in sleep.

_No, I’m looking into something tonight. It isn’t critical._

**_I love you. Be careful._ **

_You, too._ All of it, he meant all of it, and Harry could tell from the faint panic he felt when telling Harry he loved him.

But Ginny had looked over. “Is that _real_?” she asked of the Parselscript. It did look very foreign, an assemblage of curls and jagged spikes. (The film was already getting constantly disrupted by explanations of Muggle tech and a few minutes ago, Luna’s explanation that Muggle DNA was actually a quantification of their aura. This was just one more distraction.)

“It’s real,” he said, amused at the idea he’d just write an entire book of nonsense scribbles. “But it’s not important.”

Luna and Hermione were reaching for it at the same time, across Ginny and Ron’s laps respectively. He nudged it toward Luna, because at least she’d say something hilarious about it. “Has the Ministry ever used you to pass along coded messages?” she asked in fascination.

“Other countries have Parselmouths. A lot of them, actually.”

“But snakes are very patriotic. I’m sure they wouldn’t give up state secrets if they were meant to protect them.”

He loved Luna. (Even if, having spent enough time with the snakes on the Slytherin estate, _patriotic_ was about the last word to come to mind.) “We do use it for privacy, I guess. In public. Hey, you haven’t heard of any papers hiring translators, have you?”

“No. But it’s only a matter of time.” She passed it to Hermione, who studied it as though she could translate it just by looking at it hard enough. For all Harry knew, she could.

But just as they met the first triceratops, Hermione let out a tiny “Oh!” Then: “Oh. What is this, Geminio? It’s very good.”

He hadn’t expected Voldemort to write again tonight. Frowning, he reached for the diary. “Yes, it is. Here.”

_There has been no speculation about how they reached Avery and Greengrass?_

God, Harry hoped Voldemort was going to dismantle the Humnerë fast. **_No. He said they’re in a self-sustaining hideout. They shouldn’t have had to leave._**

_As with Hogwarts, the question remains whether they were driven out or lured in._

**_He showed us the wards today. They’re really eroded. I’m not surprised they felt like the castle was attacking them. We don’t know why either. Scrimgeour said we could bring in specialists after term ends. The Horcrux might help. Or if you’re back in Britain by summer._ **

_I intend to be. Are other parts of the dungeons so eroded?_

**_I don’t know. I’ll look after this. Why, do you think they’re targeted?_ **

_I am not asking whether, only how. I’ve encountered more unfamiliar magic here than I’ve ever seen before. Few magic theorists have ever accounted for quasi-humans. It is an entirely different syntax._

This didn’t mean it was too complicated or that he was defeated. For Voldemort, this meant he was happy and challenged. It was charming. **_Should I look for any books?_**

_No. I brought more appropriate ones than Hogwarts would have._

**_Is there anything else I can do?_ **

_No. Not now._

Harry sighed quietly, and then wrote in a moment of whimsy: **_I finished Richard III today. I liked it. I want to talk to you about it later. Could you tell me what to read next?_**

A minute’s pause. Harry was still watching the film enough. He’d picked up a fizzing whizbee in his off hand and was letting it dissolve against his tongue now. It was almost like sucking his thumb.

Then Voldemort wrote back: _If you haven’t tired of Shakespeare, Hamlet. If you haven’t tired of anti-heroes, Crime and Punishment. Perhaps Frankenstein. I’d like to read Kafka with you myself someday. But really, you should win Granger over by asking her._

He grinned. **_I will, then. We’re watching a film now._** (Voldemort knew of films; he’d said once that he’d spent enough of his childhood summers slipping into cinemas. But would he know of Spielberg? Not only was it Muggle, but the film had come out while Voldemort had been dispossessed. He decided not.) **_We are going to own a television. And probably video games. I don’t care how anti-tech wixes are._**

_How common an aspiration._

He grinned. **_Yeah._**

Then he tucked the diary back inside his robes. “Alright?” Ginny murmured beside him, as he returned his attention to the screen.

He felt mildly guilty, for looking like it was a crisis when it was just stupid flirtation, at the end. “Yeah.” He popped the last of the fizzing whizbee into his mouth.

Hermione fell asleep on Ron’s shoulder; Ginny fell asleep on Luna’s. But Ron and Luna loved the film. And it felt so easy, so natural. The earlier part of the day, by contrast, now felt like a bad dream.

And when it was over, and everyone was preparing to go to bed, he caught Hermione’s (still quite sleepy) gaze. “Can you recommend a book to read?” he asked. “A novel, I mean. Probably Muggle.”

She’d seen him reading sometimes at meals or between classes, so she wasn’t immensely surprised. “Maybe,” she said. “Come next door, I’ve got a few shelves.”

He hadn’t been in her suite-turned-office before. It was a thing of beauty, with two desks in the center and bookshelves all along the edges. “Does Ron come in here too?” he asked, eyeing the second desk.

“Mmhm. We prep classes in here together. You’re welcome in here too, of course, though I usually set aside the early mornings for personal study….” She was leading him to the far corner, casting Lumos in a ball over their heads. “Have you got any preferences?”

“No. Uh. Something exciting?”

A tug at her mouth as she scanned her books. “Do you mind if it’s long?”

“No. I’m slow, though.”

She handed him a thick paperback, well worn. _The Count of Monte Cristo._ “It’s an adventure story about revenge. You’ll like it.”

On the cover was a fortress surrounded by the sea, looking quite like Azkaban. “Brilliant. Cheers.”

“You’re welcome.” Then, with a pause, she asked, somewhat strained, “Does he need anything?”

He couldn’t help it, he was light and cheeky by now. “Like a book rec of his own? Maybe, if you’ve got one.”

She swatted him with the paperback she’d held. “Prat. No. Real things.”

“It wasn’t a… crisis he’d written about earlier. He’s fine.” But then, because Hermione would be infinitely more likely than him to uncover something useful: “Do you know anything about vampiric magic? I think specifically their wards. He’s trying to get into their territory, and he said the magic was really different.”

Hermione being Hermione, her eyes glittered at this prospect. “Everything about quasi-humans is understudied,” she said. “In most countries, their communities have a strong isolationist policy. For good reason, as they’ve historically been – well, hunted. And there’s really no reason they _would_ distribute their magic – it’s as inert for wixes as our magic is for Muggles, generally.” Still, she was scanning her shelves. “I’d have to go to the library, but tomorrow is already busy. Maybe Tuesday, then? I know I’ve seen something before….”

“You really haven’t got to,” Harry said, mildly alarmed even though it was just her typical mania. “Especially not, y’know, for him.”

Her look was serious. “It’s not for him,” she said. “It’s for you. And really, for all of us, if it keeps us safer. And keeps us from finding you dead in your bed one morning.”

“Thank you,” he said, quite touched in spite of the imagery.

She nearly smiled. “Don’t thank me yet. I haven’t done anything. Thank me in a couple days.”

“It’s pre-emptive,” he said. “And I’ll start….” He gestured with _The Count of Monte Cristo._

She walked him out. “Whatever happened today,” she said lowly at the door, “I trust you did the right thing.”

He gave her a shaky smile. “I think so. I hope so.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You might think that Draco has had the worst year, and you may be right. But the _other_ worst year goes to Daphne Greengrass, whose mother is under house arrest, two older brothers are missing because of presumed Death Eater affiliation, and now there’s Astoria. Sorry, Daphne. Sorry, Slytherins.
> 
>  
> 
> Allusions for Chapter 28:
> 
> The dresser that sorts clothes by color and the stairs that turn into a ramp are both playing with headcanons of disability and accessibility. 
> 
> Ron watches Die Hard every weekend, even though there’s something about Hans Gruber that is just unnervingly familiar. And Harry is predictably gay for David Bowie in Labyrinth. Also just imagine the characters watching Muggle fantasy and making fun of how much we get ‘wrong.’ (“Have you seen Tolkien’s elves? My god, what was he thinking?”)
> 
> Richard III – Shakespeare’s play about a charismatic anti-hero who kills everyone around him to become king. “Conscience is but a word that cowards use” is from his final battle speech.
> 
> “We’ll reverse the prisoner’s dilemma” – a classic psychology experiment, in which two prisoners are asked to snitch on one another and both told the other has already done so. Scrimgeour says this is a reversal because instead of making two punishments contingent on one another, they are making two rewards (the freedom of the students and return of their families) dependent on one another.


	29. Chapter 29

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Voldemort walks Albanian caves, Hermione researches, Tom persuades the Slytherins.

_Wednesday, March 17._ The next few days were deeply uncertain. Apparently Snape had anticipated Malfoy could be gone by some point, because he already had a substitute lined up for Runes, an older woman with both glasses and a bun as big as her face. And Snape himself was scarce in these next few days, missing every meal. Slughorn sat huddled between Professor Vector and McGonagall at meals, looking deeply disturbed.

The eighth years had been in all the classes Harry himself had been taking – potions, charms, transfiguration – and now there was a grave silence over them all. His own DADA classes were just as solemn. Nobody had worked up the courage in class to ask what’d happened, but they all looked at him rather imploringly.

Runes on Tuesday with Professor Valentine was incredibly dull. “You must have appreciated the undivided attention of your professor,” she chirped as she entered the otherwise empty classroom. “And in your NEWTs year!”

“Uh, yeah, I have,” he’d muttered.

Voldemort was less present than usual that week – Wednesday was the new moon properly, but the entire week surrounding it was filled with esoteric magic, he’d said. Hermione was gone on her research mission. Lisa Turpin was still here but too depressed to go to class. (“Of course she and Daphne had been dating,” Luna had said to Harry as though he were an absolute moron, and to be fair, he probably was.) Lastly, _Ginny_ was gone as of Tuesday night, and he didn’t know why. Ron didn’t either. McGonagall and the Aurors had all said she was on a sanctioned but confidential absence and would return shortly.

“Is it Tonks?” Harry had asked with some trepidation of Brightbone on Wednesday morning.

Her mouth thinned. “Auror Tonks is still under Healer care and receiving the best treatment.”

This wasn’t helpful but it was close. He’d hate himself if Tonks was also dying on his behalf.

Of course Ron’s reaction was worse. “She’s my sister!” he’d snapped at Brightbone. “I’ve got a right. You know what happened _last_ time she went missing? She nearly died!”

“Mind your mouth, Mr. Weasley,” Brightbone said, unimpressed. “Your sister is not missing, she has been excused on private matters. I believe you both should be going to class?”

“Do my parents know?” Ron asked at last.

A pause. “I couldn’t say.”

And then for the rest of the day Ron was tormented by the question of whether he should write them. Ginny still wasn’t speaking to them, last he’d heard, and it’d probably infuriate her to involve them. “They’d never let her out again,” he said. “Doesn’t matter that she’s of age, Mum would bar her bedroom door ‘til she’s thirty if they think she’s done something stupid.”

Harry had in mind a conversation he’d had with Ginny a few weeks back – in St. Mungo’s, actually. “Do you think it’s different for girls?”

“What, our parents? She’s the youngest, and she’s sort of the most reckless. I dunno.”

“Not your parents. Just… everyone.”

Ron blinked. “You should ask Hermione,” he said. “It probably is.”

They reached the place where they’d part – Harry was off to teach NEWTs level, and Ron and Hermione had the fourth years. “You’ll be alright?” Harry asked carefully.

“Yeah. I think so. Yeah.”

 

As somber as the castle had been for the past few days, dinner was a bit cheerier. Everyone had been anticipating the dueling club would be cancelled this week, as perhaps being in poor taste. But Snape and the Aurors had all agreed to let it go on. And maybe it wasn’t the greatest outlet for students’ anxieties, gearing them to fight, but it wasn’t the worst one either.

And Snape himself attended this evening, too. With the great hall cleared and then stuffed with pillows (they were all practicing stunning charms), the dueling club was especially well-attended that night. It made things feel okay again. This school, like Harry, thrived on chaos.

And somehow Harry actually ended up paired with Snape, to both their great distress. “You may not stun me,” Snape muttered as they, as the last two faculty, drew together before a group of sixth years. “You’ve taken enough blows to the skull, a few more can do no worse.”

“I… okay,” Harry sighed. Snape had often used him to demonstrate in his own sixth year DADA class, so he should be used to it.

The groups really had to be split into threes: the caster, the target, and the group ready to shove pillows under the targets’ heads. When they’d all gotten organized, Snape raised his wand.

“If you haven’t already mastered Stupefy, you may go join the third years.” He gestured to them, swarmed around Remus and Flitwick some distance away. “Tonight we will practice more drastic stunning spells, based on physiological depression. Unless your target is particularly powerful, they will not wake up from this unassisted. As such, we’ll also practice reviving charms tonight.”

Harry was already bracing himself when Snape aimed at him. Wait, was he supposed to block it? “Enervo!” Darkness, _thud_. He was awake just long enough to feel his skull hit the floor.

When he came to – well, later, he couldn’t properly say when – everyone was looking at him in mild horror. “What?” Touching the back of his skull, he felt blood. “Episkey,” he muttered, before the students saw the worst of it.

Snape glared. “I hadn’t yet demonstrated Rennervate, Potter.”

He laughed, and then immediately regretted it, because it made his head pound. “Sorry I didn’t stay unconscious long enough, sir.”

Snape did not tell him what a petulant child he was only because they were with students. “Again,” he said. “Someone else catch him. It’s very illuminating that the Gryffindor seeker has terrible aim.”

Behind him, Juniper Ellis squeaked, “Sorry!” He turned to give her a reassuring smile.

Three times more. Each time Harry woke up almost immediately, until Snape snarled that he was useless. They’d demonstrate Rennervate on the students, then. And then they split into four groups of three, to hesitantly begin practice.

When he and Snape stepped back to observe, the air between them was icy. And Harry was still picking bits of blood out of his hair when he asked carefully, “Have you seen Malfoy?”

A glare. “Yes,” he said evenly.

“Is he… will he be alright?”

“You are not entitled to know, Mr. Potter.”

Harry nearly snapped that he knew more than Snape, that he knew of the chamber and the Horcrux and the year-long escape attempt. “Alright,” he said instead, settling into silence.

The first time one of the students was successfully stunned (Juniper again, by a horrified Romilda Vane), both Harry and Snape stepped in. “Let me,” Harry said, drawing his wand first.

Snape looked over in typical contempt, but then his expression shifted. “What did you do to your face?” he muttered, casting a mirror charm for Harry to see.

A long, jagged line ran from his temple to his jawline. It was deep red, and likely only not bleeding because it was just an echo of whatever had just happened to Voldemort. “Oh.” It stung when he touched it, and blood dotted up. “We, ah, share injuries – “

“Brown is that way.” Snape pointed. “Go to her. Congratulations on your new curse scar. It is quite dashing.”

Shit. An experimental Episkey proved him right, that it wasn’t healing readily. “You’ll be okay…?”

“ _Go_.”

Keeping his head down to avoid so many students seeing, he approached Lavender, where she sat with Sabita, watching. “Harry – oh!” Lavender gasped, at seeing the gash along his face. “What _happened_?”

“Uh, Voldemort. Again.” She conjured a chair right in front of herself, to have a look at it here, and he sat. “It doesn’t hurt much. I don’t think it’s bleeding?” But when he touched it, his fingers now came away wet. Dammit.

“Don’t touch it,” she chastised, pulling out a kit.

He wanted to write to Voldemort, but he knew that’d be the stupidest thing. If Voldemort was in some danger, he’d bloody better not be writing to Harry. Still, he had the diary in the bookbag by his hip, and he reached for it carefully as Lavender cast more diagnostics. A note, he’d have to leave a note for later.

 ** _Tell me when I can give you my magic. Be careful_**. He underscored the word twice.

“This is how you write to him?” Sabita asked, eyeing the diary. He’d told her of it before, but she’d never seen it.

“Uh-huh.” He kept it in his lap just for the ghost of Voldemort’s magic on it. He’d missed the magic Riddle usually offered. He still hadn’t returned, and Harry had heard nothing. Between the loss of Riddle and absence of Voldemort, he thought his soul might be eroding.

“What do you write about?”

“Mostly just – _ah_ – if we’re safe. He’s safe. Sorry,” he said to Lavender, for jerking back when she’d placed a potions-wet cloth on his face.

“You should spend the night in the hospital wing,” Lavender frowned at him. “If you know something will happen to him.”

She was right, honestly. Still – “I’ll be fine.”

More spells. Spells that held the jagged edges of the cut together, disinfecting it, bringing down the swelling on that half of his face. “It spreads slow,” Lavender muttered, as a trickle of blood ran down his neck, “but this can’t be all.”

“I feel fine, though,” he said. “Can I stay?”

Lavender looked at him in amusement. “Has anyone ever stopped you?” she asked. “The gauze has got a coagulant on it, I’ll give you more to make sure you don’t bleed out overnight.”

He grinned at her. “Thanks, Lav.”

Her sigh of exasperation was nevertheless good-natured. She dropped gauze and a potion in his bag, and he moved to return to his students.

Snape had just picked Ashwani off the floor when he returned. “It’s nothing,” he said, putting his hand to his face. If he were better at glamours, he would’ve put one on. “Please – keep going.”

For Snape, normalcy meant humiliating Harry, so that’s what he’d do now. “Potter, none of your students could tell me the difference between _Enervo_ and _Obtundo_. Would you like to enlighten them?”

“Er….” He knew both spells. They’d used both in battle, actually. The _difference_? “I don’t – “

 _Crack_! The ceiling, and the entire great hall, went abruptly dark. There were a few shouts and a few cries. One student screamed.

Dozens of wands plunged into the air at once, but the darkness of the great hall was unnatural, seeming to swallow their light. Harry could see the glow of the ceiling faintly – and while it’d been pitch black a second ago, there was now what looked like a vortex swirling in its center. It was horrifying.

Snape magnified his voice. “Students will return to their common rooms. Stay _there_ until you’ve received further instructions. Faculty, remain here.” And then he was casting a half dozen spells, some of them quite illicit, to try to dispel the darkness.

The Aurors – Brightbone and Bragg, this week – had come running. “Severus – ah.” And Bragg shot a spell into the air to summon more Aurors to the castle. It made Harry’s stomach hurt. It meant this was real, and serious.

The ceiling was managed by Flitwick. Snape was pulling open the great hall’s wards, with Hermione beside him in an unlikely scene. When the other Aurors arrived – Moody, Dawlish, and Herzog – they herded the students out and then secured the hall, so nobody else could enter or leave.

The darkness hung like a thick fog – it was easier to discern shapes than details, and Lumos was cut short. Harry thought of what he’d heard of black holes in his Muggle science class, that they could swallow light itself. He wondered if the vortex was a magic black hole.

He recognized Ron’s lanky stature and Hermione’s cloud of hair before he could see their faces. “Harry?” Ron asked, peering at him. “Yeah – here, Hermione – “

Her eyes were huge and dark. “I don’t know what this is,” she said lowly. “It’s old magic, or foreign magic, or – I don’t know. Oh god, _Harry_ ,” she said as she drew closer, seeing the gauze along his face. “What happened?”

“Nothing. Voldemort. It’s fine, we’re fine.”

And then Flitwick summoned them forward. McGonagall and Herzog stood with him, negotiating which magic to begin with. It’d be simpler to light the hall and _then_ fix the ceiling, but what if the ceiling itself was swallowing the light….

They ended up with Remus and Hagrid. “I’ve had about enough,” Hagrid said darkly. “Bad magic this year, it’s everywhere. The castle may as well be cursed.”

Harry gave him a curious look. “Do you mean that?”

“We scrubbed down the castle after the war – yeh wouldn’t’ve known,” Hagrid said, because Harry had been with Voldemort in this months afterward, “but we must’ve missed something. Dark magic is tenacious. It feeds off people.”

Under the inky vortex, he’d never been more convinced that something was wrong with the castle. “Have you seen the wards?” he asked lowly. Only the northern wall, behind the head table, had been revealed, but even at this distance they could see where the wards sparked and frayed. “They said it’s been like this all year. The Slytherin common room is worst.”

“Who said?” Remus asked.

“… Malfoy.” It had been Tom.

Remus didn’t hear the lie. “The castle is nearing a millennium,” he said. “No magic was meant to survive so long. If we could cleanse the building, put in new magic….”

“It’d be a lobotomy,” Hermione said, with surprising coldness.

Remus looked at her, then smiled sadly. “Yes,” he said. “Or amnesia. It wouldn’t be the same castle afterward, anyway. We all knew this would be a year of significant change.”

Hermione shuddered. “It would feel inhumane,” she said. “And after everything it’s given us. It must be slow-acting for a curse – I don’t recall any such thing happening in the war.”

“Unless somebody cursed it this year,” Hagrid said grimly. And they didn’t want to pursue this idea, because they didn’t want to discuss who could be blamed.

Herzog took the lead in their magic. “We’ll begin with an inorganic healing spell,” he said, raising his voice to address the faculty. “A canted spell called _Stabilitas Augustus_. Filius will take the section on charms, Minerva will take the section on transfiguration. Divide yourselves in half.”

The trio, led by Hermione, all ended up behind McGonagall. Lyra and Lavender both gave them tiny nods. They raised their wands.

The spell was canted in a round, with two parts for each the charms and transfiguration sections. It was even more complicated than the magic they’d cast to restore the ceiling last summer. And as they reached the end, the vortex had stopped swirling, and now sat still.

Herzog wasn’t surprised by this. He took them through two more healing spells, and three anti-entropy charms. The vortex might have narrowed, but it didn’t disappear.

It was close to midnight when they called it off for the night. None of them could find a security risk in it, per se – unless someone plotted to crash through the ceiling from the outside, there was little they could do. Herzog said anyone with experience in the wards should meet him here tomorrow. Classes would be cancelled at least in the morning. All the heads of house returned to tell their students.

And Harry turned to go to the dungeon. The uneven gait behind him announced Moody. With a grizzled hand on Harry’s shoulder: “What happened to you?”

“Nothing.” He turned so Moody could properly see the bandage running down his face anyway. “I mean, Voldemort. I’ll find him tonight, but it’s not bad.”

“When this happened?” He lifted his magical eye to ceiling.

“Just before it, I guess. They’re related?”

“Not the first time something’s happened with the Humnerë and castle at once.”

That was true. The house tables had exploded as the Ministry had been attacked in September. Riddle had said the room of requirement had flooded when Malfoy Manor had been attacked. The Humnerë had infinite manpower, really – disposable souls, contained by as many homunculi as they could create. None of these looked like attacks, exactly. Apart from Avery ( _Avery’s body_ , he thought sickly), they’d never entered the castle. “I don’t know,” he muttered. “I’ll ask.”

“Please do.”

Moody was still seething at him, and they’d both compartmentalized it because there wasn’t _time_. And then Moody had to talk to Snape and Harry had to somehow fall asleep soon.

He pulled out their diary as he walked back to his suite. It was warm, and he was so, so relieved. _Where are you_? Voldemort had written.

He’d just explain in sleep, it was simpler. He half-ran to his suite. **_Let me find you, as soon as I can._**

He threw himself into his bed, kicking off his clothes and casting a cleaning spell on his mouth instead of brushing his teeth. Of course this wouldn’t make him sleep any faster. But kaval would. He picked up the half-jar he’d left on the bedside table, taking deep swallows of it until all the anxiety of the day melted away. It still helped more than anything.

He’d left the diary open beside him, but Voldemort hadn’t written again. It was fine, he must be fine. Harry spelled out the lights, lying in the dark for what felt like far too long.

And then, Voldemort’s mind in his. Voldemort’s magic on his, faint as it was. Harry pushed magic at him before they even said anything.

“I’m in a cave,” Voldemort said lowly, before the scene resolved for Harry. “A system of caves, really, but some of them are quite small. Please keep your claustrophobia to yourself.”

He didn’t even mean it to be particularly dismissive, just pragmatic. Harry had his Occlumency at hand if he needed it. He thought an agreement.

And so Voldemort casts a bluebell flame in the palm of his hand, setting it on the floor so it could grow and warm the space. The cave is low and jagged, and Voldemort pauses to see if Harry would panic. He only offers his concern instead.

Voldemort doesn’t have enough magic to conjure furniture, so he sits on the edge of a rock before the fire. “I am in Albania again, at least,” he says. “One of their portals must be in here – under a mountain range, the country’s filled with them – but the space could take weeks to examine. I… lost,” he says in a sigh. “But she’ll keep me alive. The duel would’ve ended in a draw if not for the land’s loyalty. The ground itself opened to capture me.” And he winces, because Harry does panic at that. “Don’t. I am fine.”

Harry wants to argue that point, but he doesn’t. _Take my magic_ , he thinks desperately. _I should’ve come earlier_. And then he offers up his memories of the night, the great hall going black and the ceiling opening into a vortex.

Voldemort examines the memories carefully. “I don’t recognize the magic,” he says. “The ceiling is rumored to be original as well. It would be ideal if the castle’s magic were only eroding because it was outdated. The castle was founded well before modern English, the syntax has changed…. In any building the wards must all be cross-referenced for compatibility.” He hears the excuse in his own voice, and sighs. Moody had already pointed out to Harry that the crises had corresponded multiple times now. “I don’t know,” he says lowly. “If I am permitted in the castle, I’ll examine its magic. Really, the Horcrux should be useful, too.”

 _He has been_ , Harry thinks, and there’s something like… guilt? in his words. That the Horcrux has done a lot this year, and Harry feels very naively that he’s taken it for granted.

“No,” Voldemort says, amused. “It’s better than he deserves.” In the light he’s opening his cloak, revealing hidden pockets. He has at least a week’s worth of food on him – and thank god the Dëshmitar took his wand but didn’t otherwise strip him. He feels Harry’s relief as he breaks apart a chocolate bar, and says quietly, “I’ve never quite escaped hunger either.” It’s something that rarely comes up between them – it’s too personal, too shameful – but they at least share that part of their childhood.

And then he sits back, taking apart Harry’s memories a bit more. “One would think the Horcrux couldn’t surprise me,” he says dryly. “But I am quite surprised.”

 _Did she say anything about Hogwarts?_ Harry wonders. _Or about the students, or Slytherins, or Death Eaters._

“No. Never. Only you.”

Now that the Horcrux has been gone for a few days, Harry is growing anxious. It wasn’t that he couldn’t recover it – moving the diadem from the fire still in Dumbledore’s office would re-manifest it there – but he imagines that the negotiations with the Slytherins are fragile. And maybe they wouldn’t be convinced at all. It was shitty to take away their families to begin with, and shitty to bargain with them now.

“Rowle, Yaxley, Goyle…. Is Flint’s son still a student?” Voldemort counts them off. “Madam Greengrass is already under house arrest, Zabini fled last year. Avery’s son is already dead. So are Malfoy’s and Nott’s parents. And I don’t know how to persuade the students without parents in Azkaban. Safety and legal immunity may not be sufficient.”

Harry thinks that most of the other Slytherins are younger – second through fifth years. They are children and they are scared; they’re not _tactical._

“Good,” Voldemort mutters, swallowing chocolate. “Honestly, establish an order for them as well. They were legally created to shield the elite from lesser offenses by claiming self-governance. They are useful, as you’ve seen.”

Harry thinks in a rather strained way that he’s exhausted all of the Order’s goodwill. _Moody hasn’t even got words for how furious he is with me._

“I know,” Voldemort says rather softly. Harry hasn’t got a _familial_ relation with the Order – not even his godfather was really a paternal figure – but he very much embraces belonging to them. And he hasn’t, this year. For Voldemort’s sake. Voldemort would rather minimize Harry’s sacrifices on his behalf, but some are unavoidable.

Harry cycles through everything else to do with the Horcrux. The Chamber is known and must be dealt with. The Horcrux could go free in exchange for the Slytherins, which Harry mourns as a loss of Voldemort’s soul. “I never could have reclaimed it,” he murmurs. “It is… alienated from me. We are alienated from one another. It would likely offer more turmoil than stability.”

 _Good_ , Harry thinks, though he’s not sure it is. Then, so sharply that Voldemort can feel it inside his skull: _Oh._ And Harry drags up the question of the locket.

His lips curve. How many times would Harry suffer for the fucking locket. First to lose it and have to _confess_ to such a crime, now the uncertainty of having been made to forget it entirely. He sees in Harry’s memory that the diadem tells him that Avery took the locket last autumn, and smoothly redirected him from asking how or why his memories were taken entirely in January. He has no idea where the locket is now, though it must remain with the Slytherins. So he will lie by omission until he himself understands what the locket has done, to spare Harry the problem if nothing else. “I recognized the gaps in your memory. I still don’t know what they indicate.”

_Riddle said he last saw it with Avery in November._

“Avery would have been dead by January though.”

Harry thinks a wordless frustration. It doesn’t make _sense_ , any of it, unless somehow the locket manufactured its own escape without being manifest…. “It doesn’t matter,” Voldemort interrupts his thoughts. “It can hardly be destroyed. I don’t want it back.”

And then Harry thinks that Scrimgeour wanted to display the _artifacts_ if they could, that the founders’ relics are few, and it would impress historical gravity on the castle.

He arches his eyebrows. “In the castle? The governors would never agree.”  


Harry offers a mental shrug and then offers up his memory – Scrimgeour and the Horcrux (would he have ever imagined) in the Chamber. Scrimgeour taken with the Chamber himself. He is rarely a Slytherin and rarely invested in such sentimental things, but apparently history matters to him. He is right, that Hogwarts already is on the brink of shutdown, and underscoring its historical weight might dissuade the public.

“There should be a millennium re-dedication,” he murmurs, the ideas sparking for them both. “We don’t have the proper date it was established, but just before the year 1000. If….” He sighs. “I’d donate the artifacts, if the Horcruces could be preserved elsewhere. You’re both welcome to the books, but I read them all, and there’s no mechanism for either relocating or reclaiming them.”

_If there were, you’d…._

“Of course I’d give them back.”

Harry is _gratified_ by this, in finding how much Voldemort cares about the castle, though he’s never indicated otherwise. “We had a… kinship,” he says carefully, because it feels like an inane word to use, “as soon as I arrived. We always have. Even in the war.” He says the word as a sigh. “It was visceral, when the castle was damaged, or when it repelled us.”

_We worried that it’d choose you._

“I thought it would as well,” he admits, and it’s still painful. It’s still a betrayal. “That it didn’t… it felt like an indication that it was wrong. That I was wrong.”

He hasn’t spoken this aloud before. Not even to Nagini, his closest confidante in wartime. And Harry’s quiet for a moment, just to give him space, because he’s also never admitted to Harry that he regrets anything before. Really, a year ago, he _wouldn’t_ have regretted anything.

And then Harry thinks that Slytherin desperately needs rehabilitation anyway, but maybe a _creepy, moulding sewer_ isn’t the most attractive relic to offer. Voldemort smiles faintly. “It is a fortress,” he says. “I prefer the allure of leaving it a secret. Perhaps just spread rumors about it instead.” And Harry finds this funny and then it’s all a bit easier.

By now he’s eaten and Harry’s magic has infused his soul – neither of them had wanted to name how drained he was earlier, but it’s apparent now. He hasn’t even properly seen the cave, as weak as he was before. He stands. “Come with me?”

_Of course._

He levitates the bluebell flame a few feet above and ahead of him. The part of the cave where they stand is large and open, with slick green rock walls and sandy floors. An opening leads into darkness.

“We dueled,” he says. “It was extensive. She taught me to duel, even more than what I learned at Hogwarts – and even as much as we’ve both learned since parting, we still draw on the same skills.” He ducks into a lower part of the cave. Water glistens on the walls here. “She… could’ve killed me,” he says, after steeling himself, “but she didn’t want to. Are you injured?” he asks, because he can hurt Harry like _that_ now as well.

_Only a scratch down my face._

He lifts his hand to the corresponding score down his own cheek. He hopes it will heal because it would look idiotic for them to be in public together with matching scars. Regardless. “The rest were mundane, and rather superficial.” There seems to be a time lapse, that Harry’s wounds manifest a few hours later when Voldemort is injured. “I could heal them even without a wand. This is a curse scar, but I didn’t recognize its intent. Something psychic or memory-based, perhaps?” There’s a new scab under his fingers; he drops his hand. “I… couldn’t maintain my Occlumency by then. It might not have affected you otherwise.”

He expects Harry to forgive him; instead Harry embraces it fiercely. _I’ll wear all your wounds,_ he thinks with force. _Because people care when they’re on me._

This is true. It’s thoughtful in a way he’d never experienced before. And it’s absolutely useless martyrdom. “If you are killed or maimed just to main some sentimental point, I will be quite cross with you,” he mutters, and Harry’s amusements flutters inside his soul.

“I shouldn’t have come on the new moon,” he says. It is stupid in hindsight. “Their magic is the most volatile today, but – as you know – unpredictability is its own strategy. It was wild. She was wild. The earth itself was alive tonight, hence….” He spreads his hands. “I may have to wait until the full moon, when they are weakest. Would you tell me when, by the way? I fear I’ll lose track of time underground.”

Harry thinks that he can’t just be imprisoned there for two weeks.

His mouth curves. “Until they make clear what they want from me, who could say?”

The full moon…. Harry tries to count out what day the full moon would be, but his memory snags –

 _The equinox_ , he thinks suddenly. It is only a few days from now. The day they were supposed to be married, before Voldemort decided to run from Bowersock like a coward. And it hurts Harry when he glimpses this thought, but he doesn’t comment on it.

“The equinox is magic of unity and healing. It is a time of transition. I couldn’t….” He raises his eyes to the low, craggy ceiling. “I must be able to do something with it. You’re right. Thank you.”

Harry is pleased but not content. He thinks that Granger has recently been tearing through books or vampiric magic, quasi-human magic, arcana and esoteric magic…. She has never yet found a problem too complex for her to solve, he thinks with pride.

Granger is the last person in Harry’s life who would ever accept Voldemort or their relationship, and so he can’t entirely believe she’d dedicate her time to him now. _I know_ , Harry thinks, and there’s a twinge of regret because they both mean so much to him. _But she likes solving problems. And all of us are better together when we’re solving something._

Voldemort stops, bracing himself at the top of a steep slope that leads into a wet-sounding darkness. Picking up a stone, he draws out Harry’s magic so he can transfigure it into a walking stick. Even using their magic like that feels satisfying, the sort of relief like stretching a sore muscle. He makes his way down the slope.

It’s long, doubling back on itself, and it crumbles under Voldemort’s step. The sound of water gets louder. At last, rounding a corner, they come upon a glowing lake.

“Stay back,” Voldemort hisses, before realizing Harry’s in his head and quite safe from harm. But he recognizes the glow of the water, the eerie foetid magic that animates it. “I knew these caves were magically altered by the Humnerë insofar as there are voids around its edges. I didn’t know if they’d used or altered any interior part of the cave system itself. But this….”

Harry doesn’t recognize it. Why would he? Voldemort swallows, so poorly-equipped for this unfamiliar feeling of being _scared_. “I assume you haven’t seen an Inferius before.”

He expects a dramatic reaction from Harry. He doesn’t get one. Only curiosity, and the gentle pressure of his magic. _No. You should go_. He thinks that there are tunnels beyond the lake, leading elsewhere.

Instead, Voldemort steps closer. He wouldn’t disturb them without a wand, but they can look. “The water itself is enchanted to preserve them,” he says, dropping to his knees near the edge. The stone here is cold and wet. He beckons the bluebell flame closer. “The bodies can be spelled to move, but they’re only animated as an object would be. It’s _not_ what the Humnerë have been sending in, as those can use magic. Though they really should be experimenting with housing the captive souls in these bodies, perhaps they’d last longer….” He bends forward to look into the lake.

Dozens of bodies, their skin nearly pearlescent in the enchantment. Harry is startled at first, and then gentle. _Dumbledore said we all weaponize what scares us the most._

“Yes.” He sits back, uses the walking stick to get to his feet. He’s spelling the wetness out of his trousers as Harry gives him magic, and then they walk on. “This couldn’t be the only useful part of the caves, then,” he says as he spells the light ahead of them. “You should sleep, however. I can do this alone.”

 _You should sleep too_. And Harry tries not to sound obstinate but merely concerned.

“Yes. But on higher ground.” One of the tunnels slopes slightly upward, so he takes it.

_Should I tell the Aurors?_

“If they ask,” he says dubiously. “They won’t come for me. I am legally not their responsibility. They wouldn’t put resources to my well-being.”

And Harry understands that that is what exile _means_ but he’s still irritated by it.

Voldemort lifts a shoulder in a shrug. “They should keep their resources in Britain, in case the Humnerë are infiltrating. I found it peculiar that the Dëshmitar was alone, but perhaps it was a… display.” She’d bested him too quickly anyway. It was humiliating.

He reaches an approximately round space of the cave – call it a room – with stones along the edges to be transfigured. He casts with the walking stick, which is slow but not difficult, and Harry suddenly laughs. The mental equivalent of it, anyway. _The diadem was casting with a sword, did I fucking tell you?_ he thinks with glee, pushing forward the memory. And really, the Horcrux’s entire being is based on survival so it’s not surprising that he’d survive at any cost. Still, watching his younger self level a cursed sword at Harry and Alastor – it’s embarrassing and charming all at once.

Oh. And the memory stretches on, until the house (Harry’s house, the one he’d inherited from Black, and Voldemort recognizes it from long ago) captures the Horcrux, binding his hands before him and dampening his magic to nothing. “Be careful,” he murmurs. “Don’t too quickly discard a home that is loyal to you.”

Harry was surprised by that, he thinks, but quite grateful. One couldn’t ask for a better secret HQ than one that will actively protect them. _I’ll be careful with it._

And by now Voldemort has transfigured some stones into a relatively soft cot. He’s slept on worse. The orphanage had worse. Today he’d set out in the cloak that Harry had given him (his _birthday gift_ ) and he keeps it wrapped around himself even as he conjures blankets. Finally – he tries to cast security spells around the room’s perimeter; they all fizzle and die. While Harry is alarmed, Voldemort makes a small noise. “I expected as much,” he says. “How kind of her to allow me to retain my magic otherwise.”

Harry wonders if the Dëshmitar also knows that they can share magic. She knew they could share a consciousness, anyway. Voldemort shrugs. “Sharing magic has more precedent than sharing a mind. She has probably considered it. Whether she could _stop_ it….”

Harry doesn’t like this; he is struggling not to pass along his feelings to Voldemort only because it’d further hurt them both. _I’m sorry,_ he thinks, because he’s unearthed how weak and angry Voldemort feels about his own defeat, feelings he would compartmentalize until he’s escaped. _Let me stay while you fall asleep. I can get out if I don’t sleep, too._

He is doubtful it will work, but magic runs out of him like a deep wound so he is willing to try. “My thoughts are… unguarded, so close to sleep,” he says anyway.

Harry thinks that he’ll be careful, that he’d stay out of Voldemort’s most guilt-ridden thoughts if he wanted.

“Please do,” he murmurs, but then he conjures a pillow for himself, and allows Harry to stay.

 

 _Friday, March 19._ In the midst of goddamn everything, Harry had to deal with the Muggle Liaison Office.

Winston had sent him an invitation to a meeting about Muggle religion, scheduled for this Friday. The Aurors still swarmed the castle – though the great hall’s black hole was now thought to be benign, and it’d shrunken into something smaller – so he could ask them to cover his DADA classes that morning. Early that morning, he enlisted Hermione’s help in flattening his hair, so he sat in their suite now.

“Did they find someone Muggleborn to speak about it?” she asked curiously as she smeared Sleakeazy’s into his hair. “A halfblood, even. I suppose they’d all fall away from church once they’re here, unless they set up some sort of shrine….”

“What, we do the wrong sort of magic?” Ron scoffed. “It’s all the same, isn’t it?”

“Apparently not,” Harry said, wincing as Hermione’s comb tugged a knot out of his hair. “I dunno. I don’t know _anything_ about our religion or theirs. I don’t think I’m meant to say anything.”

“You’re just there for your good looks, then?” Ron asked.

“Must be so. Hey, can I borrow a tie? I feel like everyone’s seen all of mine a dozen times.”

Ron distinctly rolled his eyes at Harry. “For the _paparazzi_ , then.”

“Ugh, maybe, really. They wanted it in a Muggle location, so we’re meeting in the Ministry and driving to a… hotel nearby, I think? Something public.”

“What will you say if you do get asked to speak?” Hermione prompted him.

He made a face. “’Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I’m the wixie savior who didn’t die. Now tell me about this Jesus chap.’”

Even as Hermione about boxed his ears she was laughing.

He turned down Ron’s Cannons tie in favor of a subtle checked one. He was instructed by Hermione not to touch his hair or stand in any strong breezes. They were about to see him out when Hermione hesitated.

“Would it be inappropriate to write him?”

Voldemort. Oh thank god, she must’ve found something. “Do you want to?” he asked, but already he was reaching into his bag for his diary. “Or should I be with you?”

“We’ve got a free period this morning,” she said, reaching for the diary. “I might as well accomplish something.”

“You are wonderful,” he said in awe. “Let me write, just to tell him – “ He was pulling out a quill hurriedly.

“Where is he?”

“Oh.” Harry slowed. “Uh. He’s being held captive by the Humnerë. They dueled, and he lost. He’s in a cave somewhere in Albania now. He’s got most of his magic, but no wand.”

Her expression softened. “Harry, I’m sorry.”

“He’s fine. They haven’t…. done whatever they want him for. We can find one another in sleep. I can give him magic there. I mean, then.”

Hermione had snapped at him just yesterday that they were dangerously entangled, when she’d seen the gash down his face in the light of day, so it was a relief she didn’t say it again now. (And Harry _had_ glamoured it this morning, to avoid awkward questions at the Ministry.) Instead she said, “He’ll need your magic, then. He may need all of it.”

“What did you find?” Harry asked, fascinated.

But Hermione only shook her head. “I need to ask him some things, first.” She watched Harry pen **_I’m giving the diary to Hermione today. I’ll be at the Ministry, but I’ll be back tonight. Be careful._** Most things he wrote to Voldemort now ended in _Be careful._

“You’re brilliant,” he reiterated as he passed her the book.

A quirk of her mouth. “Yes.” Looking down at the open page: “Would I disrupt anything if I write to him now?”

“No. He… might be awake now, but we had a late night. Not sex,” he said at Ron’s snerk. He had again stayed with Voldemort to walk the caves and share magic and sort-of fall asleep together. “He’ll see it whenever.”

“Good.” She tucked it away in her bag. “I’ve got to get to the library, then. Good luck today.”

“Thanks. Thank you. Really.”

When Hermione left, Ron looked at him. “It’s a good thing she likes being right.”

“And brilliant.” Even if it didn’t work, he was confident she’d uncover something. Hermione had solved the basilisk when comatose, after all. When he looked in the mirror, his reflection squared his shoulders in an important way. “It’s a breakfast meeting,” he said, straightening his tie one last time. “Which is the _stupidest_ …. I’m always too distracted about not spilling something on myself to listen.”

Ron shook his head with something like a smile. “Not all glamour, then?”

“With coffee down my front? Funnily, no.” He was moving toward the door but said at last, “Would you check in on Hermione sometime? Tell her she really hasn’t got to if it’s, whatever, difficult.”

“Yeah, mate. But she’ll be fine. _Go_ , before you’re late for your nutjob Muggles.”

“Ron,” he scolded, but he was laughing.

He took the floo from Dumbledore’s office as usual. The diadem still glittered in the basin on his desk, and he so wanted to touch it, even knowing it’d expedite nothing. Chewing the inside of his lip, he stepped into the floo.

Muggle Liaison was on the fourth floor. The Ministry was only just starting to buzz with activity, but Harry moved quickly anyway.

He thought he’d know nobody at the meeting but Winston, which would be depressing, but when he entered the department, the first face he saw was Hestia Jones. “Hi,” she said, flashing bright teeth. “Emeric just stepped out, he was checking on the cars. He said there are others, but I dunno who.”

“Great. Brilliant.” He sank into an adjacent chair. “Not to be rude, but – why are you here?”

Another flash of teeth. “I’m halfblood,” she said, “and my father’s a priest. I could say a bit.”

“Oh,” he said, surprised. He’d spent some time with Hestia in the war and had known none of that. He felt stupid for having someone useful nearby and not even realizing it. “Is your father… alright with it?”

“Thrilled. Only regretted he could never preach on it. I tried convincing him to come down for the day, but he was busy.”

The department door swung open and Winston entered, followed by a man with his long blond hair in a braid, and – the priestess who had married them. How strange to see her in this relatively normal setting. “Potter, you know Jones, then?” Winston said, surveying them.

“Yes, sir.”

So he was introduced to Pollux Seabury, a Muggleborn now going into church ministry, and Linnea Winter, their priestess. “The car’s upstairs,” Winston said, ushering them out.

Everyone else seemed too have been told more about the Muggles than Harry had, which annoyed him until he remembered he was useless.

They piled into a black SUV at the curb, and crawled through the horror that was the London morning traffic. Winston was furiously going over notes and directing the driver, and Hestia, Pollux, and Linnea were dividing up talking points. Harry sat quietly until Winston said, “Potter.”

He snapped too. “Yeah? Yes, sir,” he amended.

“You already know the Muggle liaisons. They requested you here. You’ll sit with them.”

This meant Antonia, and he was so happy to do so. They hadn’t been in touch since the Yule ball, and he felt quite negligent. “Yes, sir.”

“Don’t mention… anything. Don’t mention _him_ ,” (Voldemort, of course) “or that you were supposed to die, or… any of it. You can talk to snakes?” he asked, squinting at Harry.

“… Yeah?”

“Well, _don’t_.”

This was so wonderful that he had to press a fist to his mouth for a moment, hiding his smile. “Will they be bringing snakes today, do you think?”

Winston glared. “Just be quiet today. People want you around, you haven’t got to do anything.”

“Yes, sir.”

They arrived at a very clean, corporate-type hotel. The priestess took the lead in entering, as the one who’d make the most visual impact in her swirling white robes. Harry carefully picked up the bottom of his own robes so he didn’t drag them in the gutter.

There were a few employees clustered at the front desk, obviously waiting to see them. And really, apart from Linnea, none of them even looked impressive or imposing, but the Muggles still hadn’t fully adapted to the idea of wixes in their world. How do these things get normalized? Maybe wixes should start making their own films or shows, Harry thought. Wollywood.

They were led into a conference room, where the Muggles already waited. Toni was there, and she’d brought her intern Esperanza with her, and Harry immediately drew close to them both. The other Muggles were two men in clerical collars, and two women in professional suits and pearls. They were all at least middle-aged.

Breakfast would happen before the meeting proper, so Harry found his nametag at a place between Antonia and Pollux. And Harry took an inappropriate moment to silently thank Petunia, because he only understood the formal place settings from her dinner parties.

And so they caught up over breakfast. “You got married,” Toni said. “Congratulations.”

He held up his hand, displaying his ring to her and Esperanza. “We needed to, before he went abroad. There will be a real wedding – a massive, political one – next year. You both should come.” And he owed Penelope a letter about it actually, now that he was thinking about it. Damn.

“Where is he?” Esperanza asked. “The papers don’t say.”

Did that mean he shouldn’t either? It didn’t matter. “He’s traveled. There’s a… community he needs to meet with, for national security.” There. Vague enough to be useless.

And then they told him of all the recent legislation – that of everything, mixed use education was shaping up the fastest and everything to do with money was the slowest. The worlds had different types of consumer protection and regulation, and passing all goods through both would be prohibitively slow and expensive, so if they made a joint bureau… and so on. “Really, you’ll probably be able to sell services in our world years before you can sell goods. You know,” Toni said at Harry’s confused look, “a magic housekeeper, to clean up instantly. Fifty quid for five minutes of work. I think it’d be massively popular, if only as a novelty.”

He couldn’t imagine that Muggleborns who’d found themselves back in the Muggle world weren’t already doing these things. “It’d help a lot,” he agreed. “We – well, _they_ – have talked a bit about diversifying labor. Really, we would probably retain more Muggleborns if they could find jobs like that.”

“Also….” Esperanza was flipping open a steno pad. “Nobody knows what we should be called, but we’ve talked about changing _Muggle_. Nobody – your people – ah, seem to take it very seriously? It’d mark a new relationship, anyway. Have you got anything? It’s not important for _today_ , of course,” she said, nodding around the table at all the religious Muggles, “but sometime later.”

He had nothing. “What have you tried so far?”

“We’ve thought of all the expected ones. Non-wix, unwix, non-magic. Or all the words like _standard, ordinary, regular_. I’d rather not be, like, _the Ords_ though,” she said with a grimace. “We tried out noblood, like your halfblood, and people were terrified,” she said with a grin.

He snorted into his coffee. “Not that, then.” How else could they name the Muggles? “I don’t know what other countries say. Maybe there’s something better there. It can’t be Muggles everywhere.”

“We looked,” Esperanza said grimly. “They’ve all got the same connotations. The boring ones, the slow ones…. And yes, we _are_ quite boring compared to wixes, but it’s not helping our interworld relations to say so.”

“You’re not boring,” Harry said in mild shock. “I just watched Jurassic Park last weekend, it was brilliant.”

So the three of them were delighted and easy, but he could already feel that wasn’t the case with the rest of the room. The other conversations were somewhere between polite and strained, and when Winston stood to begin the meeting properly, everyone went a bit tense.

He introduced everyone (the priests were Father Driscoll and Father Godfrey; the women were lay leaders in their church communities named Ms. Atwater and Mrs. Upham) and then ceded the floor to the priestess – “Kyria Winter,” as he called her.

So Linnea explained that she was a priestess in the Sacred Respite of Aphrodite – “primarily responsible for weddings, but our magic is also valuable in families, children, and emotional healing.” Other sacred orders were dedicated to other Greek gods, or Norse or Egyptian, or the mythological figures of Merlin, Morgana, or Nimue. “We stand outside of most wixes’ daily life,” she said, “but we accompany people through transitions and turning points.”

“Is it… real?” Father Godfrey said hesitantly.

“Pardon?”

“Does your magic… work? What does it do? Is it ceremonial?”

“Is it ceremonial. It does work. Our magic is more subtle and esoteric than what most wixes accomplish on their own. Matrimonial magic draws both partners’ magic closer together. A ceremony of adoption bonds the child to its parents’ magic and ensures its inheritance. There are spells to keep aging parents from forgetting their children, spells to share physical or emotional health when one partner is disabled. They all have profound impact on our citizens’ lives.”

Harry hadn’t known most of this. Magic was amazing.

“It’s medicine, then,” Atwater suggested.

A frown from Linnea. “It’s healing,” she said in what might have been a concession. “Isn’t yours, as well?”

“We’re not the same,” Atwater said. “Your power comes from human hands. So did the works of Pharaoh’s magicians.”

Linnea didn’t understand the reference, and neither did Harry, but Pollux and Hestia both tried to speak at once. She nodded him onward. “We respect the idea that there are powers in the world beyond our understanding,” he said. “It is itself a sort of faith. A sort of humility. Mages who try to grasp these great forces of nature too strongly are often punished for it. Magic punishes hubris,” he said with a faint smile.

Like Voldemort. Immortality had come at a deep cost, the disintegration of his soul. He’d given his power for it, his stability, his place in society. It was pathological but not exactly _wrong_. Harry had become numb to death through exposure; perhaps he was the weird one. Anyway, Voldemort had said something near enough himself at some point – that wixies and Muggles alike demonized ambition, especially ambition when not paired with wealth or power.

But all the Muggles were tense now. “If there are other forces in the world…” Atwater said, about a moment away from calling them Satanic.

On it went. Hestia was the one to suggest the Muggles explain their religion as well, so all the wixies could be sure they weren’t misunderstanding it, and that they had the right words. Two of them were CoE, and the other two conservative nondenominational. Harry knew he was supposed to be there in good faith, but he found it all quite tedious.

Most of what they’d talk about had been in the papers before: questions of natural versus supernatural, questions of what ‘religion’ encompassed, what the accusation that they were ‘playing God’ even meant.

It took at least an hour to sort out all the Muggles’ beliefs and feelings. Harry had worn his wristwatch today, and it was just going on ten a.m. when Winston asked in a way he thought was polite, “What, then, should we do?”

This was Father Driscoll’s purview apparently. “Education,” he said with force. “Educate all the – the ones who grow up in magical homes who haven’t got religion. And when they’re off at boarding school – “ He looked to Pollux, “any churches nearby?”

“No.”

“This is – forced idolatry.” And the mood had gone from tense to angry. “Imposing dead gods on children. What do they think they’re doing when they’re doing magic? Who has given them this power?”

The wixes in the room all took a moment to look at one another. Hestia took it. “We haven’t entirely studied where magical aptitude comes from. We do know that it’s a natural, hereditary phenomenon. So… their parents?”

Driscoll found this inadequate. “You must think it’s greater than that.”

“Nobody believes we are the most powerful creatures in the universe,” Hestia said. (And Harry wanted to pitch in that not even Voldemort did, and _he_ was the most arrogant person in all of wixen Britain.) “We don’t pursue these beliefs generally – I don’t know what we’d accomplish by speculating – but the wixen world isn’t atheist.”

And the Muggles were only caught off-guard with the question, what _they_ accomplished by speculating. Nobody had quite asked what the purpose of religion was, but they’d have to answer it now. The Muggles said a lot about humility and grace and salvation earlier, and Hestia and Pollux had nodded along then even if Harry hadn’t understood much of it.

So then Pollux said, “They haven’t got to be in opposition. I understand magic as a natural phenomenon, and indicator of a sophisticated creator. A creator who wants to surprise us, and allow us to discover creation,” he said, with a faint smile. He tucked an errant strand of hair behind his ear as he said, “There is good theology possible. There are good worship opportunities possible! I’d like – really, the MLO would have to review this,” he said with a glance at Winston, “but I’d like to start the first mixed congregation in England. Not for spectacle, but to witness the diversity of creation.”

He’d be a good priest, Harry thought, because he was so much better at mediating than Harry himself was. And so he took over from them on: they thought about what might be done to keep religious Muggleborns in touch with their religious communities. (“A congregational owl?” Hestia mused with a bit of a smile.) What to teach wixes about Muggle religion. (Harry hadn’t known whether the topic was covered in Muggle Studies; he’d have to ask Ron and Hermione.) How they might grow or even combine different types of practices.

The Muggles were sort of mollified by the time they finished. They still thought the wixies were heathens – and really, they probably were – but they were no longer mortally offended exactly. And the wixies had gotten through the entire meeting without once snapping at the Muggles that there were still people old enough to remember the last of the witch burnings. So, success.

They’d each drafted brief statements that would run in papers in both worlds. Harry hoped it was enough to defuse any mounting tension. They really didn’t have time for more.

As they stood, pulling on coats and cloaks, Esperanza slid up beside Harry. “Come out to lunch with us?”

He would be so happy to escape this room. “Yeah. I mean – let me ask them.”

And Winston didn’t care, and he wished the others all goodbyes and he’d see them again sometime (follow-up meetings had been promised in the near future), and then they got out quickly. When they emerged into the crisp cold sunlight, he drew a deep breath. “Wow.”

They both laughed at him. “There’ve been others,” Toni said. “Here, I know a place a few streets away – “ She gestured. “There’ve been other meetings that _actually_ turn into shouting matches. Sometimes it’s our MPs doing the shouting. It’s embarrassing.”

He grinned. “Ours leave their wands outside sometimes, so they can’t _duel_. As though that’d accomplish anything.”

Lunch was a trendy pub with stickers on the wall, and the beer Harry ordered did a lot to ameliorate the morning’s tensions. They caught him up on how more recent legislation had gone. He told them a bit about Hogwarts, about Voldemort, the peril of the past couple months. Actually, saying it aloud he realized how _stupid_ it was to have come out alone. They’d been attacked by the Humnerë in Diagon Alley. The Aurors didn’t even know he was here. He wondered why Hestia, if not the others, hadn’t said anything to him. Maybe she thought he deserved a bit of freedom. Anyway, he’d anchored his wand to his forearm for an easy reach, and he had the pub’s only door in sight. He’d be fine.

But when he got up to use the loo, he caught a glimpse of coiled blonde hair that _really_ shouldn’t be here. Seething, he stalked over to Rita, currently drinking a martini without food in front of her. “How did you find us?” he said lowly, wrapping a silencing spell around them both.

Rita’s eyes had been on a few letters open on the table, but when she looked up she didn’t even pretend to be surprised to see him. “Harry. Join me? Unless you’ve got to get back to your Muggles.”

“What – “ He dropped into the chair across from her. “This is about national security. _How did you find us?_ ”

He was tense from anticipating a Humnerë attack, and might’ve overreacted. Rita certainly thought so, entertained as she was. “I waited,” she said, “outside the Ministry. Your meeting was on the agenda, it’s no great mystery.”

“Of the MLO?”

“Mmhm.” She popped a cocktail olive between her red lips. “Or do they still not tell you anything?”

They didn’t, and he actually needed to say something to Winston about this, because it was going to become dangerous. “And Hogwarts?” he pressed.

She arched her perfect brows. “What of it?”

“I was just in Dumbledore’s office.” He snarled his name into Rita’s face. She didn’t deserve to hear it. “We wondered about your _sources_. Especially the ones from Voldemort’s time at school. Oh, get a grip,” he snapped when she gave a little performative shudder. “I hope you don’t ever want to have a rapport with him. He’s furious. _I’m_ furious.” And he said it a bit vaguely, to perhaps imply that the two of them shared a heart and mind. It wasn’t even wrong.

“A journalist never reveals her sources.”

“I bet she bloody doesn’t,” he muttered. “The entire book is reckless. Hogwarts doesn’t need the strain.”

“Oh?” she said in indifference. “What else has plagued it? Avery was months ago.”

He’d just opened his mouth to tell her that _everything_ had gone wrong recently, that the Slytherins were missing and the castle itself was dying and none of the governors seemed to believe any longer that it was worth the trouble. Then, realizing what she’d done, he laughed harshly. “Expect you already know,” he said. “You know a lot.”

“It’s been quite a year for you,” she said with near-sincerity. “Would you like the public to know anything in particular?” She looked over her glasses. “Could I buy you a drink, sweetheart?”

“No.” He tried not to look back at Toni and Esperanza, but she caught his glance.

“The Muggles?”

“If you already knew about the meeting, you’d already know that.”

“They look sweet.” She was utterly dismissive. “Really, Harry, the public hears so little from you… and so much from him. At least until recently,” she added cleverly.

“You should feel so lucky he’s not around right now.”

A click of her tongue. “Or what?” she asked. “I thought you’d _tamed_ him.”

That was true; he couldn’t quite threaten people with Voldemort while insisting he was harmless. “Sort of,” he said. “He’ll never speak to you, now. And he’s going to be very powerful for a very long time.”

She shrugged. “The press has particular duties. We will not be threatened.”

He really should be advocating for a free press, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. “Write what you need to write, then,” he said. “But neither of us will ever help you.”

“We’ll see.” But she let him leave.

He was so distracted that he forgot to piss, and returned to the Muggles. “Alright?” Toni asked. They couldn’t fully see Rita’s table from where they sat, but they realized _something_ had happened.

“Fine. Yeah. I’ll tell you on the way out.”

 

He got back to Hogwarts mid-afternoon, after classes had already begun, so he’d get to his own Charms class late. Flitwick was just finishing a lecture on psychological charms when Harry slipped in.

Ron gave him a wavering smile as they broke into pairs again. “How’re the Muggles?”

Harry gave a deep sigh. “Alright, in the end. Most of it was uncomfortable. How’s Hermione?”

He grimaced. “I brought her lunch. She skipped our morning class and I think I’m teaching alone again after this too.”

“Oh my god,” Harry said in some horror. “Is she alright?”

“She’s, er, manic as usual. She’s in her study I think, if you want to check in on her.” But then Professor Flitwick made a pointed noise behind them and they had to stop.

 

When Hermione skipped dinner too, they had to perform a rescue mission. And… they didn’t find her in her study. “But she was….” Ron looked around as though she might be hiding among the bookshelves.

They found her in the library’s restricted section – though looking for her, Harry had never missed his map so much. Her desk had two stacks of books taller than her when she sat before them. She barely glanced up. “Sit down, I won’t be much longer.”

“What’ve you done?” Harry spoke quietly, nearly in tones of reverence.

“Quite a lot. Sit – “ Grabbing her wand, she conjured two chairs.

So they sat beside her at the shadowy desk, gazing up at the tower of books.

When Harry saw _The Ancient and Noble Parseltongue_ among her titles, he realized how bloody careless he’d been.

But right now she was copying text out of a tome of esoteric magic – spells to do with the moon so it wasn’t too far off, but otherwise Harry had no idea what it meant. “You were right that the equinox could be useful,” Hermione said after a time. “But he’ll need to set up some of the magic tonight, and tomorrow. It falls at quarter of two on Sunday morning. I expect you can’t share magic from within dreamless sleep?” she asked. Harry nodded. “You might take a calming draught to stay asleep. Or ask Lavender what physiological depressants she’s got. Really, you shouldn’t be sleeping alone when you share injuries, lest you bleed out in bed. Again.” She fixed him with a reproachful look.

He’d forgotten what he’d told them a couple weeks ago. How did he get to the hospital wing, if not with Riddle? “I’ll be alright,” he said. “I’ll leave my door unlocked, come check on me in the morning if you want.”

“Hm.” She was not satisfied.

And Ron was a bit lot. “What’s it like, when you… sleep with him?” His eyes bulged slightly. “Harry, are you _possessing_ him? That can go really wrong.”

“No. Uh. I don’t know. It’s like I’m in his head, but I can’t do anything. And he can’t do anything to me,” he said, cleverly omitting the times Voldemort _had_ possessed his body, to get him off. “We can just hear one another’s thoughts. Oh, and he’s awake, so I can see where he is. Then we can share magic. And… feelings.”

He’d mentioned before that they could have sex – in a manner of speaking – in this world. The blush behind Ron’s freckles indicated he hadn’t forgotten. But then – “He can’t like it when you put yourself in danger.”

Ron was astute in an underappreciated way, based in empathy. This was thoughtful. “Well. No. But… he needs me.”

Hermione flipped through another few books, and handed one to Harry. “You need to write runes on yourself before the equinox,” she said. “Only two pages. Ron will come over to do it for you if you want.”

“Will I, though?”

She glared. “Be helpful.”

“I can do it,” Harry said. “As long as I haven’t got to write it down my back.”

“No, you don’t. And….” Her fingers skittered along the open books before her, picking one out from the heap. “You might cast some pre-emptive spells on yourself. Strength, stability, even conditional healing spells. Can you do dark magic again?”

Her question startled him. “…Yes?”

“Good, because these are all classified as dark spells. They’re a bit too close to invulnerability, apparently. And I gave him spells for certain soul magic. Blood magic would be even more useful, but….” A wave of her hand.

“Hermione. You are amazing. Thank you. You really didn’t have to. Especially not for him.”

With a last gesture, she tore an entire handful of pages out of his diary. “We were at it most of the day,” she said at their looks.

“Just with magic?”

“Funnily, we did not have much of a personal conversation.”

He was so relieved and so overwhelmed by her generosity, all at once. Even if she was a bit short with him, she was more than allowed to be. “Thank you,” he said once more.

“You’re welcome. Is the dueling club on? Snape said at breakfast he’d announce his decision later today.”

“Yeah,” Ron said. “Here, I think we’ll just make it – “

Instead of putting her books back, Hermione cast a preservation and invisibility charm on the stack. “I might need to come back,” she said as they were walking out. “I hope if Remus finds it he’ll recognize it’s mine and just leave it for a bit….”

“Finds what?”

Remus had just emerged from the backroom, also presumably going to the dueling club. Hermione gave him the first smile Harry had seen on her today. “Some books in the back corner, in a carrel below the restricted cryptozoology. They’re all books on soul magic, we’ll be finished with them after Sunday….”

“Of course.” He looked over her shoulder at Harry. “Alright?”

“He will be.”

A glimmer of a smile. “I meant _you_.”

He smiled back. “I will be, too,” he promised. They walked down to the great hall together.

 

Tonight was the first night they’d let students duel on their own. So even if attendance would’ve otherwise been down because of Wednesday’s crisis, this stirred enough interest that they had another full night.

But Harry about choked when he turned in the middle of the hall to find Moody stumping in, joined by Snape. Harry’s first thought – as it should be – was that he was in trouble again, and he looked for the nearest faculty to take over his seventh years.

Moody had seen him too – he’d been looking for him, it seemed. He drew near, leaning heavily on his staff tonight.

“Hi,” Harry said. “I mean, good evening, sir.”

Moody’s eye swiveled to watch the seventh years before them. Of the ones who noticed, half of them had fought with Moody in the war already and gave a nod of recognition; the other half looked intimidated as shit. “Had to see the governors tonight,” he said. “To tell them we can’t fully account for this,” he lifted a hand to the ceiling. “But it’s not worth closing over.”

“Did they believe it?”

“Almost enough. Snape!” Moody barked, when Snape had gotten close enough. “Come watch the seventh years. Potter and I need a minute.”

Snape had been moving to join Remus at the fourth years’ duel, and he looked at Moody like a petulant teenager. “Fine.”

He and Moody did not take a _minute_ , as Moody led him away entirely. They did need somewhere private to talk, apparently; the vow of non-disclosure necessitated it.

When Harry recognized that they were heading to Dumbledore’s office, he looked over. “You haven’t heard from the Slytherins…?”

“No,” Moody said curtly. “It’s been too long. They’ve had days. The longer they delay, the harder it’ll be, and they _know_ that. We’re bringing him back to report on his progress, if nothing else.” His staff and false leg tapped an uneven gait as he climbed the stairs.

“It won’t make them trust us any more.”

“I’ve already decided,” Moody said shortly.

“Yes, sir.”

“And the Muggles?”

“They were fine. We agreed on some things, in the end. Hestia was there?” he offered, in case Moody didn’t know. “She’d never said her dad’s a priest. She was really helpful.”

“Good.” His magical eye swiveled to observe Harry as he asked, “And Voldemort?”

He sighed. “Alright. I give him magic every night, and we look at the cave system where they’ve got him. It’s massive, and he can’t even get close to the edges, because they’ve lined it with a void. We thought he could cast something on the equinox. Oh,” he realized. “If that goes… wrong, I’m supposed to be casting the shield Sunday morning. Can I write you then, to say whether I’m up for it? Or if I’m in hospital. Again.”

He shook his head. “Just go the next weekend. It’s not so fragile now.”

“Yes, sir.”

They reached the bottom of Dumbledore’s tower. And while Harry only had his wand in his fingers to fiddle with, it came in massively handy when – _crack_! A spell ricocheted down the staircase. The reverberation felt like a stunning spell, even as they both repelled it. And then _crack_! A moment later, Obliviate missed them.

Moody was sprinting up the stairs before Harry could even shout. Running up behind him, the stairwell flashed in vicious spellwork, as Moody detained whoever was at the top –

“… Granger, what the _hell._ ”

Harry took the steps three at a time, to find Hermione pinned and bound against the office door. “Harry,” she breathed as he emerged behind Moody.

“This is… mental,” he spluttered, but he didn’t pass Moody or try to free her.

Moody had his staff lifted high to illuminate her face. “What are you doing, Granger?”

“I needed to get in.”

He jerked his chin in a way that demonstrated, _Obviously_. When she said no more, he added, “And _why_?”

She looked back at them defiantly. “I need the Horcrux.”

“So do many of us,” he said darkly. He’d disarmed her at the end, and while he freed her from her bonds, he didn’t offer her her wand back. “You need to go.”

She stood resolutely before Dumbledore’s office. “It could help,” she insisted. “He needs the power, and we’d all be better for it if….” _The Horcrux didn’t exist._

Harry squeezed his eyes shut briefly. “I didn’t think about it, that you could read the diary. I _know_ ,” he snapped at Moody’s incredulous gaze, that he’d fuck up and reveal everything in the diary twice in a week. “The Horcrux is… already taken care of.”

“What, _freedom_?” she asked scornfully. “You’ve lost sight of how _monstrous_ this magic is. We could extract it with an exorcism perhaps, or some types of psychic disassociation, or even looking into the power of dementors….”

“No,” Moody cut her off. “We appreciate your effort, but it’s already been decided. In fact, here.” He stepped in to open the door. (Were all the castle doors keyed to the Aurors?) “In.”

They both entered, Hermione reserved and Harry bewildered. But they didn’t approach the desk where the Horcrux still burned. Instead, Moody pushed Hermione into a seat around the coffee table, conjuring the contract before her. “Sign the non-disclosure. You’re part of this now. Well done.”

“I – “ She looked desperately at him. “You can’t want this.”

Harry sank into a chair, useless. Moody and Hermione were the two most ideologically pure people in his life. Every time Moody signed a contract with Voldemort, Harry had the sense that something of the wixen world eroded. He already knew Moody wouldn’t keep doing this, that he would never serve Voldemort’s ministry. And Hermione would never accept their relationship, or Voldemort’s new place in the world, at all. It felt like they needed to have a conversation that didn’t involve him.

But Hermione sat with her arms crossed over her chest. “Can _entities_ be held to contracts?” she asked. “It can’t be enough.”

“Voldemort can. Potter can. The Horcruxes are suspended between them. You’re bright, but you won’t uncover anything new.” He’d lowered himself to a sofa too, no longer looming over her.

“Did Harry tell you I wrote to him today?” Hermione challenged. She had a blood quill and the contract still before her, but she didn’t touch them. “I gave him spells to escape. It’s not enough to defeat them, but he’d get out of their territory.”

His face snarled. “Why?”

“Because I want this to be finished too,” she said, her tone strangled as though she’d rather not admit it.

Moody’s jaw worked. “The Horcruxes are an integral part of it. I wish they weren’t.”

Hermione gave a jerky nod, and signed the contract. “I told Ron too,” she muttered. “Earlier this evening.”

“Then he will sign as well.”

“You still haven’t got to do it this way,” she said to Moody, not looking at Harry at all. “You haven’t got to let him take the ministry _hostage_ , or to let the Horcruxes go free. Everyone would be better if he didn’t return at all. The Slytherins would be safer. Harry would be safer.”

“Don’t tell me what I should want,” Harry said reflexively, but he was quietly horrified. He thought Hermione had accepted this in some way, had grown to _tolerate_ it at least. To think of her seething all year – and to think she didn’t want Voldemort back for _Harry’s_ sake if nothing else….

“It’s out of my hands, Granger.”

Her mouth tightened. “I’m not bound to the Ministry like you are. Accio Horcrux!”

“No!”

They were all up at once, but Hermione had been sitting nearest the desk. The diadem, still glowing, soared into her hands – and she must’ve been researching spells for it today too, because she had one on the tip of her tongue as soon as it was in her grasp. “Exturbomacula!”

Harry thought at first that he went sick because it was dark magic, that it had polluted the room – but as Hermione was grasping the Horcrux’s magic, he felt something rip inside of him too. Pain flooded from his chest up his face, he felt warm as though he were bleeding again, the gash across his face had split open – He hit the ground.

“Potter – “ Moody’s voice sounded distant, and then there was another volley of magic above him – Were they _dueling_? He had to get up, he didn’t understand – Then Hermione cried out, and the diadem hit the rug a distance away.

More magic. Warm, healing magic. He got shakily to his feet – Moody was up, casting a healing spell that enveloped the room. Hermione was slumped on a sofa, eyes closed. “What did you do?” Harry asked in horror.

“Stunned, and Obliviated. Just this past hour. So she might be derailed from seeking out the Horcrux again.” He saw Harry’s expression. “I would’ve taken more if it didn’t seem important that she actually remember what she wrote him. And I would’ve offered to _not_ prosecute her for an unauthorized Obliviation herself, for her cooperation, but it hardly matters now. And I’m putting an aversion ward for her on this office.”

Harry moved to shake her awake, but Moody made a noise. “The diadem.”

“What about it?” It felt so _dead_ , compared to Hermione’s unconscious form.

“Put it back. We need to see it.”

So Harry reluctantly stepped away from Hermione, moving to pick the diadem off the floor. “I think she’s right, in a lot of ways,” he said tentatively. “I think you’re right, too. I know I’ve done it all… wrong.”

“We’ve yet to see, really.”

The fire still burned in its bowl on Dumbledore’s desk. Bracing for Riddle’s anger, Harry dropped it in.

And because he was already anticipating it, Harry could deflect Riddle’s shove as he emerged from the diadem. “You impatient child,” he hissed, before taking in the scene. “It was your Mudblood friend?” he concluded with distaste. “I assumed it was _punishment_ for not luring them out fast enough.”

“You know her name,” Harry said. “And yes. We – Moody – stopped her.” (Riddle glanced at Moody, who was impassive as always when Harry was managing Voldemort.) “We want to send you back. But – how are they?”

A shadow of a smile. “Weary. Distrusting.”

“Scrimgeour’s already been to Azkaban,” Moody said. “The Aurors will collect the cooperative ones at the end of this month.”

“Where?”

“Ministry-owned safehouses, to begin with. We’ve warded some of their estates, but they won’t be done until the contracts are signed.”

“The students don’t know where to go, either. You won’t let them back into their own homes?”

“They won’t come back here, then,” Moody said flatly.

Riddle’s smile was quite dark. “Maybe when the castle is secured. But for now, they need somewhere much safer.”

“With their estates back, then they’ll agree to it?”

“… I believe so.”

Moody was being overburdened by all of this, that he couldn’t impose any of the wards or security on the other Aurors. “We’d give them a secured estate within the week.”

“Right,” he said, moving as though to return.

“Wait.” Harry looked to Moody. “Bring them to Grimmauld Place.”

Riddle looked incredulous, but Moody’s magical eye rolled in his socket as he considered it. “You know it’d undermine our security.”

“Is the Order using it now?” he asked. He hadn’t heard of any activity, but then, he was compromised.

Instead, Moody said in something like a challenge, “Malfoy’s there now.”

“Good,” Harry said firmly, without considering how he actually felt about that. “Good, then bring the rest of them in.” At his dubious look: “You can change the Fidelius afterward, can’t you? Like how Muggles change the locks….”

They both found this comparison inane. “Would they… _accept_ staying in Grimmauld Place?” Moody asked Riddle in a strangled way.

“Perhaps. They do respect Malfoy.”

“It would be short term. Only until their parents are out.”

“I will propose it to them,” Riddle said, apparently surprised at how quickly Moody acquiesced. But Moody no longer had the time or energy to fight. “I believe….”

“Take Portkeys,” Moody said, reaching into a pocket and pulling out a handful of portkeys in miniature. He returned them to full size, four altogether. “These will bring them to the street before the home. I want to let them in myself. Could they get there by…” he checked a pocket watch, “nine?”

“If they’re not there by nine-thirty, they’re not coming.”

“Right.”

“Potter should come, too,” Riddle said, with a look. “I’ve heard Malfoy’s been asking after you.”

What the hell, what did that even mean. “I’ll be there,” he confirmed. “If that’s okay?” A look at Moody. He gave a jerky nod.

It was just past seven now; Riddle had two hours to persuade the Slytherins. Harry and Moody had two hours to figure out what to do with Hermione before getting off Hogwarts grounds and re-securing Grimmauld Place. It was exhausting.

“I need a wand,” Riddle said. “To Apparate. I haven’t yet bent the chamber’s magic so far.”

Harry was reaching for his own – given that he could side-along with Moody and he wouldn’t need it otherwise – but Moody stopped him. “Yes. Poplar?” he offered. “Rowan? They’re all unicorn hair.”

“How many bloody wands do you carry,” Riddle said, surprised and a bit amused. “Poplar.” A flick of Moody’s fingers, and he was pulling a spare wand from his sleeve, passing it to him. “Thank you.”

“Should we know anything about the Slytherins prior?”

“They won’t trust you,” he said bluntly. “They wouldn’t trust anyone from the Ministry, though.”

“They scarcely need to. Should I bring Snape?”

Riddle sort of grimaced. “Potter will mediate,” he said. “Have you got any Slytherin Aurors, though?”

“No.” A pause. “Only Scrimgeour.”

“ _Only_ Scrimgeour?” he said in incredulity. “Fine. Bring Scrimgeour.”

Moody had bristled at his reaction. “He’s already been at Voldemort’s beck and call all year. He won’t be at yours as well.”

“They’ll only speak to Slytherin law enforcement. You’ve brought it on yourself,” Riddle said harshly. “Pity Rookwood is dead and Macnair is Kissed, even they could have helped.”

Moody gritted his teeth. “I’ll bring them a Slytherin. Maybe not tonight.”

“Fine.” At last he’d moved to go. “Oh, should I drop Granger off somewhere on the way?”

“No,” Harry said, too sharply, even though Riddle’s request had been somewhat sincere. “I’ll do it.”

A shrug of his angular shoulder. “Fine.” He went.

They both paused in the quiet unfolding. Everything was too fast and too wrong. “I’m sorry,” Harry said softly.

“I need to find Rufus,” Moody said instead of answering. “Take Granger… somewhere inconspicuous. Who’s seen her tonight?”

“I’d take her to the library,” Harry said. Her natural habitat. “But she came to the great hall with us.”

A swirl of Moody’s staff, and the cool aura of memory magic trickled out. “She stepped away to find something in the library, shortly after arriving.”

“Right. Alright.”

“Would you rather arrive at Grimmauld Place together?”

“D'you want to?” He was trying for meek and accommodating, but Moody made an indifferent gesture. “Then no, I’ll go ahead. I dunno if I can check all the security, but I can at least be sure the house is ready. Are there things about the Order that should be put away?”

“They’re already concealed.” A pause. “This may well disrupt the house’s loyalties.”

“We’ll sort it out later. Er, if I’m not out of the Order after this,” he added awkwardly.

“Not yet,” Moody said, a bit darkly.

And then Moody set Hermione in Harry’s arms with Mobilicorpus, and covered them both in a Disillusionment. “See you in a few hours,” Harry said, and left.

It was weird. It was sad. The only person he’d held like this before was Voldemort, in times of peril. And it was so unfair because they both knew Hermione had been _right_ in a way – and after a day of doing her damnedest to get Voldemort out of Humnerë territory, if only for Harry’s safety – and it’d only gotten her Obliviated. Gryffindors were the house who thought of themselves as doing what was right, not easy, but Harry no longer knew which side of that he was on.

Thank god he didn’t run into anyone in the corridors – even if he was disillusioned, he was walking too fast to be silent, and so he could’ve been discovered anyway. But the castle was still, with only the faintest buzz traveling up from the great hall.

He let himself into the library, weaving through the shelves to reach the restricted section. Finding where Hermione had left her books earlier, he edged out the chair, lowering her into it. It would look like she’d fallen asleep while reading, far from the first time. Hopefully she’d believe the same thing herself.

He left the disillusionment on as he traversed the stairs once more, but dispelled it as he approached Dumbledore’s floo. It wouldn't do to look sneaky now.

Grimmauld Place was dark and still as he arrived. “Malfoy?” he called into the house. Nothing.

He began lighting candles and lanterns, tergeo’ing dust off the spotty surfaces. Did the kitchen have food? They generally left some non-perishables around, but he didn’t know if there was enough to feed a dozen people now. He straightened the sitting room, moved into the kitchen and threw open the pantry. There was a shop down the road that stayed open late, there might be time….

Footsteps on the stairs. “Malfoy?” Harry called again. “Is that you?”

“It’d better be, or you’re in trouble.” Malfoy emerged into the kitchen, dressed uncharacteristically in sweats. He might’ve been sleeping before; Harry felt bad.

“Look – I dunno if Moody sent you a message – we’re bringing the Slytherins here.”

“Oh,” he said flatly.

“That’s… it?” he asked, bewildered. “I thought you’d be surprised. Maybe even pleased.”

“I can’t imagine what magic you’ve forced on them to get them out.”

That hurt. “No magic. Tom has been, uh, mediating? You don’t know how much you’ve missed this bloody week…. Anyway, Moody and the Minister offered to take their parents out of Azkaban and put them under house arrest if the students… whatever. Gave themselves up?” But that sounded wrong. “Came out of hiding.”

“House arrest,” he said, still flat and unimpressed, “was not wildly successful _last_ time.”

Oh god. He hadn’t thought of it that way. “Moody said they were taking a few weeks to secure the estates. That’s why we needed a place to bring the Slytherins. This was the most secure place we’ve already got. I assume that’s why Moody brought you here.”

“On Wednesday. None of us should return to the castle.”

“The wards are fucked,” Harry said bluntly. “We all know they are. They’ll bring in specialists over the summer, before it gets any worse. The Slytherins could always sleep elsewhere, we’ve got the space, but….”

“I suppose if anyone still trusts that you’ve prioritized our well-being.”

This wasn’t completely fair, but Malfoy was injured and emotionally damaged both. He was more depressed than Harry, which was a fucking feat. “I know,” he said. “but the students are meeting Moody outside in… just over an hour,” he said with a glance at the grandfather clock. “Would you come shopping with me? And anything else the house needs really, I haven’t stayed here in awhile….”

He’d fully expected Malfoy to say no, but he still couldn’t entirely account for his sudden happiness when Malfoy considered and then muttered, “Yeah, sure.”

“Great. Uh, I’ll give you a few minutes. Does anything need to be fixed quick?”

“There’s a boggart under the tearoom sofa. Or perhaps a ghoul. It won’t come out.”

“Damn, I thought we’d gotten them all…. I’ll go see, find me when we can leave.”

Malfoy turned only with a tired nod.

The tearoom was the mustiest, least used room on the ground floor, tucked away in a dark corner. He lay on his stomach to peer under the sofa. “Hey,” he said softly, as though it were a scared animal. A Dementor’s hand crept out, making the room cold. Trying not to flinch, he took it. “Here you go, out.” He pulled, and the absurd image of a dementor hiding beneath the sofa already made him smile. Fighting through the cold fear that he was so accustomed to by now, he pulled out his wand. “Riddikulus!” The boggart vanished altogether. And he reflected that Dementors affect him fractionally less now that he has accepted the Horcrux’s soul as his own; while they affected Voldemort more since… whatever. Since his soul had become so valued, and so loved.

Malfoy returned to find him sitting on the floor. “What, have you befriended it? Is it another misunderstood pet, now?”

It was so, so good to hear Malfoy be snarky instead of broken. Harry rewarded him with a smile. “No. It was a boggart, but I’ve banished it. I think this house is just very prone to infestations. I dunno.” He got up, straightening his robes. “Let’s go.”

The shop was quiet, its only customers the wixes working especially late hours. It was also the first magic grocery Harry had been in, and Malfoy snorted at his utter surprise that the trolley moved on its own. “How’ve you managed?” Harry asked as they walked through the shelves. “Were they leaving… the hideout sometimes, or are there spells to keep it self-sustaining, or…?”

Malfoy was quiet for a bit. “We’d bring things in. They knew how to duplicate items. Tom could conjure things out of the Hogwarts kitchens. And the library, sometimes.”

“I had no idea that was even possible.”

Malfoy let the anticipated _There’s so much you don’t know_ go unsaid, instead dropping bags of pasta and rice into the trolley.

Harry wanted to ask how the Slytherins could trust Tom while (rightfully) hating Voldemort. He wanted to ask how they’d kept in touch, or kept up with the outside world at all. He wanted to ask what would possibly make it right again. “Could you pick out coffee while I get milk?” he asked instead. Malfoy nodded.

In the end, it was good he’d brought Malfoy along, because even with levitation and featherlight spells, it’d take both of them to take the groceries home. There was a spell that the cashier could cast over the trolley to tabulate everything at once, and Harry paid with money from his new coin purse (a new one he’d gotten from Gringotts, after giving his first to Voldemort), and then they walked back. It was just starting to drizzle.

So Harry put on the kettle as he unpacked. Malfoy made a dubious noise. “I’d really prefer alcohol.”

“…Me, too,” Harry said after a moment’s thought. The kettle was discarded. “Have you found the liquor cabinet yet? It’s between the pantry and the dining room….” He listened to Malfoy’s footsteps as he went. “On the right.”

“What do you want?” Malfoy called back.

“Whatever you’re having is fine.”

Malfoy came back with a pale amber bottle that Harry didn’t recognize. “Cygnus was known as a collector of grappa,” he said, “and you all are heathens for letting it go to waste.” He had already brought two oddly-shaped wine glasses back with him.

“I don’t think I’ve ever even noticed it in there. Maybe it’s only visible to purebloods,” and he was half-joking. But he took a glass from Malfoy. “Cheers.”

It was deep and velvety and sweet, to be sipped slowly. “Nice,” Harry said. He’d momentarily turned away from the groceries.

“Mm.”

“Could you keep the younger ones from getting sloshed?” Harry requested, as it occurred to him. “I don’t really care how the house itself gets treated, but.”

Malfoy’s eyebrows went up. “You’re leaving us alone?”

“I thought so. Moody might feel differently.” Pause. “Do you not want to be left alone?”

“We strongly would.”

“Tom told Moody that you’d – everyone’d – only talk to Slytherin Aurors. Which is… Scrimgeour, and no one else, somehow.”

“You’re surprised?” Malfoy refilled his glass. There was color in his cheeks again, and it was good to see. “There’s a cliché, you probably don’t know it – Ravenclaws in the legislative branch, Hufflepuffs in the judicial branch, Slytherins in the executive branch, and all the Gryffindors run off to get themselves blown up as Aurors.”

He laughed, because he couldn’t refute it. Malfoy looked mildly pleased.

“So, Moody went to get Scrimgeour. Did I say that, that Scrimgeour was there to bargain with Riddle last weekend? After you… you know. We went down to the chamber together and everything. It was… one of the more surreal days I’ve had.”

Malfoy closed his eyes for just a minute. “I suppose I’m not surprised,” he said. “The Ministry really does seem to love him.”

“Er. Maybe.” He wouldn’t put it quite like that, but he knew what Malfoy meant, that Voldemort had had a surprising amount of protection from the Ministry this year. “Scrimgeour’s really pragmatic, and we both think peace means working with Voldemort rather than against him. He’s not, like, loyal.”

Malfoy tipped back his glass too fast, in a way that must’ve been unpleasant. “Sure.”

“Should we get someone else?”

Shrug. Another glass. “I’m not the one with whom they’re bargaining.”

“You sort of are? People would want you back at Hogwarts. You’re still taking NEWTs, right? And then… whatever is next.” He set down his glass so he could give Malfoy his full attention; Malfoy actually looked surprised and wary when he squared off. “All we want – all I want – is some sort of damage control, so the Slytherins feel safe again. It shouldn’t have gotten this bad.”

“Why _thank_ you, Potter, for your generous opinion that students shouldn’t die. Well done.”

“Piss off. You know what I mean. Could you put away the produce?” he asked, because it’d all sat out for awhile now, and it was getting close to nine p.m., and Harry wanted to poke at the wards. “Unless they’d want dinner? I could start dinner.”

“No. Probably not.” Malfoy opened the icebox.

 

At quarter of nine there was the whoosh of the floo. They’d both been sitting at the kitchen table, Harry reading _The Count of Monte Cristo_ after having handed Malfoy his Panopticon. “Moody? We’re in here,” Harry called out.

There was only his uneven gait on the floor, and Harry was mildly disappointed to hear he was alone. It was fine, it’d been unlikely he’d get Scrimgeour here anyway, it was late…. “Hi,” Harry said as Moody entered. “I think the house is ready. We went shopping. I looked at, ah, the wards I know about, at least. Could you check the others?”

“Yeah.” He squinted at the grappa. “Put that away.”

“Sorry,” Harry muttered, jumping to take responsibility so Malfoy didn’t have to. As he was returning the bottle to the liquor cabinet, he asked, “Scrimgeour…?”

“I told him I’d bring him here later. He thought _receiving_ the Slytherins would give the wrong impression. If they want to talk about their legal options tonight, they can.”

“Oh. Good,” Harry tried to say nonchalantly. But thank god.

“Most of the wards are over the entryway. Malfoy, you should look at ‘em too, in case any of them need to be worked on later.”

Malfoy followed warily. “We’ll be here alone, then?”

“Yeah. Is that a problem?” Moody’s blue eye swung back to look at Malfoy; he shook his head. “None of you are _imprisoned_. This is for your own safety.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And what – “ Moody sort of gritted his teeth. “We’re securing some of the estates now. Potter told you – ?”

“Yes.”

“What would you do with yours? We can secure it, if you’d move back in.”

“I don’t know,” Malfoy said, uncharacteristically quiet. “I wouldn’t move back, not immediately, anyway. I might sell it.” He took a handful of wards, examining their contents, as Moody revealed them.

“You can’t sell ancestral property until you’re twenty-five,” Harry piped up, as though he were being helpful. When Malfoy gave him an incredulous look, he said, “What? You know how hard I tried to give this place to the Order?”

Malfoy’s mouth twisted in a smile. “How ungrateful. As though the Slytherin estate will be less pureblooded or foreboding.”

“I know…. How _do_ you know about that, anyway?” he added. “I bloody hope it’s not in the papers yet, it’s supposed to be a surprise.”

Malfoy shrugged. “Perhaps your voice carried at dinner one night. I don’t recall.”

None of the wards had to be fixed or altered, apart from bumping up the number of occupants to eighteen (Malfoy counted them out, if everyone agreed) so there’d be enough bedrooms. And then – “Oh!” Harry scarcely recognized the rune for _house elf_ , because he really was the most negligent owner. “Could we leave a house elf for you?”

Malfoy sneered faintly. “I don’t need to see my barmy renegade elf again, thanks.”

It took Harry a moment to put that together. “Not Dobby,” he clarified. “Uh, actually, Dobby died last year, fighting for us. This is an elf I inherited with the house, his name’s Kreacher. He normally works at Hogwarts, he would’ve gone mad by himself here, but he’d probably be useful….”

“Not if he’s loyal to you.”

Harry snorted. “He’s not,” he assured Malfoy. “We’re all blood traitors, I think he’d smother me in my sleep if he were allowed to. He’d be _thrilled_ to have proper purebloods around again. Bellatrix was his favorite.”

“… Alright.”

“Brilliant. Kreacher?”

Kreacher popped into existence before them, sinking into a bow that was almost certainly ironic. “A long time since Master’s visited,” he muttered.

“It has been. Here, listen. This is Draco Malfoy and – “

“A Black,” Kreacher interrupted, gazing up at Malfoy.

“Narcissa was my mother,” Malfoy agreed. He’d straightened and drawn his shoulders back minutely, looking more respectable.

Kreacher’s face split into a smile Harry had never seen on him before. “A good witch, a good girl. Very cunning, that one. But she never got caught.”

Later, this conversation should happen later. “And there are a bunch of other Slytherins coming to stay here,” Harry said with a touch of asperity. “Is that alright?”

Kreacher turned his gaze back on Harry. “Is _what_ alright, Master Potter?” he asked with perfect politeness.

“I mean – look after the house while they’re here. Do what they ask, unless it’s stupid,” he said with a sidelong glance at Malfoy. “It’ll probably be a couple weeks, and then you can return to Hogwarts. Alright?”

“ _Alright_ ,” he echoed. Harry was not cut out for the pureblood world.

As Kreacher went to check on the linens, Harry, Malfoy, and Moody stepped outside. The clock had just struck nine.

The rain came down hard now, and it seemed like a bad omen. They stood huddled beneath the overhang, watching the street with trepidation.

Then, the whir of a Portkey. “Oh thank god,” Harry murmured, as Moody stepped into the street to receive them. An entire throng of Slytherins, students who’d been missing for months. Gotlinde Rowle and Beatrice Yaxley huddled against one another. Hypatia and Hyacinth Pickering. Daphne, flanked by Theo Nott and Greg Goyle – neither of whom had even _been_ at Hogwarts this year, so they must’ve come back for the others. Same with Marcus Flint and (Harry thought his name was) Cassius Warrington, two older boys watching from behind. Millicent was the first to step toward Moody. Through the rain, Harry could barely spot Riddle all the way in the back.

Malfoy stepped from the porch to join them, but Harry moved inside, so they didn’t have to file past him as though being inspected. His chest hurt with sadness and relief.

He lit the hearth where they’d come in. “Kreacher?” he called up the stairs. _Pop_ , right in front of him. He’d never get used to it. “They’ve just arrived. Could you take their cloaks? I’ll put on tea.”

Kreacher glanced out the open door at the crowd. “As Master Potter does not know how purebloods hang their cloaks or take their tea, I will do both. You, sit.” He motioned to the hearth, just starting to crackle.

He did, taking a quiet moment to consider what it meant that he didn’t know how to hang a pureblood’s cloak.

Moody was letting them in three and four at a time. Millicent, Blaise, and Daphne were the first ones in, and sort of stuttered when they saw Harry. “Hi. Come in. I’ll show you the house when everyone’s here. This is Kreacher,” he gestured, as Kreacher was currently tugging at the edge of Daphne’s wet cloak.

As they entered, the sitting room expanded subtly to contain them all. The students moved in groups, even out of the cold. Few of them looked at Harry; none of them spoke.

Kreacher was pushing teacups and saucers into everyone’s hands by the time the last of the Slytherins entered – Goyle and Nott, followed in by Malfoy, Riddle, and Moody. Riddle took a seat on the ottoman beside Harry; Malfoy sat beside Millicent; and Moody remained leaning on his staff at the edge of the room. But when their eyes met, Harry saw that Moody intended for him to speak first. Moody was a necessary antagonist to this group after all, while Harry was a mediator with a burgeoning reputation as a Slytherin lover.

He cleared his throat, willing away inappropriate sentimentality. “Hi. Welcome. Uh, this is 12 Grimmauld Place. It’s an ancestral home of the Black family. I’ve inherited it, it’s under the Fidelius, and it’s the most secure place we can offer you right now. There’s a house elf named Kreacher here. The first three floors above us are all bedrooms, there should be enough for everyone. The kitchen is behind us, the library’s that way. Careful touching anything that looks cursed, because it probably is.”

Silence. Sucking silence. Harry looked to Moody, who took over.

“The Ministry’s sorting out your parents – Riddle told you of the house arrest amnesty? Good – and your homes. Aurors want to come in to sort out each of you individually – what you need, where you’ll go next. Scrimgeour wants to come in. Probably not tonight,” he said, looking around at their pale and weary faces. “Could we come back tomorrow?”

Malfoy spoke up. “Could you floo a message ahead?” When Moody’s face snarled with suspicion, he added, “So we’re not always _braced_ for people to come in at any moment. Potter didn’t mention this is the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix,” he addressed the room, pronouncing the name precisely. A few flinches. “But I hope they won’t be present as well?”

“No,” Moody said. “You’ll be alone. We’ll write ahead,” he conceded. “This floo only runs to Hogwarts and to the Ministry, but you could reach us there if you need to.” Another look around the room. “I am sorry. _We_ are sorry. We’ve been negligent this year. We should’ve asked more questions, much earlier.”

It was so reminiscent of what Moody had said to _him_ , when he’d uncovered Harry’s childhood abuse, that it was sort of stung. Harry watched the students’ faces and found them in varying states of misery. God. “We should go. For the night,” he said. “Unless you need anything?” A couple shakes of their head. “Great. And….” He looked to Riddle. “Are you staying, too?”

“I should.”

“Thank you.” He rose. But he couldn’t resist saying then, “It is so good to have you back.”

He and Moody took the floo in the next room. They paused for a moment, a bit to listen for conversation and a bit because they didn’t know what to say. “Thank you,” Harry said at last. “You’ve done so much for us.”

“I haven’t done nearly enough,” he said with faint disgust.

“You have,” he said. “I’ll ask Fawkes to bring me any notes they send.”

“They’ve been self-sufficient for a long time.”

“I know. But in case. And I can be here whenever, if it’d… help, with the Horcrux. Or anyone else.”

“You might need to,” Moody acquiesced. “I’ll bring Rufus by tomorrow.”

“Oh yeah. Tell him thanks, too.” He stepped toward the floo. “Is that it? I need to give Voldemort magic tonight, since he’s planning something after tomorrow.”

“Go home, Harry.”

 

He got in late and found that the Aurors had not only heard where he’d been, but also that there was a trip to Azkaban tomorrow, jointly with some Ministry lawyers, to begin negotiating house arrest for the Death Eaters. Bragg walked him to his suite, but everyone else was already in bed.

He took kaval to sleep, again.

Voldemort was so hideously relieved to find him, just past midnight, that Harry’s guilt hurt them both. “Don’t,” Voldemort mutters. “It is unproductive.”

Harry pushes forward all his memories at once, which is _also_ unproductive until Voldemort pulls them apart. He watches carefully as the Slytherins all arrive at Grimmauld Place – _all_ of them, he notes, because Slytherin is the house of loyalty too, in a way.

He thinks that he’d be able to arrange shelter, jobs, a life for the purebloods out of his contacts, if they’d let him. _No, probably not_ , Harry thinks. _They love the Horcrux though._

And that astounds Voldemort too, that they should be disgusted by and suspicious of the Horcrux, but he has been perfectly responsible for them. Maybe it’s his charisma or his knowledge. Maybe it’s his mediation. Maybe it’s his untouchability, that he can’t be held legally responsible for so much as a human could. In any case, Harry thinks Riddle has earned his freedom.

Oh. Which leads them to the memories of Hermione. Voldemort watches impassively, but he only says at the end, “She’s quite talented. And quite astute.”

 _That’s it?_ Harry thinks. Hermione tried to dismantle if not fully destroy a Horcrux.

“Our opposition only hurts you,” Voldemort says simply, and Harry loves him so much in that moment.

For the escape plan, tonight Voldemort has cast new wards around the cave. They’re at all angles to the ley lines, which he’s had to calculate and Harry marvels at this because they’re _underground_ and _invisible_. Voldemort smiles faintly. “If I am wrong, it will do nothing.” And for now, Harry is giving him as much magic as he can afford, keeping only enough for his own survival. Moody had brought him vials of the experimental potion to replenish magic, and he’d take one tomorrow, for fortitude.

And when they’ve exhausted everything they needed to say, Harry wonders if they could fall asleep together again, which had mostly worked last time. “Yes,” Voldemort says. He’s still near the cave where he conjured a bed on Wednesday – though he walks the cave system during the day, though he’s mapped out miles by now. He’s found other indicators that this cave was constructed as a prison. He thinks the Inferi might’ve served as guards before. Regardless, he settles into the conjured bed now, wrapping Harry’s cloak tight around him because cold air still rushes through the cave no matter how many warming spells he casts, and also simply because holding something like Harry is… good.

 _I love you_ , Harry thinks sleepily. They’re both uninhibited. Sharing magic makes them feel more in love. It nearly feels like being together. For now.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Allusions for Chapter 29:
> 
> “Hermione had solved the basilisk when comatose, after all.” – This comes from glorious fanart that titles CoS _Hermione is More Competent than Everyone Else While She Is in a Coma_ , [here](http://floccinaucinihilipilificationa.tumblr.com/post/160340936572).
> 
> Pollux Seabury – Samuel Seabury was the first American Episcopal bishop, establishing a lot of how the American Episcopalian church works now (and also lol, he has a small part in Hamilton). This character is a descendent. Also someone please write a fic about how a mixed magic/Muggle congregation would work because I would read it.
> 
> I was reading [Goldstein, by Laazov](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10847788/1/Goldstein) while writing the religion parts of this chapter, and obviously practicing Judaism is very different from practicing Christianity, but it gave me a lot to think with, how religious ritual and philosophy could both be incorporated into the magical world. Also if you care about Judaism at all it’s a fascinating read, so.
> 
> “Your power comes from human hands. So did the works of Pharaoh’s magicians.” – In Exodus 7, Moses goes to Pharaoh and performs miracles to prove he works for God, but Pharaoh doesn’t believe him because his own court magicians can do the same ‘miracles.’
> 
> The Slytherin sleepover to come is inspired by [Among Those Killed, by motleygrrl](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7739824/chapters/17643325).


	30. Chapter 30

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Slytherins negotiate. Voldemort takes advantage of the magic of the equinox. The Dëshmitar finds him anyway.

_Saturday, March 20._ Very early the next morning, there was a flutter above his head. Warmth. Fawkes, glowing brightly, had brought a note in Riddle’s hand, telling him he should be at Grimmauld Place by ten a.m.

So he dressed, then approached Ron and Hermione’s suite. A knock.

Ron answered blearily in just his boxers; Hermione was pulling a bathrobe on behind him. “Har – where were you?”

“Yes, where _were_ you?” Hermione agreed with a bit more passion. “And what happened last night?”

Right. “Grimmauld Place,” he said. “We got the Slytherins back. I wanted to tell you I’d be there again today, I’m leaving soon, because I’m supposed to sit it on….” _Negotiations_ was the wrong word. So were _trial_ or _hearing_. “Discussions,” he decided.

“Thank Merlin,” Ron muttered. “ _All_ the Slytherins?”

“Yeah. They’ll be alright. But nobody knows what comes next for them.”

“Harry.” Hermione’s voice was strained. “I don’t remember last night between dinner and when Remus was locking up the library. I _do_ remember learning from your – _diary_ – that you’d kept the Horcrux in a human state _all year_ behind everyone’s backs. _What happened?_ ”

“I don’t think I can say.”

Her complexion reddened. “Why not?”

Because he didn’t want to put the idea of destroying the Horcrux back in her head now, if she wasn’t already planning it. Still, she must have some horrible assumptions now. “You fought with Moody,” he said.

Her mouth worked for a moment. “Like… a duel?”

“Well, a short one.”

“Hermione,” Ron scolded, but he was amazed and amused. “Taking on Moody. You’re _mad_.”

“Why?” Hermione asked. “I believe you… enough, but _why_?”

“I can’t,” he said, and it might actually be true. “He stunned you, that’s all. Sorry.”

“Oh my god,” she muttered, mostly to herself. “What did _you_ do?”

“Brought you back to the library.” He had to get to Hagrid’s before he disappeared into the Forbidden Forest for the day, as he did some weekends. He was edging backwards now. “I’m sorry. You can ask him, but we can’t say much. I hope you’re alright.”

“I… I don’t know,” she said faintly. “If he’s there, tell him I’m sorry. I don’t know… was I _possessed_?” she said suddenly, eyes flaring. It was a quite legitimate question. “The Horcrux – it’d _love_ to attack Moody, I’m sure – “

“No,” he said. “But I’m sorry. I’ve got to go.”

This was a very shitty thing to drop on Hermione. If she hadn’t written down any of the spells she’d planned to use on the Horcrux, maybe she’d assume she’d spent the entire day on Voldemort’s magic. So he’d hope, anyway.

A quick walk to Hagrid’s hut, to pick up Moira for the day. She’d gotten big, essentially her adult size, and he could no longer carry her under one arm. “She helps,” he said to Hagrid, petting her as she fluttered around his hips. “Gives everyone a distraction, anyway.”

“Everything alright?” he frowned.

“It will be. C’mere, good girl.”

Dumbledore’s office. The floo. Even with his note back, the Slytherins in the living room before the floo still startled as he entered. “Hi. Good morning.” Daphne, Uli, and Flavia had been curled on a sofa with coffee. “Tom asked me to come. Uh, do you know where he is?”

“In the library,” Daphne said warily.

But Flavia was eyeing Moira, and he pushed her forward. “This is an Aralez. Her name is Moira. Can I let her run around her today? She’s really friendly.”

“Yeah,” Flavia said. Her voice was soft; she’d hardly spoken in class this year so it surprised him.

“Brilliant, thanks.” He moved to find Riddle.

He’d never spent much time in the library even when the Order was in here regularly. When they were underage, they’d been forbidden from coming in at all, because somehow it was the most cursed part of the house. They’d cleansed most of it, by now.

Riddle was surrounded, actually – Malfoy, Flint, Zabini, and Warrington sat with him, giving Harry an unpleasant impression of the old Slug Club of which he’d seen memories. “Harry,” Riddle greeted him as he let the door click closed. “The Ministry hasn’t arrived yet?”

“Not that I saw.” He took a seat beside Malfoy. “Last night was alright?”

A faint roll of Riddle’s eyes. “We’ve survived worse.”

“… Good?” he said. “Do you know what you’ll say to Moody today?” A few smirks around the circle indicated what they’d _like_ to say to Moody, anyway.

Malfoy spoke up, then, without sarcasm. “We – “ he raised his chin toward Zabini, “need to take NEWTs. Lest we become part of the permanent _underclass_. The fifth years – Pritchard, Archuleta, and Yaxley – need to take their OWLs even more. Students without any OWLs get their wands snapped.”

“Really?” Harry said in horror – which was stupid, because Malfoy had clearly said it expecting Harry wouldn’t know that. The others, however, sort of rolled their eyes at his ignorance. Twats.

“They could hardly let partially-trained, partially-educated wixes run around with wands. That could only end poorly.”

“Right. Of course.”

“You need to figure out how they’ll pass the Defense OWL. They’ve had textbooks. They can duel. They, like you, are hopeless in theoretical matters.”

He glared. “Thanks. If they came to the castle – “

“No.”

A harsher glare. “Just for classtime, if they’d like. Like… day students.”

“And what would everyone else say to them?”

“Sod everyone else. I’d give them detention if they even looked wrong at the Slytherins.”

“How intimidating. Certainly that’ll deter them.”

“What – look, I might come in and teach, but nobody else would. Only McGonagall and Snape can get in, and they’re both stretched too thin already.”

“Mm.” Malfoy’s lips pursed.

“We might fix the castle sooner than the summer. Though if _you_ don’t know and neither does Tom… and I asked Voldemort too, and he couldn’t suggest anything new. What if while we worked to fix it, we gave you escorts? And kept you out of the dungeons.”

“Maybe we should hire tutors instead,” Zabini mused. “That’s what my mother had planned for me. I convinced her otherwise, but a tutor per subject, alternating days….”

That sounded expensive as hell, but they’d put it on the list of potential outcomes. “Sure. Maybe. Britain’s currently a bit short on defense teachers though, you can ask Tom about that one.”

He meant it to be somewhat wounding because being around these bully types brought out the worst in him, but the others only looked at Riddle in _awe_. “The curse is real?” Flint asked.

“Yes.” Tom looked neither proud nor abashed. “I’d teach them Defense myself as penance, if you’d like,” he said to Harry.

“Maybe.”

Then suddenly, a commotion at the floo. They all jumped up. Harry was the last one out.

Somehow, the sounds weren’t _bad_ , and he found why when he ran into the living room – Moody and Scrimgeour stood there, but with them they had brought _Pansy_. Millicent had grabbed her in a fierce hug, but when Pansy had glanced up, she shot a grin at Malfoy as he entered. Harry didn’t understand the noise he made.

Somehow, Pansy energized the group, and the students scrambled to all fit in the major sitting room. It was a marked change from how sullen and wary they’d all been last night. “ – We were staying in New York,” she was saying, hanging off Malfoy’s shoulder by now. “We’d brought gold – the exchange rate is awful though – but last week Mum got a letter from the Ministry saying they’d get clemency in exchange for me.”

“Not in _exchange_ for you,” Moody said as though it pained him. “That your well-being would be the first step of reintegration. And we never got an owl back from your parents, anyway.”

Flashing sharp teeth, she glanced at the jewelry watch on her wrist. “They’ll find out in an hour or so.”

“Parkinson – “ Moody stopped himself, sighing.

“I’m eighteen,” she said defensively.

“That’s not my first concern.”

“Me, too,” Goyle volunteered to Pansy. Theo beside him was nodding.

“Where were you, Greg?”

“Germany. With cousins in Dusseldorf. They wanted me to come to Durmstrang, but,” a shrug. It hadn’t worked out.

“We wrote Higgs, Vaisey, Fawley, Carrow, Baddock, Greenleaf, and Shelby,” Scrimgeour listed off. “As students – and former students – we didn’t have recent records of. Are there others, abroad or in hiding?” No one offered other names. “Alright.” Conjuring two chairs near the hearth, he looked over the group: “And Potter is…?”

“Here,” he spoke up. He’d been watching from the edge of the room, sort of wedged behind Flint, and stepped forward now.

“Excellent. Would you kindly take notes?” He conjured a legal pad and quill into Harry’s hands directly. Harry had the sense that Scrimgeour hadn’t particularly accounted for him in how the morning would go, but really – Harry’s presence was generally accepted among the Ministry these days.

So Harry took a seat on a settee beside Riddle – both positioned so they could see the entire room. Tom was quiet, apparently having decided to be judicious with his input.

“We should start by telling you what we need from you,” Scrimgeour said, accepting a teacup from Kreacher, “and then you’ll tell us what you need from us. We have been – negligent,” (he said the word in the same strangled way Moody had said it last night) “so I imagine it’s a lot.”

So they made a list. The Ministry needed to ensure the welfare of every child orphaned or displaced by recent Death Eater arrests. They each needed to have a home address on file and some guardian who was of age. (“Typically we’d ask for a blood relation,” Scrimgeour said, “but that doesn’t seem the most critical detail now.”) They must have proof of some form of education and as Malfoy had said – were obligated to reach at least OWL level. “If you’d avoided the trace with magic, it needs to go,” he said with a frown. “We… understand any underage magic you’ve used, but it is for your own safety.”

“It was mine,” Riddle spoke up. “There were cloaking charms on our safehouse.”

“Ah,” Scrimgeour said, even as Moody used his magical eye to scrutinize Riddle. He met his gaze coolly.

“Most of you haven’t been in contact with your parents?” he went on. A few faint shakes of people’s heads. “The Ministry’s gone to Azkaban today to offer them amnesty. The earliest they could be moved is the end of this month – which would be nearer than the work to get any of you _into_ Azkaban for visitation. But we anticipate Ministry officials visiting there… nearly daily, so we’d welcome any post to be delivered.”

“Who went?” Daphne asked, sounding unimpressed.

“Three Aurors. Three members of the Wizengamot’s judicial body. Two barristers. Why?” He raised his bushy eyebrows, but Daphne shook her head.

“You charged reparations after the last war,” Pansy said. “What will they pay this time?” She sounded deeply bitter.

And Scrimgeour studied her face for a moment, and nodded. “If any sentence carried fines, those remain. There won’t be any imposed reparations this time. We’re not so economically devastated as we were then.”

Pansy scoffed. A few Slytherins looked at her in shock. “You’re not devastated at all.”

He wasn’t surprised or taken aback by her tone, even. “That is quite the point, though. The Unification is a confluence of events such that we might – start over. At least,” he amended, not liking the phrase, “we have relatively more freedom to make decisions apart from financial necessity.”

The Unification with the Muggles would skyrocket their economy in the next five or so years. Scrimgeour was essentially guaranteed a positive legacy by virtue of being Minister during. Hell, _Voldemort_ might end up with an overall good place in history, as a major architect of the Unification.

And wasn’t this funny. Voldemort established himself in proper society by leading integration with the Muggles; the Death Eaters were being offered clemency now as a function of the Muggle-effected economic boom. They could literally _afford to forgive_ them now. He knew they were lucky, in a sense.

They’d sort out where everyone would be living, both in the interim and afterward, for the children who’d be alone. Harry nearly said, “Just live here,” but at some point that’d hinder the Order, so he bit the inside of his mouth instead. They’d sort out the security of estates, the house arrest particulars (which would themselves be a sort of burden on the children, caring for their parents), the transfer from Azkaban. Before any of that, however, Scrimgeour looked over his wire rimmed glasses. “What do _you_ need?”

Silence. Nobody wanted to be the one to make demands of the Minister. So Riddle spoke on their behalf. “Fix the castle. It’s not safe to return until it’s no longer antagonistic toward them.”

“Herzog – the Auror who’s specialized in arcana – is still there,” Moody said. “And he’s leading a team of experts. Would you join him, at some point?” he asked Tom.

“… Yes?” He found the suggestion amusing. God knows what explanation they’d give to Herzog. “Many – perhaps most? – students want to finish out an education.” A few short nods.

They began there. Riddle ran through the same options Harry had been through – day students, tutors, faculty coming here. By now Scrimgeour and Moody were taking notes of their own.

Otherwise – they wanted stability for their families. They wanted freedom. They wanted written agreements. (“A vow?” Tom mused, but both Scrimgeour and Moody remained impassive to this), that they wouldn’t be charged for underage magic, avoiding the trace, or trespassing. And when Uli said, “And we don’t have to explain any of it to the other houses,” a few people nodded.

“No, you don’t,” Scrimgeour said, rather severely. “So what should they be told?”

“Nothing. Not to ask.”

“We should involve the headmaster at some point. Or the chair of governors.” Downcast eyes again at this. “What?”

“Snape’s loyalties are conflicted,” Riddle said after a long moment of silence.

Frown. “Are they?” he asked dubiously. “He’s been adamant that he’d want nothing to do with the Death Eaters anymore.”

That was it, though, wasn’t it. They had the sense that Snape would crawl over anyone’s back to save himself, while the other Death Eaters had suffered. They’d had some sense of suffering _together_ , at least, while Snape got particular Ministry protection.

“Not Snape,” Riddle said, more forcefully this time. Scrimgeour didn’t understand it or fully respect it, but gave a tired nod.

“Slughorn?” Moody asked. “If you only talk to Slytherins now – I dunno what most of the governors were,” he said, with a look at Scrimgeour, who likewise shrugged. “It really stops being important soon after school.”

“Slughorn would be alright,” Pritchard muttered from the back of the room.

“He’s a coward,” Hypatia Pickering objected, with no sympathy.

“Well, yeah, but. Anyway, isn’t it his _job_?”

As it was Snape’s, but anyway. Moody had clearly resigned himself to resetting the Fidelius after this anyway. “Next weekend,” he said. “It’d be hard to get Horace away during the week. We’ll know more of the castle then, anyway.”

They’d already discussed the logistics of bringing faculty in here for tutoring. It would be complicated, overly so. The NEWT and OWL students were in some self-directed revisions; all the others had an erratic education. Harry had already asked if he could bring in textbooks. (“Yes. One of each,” Malfoy said crisply. Right.)

And that was as much as they could decide collectively, Harry thought, until a small voice from one of the girls in the front spoke up. “What about… him?”

Flavia Dunlop, her jaw set. She still had Moira in her lap; she might not have let her go all morning. The rest of the room had gone frigid.

Somehow, Harry ended up being the one to answer. “He won’t get involved, with Hogwarts or anyone. And he’s abroad right now, did you know? If there’s a way to get papers delivered by floo instead, we really should…. Anyway. He can’t have contact with the Death Eaters,” he said, wishing too late he’d said _your parents_ instead. “And he’s got – a _lot_ of vows. Actually,” he looked over to Moody and Scrimgeour, “I don’t know how to conjure my own vow,” he said a bit sheepishly. “Could you…?”

“The wedding vow?”

“Please.”

Scrimgeour conjured the scroll, passing it to Dunlop where she sat on the floor. She turned the case over dubiously, without opening it. “There are more,” Harry said. “But this was the last of them. He’s really… restricted, from having any sort of power again. Oh, and he’s in exile anyway until he neutralizes the Humnerë.”

Bernthal, beside him. “The Hum…?”

“Oh my god.” Harry turned to Riddle. “What _have_ you told them?”

“Some things,” Riddle said, bristling. “Not everything. I shouldn’t be the messenger for this, and anyway, it’s _horrible_. It is traumatic and grotesque.”

The room had gone cold at this – they knew Riddle to be generally poised and dispassionate; hearing his voice rise now shook even Harry. They couldn’t fight in front of the Slytherins.

“I want to know.” Daphne, looking over at them with a steely expression. “What happened to my sister?”

Moody picked up so Harry or Riddle didn’t have to. “We’ll tell you what we know,” he said to them, “if you tell us when you last saw Avery and Greengrass.”

They found that information had trickled in to the Slytherin safehouse erratically – that every new student brought some news and some rumors. Riddle had kept them somewhat apprised of the castle, but as he said, it was traumatic, and sometimes not helpful. Moody gave them a steady, unflinching summary of what they knew of the Humnerë – that they were vampires residing in eastern Europe, who could harvest souls and animate or fully create bodies with them. “They want Voldemort and Potter in about equal measure,” he said, his blue eye rolling in Harry’s direction. “We think they were attacking the Death Eaters because the Dark Mark is _his_ magic, it might’ve been useful to them. We can’t fully say what they want your generation for. Maybe to keep him from repopulating the Death Eaters. Maybe there is magic to being a Slytherin that they want. Maybe it’s just _terrorism_.”

Harry was grateful and ashamed that Moody hadn’t mentioned what he felt like was the most plausible scenario, that they’d been bait for Harry himself. He could’ve saved them, if he’d been bolder, if he’d been more insistent, if he hadn’t accepted the disappearances so readily –

He felt a flare of magic down his forearm, and looked to find Riddle grazing his fingers down it. _Enough for now._

The rest of the room was taking in varying bits of this knowledge, however. “I hate him,” Uli said quietly, dropping her head so her dark blonde bob swung to cover her face. “I hate him, and I hate how much more you’ve done to protect him.” Many of the students stiffened. Malfoy conjured a box of tissues on Uli’s lap silently.

“… Yes,” Scrimgeour said, after a long pause. “We’ve been inconsistent in enforcing any sort of justice this year. Or really, any sort of mercy.”

“Why wasn’t it easier to get rid of _him_?” Her voice was wet, but she was angry, too. “Cut off the head. It’s simple. What has he done to deserve _this_?”

(“Uli – “ “Uli, don’t – “ a few Slytherins were hissing.)

But Scrimgeour’s shame petrified into defensiveness, at this. “We saw the Death Eaters – without him – united to collaborate with the Muggle military in order to put the non-pureblood wixes in servitude. If I’d believed they’d be harmless without him, I would have made different decisions.”

“We didn’t have another choice!”

“I don’t intend to argue your parents’ convictions with you,” Scrimgeour said, struggling to get the conversation back to a less volatile place. “They are, after all, _their_ convictions. You are all as of yet legally unmarred, and I’d like to keep it so. Whatever made the Death Eaters attractive – I hope circumstances and public opinion has sufficiently changed since then. Of the circumstances that create extremism, it is a priority, in the Unification, to recreate our society such that people don’t find it either necessary or attractive.”

“Listen to their parents,” Riddle said quietly. “You never have before.”

Scrimgeour’s light eyes met Tom’s dark ones. “We’ll listen,” he said. “But I won’t have the state held hostage by terrorists. Again.”

How funny, that purebloods could simultaneously hold most of the social and political power in their society, and feel oppressed. Harry didn’t know what to do with this.

They’d strayed from their intended goal, though. Moody searched the students’ faces. “What happened to Avery?” he asked again. “And what happened to Greengrass?”

Silence. Reluctant, obstinate? But it was Uli once more who spoke. “They must have just… left. In the middle of the night. Nobody would be able to get in. And they’d never said they’d leave. We don’t… go alone, now.”

“We could recover some of Astoria’s memories,” Moody said. “Nothing illuminating. She hadn’t seen the Humnerë prior, apparently.”

“And Avery?” Beatrice asked.

He shook his head, tired. “The magic of animating a body only lasts so long. He was nearly gone when he was found already. Or… they’ve gotten better at it, such that Astoria survived a couple more days.”

A tiny sound from Daphne, and then Millicent pulling Daphne’s face to her shoulder. Moody watched but didn’t address her. Instead he said to the rest of the room: “Be careful. They can disguise themselves near-infinitely. Take the same precautions you’d take for Polyjuice. Have any of you started Legilimency?” Malfoy, Blaise, Warrington, and Millicent nodded hesitantly. “That’ll reveal them. Or summon an Auror. Really, stay out of public now, if you can.”

“And you’ll simply… leave this to him?” Malfoy said, strained.

“No. Of course not,” Scrimgeour answered. “We’re working with the Albanian government. We’ve put specialists in soul magic and creature magic on it, working alongside our counter-terrorism experts. Voldemort is valuable, however, for his specializations in both. He is also – _freer_ – to use extrajudicial magic than our proper law enforcement would be. And apart from their specific attacks, the Humnerë have never stayed in Britain, so we must fight them abroad regardless.”

“And we know them personally,” Riddle added, dispassionate. (Harry was struck by how strange it was to hear Riddle speak of himself and Voldemort as _we_ , as this disjointed persona they half-shared.) “Why wouldn’t you mention that? I spent years – _these_ years,” he gestured to his own body, “studying with them. I would say this is retribution, but we parted on quite good terms.”

“If they only want _him_ – “

“They don’t,” Scrimgeour said over Uli. “As we’ve already found. They are, in part, his responsibility – and he believes so too – but we’ve directed many different resources to stopping them.” He directed a wry smile at Uli, who glared back. “Your sentiments are shared by a large portion of the Ministry,” he said. “Of course it’s been controversial to incorporate him into… anything, much less rely on him in ways. We’ve done a lot to ensure we benefit from his knowledge and power without being vulnerable to his manipulation. Really, he’s got a dozen vows in place at any time,” he said with a sigh, and Harry saw some of the students react in surprise at this number. “If it goes poorly, it will hurt him before it hurts anyone else. Well, him and Potter,” he said with a wry look at Harry. “I’ve bet my career on it. So have a great many of the Wizengamot.”

“Why?”

“Because we have neither the resources nor population for a civil war. We never have. We still suffer from the killing off of old bloodlines from the first war. It’s not… ideological,” he said the word slowly. “It is pragmatic. He is no longer committed to ideology either. We can rebuild our world without it.”

“… Right.” And then Uli was quiet, and so were all the others.

It was midday by now. Everyone was worn down. Scrimgeour and Moody needed to pull aside the Slytherins one at a time to discuss their own parents, home, and education. “Could we use the tearoom?” Scrimgeour asked, rising on his cane from the chair. (He still carried his cane, even after Nagini’s venom had healed him. When Voldemort had once asked why, he’d run an affectionate thumb over the marble handle. “Blunt trauma.”) “Or the library?”

“The tearoom,” Riddle decided for everyone. After sitting quietly, he was in charge again, and it seemed like a lot of the students found that a relief. “The ones with parents in Azkaban should be first.”

“Yes.” Surprisingly, the tiny figure of Gotlinde Rowle was the first to step forward.

Harry sort of hovered there and so did Riddle, but she was alright on her own. The Slytherins all looked uncertain what they should do with themselves next, until Kreacher popped into the center of the room. “If you are finished, lunch has been waiting.”

“Oh – brilliant, thank you.” And Harry let the Slytherins move toward the dining room, and still didn’t know what to do with himself, until Malfoy grabbed his shoulder with a sigh. “You can come eat lunch with us, Potter, as long as you don’t say anything stupid or brave.”

“Stupid _or_ brave?” he said, wonderfully amused.

“I’ll kick you in the shins if it seems that you’re about to,” Malfoy promised.

Everyone was… better. Not happy, but better. They ignored Harry mostly, but they weren’t tense around him the way they were around Moody and Scrimgeour. Pansy regaled everyone with tales of New York, and Nott told her about Rome, and everyone was relieved for the distractions. Until after lunch, when Kreacher was just cleaning up, Flavia held the scroll case up to Harry. “I want to read it.”

“You should. You all should,” he said at the curious looks he got. “We got married last month, and wedding vows are strong magic so it could be a powerful contract anyway…. It’s a treaty, really. Some of it was made public in the papers, so everyone knows….” _That he’s finished. He’s harmless. He’s discarded his violence and terrorism and opposition._

Flavia looked around the still-cluttered table. “The library,” she said, rising from her chair. Most of the room followed her.

The scroll was unfurled down a fine oak table, so students could look at it from either side. They were mostly quietly. Harry and Riddle ended up on the end of the table, jointly ready to answer anything. But really, the contract had been written for public consumption, so the language was all fairly straightforward.

“They said you were brave,” Millicent said, stepping back to look at Harry “They said it was a sacrifice.”

She sounded doubtful, and he was grateful to her for it. “It wasn’t,” he said. “And I wish they’d stop saying it.”

“Snape gave you a _feast_.”

“I know,” he grimaced. “And I bet he hated it as much as I did. But if it makes anyone feel safer – or it keeps them from making any more laws out of fear, you know – then it’s fine.”

“Right,” Millie muttered, but it was enough.

“Does that mean you’re married to Tom, too?” Bernthal asked across the table, his spray of freckles rippling as he wrinkled his nose in disgust. “Because Malfoy – “

“No,” Malfoy interrupted firmly.

Harry grinned at him. “Is that what Malfoy said?” he asked, raising his eyebrows. “He’s quite wrong. Also, it’s – _mad_ – that you’ll keep Tom around like this. He’s useful,” he said with a sidelong glance, “but it’s mad nonetheless.”

“You should be as grateful to me as any of them.”

“I know.”

Rowle had been sent back in, Goyle went in. There was a lull and then Malfoy asked Harry, “Is there any butterbeer here?”

“I don’t think so.”

“It’s too early for wine,” he lamented. “Firewhiskey, then.” He was moving toward the door.

“Are you sure?” Harry asked dubiously. “I mean, they’ve got to talk to the Minister. _You’ve_ got to talk to the Minister.”

A roll of his eyes. “We’ll rehearse. Or cast a sobering spell if we need to. It’s not hard. Anyway, we are _celebrating_. How does that make your soft, heroic heart feel?”

“Prat,” Harry said. “Let me get it, it doesn’t matter if I’m in trouble. _More_ trouble.”

“What will they even do to you?” Uli spoke up, fascinated. “For keeping Tom around, anyway.”

Harry sighed. “Moody hasn’t had time to decide. I’m not sacked yet and I’m not expelled, so.” A vague wave of his hand.

There was butterbeer after all, so he brought a case of it back to the library along with a bottle of whiskey. “Most of the books bite if you spill anything on them,” he warned, conjuring glasses and ice.

“This library’s worse than mine,” Malfoy muttered, with a glance at the nearest shelves. At Harry’s glare: “What? Darker magic, magic that has been illegal longer. Not books I’d expect your _Order_ to keep around.”

“I heard the Muggle pope has the largest collection of porn in the world,” Pansy volunteered brightly. “Is it like that?”

“… It’s nothing like that, no.” He looked to Riddle. “Have you gone through them?”

“A bit. Last night.”

“Would there be anything on Horcruxes?”

“I haven’t actually looked. I saw soul magic, though.” He was standing from his place at the table, moving to the shelves. “Honestly, don’t let Moody back here. He’d have to arrest you. Or himself.”

“It just seems – “ He raised his voice so Tom could hear him in the stacks. “Regulus knew what a Horcrux _was_. He could steal the locket, even if he never destroyed it. Oh.” He hit his fist to his forehead. “We need a locket,” he addressed the Slytherins. “Tom said Avery took it last year. It’s sort of oval, with a snake on the front. Do you know…?” He looked around the table.

A few shakes of their heads. “Avery didn’t leave much,” Zabini said. “And nothing unusual.”

“It’s not destroyed,” Harry said. “And it’s not dangerous, exactly.” He sighed. “It was _here_ at one time, and the Order didn’t even recognize it then. Dumbledore must not have seen it, he’d have been the only one to have known the magic then.”

“How convenient, to find a Horcrux in your own home,” Malfoy said.

And Harry choked on laughter. “I didn’t,” he said. “I stole it off Dolores Umbridge’s neck.” This got him enough interested glances that he threw back a whiskey, and recounted his time at Azkaban.

 

Rowle, Flint, Yaxley, Greengrass, Goyle, Warrington, the Pickering twins all had relatives in Azkaban. Archuleta and Dunlop had each had relatives killed who weren’t their parents, but their families were scared. Malfoy and Theo Nott had both been orphaned but were of age; if their assets were unfrozen, they’d manage on their own. By around three p.m., Moody and Scrimgeour were down to the last few Slytherins, the ones without Death Eater affiliation. The rest of them were raucous and a bit drunk, and the library just wasn’t the best place for it. Harry ran in front of Johan Twigg into the tearoom. “Do the wards extend into the rear garden?” he asked Moody, because they’d all gotten restless and Moira needed to go out anyway.

“Yes. But only the height of the fence. Look at me, Potter,” Moody said when he’d turned to run out again. “You are drunk.”

“No. But we’ve been drinking.” If there was one thing the Gryffindors and Slytherins agreed on, it was that admitting wrongdoings promptly had more honor than lying about it when confronted. “We’ll be careful.”

“Do I need to ask someone to come as a child minder next time?” Moody was just honestly a bit incredulous. “And what’s more, I _watched_ you take that whiskey. You’re getting careless.”

He found this funny – he had entirely forgotten that it was near-impossible to have secrets around Moody – but he tried not to grin. “They haven’t had much time to be _careless_ this year themselves, sir. Let them have today.”

“When have I ever cared for pathos,” Moody muttered. But then he waved a grizzled hand. “Go. Tell them under no conditions can they leave the property.”

“Yes, sir.” He stepped out of Twigg’s way. Twigg did not look pleased to be meeting with Moody in his renewed ire.

That the house had a back garden at all was only possible with magical space. Harry let everyone out, Moira first. She dove into the nearest bushes in delight.

Riddle had stayed inside, in the library, and Harry really should’ve joined him. He was avoiding thoughts of the Horcrux because whatever escape magic Voldemort was doing would happen _tonight_ , in the magic of the equinox, and he was somehow more anxious about it than he’d been about anything else. Instead he stayed outside, kicking a ball around for Moira with Millicent (“my parents put me in the Muggle footie club when I was young, for a few hours alone,” she’d shrugged when she’d dribbled the ball away from Moira deftly). Pritchard, Nott, and Flint were batting around a Bludger they’d brought out. Some of the girls were sitting on the fountain, charming its water different colors or crafting careful spheres with wandless magic. And Malfoy was sitting on a bench, looking through Harry’s Panopticon.

Twigg came out, and sent Cephas Huxley in. Harry kicked the ball in his direction, and he was startled, but stopped it. “I’ve only seen pictures of an Aralez before,” he said, kicking the ball to Millie so Moira chased after it. “They were supposed to be bred for warriors. How did you get her?”

Was he _allowed_ to name Voldemort in such an innocent context, when he wasn’t innocent for these people? “Uh. For Christmas. Voldemort got her for me.”

Twigg froze, clearly not expecting that. “He got you a _puppy_ for _Christmas_?”

“Yeah.” Harry saw a few other Slytherins looking. “Or, since he’s not a great fan of Christmas – Yule? Do you give presents for Yule?”

“Potter, you are hopeless,” Malfoy remarked from his spot on the bench.

“Yeah,” he agreed quite readily.

 

It was late in the afternoon when Moody and Scrimgeour finished. They each carried a long scroll of notes as they found the students, still outside even though it was nearly dark. “Is this everyone?” Scrimgeour asked, looking around the garden.

“Warrington’s upstairs,” Malfoy answered. “And I think Pansy’s in the bath. Otherwise, yes. Oh, and Riddle,” he added.

“Right. Pass this along, then. Any of _this_ ,” he gestured with his scroll, “may change, subject to what your parents have agreed to today. We’re returning to the Ministry now, to meet with the ones who went to Azkaban. We’ll have further details early next week.” A few nods of their heads. “Excellent. Be careful,” he said, looking over his glasses at the collection of them. “Please write. Or summon the Aurors.”

“Yes, sir,” Malfoy murmured.

Moody’s eye rolled over them until he found Harry. “Potter?”

“I’m staying, for a bit. Not overnight,” he clarified, because he had to be back and asleep for Voldemort. “I’ll write you in the morning?”

“Yes,” Moody said grimly. They left.

Harry went to find Tom after that. He was in the library still, between two high rows of shelves. Sitting on the floor, with books piled around him, he actually looked quite charming. Harry sat down beside him. “What’ve you found?”

“Don’t touch that,” Riddle said sharply, as Harry reached for the top book in the stack. “It’s poisoned.”

“Poisoned?”

“Well, the acromantula from which they took its leather was poisonous. You can handle it with a gloving charm.”

Harry didn’t care that much, so he left it. “Soul magic,” he said as he read down the titles. “Anything on Horcruxes?”

“Footnotes. Allusions. Nothing new.”

“I haven’t picked up the books from the safehouse yet. Sorry.”

He shook his head. “I’m staying here as long as the Slytherins are here, anyway.”

“I know,” he said. “Er… thanks. You’re really good to them.”

“Mm.” He’d leaned back, his back against a bookshelf. “Why have you stayed?”

“I wanted to. It seemed important. It’s – _stupid_ that we separated ourselves so much at school, when there are so few of us anyway.”

A wry smile from Riddle. “You never stop.”

“Saving people? I fucking know.” He drummed his fingers against a worn book at his knee. “If you didn’t look for Horcruxes in here yesterday… what _did_ you look for?”

“Nothing in particular. Anything rare or valuable. There are a few texts presumed lost, but if they do still exist, they’re most likely in an estate like this.” Seeing Harry’s expression, he reminded him, “I traded dark artifacts for years. I was not there long enough to properly specialize, but I did have an especial fondness for their rare books. That is all.”

“Right. He’s still alive, you know. Borgin. Uh, though you probably shouldn’t visit.”

A sharp smile. “Perhaps your locket will turn up there again.”

 

Harry returned to Hogwarts after dinner. (“Should we go shopping again?” Harry had asked Kreacher, taking in the sight of twenty lambchops he definitely had not purchased. “Have _you_ gone shopping? Can I give you gold for it?”

The Slytherins nearby had given him similarly incredulous looks, and Kreacher about sneered. “The estate has expense accounts, to which we may charge purchases. _Master_.”

“I grew up with Muggles, alright,” he said, irritated, and several of the dubious expressions melted into horror. Prats.)

A knock on Ron and Hermione’s door. Hermione answered. “How are they?” she asked grimly.

“Alright. Really good. Moody and Scrimgeour were there all day – Hermione, don’t,” he said when she sort of flinched at Moody’s name. “You tried to stun him for, well, a good reason. He hardly blames you.”

“A good reason!” she moaned. “For attacking the head of the Aurors. Why am I not in _prison_ now?”

He grinned, because sometimes Hermione’s melodrama was charming. “You were right. And he’s fine. He – they – sort out all the students today, where they’ll live and I _think_ how they’ll finish up school. You took runes,” he was struck with the thought. “They won’t come back until the wards are fixed, but nobody knows what’s wrong. You can probably see more in the corridor.” Stepping out, he found some cords running past the door; he pulled on them until they glowed bright. “See?” He gestured to the frayed parts. “It’s worse in their common room. It’s, like, psychological warfare. They probably _shouldn’t_ feel safe.”

“That’s why the arcanist is here.”

“Herzog, yeah. The Horcrux – the castle is his magic, and so he can fix it easier than others, but even he couldn’t say what has caused it. Malfoy has been fixing them. Voldemort didn’t have any suggestions.”

“These are hideous,” she muttered, pulling out her wand to braid the nearest one back together. “Many security wards _will_ decay into fear, paranoia, dread… their runes are similar. Like this,” she pointed.

“Well, _and_ they’re actually being targeted. But… I understand why they won’t come back.”

“Won’t they?” she said, wincing. “Their education has already been so disrupted, and they’ll really struggle without OWLs at least….”

“I know. We’re working on it.” He hesitated. “Can you tell me about Voldemort’s magic tonight?”

Her mouth pursed; she pulled him inside. “Ron’s out,” she said when he looked around. “Said he had to do something _secret_ after dinner. And Voldemort….” She dropped them onto the sofa. “I provided a few options. All of them have some negative consequences. He will lose something tonight.”

Harry thought, perhaps inappropriately, of Wormtail cutting off his own hand. “Permanently?”

“… Maybe.” She was reaching for a book behind her. “Do you want me to copy runes for you? This many,” she said, indicating a few pages. “You might be able to get them all on your legs and torso if you’d rather do it yourself, but in case….”

“Where would you put them?”

She colored. “Across your back. I’ll give you some felt-tipped pens regardless, I think they’ll be less irritating than a quill.”

Oh god, if only Voldemort had used pens the week he’d captured Harry, he might’ve had an easier time. “… Could you?” he asked, shy though Hermione had seen him shirtless any number of times.

“Of course.”

Oh, though not since Voldemort had put piercings through Harry’s nipples, he realized as he pulled his undershirt off and Hermione went deep red. “Harry, really,” she faux-chastised him. “You’re marked enough by him.”

“These I wanted, though.” And Hermione hummed in some amusement.

They both sat sideways on the sofa, with Harry holding the book for Hermione to read. “Depending how he casts tonight – and how the Humnerë cast, if there is a fight – he could get out with some sacrifice of bodily integrity, magic, his soul – I suggested not that one, lest he make himself into an Inferius,” she said with unabashed disgust. “He may lose control of some, say, satellite magic? Any of the Horcruces, or the Dark Mark.”

Voldemort had sacrificed a Horcrux before. Hufflepuff’s cup had saved them both from Fiendfyre. He dearly hoped this wasn’t going to be the case again. Voldemort didn’t have enough of his soul left to dispose of any of it, Horcrux or no.

He could feel that Hermione’s writing with a sharpie on his back was quick and precise. “This is what he did to me, too,” he offered after a time. “At the beginning, when he first took me off the battlefield.”

A pause. “I know.”

“Did you?”

“I know you don’t like reading about yourself, but – it’s one of the questions they ask the most. What did he do to you, to make you stay? Anyway, since it’s where your… bootlegged memories begin, it’s what people who saw a copy were most likely to watch.”

He groaned, because he’d almost allowed himself to forget. “It’s different now,” he said.

A touch of amusement in Hermione’s voice. “I’m sure it is.”

“Do _you_ know why I stayed?”

“I think so.” She turned the page.

Long minutes later, they both recognized Ron’s gait in the corridor. “Should I – ?” Harry was reaching for his shirt.

“Does this feel illicit?” Hermione asked, amused. “Stay right where you are, I haven’t finished.”

Ron pushed open the door a minute later. “Oh, hi, Harry,” he blinked at him. “How’re you?”

“Mate, how’re _you_?”

Because Ron looked sort of wrecked. He sank onto the sofa across from them. “Ginny’s getting married.”

“Oh,” Hermione breathed, as Harry said in his stupidest moment: “To who?”

Ron gave him a look. “To Tonks. McGonagall let us use her office, she’d only written to say she needed to talk…. So it’s happening tomorrow. She’s not telling Mum and Dad until afterward. Just in case.”

Poor Ginny. Poor Tonks. “She’s not healing, then,” Harry said dully.

“No. But they think this will work. It’ll help, anyway.”

“Oh my god,” Harry sighed. “I haven’t gone to see her. I don’t know if she’ll…” _blame me_. He did feel responsible, for the Humnerë and everyone they’d hurt.

“Dunno,” Ron said. “Gin said she’d be back tomorrow, late.”

Damn. It was a good thing, it was a _generous_ thing, but the entire situation was still such a mess. Harry was reaching for his shirt. “I can finish it myself,” he said to Hermione. “Thanks a lot.” She marked the library book for him, handed him the markers, and set him off.

He drank kaval, a lot of it, as he wrote the rest of the runes along his thighs. **_Can you tell me about tonight_** , he’d written in the diary, and it felt like an awful wait before Voldemort wrote back.

_I will show you._

He was fishing out from his bag the vial Moody had given him to replenish his magic. There was another one, for after, if he needed it. He would be responsible enough to sleep in sweats, with trainers and his wand and his diary nearby, in case he had to stagger to the hospital wing. He’d even warned Lav, who was less than impressed with him. (“Just sleep in here,” she’d begged him when he’d told her, but it seemed too strange and too needy.)

 ** _OK,_** Harry wrote when he’d brushed his teeth and pulled on his pajamas. **_I’m ready. I love you._** The magical replenishment potion made his skin buzz, but the kaval was habitually relaxing, and when he’d turned out the lights, he could nearly reach for Voldemort’s soul directly.

The equinox wasn’t properly for another couple hours, but Voldemort needed to finish some bits of magic first. The room he was in felt colder and more foreboding than any they’d been in previously. And it was brighter, only because Voldemort had left all the wards visible for now, bathing the room in a golden glow.

Harry conveys that Voldemort can take all his magic. He _needs_ to take all of his magic. “These,” Voldemort gestures to some columned wards at strange angles, “should short the voids at the surface. Others – the planes – should hold open any portals we uncover. And most of the cords are defensive.”

_Hermione said you’d lose something tonight._

“Yes,” Voldemort says carefully. “It is likely. There is magic in sacrifice.”

_What will you lose?_

“… I don’t know.”

So Harry accompanies him as he walks the caves, weaving complicated magic in his path. It is beautiful, it is impressive.

It wouldn’t be enough.

He is nearer to the surface than he’d ever gotten before – though his magic couldn’t reliably say if there are actual exits nearby, but that is secondary – when there’s a crackle like static, and a smoky, shimmery apparition. The Dëshmitar arrives before him, in a facsimile of Bella’s body. “My Kukudh,” she greets him easily. The voice is wrong, it’s velvety, not Bella’s rasp, but her posture and aura are otherwise… good. Harry is horrified and Voldemort pushes him to the back of his mind.

“Kyria,” he greets her. He holds his knife like a makeshift wand even now, even after Bella’s dark eyes take it in in amusement.

“You’ve been quite industrious,” she remarks, plucking at a ward he’d only just made visible. “You always have been.”

“Yes.”

“I brought you a picnic. To celebrate the blessings of Ostara.” She conjures a wicker basket before her, passing it to Voldemort.

He is about to vanish it, when she purses Bella’s lips. “You really shouldn’t, doll.”

So he opens the basket, and exhales when he finds his wand placed neatly on the cloth inside. “Thank you.”

The Dëshmitar has conjured a glass table between them. “It would be better by starlight,” she remarks, glancing up at the craggy ceiling. “Are any of your wards burrowing spells?”

“No.” Digging straight up hadn’t been entirely implausible, but he didn’t want to risk a cave-in before exhausting his other options. “My magic is merely human, anyway.”

“Oh, I know. I only wanted to give you a first go at it.” Looking up, she twists her hands and the earth shudders – the cave split open above them. The moon is barely a sliver, but the stars are bright and cold. “Now _sit_. While we eat, we will deliberate what to do with you.”

He doesn’t sit. And then, with an elegant seizure of his magic, the Dëshmitar pulls him down. It must have been Imperio. It’s a small gesture but it scares Harry, who believes that Voldemort should be infallible. He continues to push all of Harry’s sentiments away, because they won’t _help_.

Inside the basket, beneath his wand, there is food: crackling bread, a salad of new greens, delicate roast pheasants, dyed eggs. “Why,” Voldemort deadpans as she casts place settings.

She looks through Bella’s long lashes. “Because we are civilized people. Because things take time. I thought you would be hungry. Or has your illicit magic eliminated human hunger, too?”

“Not yet, no.” The basket splits its wares between them. He doesn’t touch the food until there is another wrenching bit of magic, and there’s cutlery in his hands poised over the pheasant. There must be magic in the food. Not poison; and he faintly catches Harry’s amusement at the same, his own thoughts when Voldemort had cooked for him in captivity, that poison is _vulgar_. He cuts open the pheasant breast, splaying it across his plate.

“Would you like to tell me about _this_?” She waves her hand backwards, indicating the magic he’s woven throughout the caves. “Or shall I see it for myself?”

He wishes for violence. Violence resolves the scene into something, not this anxious potential for anything. Potential energy, the Muggle scientists would say; a coiled spring. “You must see it for yourself.” He lifts the pheasant to his lips; there is nothing extraordinary about it.

“You’ve learned wandless magic from Harry, I assume?” He doesn’t intend to answer, but she is waiting.

“Yes. In part. It comes from necessity.”

“Is he with you now?”

If she were reckless as he is reckless, she would have peeled open his mind with Legilimency. But once more, she waits. “Yes.”

And _then_ she dips into his mind, and his Occlumency is useless against her. Harry shrinks back, as far as he can without withdrawing entirely. The Dëshmitar flashes Bella’s sharp teeth. “Hello, Harry,” she says. “You are so generous to him. Really, at some point he may have enough of a soul again to be worth stealing. _Before_ that point, however – we’re quite interested in the magic created between you. We will keep him alive for at least that long.”

Voldemort frowns faintly. “You want magic?” he asks. “I suppose you would. From where are your… creatures drawing power?”

She clicks her tongue. “Good boy.”

He interrupts her sharply: “I am not your protégé, and you are no longer my mentor. We left that behind.”

“Voldemort,” she says soothingly, if only to underscore that he is not _Tom_ to her. He had been grateful for it once. “You have surprised us so much in the past year. We are all quite _proud_ of you. Our Kukudh, finally taking the world by something other than force.” Squeezing an egg in her hand so its dyed shell pops off perfectly, she circles back to his question. “Our _varri_ – your papers all refer to them as Inferi, which is quite funny, when their souls are so much more significant than their vessels – draw magic from our land. It is all a bit fragile, as the souls revolt against being housed in dead bodies. Bodies that are not their _own_ , when we’ve relocated the newer ones. Either the body or soul begins to break down quickly, in this conflict. With magic to sustain them both – and control them both, ultimately – they may become less disposable. You’ve seen how quickly they decay. Days, at best.”

He is intrigued by this. It is a challenge, arcane magic inaccessible to most. “Far be it from me to ask, but – what have you planned for an undead army?”

The Dëshmitar actually laughs. “Our own politics.”

“Not Britain’s?”

“No.”

“Then _why_ ,” he says, “are you attacking students? They are unaffiliated. I have never wanted them.”

“Are you fighting for _the children’s sake_ now?”

“No. Clearly not. But even if you want our magic, they are irrelevant. Were they a lure?”

“Surprisingly, no. Though it would’ve been delightful if it had worked that way.”

Voldemort is frustrated by now. “I will give you magic,” he says. “The magic of the Horcrux captures a soul in an object. I even learned how to alter the spell to keep it in a living body. As you know,” he says bitterly, because they’d killed Nagini first.

“I sent others out for her,” the Dëshmitar says. “I regret it now. Their incompetence killed her. She would’ve been more useful alive.”

“Yes.”

“But I need a connection that itself generates magic. You couldn’t account for Harry’s Horcrux yourself. Anyway,” she says lightly, “such collusion would be _treason_ for you.”

“Perhaps,” he says indifferently. “If you invade Britain it will be.”

“Britain contains nothing of value to us. However, it does contain things of value to _you_ ,” she says archly. “We thought it might be some substitution for your wretched soul, if instead we dismantle and control everything you _love_. Harry will come second, of course, but Hogwarts will come first.”

Hogwarts. Hogwarts has been besieged by violence, tragedy, decay…. “How?” he asks. “How have you cursed it?”

There’s a look of surprise, then delight, on Bella’s face. “I have wondered why you haven’t felt more _guilt_ ,” she says. “Slytherin’s blood, Slytherin’s magic…. The castle is destroyed as the founder’s lineages are. I had assumed you were keeping it from the Aurors, as they’d assume it to be _another_ petty curse on your part.”

Harry has been quiet, but his reaction now is painful. The house tables when Voldemort was injured at the Ministry, the room of requirement when Malfoy Manor was attacked, the great hall days ago when he was captured. Harry pushes through Voldemort’s mind himself, looking for deception. “I didn’t know,” he says aloud, for them both.

“And if Harry will carry this revelation back to Alastor Moody, then… what?” She offers him a smile. “Back to Azkaban for your own safety, perhaps?”

“That seems likely.”

“Or would they _ransom_ you?”

“Certainly not.” He frowns at her. “Our Ministry doesn’t pay ransom. If _that_ is part of your strategy, you’ve made a stupid error.”

“They’d have more reason to protect you now than they’ve ever had before. It’s all been rather circumstantial before, how they’d treat you.”

“You’ll get nothing from them for me. And I cannot return until you are neutralized.”

“Hm. Wine?” she offers, conjuring a bottle and glasses. Her magic is _native_ , and Voldemort is jealous to see it, as though the entire world responds to her whims. It is how magic envelops Harry too, he half-thinks, to Harry’s own surprise.

He takes the wine glasses – a warm, spicy variety, ill-suited for the mild spring meal. It is heavy on his tongue. “And if I charm your Inferi into everlasting life?” he asks.

The Dëshmitar’s wry smile looks strange on Bella’s full mouth. “You are still quite uncontrolled.”

He chokes on laughter. “You’ve seen, at least, the vows made public. I am more restricted than in childhood.”

A flash of her teeth. “I think you’re more clever than they are.”

“I… yes,” he says in a sigh. “I don’t intend to deceive our ministry, really. I was bought out from justice once, I doubt I will be twice.”

A thousand times, Harry thinks fiercely. _I’ll save you a thousand times if I’ve got to._

“’Love is broken at every opportunity when their self-interest intervenes,’” she says. “To make promises on your sentimentality….”

“What does your _control_ entail?” Voldemort asks in exasperation.

“To have immortal humans wandering the world, unaccounted for… it would be irresponsible of us not to curb your more reckless decisions. You might stay here, even. You do not yet think like an immortal.”

He feels a flare of irritation. “I don’t think as a human.”

She tips the wine bottle over his glass in a pacifying motion. “Darling,” she says. “And not only would you be free, you’d be _powerful_. You’d take everything quite out of proportion.”

“The gods were meant to rule over the humans. They have no perspective, on matters of import.”

“Very good,” she coos, to watch Voldemort grimace. “You will have to believe me when I say… neither do you. I have seen eighteen generations of humans die. Moths, all of them. And while you might object to a flame-driven moth as a leader or figurehead… do they not deserve one of their own?”

“You are democratic?” he asks in fascination and horror.

Another smile. “I am a patriot. This land loves us, conditionally. We haven’t taken the country yet, not out of disinterest, but out of _harmony_. I no longer have patience for most of the humans’ interests. In time, you won’t either.”

“I am seventy-two,” he pronounces. “Nearly too young to gain any prominence in our Ministry. Do you say this for my well-being?”

“Other immortals have taken notice of you. Not all of them are so fond of you as I am.”

Harry feels in Voldemort’s mind that this is approximately true. “Who?” he asks.

She fixes him with a look. “More than you’d be able to avoid, by now. You came through Greece?” He nods. “The Erinyes are quite impatient with you; you’re lucky to have not encountered them. The Dökkálfar and Ljósálfar both. I’ve heard rumors from as far as the Caribbean, that the Ciguapas are anxious to neutralize you. You’d have done better avoiding such prominence. Immortality and fame rarely go well together. As I would’ve told you if you’d stayed.”

“They shouldn't know.”

“Rumors of a Horcrux bearer carry fast. As I’ve said, you are an interloper.” She says it with loving exasperation. “Generally they squander the immortality on trivial things, and get killed for boasting too often. You, though – they see that you intend it as a means to an end. What _is_ your end? Some sort of eternal monarchy? When you were young, you spoke of purification, a restoration of Britain to former glory. Forgive me as an outsider to your politics, but that doesn’t seem to be your interest any longer?”

He shakes his head. “My politics are a means to my immortality. Not the reverse. Britain can’t survive another civil war. We will not survive another world war either. I would rather not exert my magic on mere self-preservation any longer. I could have fled, but… I am still irrationally fond of England.” (And somewhere in the back of his mind, he feels Harry recall that Scrimgeour said the same thing just earlier today, that they could not survive another war. Good.)

“Mm.” She splits the last of the wine between them. “I suppose you’re beyond obscurity.”

A faint smile. “Quite.”

“What do I tell the other Undying, if you are to return?”

“As you don’t answer for me, nothing.”

The Dëshmitar reaches across the table, placing Bella’s hand with her long dark nails over Voldemort’s pallid one. “I have _always_ answered for you. They came to me first.”

She was an ally he hadn’t known he’d had. “Thank you, Kyria. But it’s been quite a long time.”

“We protected you last time,” she says. “Did you know? We warded the forests where you took refuge in dispossession. We diverted your Ministry when they sought you here. We knew less about the magic between soul and body than we do now, or we could have offered you more.”

He is so startled and really, affected by this revelation. “Thank you,” he says again. “I hadn’t known. What do you want?” Because such decisions may be made out of grace, but not _only_ grace. Not among the Humnerë, not among the humans.

“We need to understand the magic of your Horcrux,” she says. “And then… if you remain, it will not be as an immortal. The Undying won’t allow it any longer.”

“No,” he says, and the goodwill between them is evaporating.

“You’re strong for a human,” the Dëshmitar concedes. “But you’re utterly arrogant if you think you will defeat them. Some of them are angry. Some are humiliated. You have never been part of our world, and you don’t know the contours of our politics. It is already a concession to allow you a choice.”

“What would you have me do?”

“If you wouldn’t stay – destroy the Horcruces. Dismantle them. Take your human life, with your husband and home and Ministry position, and simply be grateful for it. As you say, live a life that poses no danger to you. Live as long as humans live, I suppose. I would hold off the Undying to the extent that I’m able. Most of them only want you stripped of immortality.”

He should be grateful, infinitely so. It’s not enough. The thought of dying – dying _eventually_ – still makes his chest tighten. And the Horcruces – bugger the locket and diadem, but everything falls apart if he and Harry are separated. His personal and political life are both organized around it.

 _I will never leave you_ , Harry thinks desperately, because he feels the same. But they wouldn’t be the same people without each other. The way their thoughts, minds, magics intertwine….

It has made his life more worthwhile than anything else this year. Maybe anything else altogether. This must be love, to make reckless decisions against one’s own self-interest.

 _That’s about it_ , Harry thinks in amusement. _We’ll be alright, though. I swear it_.

Nevertheless, Voldemort looks up at the Dëshmitar. “I can’t,” he says. “I won’t.”

She gives a small nod as though she’s expected as much. “Out of love, or fear?”

“Yes.”

With a gesture she conjures a staff, a silver one that swirls like mercury. “I mentioned the Erinyes. They knew you traveled through Greece, and came to me. I am rather indebted to them. _Stay_ ,” she instructs when Voldemort has raised his wand, his body tensed. She casts Imperio on him, so he’s forced to sit, and it is humiliating. “The Erinyes came to me. I do quite like you. So – “ she raises her staff, and the ceiling slams closed with a cloud of dust, leaving them in relative darkness. The light of her staff throws Bella’s angular face into sharp relief. “I’d like to see what your wards do, anyway. You’ve got five seconds.”

She releases him and he is up, wand tight in his grasp. Days of walking the caves would have been to his advantage, but he hears the earth’s plates grinding beneath them, rearranging the cave system. He casts quick spells over his shoulder, all manner of them – ice, panic, a bubble that shrinks rapidly around its target. He runs.

Harry fights with righteous anger, but Voldemort fights in play. Magic is beautiful, magic deserves respect, his own and anyone else’s. He hears his wards trigger behind him, weaving a thorny matrix. He couldn't go back that way, but he wouldn’t want to anyway.

He recognizes a pattern in the cave system, that one must go down to come up, so the next downward-sloping crevice he finds, he throws himself into. “Look away,” he murmurs in Parseltongue, as though Harry can, but the space is so small that going in sideways, his ribcage still scrapes. He’s casting directional spells all the while, spells that point him to any stray light or wind filtering into the cave. Or if there’s a portal – there _must_ be a portal in here – its magic would be distinct. He runs his hands along the damp walls, feeling magic flare into his touch. _Currents_ , there would be currents leading toward it. He pivots to blast the narrow opening behind him, blocking the way with rubble.

He runs through a passageway dotted with stalagmites, and another one with sticky clay for a floor. But he hears _water_. They’re not anywhere near the lake of Inferi, unless the cave has fully inverted itself. The directional charms are leading him toward the sound anyway.

The temperature and pressure of the cave fluctuate rapidly, as his wards are set off in quick succession. They are only meant to impede her. They couldn’t kill one another, not like this. But if he could find the portal – he’d spent enough time exploring the European countryside, he could make it out, try again –

Rocks crumble under his step and it might have been Harry who actually catches them, throwing Voldemort’s weight backward. There’s a crumbling slope before him, and he casts levitation on himself to assist in neatly running down it. The ground at the bottom is muddy, and he can barely make out a trickle of a current. Maintaining the levitation so he does not sink into the mud, he moves toward its source.

Magic at last begins to flare around him, trying to trap or impede him. The cave itself seems to become hostile – the mud begins to lap at his boots, moving itself into tendrils as though to grasp at him. The magic that burns him is ambivalent – it might be hostile, it might merely be foreign and strong. He is desperate too think it marks a way out.

He runs through the wet shadows. The walls expand and contract as though breathing.

Deep into a corridor is the first time he triggers magic – it is unfamiliar, some sort of wasting curse that blackens his fingertips. He’s breathed it in and he feels his lungs deteriorating, filling with blood. He casts quick healing spells on himself and they don’t quite work, but he won’t stop. Harry shoves magic at him.

Another trap, another curse. Gas – or is it paranoia – hallucinations? He can feel his lungs falling apart in his ribcage – he can’t _breathe_ and the ceiling is so low, he could be smothered here – He’s had to stop, bracing a hand on the wall –

And his other hand is wrenched up of its own accord. He expects the Dëshmitar is behind him, that she is in control, but Harry’s magic surges across his skin. _Expecto patronum_ , Harry thinks fiercely because he can’t compel Voldemort to speak.

He cedes control of his magic for a moment. “Expecto patronum!”

The spell is a mystery to him ultimately, but it is welcome. The thestral lights the corridor and the warmth and light and love of it erode the worst of his panic. “Could it lead us out?” Voldemort murmurs in Parseltongue.

_I don’t know._

He will follow it anyway. The idea of abandoning the thestral right now just seems too painful.

The cave crackles and shudders behind him. Has the Dëshmitar even given chase? He’s never been quite so disadvantaged against an opponent before, in her domain, standing on her ley lines, casting by the grace of her magic. He is shoving passages open ahead of them, splitting and vanishing rocks. The cave slopes farther down, and the air is cold and moist. The thestral continues to run ahead and circle back to him, throwing its mane in an agitated way. He runs a hand over its shimmering neck.

He reaches an abrupt ritual space, with a high carved ceiling and veins of gold glinting in the walls. The patronus flickers until Harry grasps the magic again. _I’ll keep the patronus, you do the rest_ , he thinks firmly.

It is so kind and so generous – but of course it is, it’s Harry. “I love you,” he says. It shouldn’t be a _reward_ for Harry to hear this, but that is how it has worked in practice. And there’s a flash of warm amusement form Harry at this train of thought. It helps.

He is casting magic into the center of the room, exploratory spells to find anything of significance here. Unlike the rest of the cave system, this carries echoes of deliberate magic done in here already. In fact – the center of the room might have the portal. There is _something_ there. Because he knows now of the effects his injuries have on Hogwarts, he hesitates. Something draws him forward.

The magic in the center is warm and deep, a different sort than the patronus. But as he steps forward, the gold in the walls begins to boil. He feels unable to turn back.

The inset circle before him – it doesn’t _glow_ , but there is something extraordinary about it. Even if he can tear open its magic, he could harness it. He couldn’t escape on human magic, anyway. He has already been casting in Parselmagic, and it is partially effective.

As he steps between tall stalagmites that function as pillars, he feels the magic drawing him in. He feels a breeze across his face. He’s cast shields surrounding himself, and the patronus still laps him, and the direction spells beckon him forward.

_Crack!_

The Dëshmitar stands perfectly in the circle; it rises slightly from the ground as if to welcome her. Her body is no longer Bella’s, but her own, light and ethereal. “Your wards didn’t extend this far,” she says, “but I wondered if that was misdirection. Ah,” she says in surprise and delight at the thestral galloping between them. “No, keep it, if you’d like. I would ask if it is Harry’s, but it seems so indisputably _yours_.”

He doesn’t correct her. He doesn’t say anything at all, but falls back, in the hopes of luring her off what is now a stone dais. He has seen this structure before, the dais and columns. He should’ve recognized it from the Humnerë’s memories, but he’d been so _hopeful_ –

His spells for now are defensive, shielding him and quickening his reflexes and pre-emptively casting healing spells to close wounds at vital points. “Would you really duel again?” the Dëshmitar asks in faint surprise. “You’ve been in more desperate circumstances. But now you know your own responsibility for Hogwarts. And for Harry.”

“I will never stop fighting,” he says lowly. Is it too late to plant wards on the walls, or underfoot? Or if the stalagmites are structural, he might cause a cave-in and simply escape into the sky. He casts more healing spells, but as many as he does, he is still struggling to breathe.

The Dëshmitar is casting defensive spells of her own. He doesn’t recognize them, but then, they each cast in a foreign language. “Do you not feel guilt?” she asks lightly, in a way that implies she already _knows_ , how often he lies awake, sick at ruining Harry’s life. Now he shall be sick at destroying Hogwarts as well.

In response, Harry only draws the patronus closer.

“Allow me to craft your Inferi’s magic,” he says, in a last effort.

“You will,” she replies. “But since you apparently haven’t outgrown brute force – “ And she slams the staff against the dais, causing a shockwave.

He doesn’t recognize the magic at first. It hasn’t hurt him. But then there is the beating of wings, seemingly hundreds. The crows swoop low, landing on the dais until it’s a sea of black, and then regain their form as Inferi.

His throat catches. It is embarrassing, how _scared_ he is of the dozens of dead faces staring at him. Their features are removed by the cursed water, apart from some strands of hair. They’re in every state of decomposition. They move their hands and jaws, clicking their teeth and rolling their eyes. Harry keeps the patronus firmly between them.

Nevertheless, he looks to the Dëshmitar. “ _That_ is no duel.”

“No. Of course not. They are only standing guard. And,” she looks back at them, “you need some spectators anyway.” She swirls her staff; bitter and complicated magic emerges from it. The souls she carries inhabit the bodies, transforming them. Their faces stretch into features, clothing is conjured, and their postures straighten with a sort of purpose and self-awareness. A facsimile thereof, anyway.

He only recognizes what she has done when the transformation is nearly complete. The souls make the bodies malleable, that they can really take on any form in their collective memory. So, looking back at him are his victims. Forty? Fifty? Bella’s face has a place of prominence. The Malfoys. Pettigrew.

“We did kill him,” the Dëshmitar says when she’s followed his gaze. “Though really, you should have. Trapping him was monstrous. After all he’s done for you.”

She’d have Pettigrew’s mind, and even though he’d wiped his memories such that Wormtail would never remember how _helpless_ Voldemort had once been, the Dëshmitar may have recovered something. “He did need to die. They all did.”

“Not all of them are the true bodies or souls, of course. Some are from mere memory. Contrary to _your_ magic, flesh, blood, and bone are rather indistinguishable here.” She tosses her shining hair back. “Does Harry know of all these? The first war was much bloodier. Here’s the Muggle Studies professor,” and she pulls forward a gangly man. Her tone has shifted to something more didactic, as though she’s saying all this for Harry’s sake. “The Prewett brothers,” and there are two broad-shouldered redheads. “A dozen Aurors. Recent students. Both sides fought with twenty year olds, and I could not _fathom_ why. The Longbottoms aren’t properly dead, I know, but you’ll forgive me for counting them among the casualties.” She’s pulling bodies that look like Alice and Frank forward, keeping a hand on each of their shoulders. “Other friends of your parents…. There’s Fenwick – blasted to bits in the war, obviously it’s not his body – and there’s Edgar Bones, and there’s Dearborn. And _here_ ,” she says as though she’s proud of it, “are your parents.”

Neither of them had expected it, and Voldemort doesn’t look away fast enough as she pulls pallid approximations of Lily and James out of the horde. They are smiling, broken teeth crooked in their mouths. They are _holding hands._

Voldemort is peddling backwards, and he doesn’t care that they’re not properly in a duel, he is casting Fiendfyre into the center of the circle. The Inferi – _the varri_ , she called them, the archive of souls – hiss and moan, shrinking from the flame. She is casting rapidly to – _to keep them from attacking_. And then, she hisses a spell that he remembers as the Vampiric _Finite_ , and his Fiendfyre is wrenched away from him. The flames caught the bodies of James and Lily primarily, and they’re writhing on the ground before the Dëshmitar. With a noise of disgust, she vanishes the bodies.

The patronus steps between them once again.

Both Voldemort and the Dëshmitar take it in incredulously. Harry is wounded, he is horrified, but he _needs_ to protect Voldemort. The love with which he casts comes easily when their souls are so intertwined, anyway. “Thank you,” Voldemort murmurs.

“We are doing this with decorum,” the Dëshmitar says. “The varri stand on the portal you want. They’re unarmed, for now, but much physically stronger than mere Inferi. Keep Harry,” she says with a faint smile. “My native land loves me, and you are so – _unspeakably_ lucky that he loves you.”

Voldemort is rapidly pushing away his feelings. There’s no _time_ for them, they will only ruin him, later – And Harry does the same.

Voldemort and the Dëshmitar square off, dropping their weapons long enough to bow deeply. And then the room goes white with spells, clashing in midair time and again.

The Dëshmitar favors psychological spells – paranoia, hallucinations, dread, despair. He catches them and hurls them back at her. Of the ones for which he knows a conflicting spell, he intersects it with his own as he leaps back, dousing her in fire and lightning. She shouts in surprise, but not anger.

The both have lightstepping and levitation spells on, bounding around the room quickly. He hits her once with an electrical spell when she’s mid-stride, sending a white-hot shock through her body. Whirling around, she throws a thousand shards of glass at him, narrowing into a bubble. Some pierce his shields, and he feels sticky blood run down his back.

He is still at the outside edge of the room and she is still in the center. He casts magic to twist the shape of the room, drawing the walls in. A stalagmite on the far side snaps, and the varri all startle at the noise.

He needs to lure them away. They’re repelled by fire, but they’ve been indifferent to the spells exploding so near to them. Water? There is the spell to cast the enchanted water that creates Inferi, but would they still be attracted to it now?

Harry pushes his magic forward, sending the thestral in at a gallop. It scatters the varri briefly and minimally. Then he thinks of everything he knew of wards: they break not by taking away magic, but adding it. His magic makes the thestral glow brighter. Maybe even the Inferi will be compelled by it.

Voldemort has to look away as the Dëshmitar swoops overhead, bringing the ceiling low to impede their visibility. She lands behind him, and neatly breaks his leg at the knee before he can cast a new shield. “Mina said the humans have made you slow,” she calls over the din. The vampire who’d dueled him at Malfoy Manor, he assumes. He casts a splint, but in the moment he drops his wand she hits him again, a bright gash across his face. Blood runs into his mouth, and all he can think of is protecting Hogwarts from further destruction.

He whips Crucio at her, and because she’d expected a verbal reaction from him, she’s not entirely prepared. The pain in his broken leg is white-hot and he is furious, with her and himself. Crucio fractures her hasty shield and he casts it again, expecting to get through it with fury alone. _Crack_ , and her shield yields to Crucio, and she’s recoiling in pain.

Thank god. He’s no longer entirely on the defensive now. She is preparing something long ranging, judging from the movement of her staff, and he rushes in to block her, casting the shortest-range spells he knows, inflicting deep stab wounds. One slips beneath her ribs, and while these vampires don’t bleed, their dead flesh gives way easily.

Crying out, she grabs him by the throat, suffocating him with a spell. His vision grays and Harry is fighting back panic. The stabbing spell fails, and instead he’s reaching for something non-verbal – he makes a poisoned thicket erupt beneath her, and she jumps back only just to avoid it. Harry keeps Voldemort from landing on his broken leg, and he exhales deeply.

He is casting thorns into the bramble, piercing her. A crack, and she apparates to the other side of the room, casting the spell of paralysis she’d prepared before. He dodges, but it rebounds, and the shockwave alone would graze him, along his right shoulder. Immediately his right arm is nearly useless; he switches hands to cast with his left.

Looking back in this direction, he sees the thestral still among the varri. They are shuffling, restless, and the thestral is too crowded to even spread its wings. It is already extraordinary that Harry maintained it when he broke eye contact. _I am so proud of you._

More of their spells clash in midair. The atmosphere is toxic with them by now. A few more spells that smother him, and he is becoming too light-headed to fight properly. “Crucio!” He thinks he has cast it in Parseltongue. Again he’s running in. “Crucio!” He can think of nothing else.

Harry would take over, but he doesn’t know anything dark enough. _Sectumsempra_ , he thinks, and it will work. Voldemort casts spells at oblique angles, so she must move her shield to deflect them. Crucio, Diffindo, Crucio. Then bracing himself, he rapidly casts Crucio to her left and Sectumsempra to her right. It hits, and she chokes on the dry flesh collapsing into her throat. He thinks faintly that he really must thank Severus.

He’s running to the center of the room, toward the varri ringing the thestral. If he could cast Fiendfyre and stay back long enough for it to incinerate them all….

He stops dead. The body nearest to him is Harry’s.

 _No_ , Harry thinks desperately in his mind. _No, sweetheart – Voldemort, don’t – look out!_

There’s a fireball exploding into his back, and dark laughter. He falls forward on his broken leg, his hands scraping the varri’s cold flesh, and they’re reaching for him –

Between their legs he can see the glow of the thestral, standing on the portal. “I need to...” He feels Harry’s magic flare, and the thestral is moving toward him, making the varri part –

He feels her staff on the back of his neck, ripping through his magic, discarding it like wet tissue paper. He lunges forward, slapping a hand between the Inferi’s legs, and his fingers fall short of the portal. Then he’s paralyzed and levitated, and he is fighting because she can’t take him, he’ll find another way –

The Dëshmitar scoops him up by his scruff as they apparate.

There’s blood everywhere. It must all be his, he thinks groggily. The vampires do not bleed, though their flesh and bone may give way. He’s fading fast and so is she; still, when she slides down the wall to sit beside him, he struggles to bolt upright. Her staff dropped across his chest stops him, painfully compressing his oxygen-deprived lungs.

“What – “ She clears her throat as it collapses, “is this?”

Sectumsempra is a lacerating spell that follows the trails of the largest arteries, but he hasn’t got the words. His lungs are shredded, his magic is being drained rapidly by a curse, and he can no longer think through the pain. He shakes his head.

“Voldemort.” She’s leaned over him, a hand on his face to keep him awake and alert. “Say that you’ll surrender. Or we will bleed out your magic as _they_ once did.”

“For what?” He mouths the words. It is a struggle to stay awake; he thinks most of the effort is Harry’s already.

“We will heal you. You’ve been splinched.”

Oh. That is the source of the blood. The cuts he’d sustained really couldn’t have accounted for it all. His robes are already sodden, he can’t tell where. He has minutes, he thinks. This body wouldn’t be important except that it also belongs to Harry. It belongs to Hogwarts. He wants to close his eyes but Harry won’t let him. “I surrender.”

She makes a noise, grabbing both of his hands in hers. “Again.”

“I surrender,” he says distinctly. He holds up his wand to her, pale wood stained bright with blood. She takes it and, without decorum, snaps it in half. The phoenix feather inside seems to dull and darken as it is exposed to air. He feels himself dying with it.

Then she puts the pieces back at his solar plexus. He places a shredded hand over them. The Dëshmitar summons the coven to heal them. “Is Harry still with you?” she asks, still crouched at his side.

“Yes.”

“You should explain to him.”

It is mostly to keep him talking, to keep him awake. It would be such a relief to escape this pain, if only in sleep. It is its own sort of cruelty to ask him to speak when his lungs are so ruined. He is brief. “Surrender – is a vow, itself. It protects both – “ he chokes, turning to the side to spit blood, “both parties from – retribution, and cruelty.” A rattling breath. “I never offered it to you because – you wouldn’t have believed me.”

Harry is warm and loving and miserable and scared. _You’ll be alright, love._

The door swings open, and there are a mass of ornate robes moving above him. Before Voldemort is free to pass out, the Dëshmitar grabs his shoulder. “Harry. Doll. We will keep him alive, for now. Your Ministry wouldn’t find him, anyway.”

A bitter laugh from Voldemort. “They wouldn’t look. But – tell them everything,” he breathes to Harry. “Tell them I’m sorry – about Hogwarts.”

He is grieving. It hurts them both.

The coven is above them now, casting spells to peel Voldemort’s robes back. He looks away deliberately, so Harry doesn’t have to see, but it feels as though he’s been gutted.

The Dëshmitar runs an affectionate hand over Voldemort’s cheek, rubbing off some sticky blood. “Harry,” she says again. “You are welcome to stay, but he shouldn’t be awake for much longer. Anyway, it seems that _you_ should awake before you bleed out in your bed, as the castle crumbles around you.”

Voldemort hates this. It was stupid of him to miss the correlation. But holding the castle hostage…. He can’t think. “Go,” he murmurs. Magic would be wasted but Harry gives him love, and it feels like drawing a last breath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love the trope of antagonists who mutually respect each other. Voldemort and the Dëshmitar will have a great relationship here except for the part where she needs to strip him of immortality.
> 
> To better define the varri – they are the souls captured by the vampires, which can be animated in Inferi or other conjured bodies. They can speak and think and do magic, and they retain some memories and mannerisms of their previous person. These memories are shared among all the souls, so they can take on any form any of them have seen. When they are stunned or killed, the bodies revert to basic flesh. Most of the British characters will call them Inferi anyway here, because they understand it more. ‘Varri’ is Albanian for tomb.
> 
> Allusions for Chapter 30:
> 
> “I heard the Muggle pope has the largest collection of porn in the world” – This a persistent rumor about the Vatican. They’ve got some erotic art (and really, it depends what you’re into?) but not the *largest*.
> 
> The idea of souls revolting in their re-animated bodies comes from Undertale :D
> 
> “Love is preserved by the link of obligation which is broken at every opportunity when their self-interest intervenes” – Machiavelli’s The Prince. 
> 
> The immortals and quasi-immortals mentioned: Erinyes, the Greek furies (and in this story, the most powerful immortal beings and the ones nearest to being ‘in charge,’ even though immortals strongly value independence and rarely collaborate). Dökkálfar and Ljósálfar are dark elves and light elves in Old Norse myth. The Ciguapas are beautiful but cruel magical women in the Dominican Republic.


	31. Chapter 31

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry offers a pensieve, finds a grotto, receives a letter.

_Sunday, March 21._ The tears on Harry’s face were stinging in his open wounds. He bolted upright, but immediately bile was filling his mouth. Staggering from bed, he barely fell in front of the toilet before he was sick, heaving desperately.

Over the sounds he could barely hear the pounding on his door. “Harry!” Ron was yelling. “Get up, we’ve got to get out!”

Fuck. _Fuck_. He wouldn’t get out on his own, aching and infirm and horribly sick. Making the decision that Ron and Hermione would love him anyway, he spelled open the door.

“Oh my god,” Hermione breathed, and then they were both beside him, Hermione casting a volley of spells as Ron pulled his hair back from his face.

“There was a cave-in at the far side of the dungeons,” Ron said in an urgent tone. “McGonagall just woke us up. All the faculty needs to evacuate, they don’t know what the damage is yet.”

He spat bile; Hermione cast a hydration charm to little effect. And then there was a ripping feeling in his torso, and a rush of warmth. “I think I’m splinched,” he muttered.

“ _Splinched_?” And Ron put his head to Harry’s forehead as Molly must have done for him.

“I’m not, _ugh_ , delirious.” He couldn’t stop dry heaving. “He was splinched. And – “ And then he was vomiting again.

“You’re going to the hospital wing. You should’ve listened to Lav,” Hermione scolded. “It’s the part of the dungeon nearest the lake, the ground floor doesn’t need to be evacuated yet…. Ron, could you….”

Harry fought because he didn’t want to be sick down his front, but he was shaking and his head was pounding, so it wasn’t much of a fight. Ron conjured a basin before him and Hermione cast a Mobilicorpus to assist in walking, and each with an arm around his shoulders, they pulled him out.

“Do you need anything? – Oh, good,” Hermione said, seeing his trainers, wand, and diary set out for collection. They all went into her bag. Glancing back at him, she stifled a cry. “You’re – we’ll get you to hospital.”

The wound on his stomach was shallower than Voldemort’s, since his blood wasn’t _pouring_ onto the floor, but it had soaked into his shirt and sweatpants by now, making the fabric cling to him. Looking down, he could see other cuts forming in real time, with the delay between them. It was happening faster these days.

He didn’t have long.

The dungeons were active – he could hear other faculty casting hurried spells of security and stabilization. They were moving toward the sloping corridor to the ground floor when McGonagall’s tabby patronus ran past them, with McGonagall herself a moment behind.

She stopped dead, going white at seeing Harry. “Potter – “

“We’ve got him.” Ron’s arm was solid behind him, pulling him out.

“Are the Aurors – ? They’re busy,” Harry concluded, in between deliberate breaths so he didn’t vomit in front of her.

“Were you attacked? Were you there?” She was trailing behind them now, directing her tabby upstairs to alert Lavender.

“No. He was. And – “ He couldn’t tell them about the castle, that it would be destroyed by killing Voldemort. “They should fix this first. They’ll heal him.”

He was incoherent, she wouldn’t know what he meant. “You need Alastor,” she said.

“Yeah. Or… Scrimgeour.”

She only faintly raised her eyebrows at this. “I’ll send them to the hospital wing,” she said. “Take him quickly,” she added to Ron and Hermione, and then she strode off.

The castle was dark, so there were figures on the ground floor, but he couldn’t make them out. “Here you are,” Ron said, pushing open the hospital doors. “Lav?” he called in.

“No – she said nobody had been hurt.” Lavender came running out. “Oh, Harry,” she sighed in sympathy, but then pointed a purple fingernail at him. “I _told_ you!”

He couldn’t help it, he grinned weakly. “Yeah, I know.” Ron and Hermione dropped him carefully on a bed. “I’ve been splinched. And… poisoned? I don’t know what you cast,” he said with a glance at Hermione.

“I didn’t recognize it….”

He felt so desperately empty. He was without magic, he already knew it. He had kept Moody’s second vial in a pocket, and with some relief, he found it now. He’d take it, he’d take it every day if he’d save Voldemort by doing so. He put the glittering vial on the bedside table for after.

When he was settled, Hermione sort of squirmed. “We should be back out there,” she said, moving so Lavender could cast precise diagnostics.

“Please go. I’ll be fine.”

Her look indicated that he had an awful idea of what _fine_ constituted. But she smoothed his blankets, standing. “Send us a patronus. We’ll be back in a bit. Nobody’s hurt now, so I hope we won’t be bringing anyone else in….”

“Wait. Can you drop a note in the floo? Uh.” He looked around for parchment. Hermione handed him a small scroll. “To Grimmauld Place. I… need the Horcrux,” he said, knowing Ron and Hermione would understand that meant Tom and Lavender would not.

Indeed, Lavender hissed, stepping back. “Not in here,” she said. “It will corrupt all of my healing potions.”

He blinked at her, but the general public had learned a bit of the Horcruxes at some point. “Not in here,” he promised her. He scribbled a note with newly-bleeding hands, saying he needed to see Tom.

Lavender gave him dittany to smear down his torso as she cast spells on him. “Can I… I’ve got a potion, from the Aurors. It restores magic.” He’d stopped vomiting, and was fairly confident he’d keep it down.

“It restores _magic_?” she asked dubiously.

“It’s, uh, experimental. I took it last night. He gave me another for after. I just don’t want to interfere with… this.” He gestured vaguely to the medical tests floating in midair before them.

“Let me test your aptitude first. Take up your wand.”

She ran him through a barrage of tests. They were devastating. His Lumos flickered, nevermind anything more complicated. He was swallowing an awful lump in his throat by the time she finished. “Alright,” she said softly, stepping away to give him a moment.

The potion was like pouring magma in a thin line down his throat. Moody had said under proper circumstances, he’d take it under the supervision of a researcher, tested with controls. “Doesn’t matter,” he’d muttered, and Harry had gratefully pocketed the vials.

Lavender gave him permission to sleep, when he was stabilized. “Do you want them to wake you up? I’ll send them away otherwise.”

“No, I’d rather.”

“Alright.”

But he slept through to the morning; and when he woke up, Ron and Hermione were on the bed beside him. Hermione had a book open; Ron was eating a bacon sandwich with a concerned look on his face. It was so absurd that he actually laughed, startling them both.

When Hermione closed her book, he saw it was one of the same she’d consulted for Voldemort. “Everything worked,” he told her. “It protected him, and brought him to the portal. Just… he was disadvantaged. The land itself was on her side.”

“He should have been able to get out undetected. The cloaking spells, the misdirection….”

“She came to see him. He let her. Since he last tried to attack on the new moon, the equinox was, er, expected?” Voldemort and the Dëshmitar both had an appreciation for drama, and magic altogether. He could see why she’d been important to him. Why they had seemed to _like_ each other.

“Do you know where he is now?”

Voldemort had been _fucked_ at the end. “I don’t know. Still with them. The cave collapsed, a lot of it.” He looked into Hermione’s dissatisfied face. “You were perfect,” he promised. “Thank you.”

 

She gritted her teeth. “That he continues to put you in danger – “

“Please don’t,” he said, even though they were alone.

“I don’t want to keep any more of his secrets.”

This was fair. “I’ll introduce you to the Horcrux. It’s… sort of at Grimmauld Place right now. Has there been a note back?” he added anxiously. They both shook their heads. Damn.

Lavender forbade him from going out – there was breakfast in the great hall, “but it’s still chaotic, and you can’t handle the excitement,” she’d said.

He didn’t know whether he more resented the idea that the panic was undue or that he couldn’t _handle_ it. He took his bowl of porridge from her rather sulkily.

Ron and Hermione filled him in: there had been a cave-in in the east dungeons. It was not so far from the Slytherin common room, but only some unused classrooms had been damaged. “We are waiting for the Aurors to clear it out,” Ron said. “It seems like there’s a passage behind it. There’s airflow.”

That was fascinating. “It only leads under the lake and into the forest, if it even exists,” he mused. “Tell Firenze, he might like the shortcut.”

“Maybe,” Ron said doubtfully.  “We recast the ground floor wards, so it’s extra-supported. Still, we’re supposed to avoid that part of the castle until the dungeon’s been restored.”

He sighed. “Right,” he said. Honestly, given Voldemort’s captivity, the castle may never be entirely safe. He didn’t want to say it aloud, though, because that would make it true.

The flutter of wings startled them all. Fawkes soared in ( _had he spelled the door open?_ What the christ.) and dropped a thin scroll on Harry’s bed.

_Meet us in Albus’s office at 10 a.m. A._

Moody. It was nine thirty now, and he supposed he’d go to Dumbledore’s office looking like this. At least Ron had brought him a robe this morning.

But Fawkes had settled on his bedpost, and when Harry looked at him curiously, he held out a gleaming claw. There was another thin scroll.

“Thanks. Thank you.” He took it.

It should’ve been in Tom’s hand. It wasn’t. Instead, he recognized it faintly as Malfoy’s. _The Horcrux is missing._

Fuck. What Malfoy meant by _missing_ …. He couldn’t account for the diadem, but unless something awful had happened in Dumbledore’s office, it should still be fine. Tom himself was gone, then.

Maybe something awful _had_ happened in Dumbledore’s office, though. He had to go.

He was moving too fast, moving from bed and reaching for his trainers. “Harry?” Hermione asked in concern, getting up to help.

“It’s fine. I’ve got to get to Dumbledore’s office. Fawkes will take me,” he added, when they were reaching for him.

“Fawkes is a bird,” Hermione said patiently.

“I know.” He stood, shrugging on the robe. “You can’t come. I’ll be alright.”

He saw that it hurt them, after all they’d done that morning. “I’ll ask Moody what I can tell you by lunch. Oh,” he said with a backwards glance, “tell Lavender thanks. And sorry.”

They were frustrated with him, and there wasn’t much he could do about it. Fawkes swooped overhead, hovering as he left. The great hall was nearly cleared out by now, and he kept his head low.

A few floors up, he looked to Fawkes. “Can you do something?” he asked in a last desperate hope. If anyone could restore magic – restore a _soul_ , even – it would be a phoenix.

Fawkes swooped low, perching on his shoulder to look inquisitively into his face. Harry raised a careful hand to stroke his golden breast. “They snapped his wand,” he said, and his voice nearly cracked. “I’m sorry.”

Fawkes blinked a few times, and sung a mournful note. It resonated deep inside him. It might have strengthened him. “Oh,” he said, eyes wide. “Could you do that again?”

The rest of the way, Fawkes trilled soft notes into his ear as Harry stroked his plumage. It was nice. He didn’t feel quite so weak or shaky by the time they climbed the staircase to Dumbledore’s office.

Fawkes perched, and Harry approached the desk. The basin that held the diadem still burned with its fire, but it was low and sickly. The Horcruxes were drained of magic as Voldemort was, he realized. Fuck. He didn’t have much time, but he had enough to get to Grimmauld Place and tell them. He picked up the basin, balancing it in one hand so he could take up floo powder in the other.

When he stumbled through the fireplace, he ran smack into an invisible shield, driving the basin back into his ribcage. “Bloody – “ Looking up, he found Pansy laughing at him.

“Well, you should have written,” Daphne, beside her, said as he pulled down the shield. “Instead of feeling free to come and go. It is abusive.” She hissed the word.

Well ,that was a terrible way to start off. He stepped out of the remainder of the shield. “ _Abusive_ ,” he marveled. “Malfoy wrote. I bought the Horcrux. Oh, hello, girl,” he cooed when Moira came running at the sound of his voice. He set the basin on the mantel so he could pick her up, even as she wriggled wildly. At least _one_ person was happy to see him.

Oh. Two. Malfoy strode in to investigate a moment later. “Potter. Good.”

“Is it?” he said, even as Moira licked his face. “I brought the diadem. Here – “ And he was trying to rearrange the dog so he could reach for it, but Malfoy stepped in, taking the basin himself.

“That’s the fire that makes him real. Manifest. I’ve never seen it look like that before, burning so low.”

Malfoy looked strangely at ease, reaching in to pull the diadem out of the flames. “What happened?” he asked, low and serious.

“I can’t…. You’ll find out later, I need to see Moody and Scrimgeour first. His magic was sort of taken, and that must affect the Horcruxes too.”

“And you.”

“Yeah.”

A few more Slytherins had drifted to the doorway by now; he acknowledged them with a nod. “Magic replenishes, so it’s probably temporary. I could write when mine is… back, like it was. It’s never happened like this before, so I dunno how long it takes. The incantation is _Hithgalach_ ,” he added when Malfoy vanished the fire. “We should probably keep the Horcrux with him now. And you can just take it from the fire when you’re bored of him,” he said with a small smile.

Malfoy had re-cast the fire and dropped the diadem in, holding his breath. The flames flickered and spat, but then there was nothing. He exhaled through his teeth. And Harry couldn’t really understand the reaction, but then, the Slytherins had spent as much time with Riddle this year as he had.

“We’ll fix it,” Pansy said, not to Harry but to Malfoy. “There must be something in that wretched library.”

“Also,” Harry said awkwardly, because this wasn’t the right time for it. “The dungeons sort of… caved in last night. Not all of them,” he said at their sharp looks. “Just the eastern corridor, the part toward the lake. Nobody was hurt.”

“That castle wants to kill us,” one small voice muttered among the crowd in the doorway.

He wanted to tell them. He couldn't. “It doesn’t. The Aurors were in there all night. Ron said there might be a passage?” he offered. Mild interest. “Anyway, I’ve got to see Moody now. D'you need anything? Can I leave Moira here a little longer?” A few nods. “Brilliant. There you go, good girl,” he said, setting her down. She darted off with a dog’s sense of importance. “Uh, I’ll write. Or if something happens with the Horcrux… well, I only know a bit about it. But I’ve got books. I’m sure it’s temporary….”

“Potter, just go, we’ve got it,” Malfoy said.

“Right. Bye, then.”

 

Before he stepped back into Dumbledore’s office, he heard voices, and sort of groaned. “Am I late?” he asked, dusting himself off as he entered the office, where Moody and Scrimgeour already stood.

“No,” Moody said, looking him over. “Grimmauld Place?”

“Yeah. I brought them the diadem,” he said, though obviously they would’ve noticed its absence here. “Malfoy wrote this morning, and said that Riddle was, uh, gone. The spell was really weak, and nothing happened when we recast it. But – I need to tell you everything,” he sighed. “His magic is gone. He lost against her, and she snapped his wand, and took him somewhere else….”

He was too distraught to even explain in an orderly fashion. They both saw it, too. “It would be simpler to go through a pensieve,” Scrimgeour suggested, deliberately gentle as though Harry would break.

“… Yeah,” he said in another sigh, moving to the cabinet where Dumbledore’s pensieve was kept. They encircled the desk, but Harry fiddled with his wand. “I was… with him for a couple hours prior. He was casting wards in the cave to help get out. I was just there for magic. But… I’ll start when she comes.” And then he was pulling a shimmering strand of his memory from his temple.

It looked much worse, the scene reflected in the pensieve, after the fact. He could see glimpses, but… it’d be hard. Moody caught his look. “You haven’t got to come.”

“I should,” he said.

“Do you _want_ to?” he stressed.

“… Yeah.” So Moody gestured him in.

 

The cave is cold and dark in a two dimensional way in the memory. Moody and Scrimgeour are more interested in the visible wards. “Some are in Parselmagic,” Harry says at their looks. “Some are in Vampiric. They’re supposed to keep her from pursuing him and to help him to find a portal out.”

But he falls quiet when the Dëshmitar appears. Moody and Scrimgeour both startle at Bella’s appearance. “There are more,” he mutters. “There are Inferi later.”

“Of course,” Scrimgeour says grimly.

They watch as the Dëshmitar offers the picnic, forces Voldemort to eat with her. “If that wasn’t Imperio, it was identical to it,” Harry says darkly. “He couldn't even resist.”

But Moody and Scrimgeour move in closer for their conversation. They’re surprised that she returns his wand. They’re more surprised at how _affectionate_ Voldemort and the Dëshmitar are with one another. It clearly exceeds how much contact they thought Voldemort had had when he was younger.

She explains the varri, the souls housed in Inferi or other temporary flesh. When Harry looks over, Moody has pulled out a ledger, taking notes. When Voldemort asks what use she has for an undead army, Moody snorts.

When the Dëshmitar tells him that his own injuries are damaging Hogwarts, both Moody and Scrimgeour nearly choke. Moody freezes the scene with his staff in a reckless motion, before turning to Harry so angrily that Harry takes a half-step back. “He wouldn’t – “

“He didn’t know,” Harry pleads. “It’s awful, and we felt – _stupid_ for not realizing it, but he didn’t know.” At Moody’s doubtful look, he gives a small smile. “I’m as close to Legilimency as you’ll ever get with him, I think. He really – he loved Hogwarts first. It loved him first.”

“Yes,” Scrimgeour says quietly, stepping to Alastor’s elbow. “It doesn’t change our actions. It doesn’t even change his repercussions. But I don’t believe he’d harm the castle.” A shake of his head, with the artificial light of the memory catching his tawny hair. “We should’ve seen it.”

The Dëshmitar says that Voldemort’s immortality is a threat and imposition. She says that the communities of the Undying are angry at him. When he tells her that his politics are a means to immortality, not the reverse, Scrimgeour makes a noise of comprehension, while Moody jerks in annoyance. And when she says that she protected him from the Aurors while he was dispossessed, Moody outright growls.

She gives him the choice between staying with the Undying or destroying his Horcruxes. They are both intrigued by the offer. Harry is still devastated by the idea, that they’d survive without the Horcrux but so much of their _life_ is predicated on it. Of course Voldemort refuses, and the Dëshmitar conjures her staff.

The memory shifts as they move. Moody and Scrimgeour are tensed themselves, habitually. But while Harry is watching Voldemort, they are looking backwards toward the Dëshmitar, as long as they can see her.

Voldemort and the scene move so fast that Harry is getting motion sick. Voldemort sprints, casting beautiful complex magic as he goes. The cave warps around him, trying to trap him. The aura of magic doesn’t remain in memories, so Harry will have to explain afterward how _alive_ it felt around them, as though they’d been swallowed.

In the memory, Voldemort casts the Patronus. Frowning, Scrimgeour slows the scene. “Yours?” he asks incredulously.

“Ours, I guess. We didn’t know that would work. It’ll stay the rest of the time; I could hold onto its magic while he cast everything else.”

“That is… extraordinary,” Scrimgeour murmurs, looking after the Patronus’s path.

They reach the portal, the stone dais in the high-ceilinged room. Harry sucks in a deep breath, still sick from being rushed through the memory. The Dëshmitar appears, and the dais takes shape. Both Moody and Scrimgeour react, recognizing the shape from the captive Humnerë.

Now that Harry is watching externally, and now that he knows how it ends, he’s hideously anxious for Voldemort. Not that it does any good. His arms are crossed tight over his chest.

She summons the birds, returning them to Inferi and then imbuing them with souls. And then Harry is looking to Moody and Scrimgeour: “She’s going to make them… bodies. From the first war, mostly,” he says lowly. “Be careful.”

“No,” Moody says in faint horror.

Rewatching it, it is a striking image, all of Voldemort’s casualties (or are they _all_ of his casualties?) in one place. This time he can look elsewhere, at the edges of the group. This time he notices casualties also from the second war: Mulciber, Travers, Rosier. The few Aurors they lost. Dedalus Diggle. Sprout, Trelawney, Charity Burbage, Susan and Seamus and Collin. When he sees Dumbledore’s gray hair glinting near the back of the crowd, he stifles a cry.

The memory is slowed, and Moody’s gnarled hand is on his shoulder. “Get out,” he says. “Don’t subject yourself to this. _Twice_ , at that.”

He shakes his head. “I’m staying,” he says. It would feel like abandoning Voldemort now anyway. “Look, my parents will be – there,” he says, as the Inferi step forward. Voldemort casts fires at them desperately, _also_ trying to keep Harry from them. And at last, they duel.

Watching from this perspective, it is clear that he learned from her. Their footwork is identical. Even as she holds a staff, it matches his wandwork. And their respect for the magic itself is the same.

The first time Voldemort casts Crucio, Harry feels deeply sick. He hits a fist to his forehead, realizing. It had happened in Talacre, too. Moody glances over at him. “Parselmagic poisons me,” he says briefly. A look of comprehension.

But then there is Sectumsempra ripping into the Dëshmitar’s flesh, and then there is Harry’s broken body standing before Voldemort. Both Moody and Scrimgeour take shocked steps backward at the sight, but Harry himself is only sick with guilt, because Voldemort’s reaction will get him captured directly. A fireball – he’s lost amidst the crowd of Inferi – the Dëshmitar apparates before him. Harry sees now clearly that he’s splinched across his shoulders and down his torso as they apparate.

An abrupt new setting, and Harry is actually glad to look at it in some detail this time. It is a fortress, that looks as abandoned as the others Voldemort has used in Albania. The chamber where he lies is hexagonal, with arrow slits in half the walls. He thinks that this must be distinctive, he could find such a place, even if the entire Albanian countryside is lined with castles….

But then the Dëshmitar stands over Voldemort. Harry’s not watching Moody and Scrimgeour when Voldemort surrenders, or when she snaps his wand, but he hears their reactions.

She tells Harry to go. He hadn’t realized Voldemort’s last words were in Parseltongue until Moody says sharply, “What did he say?”

“He’s sorry about Hogwarts, and everything. He says to tell you.”

The scene cuts off more abruptly than memories typically do. Harry is pulling himself out as fast as he can, before Moody and Scrimgeour do, so he can wipe his face.

It didn’t matter, Moody took one look at him and handed him a calming draught, and he wasn’t even embarrassed to snap off the top and down it.

The silence was profound. Scrimgeour levitated the pensieve with him as he loped to the low table with chairs around it. Sitting, he pressed his crooked hands together before his face. Then: “Albus?” He cast a summoning charm on the portrait.

It took a minute, but Dumbledore peered into the frame. “Harry,” he said first, and he was so gentle and sympathetic that Harry wanted him _back_ , desperately. Turning to Moody and Scrimgeour: “What happened? I have been downstairs as they examine the damage, but it seems quite remote and inefficient as an attack.”

They explain most things so Harry hasn’t got to. At the end, though, Harry could add: “His magic is gone and so is mine. And the Horcrux – its manifestation – is gone.”

“You have had no contact since?” Scrimgeour asked.

“No. I thought I should wait for him to write. If it’s even safe.”

“Good,” Scrimgeour murmured, though Harry couldn’t see how. Then, looking over his glasses: “What do you need to know?” Harry shrugged, because he was extraneous to this except as a conduit to Voldemort. But Scrimgeour went on: “The Undying are a name for immortal – or functionally immortal – quasi-humans. Britain has very few, as our laws have historically been more restrictive than many other countries’. They are rarely a political collective. I have never heard that they particularly had interest in Voldemort, but it is reasonable.” Dropping his head briefly, he thought. “We can’t get in. We are not prepared for the war that would ignite.”

“She’d kill him,” Harry muttered. Maybe he wouldn’t be ransomed, but it was a hostage situation nonetheless.

Moody looked sharply at him. “They _won’t_ kill him. That would be the better option. They will keep him alive, tortured to destroy the castle by proxy.”

He nearly choked. “Oh my god.”

Neither Scrimgeour nor Dumbledore seemed surprised by this gruesome suggestion. Dumbledore’s lips pursed.  “The Ministry doesn’t have vampiric contacts.”

“No.”

“Find some,” he said. “In my travels, I found them nearer to human interests than the others. Unless you could persuade the Llanafan Gwyllion to join you.”

“We have heard that, if anything, the Undying are more fractured than usual.”

“Good,” Dumbledore said decisively. Both Moody and Scrimgeour seemed unpleasantly surprised at his assertiveness regarding Ministry matters. “We’re beyond purity. I wish I’d been bolder in my own life, to change our stagnant ways.”

“Who do you recommend we negotiate with?” Scrimgeour’s voice was rigid. Harry hadn’t seen them in conflict since Dumbledore’s death, and he didn’t like it now. Mediating here was beyond him.

“With the Humnerë themselves, ideally. Global doesn’t know their allies?”

“Alliance among the Undying?” He said it as though Dumbledore had said something stupid.

“Their needs are idiosyncratic,” Dumbledore conceded. “And most are self-sustaining. But _their_ world is also too small too avoiding having some relationship.” A frown. “And really, sending Voldemort as an ambassador wouldn’t be the _most_ foolish option.”

“You’re joking,” Moody said flatly.

Dumbledore spared him a faint smile. “No, only late to reach this conclusion. I heard that he’d had contact with the Humnerë after leaving school – the diadem had been kept on their land – but I did not know their relationship had been so significant.”

“He said he’d _defeat_ her,” Scrimgeour ground out. “I would have done it differently – he’s got at _least_ as much reason to join them – “

“He didn’t know,” Harry interjected. It was not his conversation and he wouldn’t de-escalate anything, but he _couldn’t_ listen to this. “He hadn’t seen them in fifty years, he didn’t know about the last time – “

“It does not change the fact,” Scrimgeour cut him off quite curtly, “that we now must account for such a significant dynamic.”

He shrunk. Losing magic and their connection always made him depressed and unstable, but everything _was_ also terrible. “Right.”

They went back to ignoring him. Dumbledore endorsed sending someone in, working with the Humnerë or an ally of theirs. Moody and Scrimgeour were both furious with Voldemort – and Moody he expected, but Scrimgeour was generally perversely accepting of Voldemort. While they couldn’t ignore the circumstances altogether, they weren’t eager to expend resources to get involved. Both the Ministry’s resources and patience were exhausted.

They fought for an hour. Harry didn’t get involved again. He wanted to ask to be excused. There were no good outcomes for Voldemort, and it hurt to listen.

In the end, Scrimgeour said he’d pass the relevant information to Global Intel. (“Who have not dealt with him before, and I don’t know they’d entirely want to now,” he said with a grimace.) Moody would write Dumbledore’s old political associates, people with more expansive ideas about international relations than most of the Wizengamot, in order to seek out key figures for interacting with the Humnerë, the Albanian government, or any of the Undying.

“And Potter.” Moody’s blue eye rolled to study him. “Wait for him to write. See him in sleep if he can. Say nothing.”

“I already told Ron and Hermione,” he muttered. “Just that they had him. They found me this morning.” Bleeding profusely, his sentence should’ve ended, and sick as a dog. It went unsaid.

Another sharp look. “Tell _them_ to say nothing. In the future, they don’t need to know everything.”

They sort of did, because Harry was so alone and so unable to cope with it all. “Yes, sir.” His voice stuck in his throat. “And… the Horcrux?”

“What about it?”

“The books I got from… here,” he said awkwardly, “are still in the safehouse. Can I get them today? I’d told Riddle he should take them, to figure out how to liberate himself,” he sighed. “Now… I don’t know. I can’t give the diadem magic like I can Voldemort.”

Moody was skeptical. “Do you need the diadem alive?”

“The Slytherins do,” he said promptly. There had been _grief_ somewhere in Malfoy’s look this morning. “I don’t know whether they’ll talk to you again, without him, honestly.”

This sparked something that Moody found true, and his posture changed. “Fine,” he said. “But we’ll take the books. Our researchers on soul magic will need them.”

He may never get the books back, if that were the case. Or they may find a way to remove his Horcrux by force, as they’d tried once before. He should’ve just agreed, but because he was stupid and hadn’t tried their patience enough: “Just to rejuvenate him.”

Moody gritted his teeth. “He won’t keep the Horcruxes forever. You can’t have believed that.”

He knew it intellectually but was in deep denial emotionally. “ _My_ Horcrux has saved him,” he said.

Moody made an impatient gesture. “ _Well done_. The magic is still monstrous, and you’ve lost sight of that.”

“This is a negotiation for him, not you,” Scrimgeour cut in. “Certainly we can’t destroy them while he’s so vulnerable.”

It was as minimal a promise as he could make, but Harry would have to accept it. “Right. Thanks.”

“What do _you_ want?” Scrimgeour asked curiously, since Harry had been so quiet.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But – you’ve already negotiated with worse than the Humnerë. It can’t be that bad.”

He didn’t look at Dumbledore because they were still not the same as they’d been once. But Moody’s blue eye rolled toward the portrait.

And Scrimgeour ran a hand through his graying beard. “Yes,” he said. “We have.”

Moody and Scrimgeour departed to the Ministry; Harry to his suite. If Riddle still existed, Harry was so desperate for warmth and magic, he would’ve begged to just lie down next to him for awhile.

The castle was abuzz because amazingly, there was a Quidditch game still on later that morning. All the faculty and Aurors were working hard to normalize things. Nobody knew this damage to the castle had any more significance than the others, or really any significance at all.

Before Harry disappeared into his suite, he dropped a note into the floo for Malfoy: **_Moody says they’ll restore him, or they’ll try._** That was enough. Then he drank too much kaval, tossed back some baobab tablets, dropped the diary open on his pillow, and fell asleep.

 

Late in the afternoon, there was a knock on his door.

He’d changed out of the sweats he’d worn earlier, so he just threw on a heavy robe and hoped the matter would be brief and unimportant. He got the door.

Ginny. He hadn’t seen her since Tuesday evening, and the relief he felt was so strong and bodily, he grabbed her in a hug even though neither of them were huggers.

She laughed, tapping out after a long moment. “Everyone is celebrating the Quidditch match. Hufflepuff won,” she added. “But Ron and Hermione said that you weren’t there, so….”

“Yeah, I….” _Couldn’t be around people today._ “Here, come in. You don’t want to be with them?”

“Nah.” She entered, kicking off her shoes to settle onto a sofa with her legs underneath her. “So, Voldemort...? Ron said you got splinched.”

“Sort of, yeah,” he admitted. “Uh, could you not mention him? Nobody else knows….”

“He’s not alright.”

“Well, no. But,” he raised his chin in question. “Tonks?”

A faint smile from Ginny. “I had to go pretty quickly,” she said. “They’d gone through all the safer treatments so they’d done a more volatile one that day. It _was_ based in Vampiric,” she said with a short nod, “and it was closer than anything they’d tried before. But after a few days her magic was… destroying itself. It was _awful_ ,” she said, looking down. “And my magic was closer to hers than anyone’s. Even Andromeda’s. So, we got married this morning. And it worked, and I gave her magic, and she’ll be fine. We’ve been staying with her parents and I’ll go back most evenings, but… it’ll get better.”

“Oh thank god.” Harry sank back against the sofa. “That’s really good of you. She’s lucky.”

“I mean, we’ll probably get a divorce in a few months, it was just the simplest way now.” Pulling out her wand: “D'you want whiskey?”

“… Yeah.”

She conjured a bottle, probably from her dorm, and they took a shot together. “She asked about you. Both of you,” Ginny said when she’d swallowed.

“It’s complicated,” he said. “I mean, _we’re_ fine, but he’s fucked. Has Moody been around?”

“All the time,” she said. “We saw him today.”

He blinked at this. “So did I.” Even if he was still angry at Moody, he still felt bad for how much _work_ they created for him. Honestly, both Moody and Scrimgeour were overburdened by everything Voldemort had gotten them involved in. He tapped his fingernails on the glass. “He could say more. Maybe just to Tonks. It’s hard.”

A wry smile from her. “Are you quite sure this isn’t a _very_ long game to kill you?”

He had to laugh. “It’s a little convoluted, even for him.”

Quiet. Then: “Sharing magic is really good,” she offered. “The healers said it was too experimental, and not backed by _rigorous testing_ ,” she over-pronounced, “and they stopped saying it when it worked. But it’s just… a really good feeling, too.”

“Yeah.” God, he wanted to hold Voldemort. Then, swallowing, he said, “They want to take my Horcrux.”

She knew less of Horcruxes than Ron and Hermione, but she got this by context. “No,” she said. “It will…. How do they _think_ he’ll react? No offense, but you might be the only thing holding him together.”

“Yeah,” he said miserably. Ginny poured him more whiskey.

They walked to dinner together. Ginny seized Luna and the Patil twins as soon as she found them. “I’ll tell you, if you shelter me from everyone _else’s_ questions,” she offered.

“Oh Ginny, you’re glowing,” Luna said.

A skeptical look: at best she was just a bit drunk. “Maybe,” she said. “Harry, you’ve got to…?”

Sit at the head table, like an adult. “Yeah,” he said sadly. “Bye, Gin.” He tugged her ponytail playfully. “Bye,” he added to the others.

Ron and Hermione weren’t at dinner yet, and Harry was pretty ambivalent about company anyway, so he took a seat at the empty end of the table. Within a few minutes though, when he had pumpkin juice and a book and no food before him, he felt a hand on his shoulder. “May I join you?”

Remus. “Hi. Yeah.” He shoved his book back in his bag, pulling food toward himself to look functional.

“I didn’t see you at the match.”

What a wonderfully mild opening. He replied with the equally mild, “I needed a nap.”

Remus’s smile always looked sad. “Whatever happened… if you want to talk….”

This startled him. If Remus had figured out the correlation between the castle’s damage and his own traumas…. “Did Moody say something?” he asked. “Did McGonagall?”

“Dumbledore, actually,” he said a bit apologetically. “He said I might check in on you. Prior to that, however – we knew something had happened to him because Severus’s Mark… bled this morning,” he said a bit reluctantly. “But then he hasn’t been summoned since. It has been daily, so….”

Dammit. They must have wanted Snape’s magic if not Snape himself to get to Voldemort, but no need for that now. “He’s… well, not alright. He’s alive. Of course,” he said when he heard himself. “And, uh, Moody and I fought about what we should do next. It’s fine,” he said at Remus’s look. “It’s been like this all year. He shouldn’t have to deal with Voldemort this much, so….” A vague gesture.

“He should. And it is your – _place_ by now, to protect him and advocate for him. That must be difficult.”

Remus. Remus was perfect. He hadn’t given any conscious thought to how much it hurt that he and Moody had gotten so bad. They’d been great in the war; Moody hadn’t been so much a persistent mentor as one there when things were the worst, and this hurt. “…Yeah,” he admitted at last. “When things are different with Voldemort, we’ll get better.”

“I am sorry.”

“Don’t be. I never asked Voldemort if he could… take back Snape’s Mark,” he offered in some guilt. “He… I’d want to believe he’d do it for me, but I really don’t think so.”

“You delivered him one ultimatum about Severus already.”

That was correct. He’d protected Snape first before Hogwarts, before all of Britain. He shrugged, pulling a dish toward himself. “I guess.”

“Harry!” Ron, with Hermione behind him, just arriving to the great hall. “We just saw Ginny, everything is alright – “

“I know, I saw her too – “

“For Tonks?” Remus asked curiously, as Ron and Hermione took seats on the other side of Harry.

“Yeah.” And Ron was actually beaming, and it was great. “She said it’ll take awhile, but she’d be alright.”

Remus exhaled. “Good.”

 

_Friday, March 26._ It seemed so unfair that the world would go on in the following week. The students didn’t know the damage to the castle portended anything more, so they recovered from it easily. He couldn’t say much about Voldemort to anyone. Voldemort hadn’t written and Harry hadn’t found him in sleep, and it was hard to remain hopeful that he’d be fine. Their connection was gone, and depression was settling back in deeply.

So it was even more offensive when he had to do cheery domestic tasks this week. Penelope had written about a wedding guest list and he was just so ill-equipped to answer this, that he’d sent a copy to Scrimgeour’s office, asking the staff there for, just, a list of important political figures who’d expect to be invited. His secretary, god bless her, wrote back that she’d taken care of it. And then there was the Slytherin estate: the forewoman had written that the structure would be finished next week, and did he have a painter or interior designer lined up? He did not. He really didn’t care what color the bloody walls were, since at the moment it seemed so unlikely that Voldemort would ever see them. So _that_ got handed off to Hermione, with a plaintive request to do whatever about it.

He got letters from journalists asking about Voldemort (not that they knew anything, just that he was out of contact while Harry remained). They asked about Rita’s book and how _awful_ it felt to be so taken advantage of. They asked about Muggle legislation and Muggle religion and Muggle historical persecution. In addition to the handful of personal letters he threw into the hearth each morning, he started throwing all the press inquiries in there too.

It was an awful week.

He taught DADA but skipped his own classes. This was the week professors were submitting their students’ names for OWLs and NEWTs, so McGonagall and Flitwick and Slughorn had to catch Harry at the rare times he was at meals to ask one final time if he wanted to sit the exams. Somehow, Runes was the only one he felt remotely prepared for, so he asked Professor Valentine, still substituting for Malfoy obviously, to put his name down.

He slept a lot and ate a little, taking kaval and baobab not so much for himself as for Voldemort. He didn’t sustain any new injuries, which was the smallest comfort.

So the following Friday, after a week of being miserable, he completely deserved the first thing that Voldemort wrote to him: _Stop it. You’re making everything worse._

His heart thudded in his chest. He’d finished classes for the week and was lying in bed late in the afternoon; he sat up so quickly that he got a head rush. Fumbling for a quill: **_Are you OK? Where are you? I want to see you._**

He hadn’t actually needed to ask, because Voldemort was already writing all the things he’d wanted to know. _I am still in Albania, and still residing with the Humnerë. You cannot be hurt. I have given them magic for the varri, in exchange for your safety and the safety of the castle._

_There has been no discussion of the Undying. I haven’t seen the Dëshmitar at all. I assume I am being surveilled, regardless. Likewise, nothing has been said of our magic, but there is doubtless a plan for it. Be careful._

Harry had his fist pressed to his mouth as he wrote. **_I wish you’d never gone_** , he wrote miserably. **_We could have done it all differently._**

A pause _. I’ve told you, I will never be free. What difference does it make, how literal or abstract my captivity is, or by which jailers?_

He felt actual anger at this, a stronger emotion than he’d felt all week, and he shoved it at the space where their connection used to be. **_I care. I want you back._**

_And the Ministry?_ he wrote, cleverly avoiding any sentimentality. _Nothing has been published._

**_You kept the Panopticon?_** Harry wrote, stunned. Or if he had papers?

_It is not a particularly cruel or oppressive captivity. Azkaban was worse._

**_Of course it fucking was. Still. I gave Moody and Scrimgeour my memory. They're both furious with you._ **

_For Hogwarts?_

**_No. Not really. That they didn’t think you had such a good relationship with her._** He paused, because the next sentence he wanted to write was _Could you even kill her_ , but – surveillance was so likely.

_Nor did I_ , Voldemort wrote. _I last lived with them when I was 28. Some of the same lugétër are here now. It’s been quite a perverse homecoming_.

**_Right. I told them you didn’t know, and they said it didn’t matter._ **

_It will have derailed their plans regardless. It has derailed mine. I should have been more aware of the Undying, anyway. I should have realized they are impatient with me._

**_What do you want the Ministry to do?_ **

_Leave it for now. The Dëshmitar is off with other responsibilities. If the Undying have deliberated yet, I haven’t heard of it._

**_They don’t want you giving them magic._ **

_Of course they don’t. But I won’t see Hogwarts destroyed._

That was the crux of it, wasn’t it. **_Would you have done it differently, if you’d known?_**

A pause, then: _What is the point of deliberating the past?_

Voldemort left behind his past pathologically, and somehow it still clung to him. Thank god, really, he had an inherent investment in Harry as the Horcrux, and now in Hogwarts as his blood inheritance. People might believe his goodwill as something both self-interested and true.

**_Hogwarts is OK_** , Harry wrote. ** _They have blocked off that part of the dungeon and cast structural spells around it. None of the students think it was anything but a fluke._**

_Good. Our vows against harming Hogwarts do take intention into account._

He hadn’t even thought of that. Most of the vows took away magic for transgression, so…. **_Good_** , he wrote. Then, **_What can I do for you?_**

_Stop being so utterly morose_ , Voldemort wrote back. _It is useless._

**_I couldn’t tell we were connected at all._ **

_Yes. I don’t want to draw heavily upon the Horcrux now, because they shouldn’t know more of its magic than they already do._

**_Do you need magic?_** Harry wrote in some urgency. **_How are you even casting for them?_**

_No_ , he wrote. _Surrender works like any vow, magic is only drained for non-compliance. It ensures the captive is ill-equipped to fight back. And they do have spare wands here. I found Bella’s, and it quite loves me._

Oh god. Voldemort casting with Bella’s former wand. Harry found it grotesque, but it wasn’t worth saying. **_Good_** , he wrote again instead. **_Will you negotiate out, then? Dumbledore said the Undying were fractured, so I don’t know how to make a deal with all of them._**

_Dumbledore was involved?_ Even without much Legilimency between them, Harry felt the distaste in his words, and sort of smiled at it.

**_Yeah. There was a gag order on the vow with the diadem, and now it’s just going to be us. Dumbledore was on the side of negotiating with the Humnerë or anyone else. The Ministry doesn’t have any vampire or Undying allies, and they didn’t seem to want them, but Moody said he’d write Dumbledore’s contacts for help._ **

_I have made no progress on quasi-human legislation, since I only have been permitted to write laws pertaining to the Unification. But if I may ever expand, they are primary among my commitments. Our isolationism has only ever damaged us. The Undying left Britain as a result of discriminatory laws, but we can no longer live without accounting for them._

**_Dumbledore said you would have done OK as an ambassador._ **

_How generous of him. I might still. I have not yet seen anyone with power. What would the Ministry have me do?_

**_I don’t think any of them thought you’d be able to do anything yourself._ **

_Perhaps_ , he wrote. _But the Humnerë find me valuable. Too valuable to kill, anyway_.

**_Good_** , Harry wrote decisively. **_And whatever happens, I won’t leave you. But I’d rather keep the Horcrux and leave than stay in Britain without it._**

A blot of ink blossomed where Voldemort let his quill rest. Living under the auspices of the Undying would sacrifice everything he’d earned in the past year – and he _had_ earned it. To give up everything twice in a year just sounded so devastating. But at last, he wrote, _I would as well. But it shouldn’t be necessary._

Voldemort wanted Harry more than he wanted his political career. That was… nice. Unexpected. Harry’s knot behind his breastbone had eased by now. **_Alright. Good._** Then, skipping a line: **_The diadem couldn’t be manifested after that night. I think its magic is gone, just like mine was. Do you know how to fix it? I asked Moody to take the books from the safehouse, and give the diadem to researchers, but they haven’t recovered it yet._**

_Really, why would you want to?_

Voldemort’s antipathy for the Horcrux and vice versa was sometimes funny and mostly heartrending, and here it was the latter. **_The Slytherins need him, mostly. He was a good advocate for them. Their parents will start being moved by the end of this month, and I don’t think they’ll speak to the Ministry again without him._**

_I hope they are not so self-defeating._

**_I want him back, too_** , Harry wrote. **_This week would have been easier with his magic. And it’s fair, anyway. We traded his freedom for the Slytherins, we can’t trap him now._**

Th reality was that they sort of could, since the Horcrux was sort of not real enough to enforce vows. _I don’t know_ , Voldemort wrote. _And it seems likely that the researchers are looking for ways to detach your Horcrux, as well._

**_I know. I wanted to fix the Horcrux myself, and neither of them agreed since I knew nothing of that sort of magic. It would have been dumb._ **

_You’d get closer than they will. I cast it in Parselmagic. If it can be altered or removed, only by the same._

He hadn’t known this. It was clever. It was something of a relief. **_Mine isn’t._**

_Yours wasn’t cast at all. I’m sure it frustrates them._

**_Should I tell them, about the diadem?_** he wrote. ** _If they can’t restore it anyway, I could._**

_I do not enjoy this new era of transparency with the Ministry,_ Voldemort wrote dryly. _Yes. When they’ve found incantations to try, you should cast them. I assume they have already discounted the typical restorations._

**_Maybe_** , Harry wrote. **_I’ll tell them. Also, I think I am allergic to Parselmagic. Mostly the offensive sort. Nobody poisoned me at Talacre, just casting Sectumsempra was enough. And I woke up sick after you fought._**

_That is darling_ , Voldemort wrote; definitely not the reaction Harry had expected, so he laughed. _You are too pure for Parselmagic. It is useful for security, even if you won’t duel in it, so don’t develop too strong of an aversion. Moody will be vindicated._

**_I did mention it. I only realized in the memory._ **

_Protect yourself with Parselmagic, at least. Learn how to cast shields and disillusionment with it. I want to keep you from fighting, anyway._

**_I know._ **

_I need to go,_ he wrote abruptly _. I can write, occasionally. I won’t find you in sleep until I uncover their surveillance. We only have to survive._

They’d said the same last summer and autumn, in Azkaban. Harry nearly smiled to see it now. **_I know,_** he wrote again. **_I love you._**

 And with that was the most significant break-in of their Legilimency, as he felt the twinge of anxiety that always accompanied it. _I love you, too_ , Voldemort wrote anyway, and then he was gone.

Taking a deep breath, Harry reached for parchment to write the Ministry. He needed to spend some time with Hedwig anyway.

 

_Sunday, March 28._ On Sunday, Harry was up early, to have breakfast before he’d depart with Aurors for the airspace shield. They’d hotly debated whether Harry should go out at all, but he’d already missed one week, and the shield was still likely to erode quickly.  


Anyway. The great hall was typically almost empty, as early as he’d get up for the shield. It nearly was today, with just four students around a table in the corner, whispering among themselves. But at the head table, Hagrid was at one end, with Remus and Snape in the center at the headmaster’s chair. Hagrid was eyeing them as they had a heated discussion behind a silencing charm.  


Harry shielded himself from the mess by sitting on the other side of Hagrid. “What’s that about?” he asked carefully.

“Something in th’ papers. Snape’s not happy.”

Harry was pulling out his Panopticon, glancing over to figure out which paper they had before them. It wasn’t the Prophet or the Quibbler. He flipped through articles until he got to the new _Wix Policy Weekly_. The top headline read: “Azkaban correspondent: Death Eaters to be moved to house arrest in experimental policy.”

He hadn’t thought much about the impact it would have on Snape. If he feared retribution, he might not be far off. He’d been put in the position of Headmaster for his safety, but to have the Death Eaters out of Azkaban, knowing Snape was protected while they had collectively suffered – it could actually be a problem.

Hagrid read over his shoulder. The clemency would be essentially as Scrimgeour and Riddle had agreed upon: offer house arrest to the Death Eaters with children. Both their magic and assets would be restricted and monitored. The Aurors could check in. Any sort of collusion or plotting would be punished promptly. But… it wasn’t Azkaban. And it would get the students their families back. The Order of Lua Saturni, the new organization was called. Scrimgeour headed it himself. (“Though requests for comment have not been acknowledged by the Minister’s office at the time of publication.”) The author wrote of it as though it were another legislative decision within the Unification, everything else they’d done to recreate their world this year. And really, in a way it was.

“I’s generous,” Hagrid murmured as he read. “Did you do this?”

Thank god his name wasn’t in the article, and Voldemort’s was only there incidentally. Actually it didn’t say at all the catalyst for this legislation. “… Sort of,” he said. “I don’t think I can say.”

Hagrid’s dark eyes studied him. “They’d better be grateful to yeh,” he said. “And never cause yeh any trouble.”

Harry had the distinct impression that all the Slytherin students just wanted to lie low for awhile, and he’d guess the Death Eaters were the same. They would all be grateful for an unexpected second change, at least for now. “I know,” he said. “I’m not worried.”

“Are yeh ever,” Hagrid grumbled, but he relaxed a bit.

 

Rye, Bragg, and Kingsley accompanied him to the airspace anchor in Malin Beg again. Moira was still at Grimmauld Place and he missed her, having become used to bringing her along. But the Slytherins needed her more than he did.

Anyway, the site was pissing down, so Harry cast a small shelter for himself with a fire and a bench. He had Hermione’s book, he had his diary. After figuring out how to angle his magic in the pouring rain, he settled in for a day of casting.

Kingsley joined him in his lean-to a few hours in. “Alright?”

“Yeah.” By now, the shield didn’t require his attention, just his magic and time.

“Good.” Kingsley conjured an armchair perpendicular to him, leaning in in an avuncular way. “May I relay what Moody said to tell you?”

Harry looked over warily. “I know he hasn’t had time to be angry with me yet.”

A faint smile from Kingsley. “Mad Eye’s becoming pragmatic in his old age. He couldn’t say exactly what had happened – I assume you couldn’t either – but he said you’ll maintain the shield through the Unification. He said he hasn’t got time to find anyone else.”

The effort they’d spend on the airspace shield was a punishment to begin with. He’d never thought of handing it off to someone else anyway. The Unification might be resolved in another five or ten years, nobody could properly say. But… that meant Harry would be involved for another five or ten years. He sort of lived in fear of being kicked out of the Order these days, so this also felt like a promise. “Sure, yeah. I don’t mind.”

“Don’t you?” he asked doubtfully. “It’s monotonous work, and a significant time commitment.”

Harry shrugged. “For you, too,” he said with a smile, because he always felt the need to apologize for the Aurors’ time whenever they had to come out here. “It is getting stronger. I couldn’t tell we’d missed casting last week.”

“Good.” Kingsley was squinting through the rain toward the shimmering shield. “Good,” he said again.

 

But late in the day, when the shield was nearly complete, a falcon patronus soared before Harry, startling him. Moody’s, of course, and it carried a note.

_The Unspeakables want to see you tonight. They’re holding the diadem. Make Shacklebolt take you._  
  


Well. He’d expected it to take longer than a week, but his own magic was effectively restored by now (granted, with a few days of the same magic replenishing potion, including one this morning) so maybe the Horcrux was too. “Does Kingsley already know?” he addressed the falcon. A cock of its head. “Here, could you – “ He was passing the note back, so Kingsley’s day would get just a little longer.

Within forty minutes, he was tying off the shield, taut and full in the sky. He packed his bag and disassembled the makeshift shelter before returning to the Aurors, on the far side of the site.

The Aurors were all a bit tense – it was just late enough in the day when everything glowed strange and silver, and it was harder to surveil than proper daylight or nighttime. “I’ve finished,” he announced. “I’ll come back the week after Easter.”

Bragg squinted up at the shield, faint against the darkening sky. “Good. Well done.”

“And Kingsley…” he said awkwardly.

He already knew. “We’re returning to the Ministry now.” Kingsley produced a portkey. They all took it.

But Kingsley alone accompanied him to the bottom level of the Ministry. “I didn’t know the Unspeakables had a Horcrux,” he said.

“Yeah. Voldemort’s magic was, uh, destroyed last week.”

“And yours?” he asked with a look.

“Sort of. I’m fine now, though.”

The Unspeakables’ office shifted layout each time he came here, probably as a security measure. When Kingsley dropped him off in the antechamber of a strange, purple-tinged lab, Moody was already behind the glass, with two Unspeakables, and two healers. Harry frowned, but waved goodbye to Kingsley, entering on his own.

“Potter. Come in.” Moody’s blue eye took him in. “Shield went alright?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Got enough magic to revive this?”

“Yeah. I mean….” He looked at Moody peculiarly. “Here?”

“Yes.”

Well. He supposed the Unspeakables’ professional vows of confidentiality surpassed any he’d ever take himself.

One Unspeakable, an older man with dark thinning hair, spoke for them. “We often work closely with the healers in the soul curses ward.” He nodded to the healers. “And we consulted with our colleagues in cursed artifacts and dark magic. But this….” He sucked his teeth. “We’ve never encountered an artifact like this before. Some colleagues had barely heard of it. And now to say it’s _alive_ ….”

He was edging closer to the diadem, where it still stood in the basin in which he’d moved it. “I hope it hasn’t caused problems,” he said, though he didn’t actually care.

“Well – no, but – “

Harry was reaching for it before anyone could stop him. Five identical hisses around the room, but when he felt how _alive_ it was, compared to last week, he actually laughed. “There. It’s… maybe not fine,” he said, because he could feel in its magic that it was angry at being trapped again. “But alive. Ish.”

They looked at him like he spoke nonsense. “Can I just… manifest it now? Sorry,” he added, because stepping in had pre-empted any explanation of what should happen next.

“No,” the other Unspeakable said. “Not yet. It could – well, the equivalent of splinch, the soul.”

Oh. That would be quite horrible. So instead Harry had to stay still while the Unspeakables painted runes (what else?) down his arms, so he could better channel his own magic to the Horcrux.

As they did, he looked up at Moody. “Kingsley told me,” he said, “that I’d stay on the shield. Until the Unification’s done. And I told him that was fine.”

Moody made a noise. “Five years,” he said. “When we put it in writing. The Unification isn’t useful as a marker.”

“Five years, then.”

“Good.”

He wanted to say sorry. But somehow, recently, he’d both already said sorry too much and had the sense he could never say it enough. “It was really good today,” he said. “I couldn’t even tell I missed a week. It’ll… settle, he said, in the next year.”

“You don’t need anyone to cast with you?”

“No, I’m alright.” He shook his sleeves back so the Unspeakables could paint runes up to his elbows. Then: “What do I cast?”

They made him hold his wand straight down as they chanted, and the involuntary drip of magic from the tip of his wand looked absolutely obscene. He was blushing by the time magic formed a thin puddle in the bottom of the basin. “That should be enough,” the second Unspeakable said lowly. “Could you cast the… the spell you’d use?”

It was outside their area of expertise, this strange and non-Western magic. Lifting his wand, he cast it. “Hithgalach!”

Everyone but Moody stepped back as the flame sputtered, dancing over the liquid magic as though burning alcohol. Harry’s wand was steady but he himself was shaky.

And then nothing more happened. The fire sputtered before steadying, but Riddle didn’t emerge. “Oh,” Harry said, wincing as he recalled Voldemort’s words. “It should be… cast in Parseltongue. Probably.”

The Unspeakables looked curious and the healers wary. Moody looked unhappy with this, but said curtly, “Fine.”

“ _Hithgalach_!” he cast again, feeling the sibilants against his teeth as he cast in Parseltongue. And then the fire jumped, and Riddle extricated himself from it. “Oh thank god,” Harry muttered, stepping in as though to touch him.

The Unspeakables and healers were mystified. Excited and scared and impressed. “How…. He created this magic?”

“Discovered it,” Riddle answered, himself. “Papyri from the Desert Fathers and the ascetics. I burned the texts afterward.”

The Unspeakables both flinched at this. “That would be invaluable – a new source of soul magic – “ one sputtered.

Riddle raised an angular shoulder. “I am selfish,” he said, flashing his teeth.

“You aren’t here as an act of mercy,” Moody said sharply, at Riddle’s ease.

“I don’t know any more about his state than Harry does. Less, typically.”

“You must – “ But then he realized that he didn’t want to have this conversation before the Unspeakables and the healers. “Come with me. You too, Potter.”

“Bring him back to study,” one of the healers said impulsively. “What we could learn from this magic – there could be _cures_ in it.”

“A Horcrux is vile magic,” Moody said curtly. “It won’t be back.” The healer fell silent.

Moody led them into a secured office, opening it with a tap of his staff. There were high-top desks there, like they had in the potions lab, and they slid onto stools across from each other. Riddle had cleverly brought the burning basin with him, and set it at the edge of the desk.

“You must know more,” Moody said lowly. “About him. Your magic is this closely connected.”

“Harry, pull your sleeves back,” Riddle said. “They’ve probably appeared by now.”

“What?” he said, startled. “The runes?” He hadn’t yet scrubbed them off.

“Not quite.”

So Harry was pushing his sleeves back curiously. And he saw what Riddle meant: beneath the painted runes, pink abrasions in ritual patterns were forming, nearly before his eyes. “What – Are they fucking _torturing_ him?”

Both Riddle and Moody looked surprised at this. “No. Not as such,” Riddle said. “They do want to understand the Horcruces. These are the marks of blood magic.”

He was going to ask why they were on him and not Riddle, but he already knew – because Riddle was only a memory, while Harry _was_ of Voldemort’s blood. “They want to take the Horcrux.”

“Eventually.” He tossed his hair over his shoulder as he looked back at Moody. “I couldn’t say more. Our connection only really accounts for bodily harm.”

Moody surprisingly accepted this. “And you’re needed for the Slytherins.”

“What is today?” Riddle asked.

“Sunday. The 28th.”

“Ah. And who’s out first?”

“Yaxley, and Rowle. As soon as next week.” He looked at Riddle sharply. “Don’t just get the students out. They won’t survive without an education.”

“So I’ve told them. They’re not optimistic about re-integration altogether.”

Moody ground his teeth. “Convince them otherwise.”

“Fine.”

“And you’ll need to stay until he’s back.”

Riddle hadn’t expected this. “Fine,” he said again, more clipped this time.

And that was it. Moody nodded them both out. “Hogwarts,” Harry informed him. “And then Grimmauld Place.”

Moody squinted. “Why Hogwarts?”

“I need to bring more dog food.”

Harry wore the diadem as a ring to transport it. He apparated to the edge of the grounds, where he landed deep in a mud puddle and cursed quietly. He wished he could apparate into the Chamber.

In his room, after re-manifesting the diadem, he packed dog food and a few new toys for Moira. “Do they need anything?” he asked.

“Such as?”

“I dunno. Most of them left so fast, they must… nevermind. Do they need books out of the library, at least?”

Riddle pursed his lips. Then: “No. They shouldn’t.”

“Moody’s pretty committed to getting some of them back here.”

“Hm,” he said doubtfully. “A generation of purebloods who couldn’t get proper employment – it would cause an economic crisis. And more significantly, resentment. Cause for extremism.”

Harry blinked. “Right.” The cuts along his arms were really starting to sting, he reached for one of the painkiller potions he used to take after Quidditch matches. “Does it hurt?” he asked. “Or does it…. The times they’ve tried to take mine, it’s caused soul damage. And panic attacks,” he added darkly.

“They haven’t altered anything, yet.”

Harry hissed through his teeth. “I hate this,” he muttered. Slinging the bag over his shoulder: “Can we go, then?”

“Are you sleeping over there?”

He raised his eyebrows. “I didn’t plan on it, why?”

“Do you want magic now?” Riddle asked.

Oh god, he did. He was better than he’d been, but his magic and soul were both still fragile. “Yeah,” he said. “If you want.”

Riddle pulled him down onto a sofa, taking both wrists, because that had been most effective. When Harry sagged in relief, Riddle looked up in some amusement. “Get ahold of yourself.”

Harry grinned rather self-consciously. Then, more seriously: “I think I’ve taken you for granted this year. Sorry. You’ve been… useful.”

“Useful.”

“Helpful?” He was always wrong around Tom. “I dunno. I wish you would’ve told me earlier about the Slytherins, though. I could have kept them a secret as well as I kept _you_ a secret.”

“They quite strongly did not want your hero complex involved.”

“… Oh. Right.” Magic was making him a little warm and loose. “None of them are going to trial, though, right? Or… anything else?”

“I couldn't say. None of the younger ones. Perhaps the ones who are of age would face some repercussions.”

“… Is that why they stayed?”

This got him an odd look. “The eighth years stayed because someone needed to keep contact here. For resources, but also simply information. We thought we’d have to divert efforts to find the students more often, but….” A shrug. _Nobody looked very hard._

That felt awful. “Did their families know?”

“The free ones? Some of them. Some of them arranged for their own hideouts. Nobody was _really_ completely unattached to the Death Eater arrests. You know what a pureblood family tree looks like.”

The magic was meant to help, but this was more depressing in itself. “They’re not disposable,” he said lowly.

“No.”

He didn’t know what to say after that. His magic was alright, even if his depression was persistent, so he shook Riddle off. “We should go, before they’re in bed for the night.”

Tom rose in a graceful motion, casting Disillusionment before they left. Dumbledore’s office, then Grimmauld Place.

Tom entered first and actually threw out his hand to stop Harry in the floo. There were pops of magic before them, and shouts, and scuffles. “Oh for god’s sake – “ Harry muttered, and he was shoving his way past Tom, dispelling the shields that had been erected. Malfoy, Zabini, Nott, and Greengrass were up, wands out. “I brought Tom back,” Harry said, as self-evident as _that_ was. “And I brought more dog food. If that’s okay that she stays.”

“What a fantastic surprise,” Malfoy said.

So he hadn’t written. So what. He skipped _It’s my house_ because he didn’t want to drive them out, but he did glare at Malfoy. “Are you fucking _hiding_ something? What the hell.” He tore down the remainder of the shields, grimacing when the house’s magic sort of flinched. “Where’s my dog?”

“Asleep.”

Harry was moving through the house by now, dragging his hand over the wards to ensure they were still intact. When he rounded the corner into the pantry and nearly ran into Kreacher, they both startled. “Kreacher. Hi. Uh, I came to check on the house.”

“It is in perfect condition,” Kreacher said, in a prickly way.

“Tom is back. He’s….” He listened; the five of them were having a low conversation in the living room adjacent to the floo. “He’s with Malfoy and them. And I brought dog food.” He hefted the bag off his shoulder. “Uh, where do you keep it?”

Kreacher took the bag and, without a word, apparated elsewhere in the house. Well.

So Harry wandered into the kitchen, not yet content to leave yet. He hadn’t eaten yet tonight anyway, they’d gotten to Hogwarts well after dinner. He was opening the icebox when the excited clatter of paws raced down the stairs behind him.

Moira had gotten good at launching herself into a high jump, and then fluttering to stay up. She could hover at his face for a few seconds, before he caught her. “Look at you.” He scrubbed behind her ears as her tail banged into his ribcage. “Who taught you that?”

Kreacher must have followed her down, because he now stood before Harry, looking like the open icebox physically pained him. “May I cook something for Master Potter?”

“Oh – yeah, actually, that’d be fantastic – Cheers.” He was taking Moira out toward the living room, if only to escape Kreacher’s baleful glare for invading his space.

The Slytherins had settled back onto the same sofas. And contrary to the typical dynamic, they were telling Riddle what had happened in the past week. Daphne Greengrass was speaking, and didn’t even look at Harry when he took a seat beside Tom. “… Then the Minister came by. We haven’t signed anything, but everyone’s families have, and he brought copies – “

“I want to see them.”

“Well.” She pursed her lips. “Blaise and I, ours are different since they weren’t in Azkaban anyway – But my mother made them promise house arrest if they found my brothers…. Ask Gotlinde, they wrote her father’s first. Anyway, he said some of the estates were giving them _trouble_.” Her perfect red lips curved in a smirk. A noise of amusement from Riddle. “And they want everyone back at school, but – I won’t leave Mum alone,” she said with sudden fierceness. “Not after this. I don’t care.”

“I want you back at school as well,” Riddle said, surprisingly mild.

She made a face. “You _would_.”

Riddle’s lips tugged into a faint smile, but then he said, “Don’t give them another reason to discount you. Don’t let them think you’re worthless.”

“They’ll think what they want,” Daphne said. “If they don’t see the value in our families, NEWTs won’t change their mind.”

“You should take your place as a young pureblood in – whatever this society is becoming,” he said.

“Did _you_ find your place for your grades?” she asked, pointed.

“I am not a pureblood.”

_Oh_ – how strange, to find that Riddle must have told the Slytherins approximately what Voldemort had told _him_ once – that their world only maintained an illusion of a meritocracy, that the purebloods ruled everything and had no particular incentive to share. These Slytherins might be alright financially – were _any_ of them poor? It beggared belief that all of them were wealthy enough to live off of – but their place in society, unearned as it’d been, had been pulled out from under them.

Daphne made an indifferent gesture. “I will go back,” she said, “but not because I care about my NEWTs.”

“I know.” Tom leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “You could take exams over the summer. You wouldn’t have to return to the castle at all. If some of them would find that more palatable….”

“Who told you to persuade us?” Zabini cut in sharply. “Are you working for Dumbledore now, as well?”

This did not aggravate Tom as much as Harry expected it would. “No. Moody.”

“Of course,” Zabini said with faint disgust. (And Harry was dying to know the subtext of this, but of course he shouldn’t even be listening.) “When is he resigning, already?”

“Later. Not much later.” But then Riddle was low and serious. “Ignore him. Petition the Ministry to take exams elsewhere. But don’t – _shame_ Slytherin. Don’t shame the purebloods altogether. You are an entire generation.”

Zabini shrugged. “I won’t stay. In other countries we could actually….” But then for the first time his gaze darted to Harry, and he stopped himself.

“Would _you_ stay?” Malfoy spoke for the first time, addressing Tom.

“Until he returns. Then – everyone would strongly prefer I didn’t. I don’t have any particular reason to stay in England, anyway.”

“I told them I’d likely live in Lorraine,” Malfoy said. “For a few years, at least. Until… whatever happens with him.”

They were all waiting for Voldemort. Whatever fate would befall him, or whatever politics he’d enable, or whatever relationship he’d be allowed to have with the Death Eaters. “What do you want from him?” he asked. All the Slytherins were looking at him warily now. “He doesn’t… he’s only in people’s lives when they want him to be. He can’t have any contact with the Death Eaters at all. But whatever you need – “

“No.” Malfoy looked nearly amused by the offer. “He could – _at best_ – offer us what the Ministry allows him to. Even if he wanted to do anything for us – and he doesn’t – the Wizengamot would never let him advocate for purebloods again.”

Dammit. Dammit that Malfoy was likely correct, and Harry wandered through the political world with the stupid hope that sincerity or cooperation meant anything.

Kreacher popped into the room bearing a sturdy tray with roast and carrots. “Master.” He passed it to Harry with a bow, before looking around the room. “Would the lady or gentlemen also like to eat?”

Murmured ‘no’s. Then Malfoy said, “The Vecellia from last night – bring another bottle of it.”

“Yes, sir.” _Pop._

Harry had hoped that’d be the end of what Malfoy had to say to him, but his gray eyes focused on him once more. “They made the correct decision, in forbidding contact with our families.” (The slightest inflection on _our_ , since Malfoy had no family left.) “Clearly it would be safest for us to be unaffiliated altogether. The legislation written within the next few years will determine, well, our safety.”

“He does want you to be alright,” Harry said. “He cares about Hogwarts, he cares about Slytherin.”

“He is not a good person.”

“Well, no.”

A quirk of Malfoy’s mouth. “So glad we’re in agreement.”

“But I am,” Harry said, speaking over him a little. “And what I ask of him – “

“Shh, Potter, no,” Malfoy said in a fucking infuriating way. “Oh thank god,” he muttered as an ice bucket with two bottles of wine popped into the center of the room.

So Harry was quiet, and they didn’t make him leave. Moira begged quietly on his lap and he fed her bits of roast beef (and, unsuccessfully, a carrot) while the Slytherins talked. He already knew most of what they told Riddle, and most of what Riddle would tell them. And the rest of the house was quiet, which he found strange – it was only about ten p.m. by now, so either the Slytherins all kept early bedtimes, or they knew he was here and were avoiding him. Probably that one.

But after a meal and a glass of wine and a long, magic-intensive day, Harry was slumping against the sofa cushions himself. Daphne was saying, “Bea said she wanted to go to Azkaban herself, when they brought out her parents. After Astoria… she doesn’t trust them. None of us do, really,” she added darkly. “It’d be devastating if….”

“Yes,” Riddle said. “They also need to keep the release dates confidential. Nobody is sufficiently worried. I will say something to them.”

A weak smile. “Thank you.”

Riddle happened to look over, and found Harry half-asleep beside him. “Go back to Hogwarts,” he chided, lifting an equally-sleepy dog from his lap. “I’ve got everything here.”

“You’re staying,” Malfoy said to Riddle, in an inflection that was neither fully a question nor a statement.

“Yes.”

And Harry felt better leaving him here anyway, even if it’d be a loss of his own, his source of emergency magic. “Right,” he said. “Uh, ‘night.” A scratch of his dog’s ears, and he went.

 

_Monday, March 29._ He didn’t know how it got out that he’d seen the Slytherins, but in Potions that Monday, when he and Ron were at a table adjacent to Lisa and Luna, Lisa looked over at him directly. “How is Daphne?”

He blinked at her. “Alright,” he said, skipping all his own questions. “They’re all alright. She… said she’ll come back here eventually. And the Ministry is sorting out their homes, all of them.”

“How will her mother know it’s her?” Luna asked, swirling some glittery moonseed on the desk with her wand.

“Uh. Should she be suspicious?”

“Of shapeshifters? Always,” Luna said with gravity. “Especially after what happened with Astoria.”

Harry went a bit cold. He hadn’t known everything that had happened with Astoria, and the general public knew even less. “What happened with Astoria?” he asked lowly. They’d all slightly leaned in.

“Lady Ravenclaw was near the entrance when Astoria returned. She was the one to fetch Professor Flitwick. And she said when Astoria entered, she was saying that her brothers had come to rescue her. But they’ve been missing since the war, so… shapeshifters,” Luna said simply. “Or a hallucination, I suppose. Hiding out must have been very stressful.”

He nearly pounded his fist into his face. Of course. He hadn’t understood what Daphne had meant by not trusting them, but they were clearly anticipating their _parents_ to be staged by the Humnerë. As Malfoy’s parents had been. They didn’t even need a body, just a memory, and the Greengrass brothers must have been involved enough with the Death Eaters that one of the captured souls knew them….

He wanted to throw up.

Lisa and Ron both looked skeptical, and it was probably better that way. “Maybe,” he said faintly. “I dunno if any of them could cast a Patronus, to prove it’s really them. Or… I don’t know.” They couldn’t identify people by jam flavors. Nothing to do with memory at all, because the Humnerë would _have_ those. It was insidious.

That would be what happened to Avery too, if they could imitate his father. God. They hadn’t known for so long what could lure them out. “Does anyone else know that?” he asked Luna. “About her brothers.”

Ron and Lisa looked surprised that he was taking Luna’s Luna-ness seriously. She shook her head, the small bells in her hair today jingling. “The Lady is quite shy. Especially around Aurors.”

“I… Right.” On one hand, Daphne and hopefully the other Slytherins all already knew of this risk, of the Humnerë impersonating their families. On the other, the Aurors didn’t seem to know, and it seemed like that should.

He decided to split the difference and write Tom, asking him to ask the Slytherins to pass this knowledge along. “You’re right,” he said to Luna as he pulled out fresh parchment. “Mostly right. I’ve got to write them….”

“She said she couldn’t write,” Lisa said sharply.

“… Sort of. D'you want me to pass on a letter? It only goes to a protected floo.”

“Yes.” And Lisa was looking to see if Slughorn was watching, but as Terry Boot had created a magma geyser out of his cauldron at the other side of the room, Slughorn was quite distracted for awhile. Both Harry and Lisa wrote discreetly.

**_Tom – I just found out the Humnerë lured Astoria out by imitating her brothers. Tell them all to be careful. Can they tell the Aurors? They really should._ **

**_We’ve used our Patronus for ID before. I don’t know if they could, or something close. Even Legilimency – the Humnerë’s memories are always broken, they say._ **

**_Tell them to be safe._ **

He didn’t realize anyone was watching him until Luna said, “Oh, are you writing Lord Voldemort? I didn’t know he would be involved.”

Parselscript. Right. Shit. “He’s not,” Harry said, folding the parchment crisply in half. “It’s a draft.”

Ron, knowing at least a bit about the Horcrux, gave him a sidelong look. Damn, he didn’t like having secrets.

Over lunch, he did also write to Voldemort. They were _his_ Death Eaters, or they had been at one time. After relaying what he’d found out – **_Is there a way to tell if it’s really them? Astoria or her soul or whatever held on for a few days._**

To his surprise and gratification, Voldemort wrote back immediately: _Possession erases their Marks. None of the victims at Malfoy Manor were Marked, in the end. And not everyone being taken from Azkaban is Marked, but the Aurors could hold the others until their time elapses._

Right. Harry exhaled deeply, because this was very plausible. **_Do the Aurors know who is?_**

_Yes. Of course. Any intake papers would make note of it._

**_And how did you keep track of the ones who weren’t?_** He must have, right? The unmarked ones were still summoned, it wouldn’t make sense otherwise.

_They are also bound by soul magic. I would know the difference. I would not disclose it to the Ministry, however._

**_But this is important._ **

_Unless they are concerned that the Humnerë have been living as the Death Eaters for months in Azkaban, it is not a threat. The Aurors know better than to break the chain of custody, and there should not have ever been time to switch out._

Maybe Harry was overreacting. The idea of the Humnerë so easily slipping into impersonation – into another _body_ , when they had it – was just so horrifying. **_OK_** , he wrote. It should be enough. He hoped it was enough.

Skipping a line: **_We got the Horcrux back. Could you tell?_**

_I could infer it, at least. How?_

**_I’ve supplemented my magic all week. And the Unspeakables and Healers cast a lot on it. They wrote runes down my arms, and I gave it magic at the end. They said they’d do it again, if they ever needed to._ **

_I’ve retained my magic since. It’s necessary for the Inferi._

**_But they are trying to take our Horcrux. The diadem knew. He said the ritual cuts on my arms were from blood magic._ **

A pause, then: _Yes. You shouldn’t be damaged by it._

**_I’m not._** The cuts had been shallow, healing off his magic alone. **_Have you got to let them?_**

_Yes,_ he wrote again, but the ink smudged and skittered across the page at the end as though he’d been interrupted. Maybe it was Legilimency, maybe it was just intuition, but Harry was certain Voldemort had to go in that moment.

**_I love you_** , he wrote anyway at the bottom of the page. Nothing.

 

He was alone at lunch. Hermione had gone to copy off some Muggle art for class that afternoon. And after Potions, Ron and Ginny had slipped off somewhere. Ginny had looked upset, and while Harry couldn’t ask, he assumed she still couldn’t go home to the Burrow for Easter this weekend.

She really deserved better.

Anyway, as he ate, he had _The Count of Monte Cristo_ balanced against a jug of lemonade before him; and he was sufficiently immersed that Remus actually startled him when he pulled out the adjacent chair. “Apologies,” he said with a faint smile as Harry sat bolt upright. “Have you got a few minutes?”

“Yeah. Of course.”

Remus watched as he tucked the book away. “You’ve read quite a bit this year,” he remarked.

“I’m slow at it,” Harry shrugged. “And it’s all Muggle fiction. He said all wixen art is rubbish.”

Remus hummed in amusement. “Hence the recent proposed grants for art and literature?”

Oh, he thought those had been idle grumbling on Voldemort’s part. “Yeah.”

“I did want to tell you….” Remus straightened his shoulders. “Tell him that Severus is seeking other means now. We’ll leave Britain if we must. But… _that_ is behind him.”

Harry had asked Voldemort to rescind Snape’s Dark Mark awhile back. He had said no, that he couldn’t and wouldn’t. They’d fought about it actually, insofar as they could fight in writing. He now swallowed a ball of guilt in his throat. “How?” he asked in enthralled horror. Amputation itself wouldn’t work, he already knew.

“I couldn’t share that yet.”

“He wants to be finished, too. Really. He’s got a lot of vows that protect everyone, but he also just, won’t. Please don’t leave.”

Remus looked like he didn’t entirely believe Harry, and that hurt. Still, his posture loosened slightly. “Thank you.”

“Don’t let him do anything stupid.”

Remus smiled. “He can be self-destructive. In the end, it will be good for him.”

Whatever Snape had planned, Harry didn’t want to be implicated in it. “Right. Uh, good luck.”

He and Remus would forever be awkward with one another, that their relationship was always too much and not enough. As Remus got up once more, he said gently, “We _are_ proud of you.” He was gone before Harry had an answer for that.

He pulled out the diary again, just to write one line more. **_Snape is finished._**

And only later that night, just before bed, he found Voldemort’s response: _I know._

 

But he couldn’t sleep that night. Forget his twin dependencies on dreamless sleep and kaval, he was dependent on Voldemort’s magic in one form or another now. It would be humiliating to return to Grimmauld Place, to ask Riddle to just hold him while he slept. But Voldemort kept their minds very far apart, and Harry was so prone to depression this year.

Humiliating.

He always had an easier time when he walked the castle at night. Perhaps Hogwarts loved him too, after a fashion, as it had loved Riddle. And even as oppressive as he generally found the dungeons, tonight they too seemed close to Voldemort’s magic.

So he walked in no particular direction, but he ended up near the site of the cave-in last week, past the Slytherin common room and a few former classrooms. The passage behind it – he _thought_ it was a passage anyway – was cool and echo-ey. And roped off but not properly blocked.

Well. He hadn’t had any ill-advised adventures recently. He stepped past the ropes, casting Lumos in a floating ball above himself.

It seemed to only be a corridor – there were irregularities that might’ve been niches or rooms once, but largely it was only a dark and damp passage.

And oddly, as he walked on, the gravel beneath his feet became wetter. He was under the lake, he supposed… or had he passed it by now? Lifting the Lumos higher, he couldn’t see any water in the ceiling.

He sucked in his breath as he came to an underground grotto properly, the gravel dropping off steeply into a far edge of the lake. There was mist on his face and the itself glowed with a strange light, bright enough that he could recall his Lumos. There were large flat stones before him, and he climbed atop one.

It was a beautiful sight. Someone had mentioned it as a myth – Riddle, perhaps? – but now it stretched before him. Squinting into the water, he saw nothing now, but he knew from the windows in the Slytherin common room that mermaids lived out this way. Anyway, there was a peace to this spot that he hadn’t found elsewhere in the castle, and it was with sickening relief that he felt exhaustion sinking into his bones. Maybe a few minutes. Casting a heating charm on the stone and conjuring a soft blanket over himself, he slipped into sleep. And when his just-in-case alarm spell buzzed on his wand the next morning, he rose at least a little happier than he’d been all week.

 

_Thursday, April 1._ He did it again on Tuesday, and Wednesday.

On Thursday, he got to breakfast early, to catch up on runes homework as he ate, when he heard Moody’s familiar gait approach behind him.

He dropped into the chair beside Harry without decorum, kicking out his wooden leg and pressing his knuckles into his thigh as though it pained him. “Morning,” Harry said warily, moving so Moody might reach for the tea he’d never take.

“Where do you go at night?” Moody asked, his blue eye sweeping down Harry’s body as though he might have written his secret across his torso. “Tell me you're not sleeping in the middle of the forest. You’re not _that_ reckless.”

He didn’t mean it to be funny, but Harry snorted with laughter. “No. I… can’t sleep sometimes.” It was expected, and the Aurors were nearer to understanding mental health than most wixes, but it was still embarrassing to say. “I was still in the dungeons.”

“You crossed the protective wards. If you were in the _chamber_ either…” he growled, keeping his voice low because it wasn’t widely known the chamber existed yet.

“No, sir. Uh – “ He was going to get in trouble for this. “The cave-in at the far side of the dungeons. Under the lake.”

He hadn’t even explained what was there when Moody lifted a hand to slap his own knotted forehead – and when Harry flinched backwards as though Moody had meant to strike _him_ , he noticed. Taking a moment, he said, “You don’t know what’s down there.”

“It’s a grotto,” he said promptly. “From the lake. I haven’t seen any mermaids yet, but maybe they’re avoiding me.”

“There’s no reason you should know this,” Moody muttered, but he went on anyway. “They aren’t avoiding _you_ , they’re avoiding the place itself. There’s some real dark magic there. Can’t you tell? Or are you just – _pathologically_ drawn to dark magic now?”

It sounded like a chastisement but it was actually a sincere question. “Are you sure?” he asked, frowning. “I mean, I can typically tell. This just was… alright.” Really nice, actually. The same sort of stabilizing magic as sleeping beside the Horcrux…. “Oh my god,” he said, putting his teacup down too hard. “Could – he have ever gotten in there?”

Moody followed only part of his thought process. “If he’s left another bloody Horcrux in the castle – “

“No. No that.” He looked around, but it was still quite early and, apart from Vector and Nyx at the far end of the head table, they were alone. “The curse on the Defense post. Do you believe in it?”

“Potter,” Moody said in an exhalation. “What has he said?”

“That it’s real, and that he removed his own memory so he couldn’t undo it. It was after all the Horcruxes’ time, and they said they’ve looked, but….” He was reaching for his bookbag already. “He said that sort of magic would be in a ward or a keystone, but we never saw it among the security wards this year…. The bottom of the lake,” he marveled. “That _arsehole_.”

“We won’t do this now.” Moody looked pointedly at his bookbag. “The area’s not even secured. If there’d been another cave-in, they would’ve never found your body,” he said severely, watching Harry go gray in the face. “And the lake is the mermaids’ domain, so you’re _also_ quite lucky they haven’t cursed you, because honestly they’d be entitled to. We’ll have to bring out a mediator before we can even properly search.”

“I want to be there, if you retrieve it,” Harry said. “His magic won’t hurt me.”

“Ask him what sort of traps he might put down there. In the past he’s used blood magic, Fiendfyre, Inferi….”

Harry shuddered. “I didn’t see any Inferi last time I was in the lake.”

“Ask him.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And….” Moody sighed through his teeth. “How is he?”

Harry was actually reluctant to say, because by all accounts he was fine. He essentially worked for the Humnerë in this moment, and wasn’t that uncomfortable. “Alright,” he hedged. “They haven’t really hurt him. There were some ritual cuts down my legs yesterday but nothing, uh, extensive. And we’ve only written, he won’t let his Occlumency down at all.”

This surprised Moody, probably because they just hadn’t spoken of it as Occlumency and Legilimency before. “Tell him that the vow stands, and if any of his machinations harm British citizens, he’ll be held responsible.”

“ _Machinations_ ,” Harry echoed. “He is not free.”

“I don’t care.”

He fought back the fury in his chest, because they couldn’t argue about it here. “Right,” he bit out, and Moody raised his eyebrows at Harry’s tone but didn’t comment. “Is that why you came?”

“I didn’t come for you at all. I came for Snape.”

Harry’s eyes darted to the center of the table. “They’re usually here early. But they were both gone from dinner last night, and the dueling club. It was the full moon,” he realized, feeling like shit because he should’ve wished Remus good luck or something. “He’s probably still asleep.”

“Yes,” Moody said, rather grim. “I need to find them.” As he stood, he affixed Harry with a stern look. “And I’m securing the grotto _properly_ this time. Don’t circumvent it.”

“Yes, sir.”

And Moody limped off, unhappy with him and unable to do anything about it.

 

Harry still got piles of letters every day, most of them delivered with a Ministry stamp on it after being vetted by their security, and so at lunch that day he was reluctantly picking through them before tossing the lot. Ron and Hermione were on either side of him, pulling out the interesting-looking ones. “Still mostly about Rita,” Hermione muttered, shoving a rather thick letter back into its envelope. “And about Dumbledore. They’re so… _ungrateful_ ,” she bit out the word. “Of course he wasn’t perfect, but he was _good_.”

Harry had nothing to say to this. He and Dumbledore hadn’t settled on a new relationship yet, whether post-mortem or post-Riddle or post-Rita or post-Harry’s reckoning with his own childhood abuse. And thank _fuck_ Rita’s book hadn’t dredged up anything much of his childhood, anyway – that the most she’d managed was, _Albus made the unexpected and controversial decision to leave Potter with his nearest Muggle relatives, rendering him unaware of our world until his fated Hogwarts letter would arrive. While Dumbledore never spoke on this decision publicly, the author must wonder if it served as an intentional handicap of young Harry’s magic_. So Rita could fuck off regardless, but at least nothing of the Dursleys was public knowledge.

Anyway. “He was supposed to be a hero,” Harry said, peering at the letter before her. “I dunno what comes next if her rumors stick. Obviously _I’m_ useless as a hero now, but Dumbledore….”

“Was always a contentious figure,” Hermione said. “You just wouldn’t know it, in the company we keep.”

“I think they still need a hero.” And privately he was thinking of a conversation he’d had in the Ministry awhile back, Scrimgeour and Voldemort and the Wizengamot considering some controlled protest against Voldemort, to maintain the illusion of encouraging dissent. It was hopelessly dark, but…. “I think a lot of people will take it really hard if there’s nobody left to admire.”

“Mum says no politician has ever gotten anywhere without being a bastard,” Ron offered. “Er – she says it differently. But – she also says Witch Weekly still mostly likes you. Their editor took it hard when you married him, but….”

“Please don’t make me start reading Witch Weekly.”

He grinned. “Dunno what you could to _rehabilitate_ yourself any more. Should we stage a photo op of you rescuing Crookshanks off a flying carpet?”

“A carpet?”

“Sure, cats get stuck on them all the time.”

“Not Crookshanks,” Hermione sniffed. “I do agree with you, Harry, but nobody could just – _plant_ a hero.”

He offered her a tentative smile. “If you’d ever like to organize a protest against Voldemort, you’d get supporters, anyway,” he said lightly.

“Hey.” Ron had pulled a strange dark envelope from the pile – it was large like a manila envelope but looked to be made of vellum. “Switzerland,” he read the postmark. “And there’s some serious security charms on it. Did you ask Neville to send you something poisonous?”

He snorted. “Definitely not. Here.” He took it but didn’t open it, because he had at least a guess what it was. Avoiding Ron and Hermione’s identical looks of pleading, he put it away.

When he slipped away between lunch and afternoon classes, he brought the letter back to his suite. The security charms were nearly oppressive, burning his fingertips as he opened the envelope.

It was a personal letter, without a letterhead. Even just a glimpse of the handwriting verified his suspicion – that it was _old_ handwriting, in the ornate style that nobody used anymore. He pulled out the parchment from Grindelwald.

_Dear Harry Potter,_

_You do not know me, but I am ever vain enough to hope you recognize my name. As there has been a recent flurry of renewed interest in the intersection of Albus’s life and my own, I find myself thinking fondly of England recently. As often as our names are paired together, it would no doubt have been more appropriate that I should write to Lord Voldemort, but the news of his exile has even reached Nurmengard. I trust that you will relay anything of interest to him._

_I hope you have recognized that Madam Skeeter’s book is more of a referendum on your relationship than it is on our own. I have not yet read it, though I would like to, but Albus graciously charmed my cell with the delivery of newspapers a very long time ago. He said that I should be able to watch the world recreate itself without me. The warden does not allow any press requests to find me, but none of them seem worthy of my words, regardless._

_Albus wrote to me religiously. He mentioned you often – not merely as the savior, but also as a student and beloved child of his own. As I hope you know by now, our philosophy in our shared youth was a glorious utilitarianism. He said near to his death that he knew of few others who moved from pragmatism to idealism late in life. You were still a casualty of his lingering pragmatic decisions. He told me that you were good, that you’d die willingly for another’s sake. He wondered if he should tell you as much, but I told him it would be a monstrous gesture. You may also think this was the wrong decision._

_Likewise, he would write to me about Voldemort – and before that, about Tom Riddle. Voldemort and I have never met, but we also covertly corresponded during his time as a student, when I was still free. He has been reckless when he could have been cunning, but then, I never fought for legitimacy as a halfblood orphaned Slytherin must have._

_I don’t believe Albus ever knew of our correspondence. He wrote of Voldemort in those years after his graduation and my imprisonment, because he had heard Voldemort was seeking the same dark magic by which we ourselves had once been enthralled. I told him less than  I might have, but I do not regret it._

_The world is eager to compare Voldemort to me, but in truth Albus only saw himself in Riddle. It disgusted him. He regretted Riddle’s fate more than he regretted yours. I hope that will mean something to him, even after all this time._

_Albus never could have saved Voldemort, and not only due to their mutual antipathy. Albus’s own conversion was quite imperfect, and really nothing to do with the Muggles at all. It was in one of my acts of cruelty, cruelty toward him, the young man who wanted my love more than he wanted to rule the world, that his faith in our shared politics faltered. We never properly discussed it, but his disillusionment clearly began and ended with my willingness to manipulate and abuse him._

_How perfectly utilitarian it was, that he should be grateful for the betrayal in the end._

_I have little to say to Voldemort at present. You have done more for him than Albus ever could. I would never have expected the young man with whom I corresponded to accept a position anywhere but at the top. I don’t claim to have ever known him, but I particularly do not know him now. Albus never wanted to believe in a soul beyond redemption, but Voldemort was scarcely a soul._

_Has he reclaimed his Horcruces? Albus wrote once, asking for magic by which to do so. I had never seen anything useful, and by that time he’d stolen my books. It seems unlikely, since a Horcrux exists solely to survive. But Voldemort refused to die out of spite, it seems, and I expect he could reclaim a Horcrux out of spite too._

_I do hear rumors here, that he has returned to Albania. I assume he is among the Undying, as nothing else is worth his attention. If he is among them, however, he has gotten in far over his head. They do not care for human machinations, especially not those of one so arrogant as Voldemort._

_Albus wrote to tell me of the signet ring when he found it. He said that even among the Horcruces, it was special. I asked him, a few weeks before his death, to impart its secret to someone, but he seemed confident that he could tell you himself. He also seemed committed to letting it kill him._

_I was sorry to miss his funeral._

_I was not good to Albus, but he was good to me. Even before his public redemption, I never deserved him._

_Likely you know that he cast the spells of imprisonment on my cell himself. You may not know that he crafted them from love. I have a set of rooms here which I am not permitted to leave, but I am kept here by the warmth of love that permeates the space. I feel solitude only when I approach the boundaries. It is clever, thoughtful, generous magic._

_So I am writing to both of you to tell you this: he has never been a spiteful person, even when by all accounts he should be. I hope Madam Skeeter’s book makes mention of the act that after the duel, he healed me himself. Faced with a perpetual sentence of solitude, his magic has kept me company. I cannot ask forgiveness on his behalf, but I hope you both one day should find it._

_In Merlin’s name,_

_Gellert Grindelwald_

 

Harry sat motionless on his bed for a long time. He needed to see Dumbledore. And… he needed to get to class. Dammit.

He didn’t know what he’d say to Dumbledore, anyway. They had been _functional_ around one another for awhile now. But Harry had rebuffed any more personal interaction, even though seeing sadness in the portrait’s eyes nearly killed him.

He reached for his bookbag, switching out the textbooks. But he did have enough time to flip open their diary and, beneath the morning’s exchange (“You hid the DADA curse at the bottom of the lake, you utter _twat_ ”), he wrote rather more solemnly: **_Grindelwald wrote to me, about us and about them. I think you should see it. Could I copy it out here?_**

To his surprise, Voldemort must have kept the diary near at hand, because as Harry was pinning on his cloak, Voldemort wrote back: _Please. I assume it is long. Cast signo to draw a box around the target text, and effingo to duplicate it._

It took a few tries, but then Grindelwald’s elegant hand blossomed on the page between them. **_I’ve got class now_** , Harry wrote beneath it, **_then therapy then runes. I’ll be free by about 9 tonight. I love you, be safe._** And closing the diary, he left Voldemort to pore over the letter.

 

He was so clearly distracted that night that Professor Valentine let him go a bit early from ancient runes. “Have you written up a schedule for revisions?” she’d asked him briskly as he’d packed up. “April already! It goes fast, it really does.”

He wanted to be back in his suite, alone with Voldemort’s diary, as soon as possible. But when he entered his corridor – Ron and Hermione’s door had been propped open, and Hermione nearly ran to see him. “Finally. You missed dinner,” she chastised. “Here, we’ve got butterbeer at least – oh, Ginny’s here too – “

Damn. He’d been ready to politely turn Hermione down, but he couldn’t say no to Ginny. “Give me a minute?” he said, pulling his bag off his shoulder. “I want to get out of my robes.” Hermione waved her permission.

Inside his suite, he fished out the diary one-handed as he undid his cloak with the other. He’d expected a longer message back from Voldemort, but his heart stuttered at the single line he’d written: _I want to see you tonight._

He fumbled for a quill. **_Is it safe?_**

No answer. He must be elsewhere. **_I have to be with friends for a while. I don’t want to do it if it puts you in any danger. And I don’t know why they’d let us have contact except to take the Horcrux._**

It had been such a long, emotionally exhausting day. With Sabita in therapy, he had predictably circled the topic of forgiveness _again_ , and he felt like he understood less than he ever had. He was dreading trying to sleep again tonight without the respite of the grotto’s magic.

At least if Voldemort found his consciousness, he was good at holding Harry under in sleep. It’d nearly be worth it.

He ended up in the toilet, holding a nappy. It was typical this time of night, settling into bed as he prepared for classes the next day. It would be stupid to wear it in front of friends. He put it on anyway, exhaling deeply when the weight of the cotton hung from his hips. He would leave his robe on over his trousers, just for discretion (along with actual discretion spells). But he kicked of his trainers and pulled off his tie, padding barefoot across the way with the diary in a back pocket.

The three of them were on the sofa, butterbeer and crisps and a scattering of chocolate frogs before them. “Hi,” Ginny said, moving so he could sit beside her.

“Hi. What’s the occasion?”

“Dunno. Any chance you could skive off class tomorrow to go to Diagon Alley? The twins’ birthday was today, I wanted to take them out.”

“No. But make it tomorrow night and I’d skip dueling club to go. It’ll probably be cancelled anyway, with people… going home for Easter,” he finished stupidly. “It’s still not okay with your parents, then?” he guessed.

“No. Not really.” She was more unmoved by this than the previous times she’d mentioned it. “Ron’s told them they’re being stupid – “

Ron made a strangled noise. “Not like that,” he protested.

“Fine. Ron said so in other words, and Fred and George said it in _exactly_ those words. It’s not like I’ve got to stay over the summers anymore, I think I’m just moving into her flat after school anyway, but – “ She made a tired gesture. “You know.”

Really, he didn’t. Voldemort had said to him once that they’d both been spared the burden of having parents, and in this moment he nearly felt it. “Sorry,” he said.

“It’s alright,” she said in a sigh. “You know, the DMLE sent them a letter, commending me on my _bravery_ and _sacrifice_. As though it were a sacrifice to save her! I think she’ll be able to come out tomorrow, too, by the way. But I’m not allowed to keep her out late,” she said with a lopsided smile. “Or else she’ll turn into a… potato?”

“Pumpkin,” Hermione corrected. “Oh, I will miss the myth unit. Tomorrow we’re beginning on common Muggle household repairs. Actually, Harry, could you take the batteries out of these clocks?” She lifted a tub of alarm clocks onto the coffee table. “The assignment’s to use the screwdriver to take the panel off and put the batteries in correctly, though as long as we’re not covered in battery acid by the end of class, I will count it as a success.”

Harry grinned, taking a screwdriver and a butterbeer in opposite hands. “Yeah, sure.”

Hermione charmed the tape deck on as Harry walked Ron and Ginny through using the screwdriver. “No, the _other_ way – to your left – “

“There is no _left_ , it’s a circle!” Ron huffed.

Soon enough they were dismantling alarm clocks efficiently as the music Hermione had taped over the Christmas holidays bubbled away in the background. Harry was a few butterbeers in when Hermione looked at him too innocently. “What did Grindelwald write to you?”

Both Ron and Ginny laughed as though this were a joke. “Grindelwald couldn’t be worse than some of these nutters,” Ron said.

“Uh. No, it was him.” Or someone posing as him, he supposed, but such stringent security spells could have only come from inside Nurmengard. “I can’t tell you. But it’s nothing bad,” he added. “Just, uh, personal.”

“I’d shit myself if Grindelwald wrote to me,” Ron muttered. “If he knew I existed at all, actually. He’s killed loads more people than….” He trailed off.

“Than Voldemort has,” Harry finished firmly. “I know. He’s never getting out of Nurmengard, anyway.”

“Please don’t let him embroil you in anything,” Hermione nearly pled. “No _favors_. It’s not about that – _awful_ book, is it?” (She nearly said _that fucking book_ , and Harry grinned at it.) “Because really, journalists shouldn’t be able to reach him in there.”

“He said Dumbledore charmed the cell to deliver papers.”

“That’s generous,” she said darkly.

“It is.” He couldn’t tell them the rest. That the cell filled Grindelwald with love. That Dumbledore had been the one to heal him. That somehow, Dumbledore deserved his forgiveness, whatever _that_ meant.

Ginny prised a pair of batteries from the compartment as she thought. “Is the rest of Nurmengard… alright? There’s been so many articles about closing Azkaban – though Merlin knows what we’d do with the Dementors, Dad says he’s seen a hungry one destroy a home like a poltergeist before. Maybe – well, the ones you haven’t _liberated_ ,” she said teasingly, “could be transferred.”

“There are closer prisons,” Hermione objected.

“I didn’t liberate anyone,” Harry also objected, nearly over her. “And it hasn’t worked yet. But I hope it does.”

“The papers have been really dodgy about it,” Ginny said. “It’s still on this weekend, isn’t it? They won’t publish anything specific.”

“The Death Eaters are still _wanted_ , in a way,” Harry said. “And not just by the vampires. There’s, y’know, people who want retribution for the war, too.”

“As they should have,” Hermione said lowly. “In some sense.”

Hermione believed in justice in a way Harry never could. “Yeah,” he said anyway. “But, y’know. Taking away the families of an entire generation of Slytherins would radicalize them.” As Riddle had said to him recently.

And none of them believed this was his own thought, damn them all. “Did Moody say that?” Hermione asked skeptically. “As though the purebloods haven’t had everything they’ve ever wanted handed to them, the _fragile_ – “

“I know,” he said. “But justice won’t matter if we’re all dead, of another war or a population crisis or both.”

Her rebuke was going to be about authoritarianism or corruption or discrimination, and it wasn’t that any of it was _wrong_ , only that they’ve said it all before. She shook her head instead, her hair bouncing. “You already know what I think,” she said.

“Yeah. Sorry,” he said, because he couldn’t think of anything else. Hermione sighed, clicking her fingernails against her butterbeer.

They’d nearly gutted all the alarm clocks when Harry’s diary went warm in his pocket. He fumbled for it, getting everyone’s attention abruptly.

_It should be now. Or soon._

Honestly, it seemed like the wrong time. It was only eleven here, which meant midnight in Albania, he’d looked it up. But since Voldemort was staying with _vampires_ , shouldn’t he be safer doing illicit things in midday? Or maybe Harry grossly misunderstood how vampires worked. Anyway. “I’ve got to go,” he said. “I’ll come out tomorrow night?”

Silence from Hermione, and more awkwardly from Ron. “Yeah,” Ginny said, smiling up at him. “We’ll find you after classes?”

God bless Ginny. “Yeah,” he said. “Uh, ‘night.” He got out before the awkwardness killed him.

In his room, he was kicking off his clothes, swallowing kaval, casting cleaning spells on his face and mouth. **_I don’t think I can sleep._**

_Just lie down._

Lights off, covers over him. He felt his heart beating too acutely. He was anxious, and it wasn’t helping anything. Occlumency – he needed to clear his mind anyway. He could feel the butterbeer buzzing in his brain, distracting him. He couldn't –

And then Voldemort seized his soul, pulling it close, and then he was asleep.

_That bloody hurts_ , he thinks before the patches of light and darkness mean anything to him.

“Mm.” Voldemort is uninterested.

And Harry’s actually irritated with him, because his friends were irritated with _him_ on Voldemort’s account, and he’s not even grateful that Harry would drop everything for him.

“Thank you,” Voldemort says, mildly surprised and taken aback. They can’t really fight when they’re this entangled, they understand each other too well. He’s sorting through the rest of Harry’s thoughts now, beginning with the nearest. “They are out now, and I am alone. I could not promise we are not being surveilled.”

_We_? Harry thinks doubtfully, but then he recalls perfectly well that the Dëshmitar had known of his presence before.

Voldemort is in a potions lab, a large one vented to the dark sky. Candles float as they do in the great hall. “I don’t know what they know of the Horcrux,” Voldemort says, moving deliberately across the room. “There has been some blood magic. Not enough, I think, to draw any interesting conclusions.” And Harry wonders what Voldemort himself is doing, that he’s been effectively _commissioned_ to deconstruct a soul. “Yes,” Voldemort says darkly. “Approximately.”

He approaches a large cauldron on the far side of the room. A _person-sized_ cauldron, that reminds Harry of Voldemort’s own resurrection. His reaction is so strong and visceral – he tries to backpedal as Voldemort is striding toward it, and the conflict brings them to an abrupt halt. “You are correct,” he says. “There is an Inferius in the cauldron now. The potion is not so far from my own. All that is left is to create some generic substitute for particular flesh, blood, and bone.” He is quiet for a moment. “I thought at the time, that _soul_ had little to do with my success. Of course, unknowingly involving your Horcrux….”

_I hope it helped_ , Harry thinks, even though that night is still among his worst memories.

“Undoubtedly.” He hasn’t gone any closer to the cauldron. Harry won’t let him. Instead he draws a wand – what Harry thinks is Bellatrix’s – from an inner pocket. Securing the lab, he leaves.

The building doesn’t remind Harry so much of a castle as of cloisters, a low and airy space for quiet contemplation. “That is what it was,” Voldemort says, faintly surprised, “in the Christian era of Albania. Now – well, they are unaccustomed to proper prisoners. I have it to myself, generally. Occasionally their human adherents also stay. The vampires are only here strategically.”

_Do you see them?_ Harry thinks in some concern. _If you could exchange freedom for something…._

“My freedom is worth less than my safety, at the moment.”

Harry think of the line in Grindelwald’s letter, that if Voldemort has anything to do with the Undying….

“Yes,” he says crisply. “But I don’t need his support, or concern.”

_Don’t you?_ Harry challenges. Grindelwald knows more of European politics than Voldemort does. Since the Undying have a greater presence here than in Britain, he might know more of them specifically. _What was his relationship?_ Harry thinks. There must be communities of Undying in the countries Grindelwald conquered.

Voldemort is quiet, only because Harry’s questions are interesting. He lets them into a sprawling kitchen, meant at one time for communal use, and opens an enchanted icebox.

Harry is itchy. _What if they find you here?_

“Where else would I be?” he says, a bit tonelessly. “There is a void encircling this building like a shell. Beyond their security spells, the magic of surrender is… complex, anyway. Ancient and obscure. I don’t know that I could ever pose a threat to them again.”

Complicated feelings stir between them. Harry thinks how angry the Ministry is, that from their perspective Voldemort deceived them, to seek out an alliance with the Humnerë after all. “No,” Voldemort says. “They should believe that, but I hope you don’t.”

_No. I know._

“Good.” He is pulling beef from the icebox, a cut that looks like it’s been recently slaughtered. Onions, carrots, peppers. He puts a cast iron skillet over the fire.

“All of the magic is different here,” he says as he sharpens a knife. “Even innocuous bits. There is some magic tied to citizenship. Not typically this much. Perhaps I am hindered as a citizen of no nation, currently.”

_That doesn’t make sense_ , Harry thinks. Magic is natural, it is innate. It is not bestowed on them _legally._

“Ley lines are natural phenomena, but always controlled politically. It seems farther reaching than that. It doesn’t matter, only that my ability to do wandless magic does not particularly extend to this place.” He spins Bella’s wand through his fingers. “I feel like a student again. Perhaps that is the point.”

Harry’s next thoughts don’t come in words, only feelings. That the narrative of the mutually respectful opponents, the _dignity_ recognized in each other – Grindelwald’s letter made him think of it today, but the Dëshmitar’s treatment of Voldemort just fascinated him. _She must want you to succeed, somehow._

“She might have, once.”

But Harry is insistent – he desperately wants a mentor for Voldemort, for _Tom_ , someone he truly respected. It never could have been Dumbledore of course, but it also couldn’t have been someone like Slughorn, sort and overly-taken with Riddle such that he’d never expose boundaries or critical self-examination. _Was she the only one?_ He thinks, knowing Voldemort traveled far and learned esoteric magic from a great many people.

“The only one to whom I gave my real name, or a way to find me again. Their Legilimency is – extraordinary,” he says as though it pains him. “While I taught myself Occlumency in school, I refined it here, of only because she would rebuke me for how _loud_ my thoughts were otherwise. I have never concealed anything successfully from any of the coven.”

Harry considers this. This story that has unfolded before him – that the Humnerë taught Voldemort Occlumency, dueling, immortality – that they sheltered him for years and led him to Rowena’s diadem –

“They have never been cruel,” Voldemort says, in something like a concession. “We are in necessary opposition but – as our Ministry might accuse – they are also the nearest to allies I have among the Undying. For now, cooperation will be an act of self-preservation, and revolt an act of destruction.” He drops cubed beef and bright vegetables to the sizzling pan.

_If you’ve got to stay, I’m joining you._

“That is entirely unnecessary,” he says, though he finds the offer charming. “I don’t know,” he confesses then, quieter. “I will not bring the conflict back to England, anyway.”

_I’d find you, and get you out. I haven’t sworn anything to them._

“No,” he says sharply. Harry flinches away in his mind. “No,” he says again, deliberately gentler. “I didn’t want your assistance. I only wanted to see you. And concerning Grindelwald’s letter….” He’s searching for a spatula, stirring the frying pan. “He has a Horcrux. We’ve only suspected it before. But he couldn’t….” A sigh. He tips the beef into a bowl, taking it to a long communal table across the kitchen. “If any letters weren’t being read by the Swiss ministry _and_ our own, I would recommend you ask if he wants to die.”

This shocks Harry; but why should it? He recognizes what a delicate trade-off immortality is. He is anxious about Voldemort’s immortality and whatever effects are manifest in his own body. _He’s not too old?_ he thinks. He’s only as old as Dumbledore, who was quite old but nevertheless didn’t die of natural causes.

“No. He is not too old. But Albus would never even suggest the magic of a Horcrux to him, much less write of it repeatedly, if Grindelwald didn’t already know of it. And,” he takes a breath, “he calls his sentence perpetual.”

There is existential dread in this word. Harry had thought nothing of it, that he’d imagined Grindelwald’s English stilted as Viktor Krum’s is, and he’d intended to convey a life sentence. _I hope that’s not it,_ Harry thinks.

“I can neither do anything for him nor use him in any fashion, so I don’t care,” Voldemort says. He’s conjured chopsticks, absurdly out of place in the Albanian countryside. “It only seemed to be the most significant revelation of his letter. Really, the rest of it was so vapid, I rather assumed that the Horcrux was the actual intent.”

_Slytherins,_ Harry thinks in a dizzy way, though of course Grindelwald wasn’t. _Dark Lords_ , he revises wryly, and Voldemort makes a noise of amusement.

And then Harry thinks that the letter is anything but vapid, that Voldemort is just relentlessly dismissive of such things as love and forgiveness. And maybe Grindelwald’s had too much time alone to live with regret, or maybe he’s gotten sentimental in old age but that doesn’t make his letter _vapid._

Voldemort is still amused. “Are you speaking to Albus yet?”

_Sort of. Only about you, really._

“Charming,” Voldemort mutters. “Read him the letter, if you would. His insights would be more valuable than mine.”

_You only want to hurt him._

Voldemort frowns at the accusation. “ _He_ is a charmed object, and quite immune to real trauma. His portraits in both Hogwarts and the Wizengamot are meant to provide insights, anyway.”

Harry agrees to it. He doesn’t know when. This weekend?

Voldemort finishes dinner, vanishing the dishes with a flick of his wand. Another flick and he’s opening a bottle of wine.

Behind them, the door swings open.

Another woman with a pallid and ethereal face, but while the Dëshmitar’s hair was long and colorless, this woman’s is a deep red, pinned back. She looks at Voldemort with significantly less patience, drawing a wand – _was_ it? It’s quite rough, more a branch than hewn wood – before she’s even said anything. A brisk gesture, then she says flatly, “He is here.”

“Yes. Approximately. Don’t – “ He actually draws back when the woman points her wand at his face. “My mind is already occupied. There is no space for your Legilimency.”

“Why tonight,” she says. “Because they are absent?”

A slight shrug on his part. “Because Harry got correspondence from a mutual acquaintance. I’m sure you already know.”

“Grindelwald,” the woman says with scorn, “already has the fate he deserves.”

“I know,” Voldemort says. He conjures a second glass, so that the woman might approach him. “Harry,” Voldemort says precisely. “This is Xenoclea. The Dëshmitar’s eldest daughter.”

She moves in a more substantial way than her mother does, shoes hitting the floor hard. She does take the glass of wine, but her look as she takes a seat across from him is still cold and fierce. “And the varri?”

“I put a soul in the most recent Inferius you have. It told me that the souls age too quickly, that they prefer immaterial existence.”

The wine stains her pale lips. “That can’t be true.”

“I… agree,” he says slowly, and his thoughts have turned to his own dispossession. “But I could not convince it otherwise.”

“My mother said she’d bring a werewolf back for you.”

“Really, I’d prefer a peasant,” he says with distaste. “Unless you’d like to keep werewolf varri? They’d shred their bodies that much faster.”

A flash of a smile. “We would only keep them for ideological reasons.”

“The transformation may be interesting magic, itself. It has _something_ to do with soul magic, as I could never properly Mark the werewolves I kept.”

“It’s rather late now,” Xenoclea says darkly.

Voldemort translates this for Harry, moving into a more didactic tone to mark the distinction. “The lugétër are out tonight, because the local werewolves are weakened by last night’s transformations. The next full moon coincides with Walpurgisnacht, another night of magic as the equinox was. If the Humnerë are to have an undead army, it must be before then, on the 30th.”

It is all happening too fast. Harry wonders what the consequences will be if Voldemort _doesn’t_ produce an undead army; he doesn’t acknowledge the thought. Xenoclea taps her long nails against her glass. “Anaya said your blood magic is incomprehensible. That you’re obscuring the magic of the Horcrux intentionally.”

“She never told me quite what she is seeking.”

Voldemort’s words are mild, but Xenoclea reaches across the table, pulling the wine glass out of his grip. He looks up with unpleasant surprise. “You are not _so_ valuable,” she says.

“No,” Voldemort agrees, though she makes him wary.

“What magic would be the best use of her time?”

A faint smile curls Voldemort’s lips. “I am more of a composite even than your varri. She’ll find my magic alongside Harry’s – Nagini’s – Pettigrew’s. I _have_ told her, that if she’d like to study a Horcrux, I am not the specimen upon which she’ll learn.”

“How fortunate that you exist at all.”

“It is.”

“If you created another Horcrux – “

“No,” he interrupts her. An unpleasant look. “I – couldn’t.” Secretly he is terrified of the idea, knowing there is already _such_ a small portion of his soul left. Harry is terrified too. He counted it out once, and if his soul were split evenly each time – well, then less than one one-hundredth of his soul remains with him. _No wonder he’s fucking broken_ , one of them had thought.

Regardless. “I could teach another to make a Horcrux. They would be purer, and actually useful.”

“Hm,” she says doubtfully. “And afterward?”

“ _Kyria_ , you already know how to destroy it.”

“Pettigrew recommended – what is the spell?”

“Sectumsempra.”

“ _Sectumsempra_ , as the last of your spells he recalled. It was tedious. And on an inanimate Horcrux?”

“Fiendfyre, then,” Voldemort says indifferently. “I do not wish to keep a population of the holders of Horcruces alive.”

She is considering it. “Any human?”

“Any _two_ humans,” Voldemort corrects, and Harry is sick to hear him speak so blithely of a death, even if –

Voldemort pushes him toward the back of his consciousness. “The caster would be sufficiently strong and healthy. Casting it too near to death is unstable,” he pronounces. “Every text warns against deathbed Horcruces.”

“She’s not interested in _improving_ the magic of Horcruces.”

“I know,” Voldemort says, though he is quietly gratified at this – Xenoclea is rarely forthcoming with him. He wonders why she should be now. “So when you deliver the magic of the Horcruces to…?” He tilts his head. “To the Undying, would they make any use of them?”

“No,” she says sharply. “We will sustain our varri. Then all records of the magic of a Horcrux should be destroyed.”

He laughs, and her face creases in disdain, because it is an unexpected and off-putting reaction from him. “You might find some interesting allies, in that.”

“We don’t care of human politics,” she says with scorn. “And of all the humans to breach immortality – “

“I _am_ useful,” he interrupts.

“My mother believes so,” she says. “Some of the others say they’d rather have someone more credible among the humans – someone for whom we wouldn’t have to account for criminal proceedings – someone who wasn’t _persona non grata_ for decades.”

“Immortality will never be respectable magic among the humans,” he says dismissively. “Nor will it ever be _legal_ magic. You understand how they feel.”

She practically rolls her eyes at him. (And quietly he is delighted – a being nearly two hundred years old, rolling her eyes like a petulant teenager.) “Don’t speak as though you’re not human yourself.”

“In exile, I have less protection than an animal. Certainly I am – _temporarily_ – removed from the category?”

“You still think exactly like them.”

He shrugs minutely. “Perhaps I do.”

She is moving as though to go. “Return to the varri,” she says. “Take Vasil’s library if it would be useful. My mother wanted to see you when she does return. Then you may sleep.”

This meant at least another few hours in the lab. “Yes, _Kyria_.” She leaves him.

In the silence, Harry is sorting through the exchange. He does not understand it all, but Voldemort is unconcerned, anyway.

He brings a charmed teapot back into the lab. When he’s closed the door behind himself, he hisses air through his teeth. Reverting to Parseltongue: “You should go. It will be a long night.”

Harry thinks that he would rather stay.

“Why?” Voldemort asks, rather incredulous. “I do need to work. My magic is sufficient. Don’t give this to the Ministry,” he says severely, and his memories are filled with Muggle criminals, the informants wearing wires to meetings.

Harry is actually offended at this. _I’m not an informant_ , he thinks fiercely. _I wouldn’t…._

“You must teach tomorrow.”

And Harry doesn’t organize his thoughts into words before he offers them to Voldemort: that it hurts to be apart for this long, that he’s incurring _some_ sort of soul damage from it, that this time he hasn’t even got the diadem’s magic to compensate. And it’s not even about magic really: his has recovered from last week, and Voldemort has enough. _I’m just so fucking depressed_ , he thinks, and it would be humiliating if Voldemort didn’t already know.

He has moved through the lab, toward an attached library, but he stops now. “Harry.”

_Sorry_ , he thinks miserably.

Pity is really a novel feeling for him, something he hasn’t properly felt before. But he recognizes it now from Harry’s feelings, the way Harry looks at him when he realizes another piece of just how broken Voldemort is. This is his own, though, he is sure. He rolls the feeling in his mouth, like an unfamiliar flavor. Harry has gone quiet.

“Stay,” he says, and really it’s fine because he partly wants this too, that he’d deceive no one by insisting he hadn’t written just to be together as well. “But there will come a time when I will do magic that you shouldn’t witness. And then you will go.”

Harry thinks this is fine. But then he offers this complex thought – that if it’s the Inferius, Harry has never seen one properly, but he’s seen dead bodies, and he knows they are only _dead_. So if Voldemort wants to shield him from this….

“No,” he says. “I am not keeping you from the Inferius.” Though his ideas for research tonight have taken new shapes, and he’s fairly certain he can keep Harry from the Inferi anyway. He’s in the library by now. “Where are the books on Horcruces?” He can’t give them a pronoun – _my_ books, _Albus’s_ books, _Grindelwald’s_ books.

Harry assumes the Ministry still has them.

“Good,” he says, though in truth he’s conflicted. He won’t need them – unless he _does_ want to reclaim the Horcruces someday – but the locket’s gone missing, the diadem has bargained for its freedom, and Harry’s must stay as it is. “Good,” he says again, taking down a book about magical pregnancy because really, he’s just gestating an unusually obedient human.

He reads by candlelight. Harry can’t quite sleep like this, but he is quiet, and it’s useful to them both. Voldemort reads of gestation magic, fetus-strengthening potions. He reads of abortifacients, paradoxically, because some of them create magic to contain a soul in a particular way.

Harry wonders if any mechanism of resurrection would help. He thinks of unicorns, the shimmery blood stains on the forest floor in his first year.

Voldemort stops reading, because it’s an interesting suggestion. “It is quite cursed.”

_I know._

“I couldn’t work with it directly. It’s not worth the risk.” He drums his nails along the armchair. “But the lugétër could. I will offer it to their scientists.”

_It should be you, though,_ Harry thinks. _So you can undo it._

He flinches minutely. “I am not in a position, either politically or magically, to betray them.”

_But…._ And then Harry quiets his own protest. He knows Voldemort is in a complicated spot, being perfectly useful and perfectly non-threatening to multiple governments at once.

“They won’t kill me, anyway,” Voldemort mutters. “But _all_ of the vows are sworn on my magic, and – “

It’s functionally the same, that he’d die without it. Neither the Humnerë nor British Ministry have any incentive to revoke any of their vows. Voldemort has nothing more to offer them.

_They won’t understand._

Voldemort laughs dryly. The British Ministry would be _so_ displeased, if they were attacked by the superpowered Inferi that Voldemort would create. “Alastor would eviscerate me. He wouldn’t even need magic to do so.”

Harry is sad and scared. He wants to _bargain_ somehow. He wants to mediate. And this is all well and good for British internal politics where everyone is still appropriately charmed by him, and much less useful on the international stage, among immortals.

At last Harry collects himself, handing off magic instead. _Can I find the locket?_ he thinks. _In case…._

There are other thoughts among this one, that Dumbledore had expected him to find the Horcruces without explaining how one may do so. He _resented_ it, which is surprising because Harry has forgiven Dumbledore more often anyone.

Voldemort holds his knowledge of the locket’s potential whereabouts with the Slytherins in the very back of his mind, because Harry can’t know that yet. “It is not with the Humnerë,” he says slowly. “It is likely still in England.”

_I can find you,_ Harry thinks _, just by following your magic._

Mining this thought, he finds that Harry experiences this connection as a cord running between their hearts. “Mm,” he mutters, examining the memory.

_Don’t you?_

“Yes. But as a… color. Nearly.” It is not a sense he has put into conscious thought before. “A vibrancy. A saturation.”

_Colors look brighter when you’re near_. What a bloody _lurid_ statement. It is disgusting, yet he is not disgusted.

And Harry catches this thought because really, they are so far beyond secrets now. He is entertained. _That’s quite romantic._

“Isn’t it.” He drops the current book onto a side table, picking up a small leatherbound volume.

_Oh_. Harry recognizes it. _Magick Moste Evile_ , the book he’d spent a futile part of sixth year poring over.

“Did you?” Voldemort says, surprised. “Really, it was of limited use to me. I learned more of the Horcruces from the Malleus Maleficarum. It doesn’t _name_ the Horcrux, but everything is there otherwise.” He’s flipping through _Magick Moste Evile_ in a practiced way. “What _is_ useful in this is the chemical composition of unicorn blood. It is….” He finds the page, marking it with a finger as he conjures a quill.

And again Harry is watching quietly. With an amount of respect and a bit of resentment, because Voldemort is just hideously good at magic.

“It’s hardly magic,” he corrects as he is flipping back to the gestation potions. “Merely chemistry. Really, wixes should have _more_ reverence for the mechanisms of the natural world, not less, but by all accounts they prefer to be mystified. Half of Severus’s talent is derived from a few Muggle chemistry classes. He should have gotten a degree in it, if I hadn’t required him immediately out of school.”

Harry is surprised – not so much by Voldemort’s endorsement of Muggle science (which is just _science_ , surely) but more by the rather affectionate tone he’s taken. Any mention of Snape usually involves anger on Voldemort’s part and strained civility on Harry’s, so this….

“He was important.” Voldemort has scratch paper before him, setting up a sort of mathematical equation of chemical reactions. “I rarely _learned_ from them. I taught him Legilimency, he taught me potions. It is unfortunate that his role was to merely be passed between us like a common whore, because he is talented in his own right.”

Harry finds the imagery of Snape as a shared dalliance between Voldemort and Dumbledore absolutely revolting. “So did he,” Voldemort mutters. A false start on the equation; he scribbles out a compound in the unicorn blood and adds an equivalent, starting over.

And Harry is passing him a memory – oh, it looked rather like Lupin begging for Snape’s freedom, but it’s more recent than that. Voldemort pauses to go through it.

_That_ is behind them. It is behind them both, really. But Snape made that clear when he handed Scrimgeour over to the Order last year, for no discernible reason that Voldemort could see but… loyalty? To Scrimgeour, Moody, or the Order itself, for some god-forsaken reason. Harry felt strongly that this would be resolved by Voldemort and Snape simply never interacting again.

_It’s been alright so far_ , Harry thinks a bit defensively.

Has it? Voldemort turns over another portion of the memory. Snape is _seeking other means_ to extricate himself from the Dark Mark. “All of the potential magic he may use is dangerous or obscure. Often both.” Really, a Horcrux might serve Severus well, since the Dark Mark itself is soul magic, but not even Voldemort could _target_ a portion of the soul to be extracted. If there are potions….

_You can’t hurt him_ , Harry thinks distinctly.

He makes a skeptical noise. “I cannot hurt anyone.” Though Snape was the first to be protected by Harry, before most of the vows of non-aggression were in place. Because Harry is just that _good_.

_I am._

Voldemort is summoning another few chemistry texts – or magic texts that would suffice as chemistry. All of the chemical compounds he’s written down would generally resolve in mortal peril, and the Humnerë might assume sabotage if he handed them these equations anyway.

The scratch of a quill in candlelight. It’s not that Harry struggles to stay _awake,_ obviously, but staying here is some expenditure on his magic.

And then there are noises from the far side of the cloisters, and Voldemort is putting down his book too hard. “You need to go.”

_They can’t hurt you_ , Harry thinks coldly.

He is not in the mood to minimize the Humnerë’s treatment of him, and it is really Harry’s least charming quality that he so often puts Voldemort in this position. Bowersock, the Ministry, the Humnerë – he equally tolerates them, and he equally does not want to excuse, minimize, or indeed discuss their treatment of him. “They will want blood magic, I assume. And they want _your_ Horcrux. Xenoclea neither knows nor cares much, but the Dëshmitar would, and cooperation on my part does not mean offering up your presence. Could you get out on your own?”

Harry finds this abrupt, and it is, but he is untangling himself. _I want to see you again._

“Hm,” Voldemort says doubtfully. “Yes. Perhaps not soon.”

Harry understands that it is out of his hands, at least. He anticipates that the Humnerë will next be out on the new moon in two weeks, and that is a worthy guess. “Yes,” Voldemort agrees, and it will feel interminable, but Harry doesn’t want to make a bad situation worse.

Footsteps, nearing the lab. He looks around, but none of these books are incriminating. “Go,” he says lowly to Harry, in English so that he might transition out of Parseltongue. And Harry is lonely and mournful and loving and good. He is gone.

Voldemort moves to the laboratory, startling slightly to find the Dëshmitar entering at the same time. “Kyria,” he greets her, waving a hand so the candlelight flares.

“I brought you a werewolf. It is in the courtyard.”

“I don’t need a werewolf. I need a unicorn. Specifically, I need one of yours to slaughter it.”

She considers. “Wixen magic of immortality….”

“Unicorn blood comes the nearest to working.”

She gives him a half-reproachful, half-amused look. “You slaughtered all our unicorns last time.”

He makes a slight bow, as though apologetic. “And many of Britain’s. I know of one apothecary, a remote part of Belgium….”

“We will find your unicorn blood,” she interrupts, “if it is worthwhile.”

He summons his proof from the library, passing it to her. Of course it’s not complete – and at the stage in which he’s stopped, the blood could form toxic crystals on the surface of the fluid. “It will be,” he says, watching her colorless eyes scan the page. Her own skills are not in potions or chemistry, but she understands enough.

“Fine.” Passing the parchment back to him: “He was here,” she says bluntly. “Your magic tastes different.”

He is faintly unnerved by her _tasting_ his magic, even as paltry a meal as his soul would be. “He was here,” he agrees. “He is not now.”

“Why?”

She likely already knows of Grindelwald, if Xenoclea did. He shrugs minutely. When the Dëshmitar is still looking at him, he says, “Because he is young, and anxious, and attached.”

“Ah.” She motions him outside. “And what have you told him?”

“That my cooperation does not extend so far as offering up our Horcrux.”

She flashes him an – _indulgent_ look. “You’ve become soft.”

“Yes,” he says, because nothing will come of either confirmation or denial.

“Too soft to kill a werewolf?”

They approach this dark mass on the ground. Voldemort kicks it – _her_ – over. Her face is bloodied by deep gashes. She looks – well, near enough to Harry’s age. He assumes it is intentional. “What the hell did you do to her.”

“ _She_ fell,” the Dëshmitar says, her tone shifting over the pronoun because to them, the wolves would always be _it_. To Voldemort, they should have been as well.

“I know the same treaties aren’t in place,” he says. “And I am not your mercenary any longer.”

He won’t kill her. It is not significant – he is hesitant because he cares for his soul these days, what remains of it, and he must be cautious with murder. Some of his non-aggression vows do extend to non-British citizens, or all deaths not related to self-defense, or simply _all deaths_. It would be stupid to drain his magic on principle. But the Dëshmitar looks at him differently. “They will never accept you.”

No matter how irreproachable his behavior is, forever. “No,” he says. “It’s not for them.”

She is uninterested in his morality or the state of his soul. The girl doesn’t stir as the Dëshmitar levitates her. Nor does she react to the severing spell at her jugular. A spray of blood, and then the Dëshmitar vanishes her body elsewhere. Werewolves cannot be made into Inferi, nor (he assumes) can their souls be transferred. The sharp scent of iron hangs between them. “We will get your unicorn,” she says in a final sort of way.

But when Voldemort returns to the bedroom where he has stayed, another of the lugétër awaits him. Anaya, one of their researchers, and the one who has been nearest to finding the Horcrux. It is blood magic, as usual, and he is unbuttoning the top of his robes before she’d curse him nude. Pushing him into a chair, she carves a few runes at the base of his neck. “Xena said you thought it should be someone else.”

“Our Horcrux is idiosyncratic.”

Her free hand is on the curve between his shoulder and neck. She curls her fingernails in; and even if that little contact couldn’t actually turn him, he still nearly flinches. “Scientifically, it is curious,” she agrees. “But socially….”

In a sense, the one who could control their Horcrux could control all of Britain with it, so much was predicated on their connection. Given how indifferent they have been to _human_ politics, he does not know what to say now.

She is putting potion into the incision with a dropper – not a healing potion, some sort of arcana. He looks back at the jar in her hand, but of course it is unlabeled. The scent is familiar, but nothing like a potion. Something of soil, the smell of a storm, and oak resin. “Diagnostic?” he guesses. “Blood magic? It is not healing.”

Anaya doesn’t answer, which is a bloody shame for her because even the British Ministry has realized he will cooperate for the sake of magic, for knowledge itself if he is sufficiently intrigued. “Look forward or I shall snap your neck,” she says. He does.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Allusions for Chapter 31: 
> 
> The Gwyllion are wandering ghosts of Wales.
> 
> The Order of Lua Saturni – Lua, consort of Saturn, was a goddess in Roman mythology. Soldiers would sacrifice the captured weapons of their enemies to her, making her a good figure for an Order that requires surrender of the Death Eaters.
> 
> “Papyri from the Desert Fathers and the ascetics” – early Christians who lived in Egypt. They often had mystical and esoteric practices, so it’s believable that some obscure dark magic would be found somewhere in their writings.
> 
> Malleus Maleficarum – The most significant historical book on witchcraft, written in the 1400s. It encourages executing witches and was the basis for the witchhunts of Puritan times; but there is also a section detailing ‘actual’ magic, so Voldemort could find the Horcrux in there.


	32. Chapter 32

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Diagon Alley, Shell Cottage, and the Slytherin estate.

_Friday, April 2._ Harry woke up with his back inflamed. In the mirror, he couldn’t tell which runes they’ve carved into his skin, but it also didn’t matter. He smeared a dittany infusion between his shoulder blades, wincing, and downed a potion of pain relief.

And baobab. Voldemort takes it as well, and between them they seemed to only just stave off the worst of the depression. He knows the risk in being together – _surveillance_ doesn’t even seem to cover it with the Humnerë; Voldemort seemed to believe they fully saw every thought in his head. Not that it was beyond him to be irrationally paranoid, and the lugétër magic behaved nothing like wixen magic. He was insecure because he was not _good_ at their brand of magic. Apart from how chilling and dangerous it was, it was fascinating.

How _had_ they known about Grindelwald, though? Voldemort hadn’t been kidding when he said their Legilimency must be extraordinary.

It hurt to move. They must have done something awful to him after he’d cast Harry out. He raised his hand: no blood, no interstitial fluid, but his back stung like mad. Well.

He reached for their diary without any idea of what he’d write. **_I’m sorry_** , he scrawled at the top. Since it was conceivable that Voldemort’s very thoughts were being watched, certainly their correspondence could be, as he weighed his next words a bit. **_Whatever will keep you safe, I’ll find you again._**

This meant what he’d already expressed to Voldemort – that if he were kept abroad or out of England, Harry would join him. But it also meant the other option – that if they carved out the Horcrux (extracted it, destroyed it – whatever form the process would take), Harry would have him back, too. Voldemort would need him infinitely more in that moment, anyway.

He hadn’t expected Voldemort to be awake so early; he startled when his handwriting bloomed on the page. _Have you ever done anything but sacrifice?_ Voldemort wrote. _It will kill you someday._

They’d fought about this before; Harry smiled indulgently at the page. **_I love you_** , he wrote instead.

_Of course you do. They injected a variant of Amortentia last night. Your effects should be mild, but you might take orchid pollen to counteract it._

Oh. That was quite plausible, really, to explain the snarl of feelings inside him – the depression and desperation at being apart, and the warm flush of being together in this meager way, and the erotic tension that sat low in his belly. Still: **_Why?_**

 _It is useful as more than lubricant._ But then he wrote with more sincerity: _I had intended to reclaim the Horcruces with Amortentia. Granted, I had only imagined so far as sex. But obsession will hold a soul together, regardless._

**_Do you want me to take the orchid?_ **

_Yes. It is only temporary. When I have learned more, you will need to brew an entire potion for it._

**_OK,_** Harry wrote. **_I will. Be careful_. ** But god, he’d value a day when that weren’t the typical way they had to say goodbye.

 

The castle was buzzing and distracted by the upcoming Easter holiday, so class was a waste. He did not have much free time that day, but what he did have, after classes had ended, he spent trudging to Dumbledore’s office. While he personally did not want or need to discuss _forgiveness_ with the portrait, he understood why Voldemort would recommend he be read Grindelwald’s letter. Dutifully, he opened the door.

The office was mostly dark, but in the corner near the window, Fawkes smouldered. “Do you know how to, uh, summon Dumbledore?” Harry asked, now feeling stupid. He’d recognized the magic Moody had used on the portrait as some sort of summoning spell, but the only sort Harry knew were meant to retrieve socks from the floor, not revive a painting.

“I am here, dear boy.”

Harry spun, to find Dumbledore striding through the frames in the far corner of the room. “Hi. Um.”

“Please sit.” He came to the frame above his desk. “I have spent a good bit of time today at the Ministry, so forgive my potential weariness and impatience for certain types of bureaucratic ineptitude.”

“Is the Ministry alright?” Harry asked cautiously. He hadn’t heard relatively much strife within it recently, but that seemed more of a bad omen than a good one.

And indeed, Dumbledore looked over his glasses and didn’t directly answer. “It seems that you’ve come with something important.”

“Er. Sort of. Not really.” Maybe this was stupid. Dumbledore was dead and Grindelwald imprisoned, and their relationship was the concern of neither Harry nor Voldemort. But Dumbledore was looking at him expectantly, so he fished through his bookbag for the leather envelope. “Grindelwald wrote to me,” he said.

Dumbledore’s expression shifted to – _concern_. “Are you alright?”

Harry blinked, not expecting that. His hands stilled on the thick envelope. “Yes?” he said. “I’m not – scared of him.” Was that even it? Dumbledore seemed more moved than he’d anticipated. “But I showed Voldemort – really, it was sort of about both of us. But it was also about… you.” He kept looking into Dumbledore’s face, for any indication of how to introduce this. “And he said I should read it to you. If you wanted.”

“Did he?” Dumbledore’s eyebrows arched. “Far be it from Voldemort to minister to my well-being. Or Grindelwald’s.”

“I know. I’ll read it to you first. Then….” He was uncurling the parchment. Grindelwald’s script looked like dried blood on the page. It was already worn at one corner where he’d worried it. Clearing his throat, he began: “ _Dear Harry Potter, You do not know me, but I am ever vain enough to hope you recognize my name…._ ”

He read steadily, without looking up in case he lost his nerve. Dumbledore was quiet. So was Fawkes. Regardless, Harry stumbled over the phrase _beloved child of his own._ He stumbled again over _casualty_. And in a few lines, when Grindelwald wrote that he had _manipulated and abused Albus_ , he kept his head very low for… mutual privacy. Something.

But it didn’t matter, because when he neared the end, to learn that Dumbledore had crafted Grindelwald’s prison in love – it was so unspeakably merciful. He had to swallow hard, stopping himself for a long moment. He came to the last line: “ _I cannot ask forgiveness on his behalf, but I hope you both one day should find it_.” A steadying breath, and then he looked up. “Sir – I didn’t know – I’ve been so – “

 _Distant_ , he intended to say, imperfectly, but Dumbledore spoke over his stuttering. “You’ve been so good,” he said. “Gracious, and wise beyond your years. You should never apologize to me.”

Harry put the parchment down before he crumbled it in a fit. Seeing Dumbledore visibly emotional was worse than seeing _Voldemort_ visibly emotional; it made him feel powerless that his world was coming apart at the seams. “Please don’t,” he said in a wretched way.

They had argued; they’d apologized; they’d avoided each other; they’d come to a working relationship at least as far as Riddle, Voldemort, and the Slytherins were concerned. There was nothing more to be said for _them_ , but – “I wanted you to know what he….”

“Thank you,” Dumbledore said. “And I also hope you don’t take the comparisons too closely to heart. They are, largely, inane.”

“I wish – what you’d seen in Tom – “

A sad smile from Dumbledore. “As Gellert wrote – my opposition to him was not so ideologically pure as the narrative might now say. I was bitter, I was wounded. It would have been a toxic thing to impart to Tom.”

Harry would accept the imperfect, these days. He _was_ the imperfect, these days. He shrugged, but Dumbledore pursed his lips. “Tell Voldemort, if he is to return, to find me if he’d ever like an apology.” A faint smile. “It is rather more difficult to impose my presence on people, like this. He doesn’t even have portraits in his office, at all.”

 _Voldemort’s office_. God but he had been tamed. “Yes, sir,” Harry said, privately thinking how massively unlikely it was that Voldemort would willingly seek out Dumbledore over anything, ever.

“I assume he was intrigued by Gellert’s word on Horcruces.”

“That’s what he thought it was about,” Harry admitted. “That the rest of it was, uh, a distraction for whoever screened it.” He looked up seriously. “ _Has_ he got a Horcrux?”

“Such magic would be kept quite confidential,” Dumbledore demurred. “You know, no doubt, that virtually all magic of immortality is highly illegal, in every jurisdiction in which he traveled.”

“The books he had – that you took – “

“I was quite concerned that if he had not already created a Horcrux, he would in time. There was little reason to believe he _wouldn’t_ conquer all of Europe, and I believed a mortal dictator would be preferable to an immortal one. But I only conspired to steal them in 1942. It may have been too late.”

“Voldemort said, if the letters weren’t being read, I should ask if he wanted to… die.” His voice dropped off.

“That is really rather empathetic on his part.” At Harry’s shocked look, Dumbledore said, “Voldemort would be more aware of the psychological burdens of a Horcrux than either of us. I cannot imagine that in his dispossession, he did not consider death himself.”

The thought made Harry go cold. “Maybe,” he murmured.

“Grindelwald is within a wizard’s lifespan and is by all accounts, in good health. It may not be a relevant point for another fifty years. But I am – with mixed feelings – inclined to agree with Voldemort. A perpetual sentence,” he mused, and Harry’s heart sank since Voldemort had noticed the same phrase.

“What…. If I could do something for him, what would it be?”

A gentle smile from Dumbledore. “You were an unlikely correspondent for him to begin with. Certainly you would be an unlikely advocate.”

“I might get a reputation,” Harry muttered, with a wry look. “But – I don’t know.” _I want to reward good behavior_ , he would have said if it hadn’t sounded like the smarmiest and most condescending statement.

“Has our Ministry given any indication whether you may write back?”

He hadn’t thought of it. “No. They search my post, and uh, they let this through. I assume it was fine, but….”

“If you would like to write back and they do protest – specifically if _Alastor_ protests, because I do believe he would be the first – send him to me.”

Harry smiled a bit. “Yes, sir.” Then: “Is there anything _you’d_ say to him?”

“Quite a bit,” Dumbledore said gravely, and Harry felt stupid and invasive for asking. “But he may not be prepared to hear much of it.”

Harry had a sudden recollection of his first year, of Dumbledore’s politic evasiveness when Harry had asked what he had seen in the Mirror of Erised. Of course he knew now it would have been Ariana – and Grindelwald too? – and Dumbledore had been so gracious in diverting him anyway. “Right,” he said, still embarrassed.

But it was unnecessary, because Dumbledore’s attention was suddenly drawn away, by something behind him, presumably in the Ministry. “It seems I am urgently required elsewhere,” he said in apology. “I trust you to make the best decision.”

Not the _right_ decision, the _best_ decision. Whatever that might entail. But they’d strayed rather far from what significance Harry had found in the letter, that had nothing to do with a Horcrux at all. “I forgive you,” he said in a rush, before Dumbledore had to go. “I’m sorry. I don’t want it to be like this anymore.” This awkwardness and guilt that hung between them.

Dumbledore didn’t soften, didn’t murmur any encouraging words. Instead the lines in his face deepened. “Leaving you alone and so ill-equipped for the world was cruel.”

He’d expected something else – that Dumbledore would confess to sacrificing Harry, which he would dismiss because Harry had nearly sacrificed himself. He stumbled over this instead. He couldn’t say he _understood_ because he didn’t, really. But that seemed an integral part of forgiveness, wasn’t it? He honestly didn’t know anymore. “Maybe you don’t need forgiveness from me, then,” he said at last.

Dumbledore was quiet, silent as he studied Harry’s face. “You escaped,” he said, “quite understandable bitterness and hatred, in a way few do. It is, itself, miraculous.”

“I know,” he said, though in fact he only knew it because Voldemort had told him the same. Then, because he was awkward: “You should go. For the Ministry. Are they alright?”

A deep sigh, and he straightened his robes. “They shall be,” he said. “You are correct that I must spend the remainder of my day in less pleasant company. Are you departing for the holiday?”

“Er. No. The Weasleys are kind of….” He made a vague gesture. “So we’re staying here with Ginny.”

There was really no reason Dumbledore should know of Ginny’s troubles. He frowned thoughtfully, anyway. “Give her my best.”

“I will.” He was getting up.

“Harry?”

“Yes?”

“Would you open a window for Fawkes? He has had little stimulation this week.”

But the question was only a redirection of his attention – Fawkes had been preening in the corner, and was now pulling at his tail feathers with purpose. “Hey, hey – “ Harry said, alarmed, because the only time he’d seen Hedwig preen so hard was in conditions of extreme stress.

But Fawkes warbled lowly, as if in reassurance. And with another tug, he pulled the longest tail feather from his plumage. It was brilliant, more gold than red. He held it out.

“Oh – “ Harry took it carefully, casting a protective spell around it. He could feel its magic – did all wand cores feel so alive? – and the way it warmed him to his center. “Thank you. I’ll – tell him to be careful with this one. Thank you,” he said, turning back to Dumbledore’s frame, but he was gone. Harry opened the window onto the glowing sunset before leaving.

 

All five of them – Hermione and Luna, Ron and Ginny – could depart from the edge of the grounds with a portkey that Auror Squire had cast for them. They got the requisite warnings, but they were only off to Diagon Alley, where there was law enforcement stationed all the time anyway. They’d have dinner there, so late in the afternoon they left.

Diagon Alley at this time was full of professional wixes, trying to get in a last bit of shopping or banking after their own work days. Harry counted at least three Aurors in the area – not ones he knew well, as the Aurors who deigned to work with Voldemort were a blessed subset of the department – but at least one of them made eye contact with a nod.

They were meeting Fred and George at the shop, as they closed out for the day. But nearer up the road, they’d pass Ollivander’s. And it was fortuitous and rash at once, but Harry slowed near the store front. “Wait – I wanna see if he’s in.”

They all looked at him incredulously. “Think it’s closed, mate,” Ron said, but since Harry could literally not imagine Ollivander existing anywhere but his shop, he was confident he’d still be inside. He knocked.

Quiet. And then Ollivander’s yellowish eyes from a back room. He moved to crack open the door.

His friends were all quite stunned. Harry was too, to be honest. “Hello. Uh. I’m sure you’re closed. But… do you make commissioned wands?”

Ollivander studied him, and then opened the door just a crack wider. “Not typically. Come in.”

Harry looked back at his friends. “I’ll catch up, I know where the restaurant is.”

“Absolutely not,” Hermione cut in. “We’re not leaving you on your own, in public. Do you know how much trouble we’d be in?”

Harry smiled at her. “Come in then, I guess.”

He and Ollivander approached the desk; while his friends spread across the shop. “I wondered if you could make him a new wand?” he asked in a low tone, out of earshot. “His was… broken. The yew one,” he clarified.

“And the cypress wand? It is still registered to you.”

Right. “It is. That’s, uh, complicated. I’m sorry,” he said. “But he hasn’t got the cypress wand, and he probably won’t. The Aurors know more. But I brought – “ He was reaching into his bookbag, for the warm bubble of magic that secured the phoenix feather. “I just saw – well, Dumbledore’s portrait. And Fawkes. And he gave me this.”

Ollivander popped the protective bubble gently, turning the feather over in his gnarled fingers. “It seems you should also consider _not_ having brother wands,” he said, though he hadn’t passed the feather back.

It actually took a bit for Harry to recall why. “I’d prefer it,” he said. “We won’t… hurt one another, anyway.” Ollivander pursed his lips; Harry went on stupidly. “Or if you couldn’t make it without him here, could you just keep the phoenix feather? It really – it was awful when they snapped his wand, and I like sharing a core, really….”

“Come with me.”

They entered the back room, where one wall was filled with instruments, another with books, and a third with labelled boxes of components. “Hold out your arm,” Ollivander said, and Harry did, and Ollivander placed the new feather in his grasp.

He would hold up a dozen different branches – some he made Harry hold, some he didn’t. “Not yew again, certainly?” he asked, bypassing the box entirely.

Harry had sort of thought they could just recreate his yew wand, and it’d all be more or less the same. “Why not?”

“Because he was adamant that he was no longer the same eleven year old boy first chosen by that wand.”

And Harry had to smile at this a bit. Voldemort shed his past pathologically; why should his wand be any different? “The cypress wand worked for me,” he said. “It felt really, uh, determined.”

“Bad luck for any wizard to own more than one cypress wand in his lifetime. Here.” He pressed a skinny aspen branch into his hand, casting diagnostic spells around it. Taking down some notes, he switched out the aspen for a thicker pine.

A sleek ebony branch, a burnished maple. He even tried holly, but took it away immediately. After discarding a knotted hawthorn wand, he gestured Harry out. “Let me work. When will he need it?”

“Er.” Harry couldn’t remotely say when Voldemort would be back. _If_ he’d be back in Britain. “A few months?” he hedged. Summer would bring something different if not good, anyway.

“Yes.” Ollivander sealed the feather and a pile of branches into a box, levitating it into an enclosure above their heads. “He should come in himself. But your magic is nearer than any I’ve yet seen.”

“I know,” he said with a bit of a smile. “We like it, though.” And he collected his restless friends on the way out.

Luna was chattering about wandlore as they headed down Diagon Alley; Hermione was actually listening so there must have been some truth in what she was saying. Ron had his arm over Hermione’s shoulder. Ginny had gone very quiet.

So Harry bumped his elbow into hers. “Alright?”

She looked over. “Yeah,” she said in a sigh. “It’ll be the first time Tonks has really been out. She’s been doing better, but it’ll be a lot….” She shook her head, dismissing the thought. “It’ll be fine.”

It wasn’t fine, honestly; it addition to celebrating the twins’ birthdays, it was a night to distract Ginny from the fact that her parents didn’t quite want her home. “Sorry,” he said, like he’d said to her a dozen times before.

“I got married like they wanted,” she said with a short laugh, flipping her braid over her shoulder. “It’s fine. It is.” Straightening her shoulders, she walked in ahead of them.

The restaurant was new, and a bit of a spectacle, with an underwater theme. The walls were glass, with fish gliding through them, and the floor was dotted with sea grass and bubble vents. It was all a lot.

Since they’d stopped at Ollivander’s, they were the last ones there – the booth in the back already had the twins, Lee, Angelina, Tonks, Bill, and Fleur, along with a handful of people Harry didn’t know. He hadn’t expected this, most of the Weasleys in one place, but he found himself pre-emptively grinning at the chaotic mess.

They made room; a waiter came by to offer drinks. With a peck on each of Fred and George’s cheeks, Ginny handed each of them a birthday cigar. “Muggles make these explode, you know,” Fred said, flipping it between his fingers.

“Oh, do they,” Ginny said innocently, but then shot him a conspiratorial grin.

Whiskeys, vodka. Experimental potions-synthesized liquors that fascinated Harry. He gave Ginny the seat beside Tonks, and ended up between her and Oliver. “Alright, Harry?” Oliver asked warmly, moving to let him in, and Harry sort of melted because he’d never fully recognized his crush ( _crush_!) on Oliver in school. “Yeah,” he muttered, hurriedly bringing whiskey to his mouth.

Bill was retelling a story of a curse in a historic French prison – “Really counterintuitive stuff, typically we’re dealing with magic to keep people _out_ , not _in_ ” – and Harry privately surveyed the table. One of the unfamiliar faces he recognized as the Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes shopgirl; others might have been in Fred and George’s year? Angelina was at Fred’s side and Lee was at George’s; since they were both Black with dreadlocks, the symmetry was uncanny.

And then there was Ginny at his side, entirely relieved to find Tonks out and well, relatively. Tonks caught him looking and flashed him a grin, and it was a little unnerving because her natural (he assumed) state looked a lot like Andromeda, who looked a lot like Bella. At least she kept her dark hair short, a jaunty look to offset her aristocratic features. “Harry. Mad Eye says I’ve missed some horrid times.” Her voice rasped and she saw him wince. She laughed. “I quite like it. It makes me sound like a sexpot, no?” She lowered her lids, and for a moment she could’ve been Bella’s daughter, not Andromeda’s.

Harry laughed it off. “It’s all… a mess,” he said. “You don’t know half of it. Could I buy Moody, I dunno, a bottle of scotch? _Most_ of his time is spent on me now. On us.”

“Even now, with him gone?” she said, surprised.

“… Yeah. Uh, maybe someday there won’t be a gag order, and we can tell you. You’d never guess.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Not sure I’d want to know, in that case. I’d rather keep to my own problems.”

“Smart,” he agreed.

“But speaking of the Aurors – oh, damn, I couldn’t talk over – “ She looked at the chaos before them.

Ginny shot her a questioning look, but then turned to the table. “’Ey! Listen.” And the babble died down.

Tonks was fishing in her coat pockets. “Dammit,” she said again. “ I know I – aha.” Triumphantly she pulled out an envelope – no, two. “Mad Eye wanted to do this himself, but there was a last minute emergency…. Ronald Barnabas Weasley,” she intoned, and Ron blinked at her. “Would you do us the honor of joining the DMLE’s tactical weaponry unit beginning this summer?” She passed him the envelope.

He’d gone red, and he was laughing, and beside him, Hermione was beaming. Slaps on the back, and a toast, and it was a long time before they all realized Tonks held a second envelope. When it was quiet enough for her to be heard once more, she slipped from her chair, getting down on one knee as though to propose. There was laughter. “Ginevra Elspeth Weasley, would you honor us by joining the Aurors’ fieldwork division?”

The explosion of excitement and laughter. George was shouting over the din, “You never even told us!” and Bill was flagging down the waitstaff to bring a round. Ginny shouted, “Yes!” over everyone, and then hauled Tonks up to kiss her.

It was good, it was perfect. Both Ginny and Ron clutched their job offers tightly, their faces glowing in the same way. Hermione clung to Ron in a way Harry hadn’t seen her do before. The table was filled with glasses, and pitchers of butterbeer, before they’d even gotten food. Harry was going to say congratulations to Ginny beside him, but she was leaning up quite close to Tonks, murmuring something with a smile. He sat back, grinning at Ron instead.

And so the night went. Fred and George had brought new stock to show off, and Luna of all people was giving them a very measured response: “Well, the ability to walk on the ceiling _would_ be quite useful, but what if you put the enchantment in mittens instead of shoes?” Hermione and Bill were saying something important about charms, while Fleur told them that all the British were _‘opeless_ at wandwork anyway. Fred and Angelina were in an animated conversation about Quidditch with the group of their peers Harry didn’t know, and they pulled both Harry and Oliver into it by looking over the table: “Ol!” Fred said, raising a hand to Oliver. “Tell Angelina that the Puddles are the only team in the league with any _decorum_ left, she thinks they should be allowed to mob the Keeper – “

Oliver played for Puddlemere now, as their reserve Keeper, and it sort of made Harry’s heart flutter. (Nevermind that Puddlemere was in last place this season, through no fault of Oliver’s.) “You _should_ be allowed to mob the Keeper,” he said quite fairly. “Puddlemere only doesn’t because when Angus – the new coach – was actually playing, he tried once and got his brains bashed in. When we’ve got a different strategist….”

Harry was drunk enough by the time food came that he hardly tasted it, swallowing chips as fast as possible to sop up the whiskey. By now, also, Oliver had moved to have an animated conversation with Angelina, and Ron and Hermione scooted in beside him. “Nice going, mate,” Harry said to Ron, who was still beaming.

“Yeah – didn’t think I’d get it – Dad’s always had sort of a tough time with Robards, so….” He made a vague gesture, nearly sloshing the cocktail in his hand.

Hermione caught his glass and set it down firmly. “We’re so proud of you,” she said, even though she’d said it a half dozen times already. “And Harry’s got a job and I’ve got an internship, and we’ve got a house – oh!” She sort of blushed. “Harry, I didn’t tell you. The landlord in Liphook – you know, the house in that Muggle village, with the window seat in front? – they just approved us. I said we’d move in partway through June, though we may have to pay for the entire month, but at least we could get furniture shipped in early….”

Oh thank god. “You’re amazing, Hermione,” he said, too sincerely. “What would we do without you?”

She raised her glass to him in thanks. “And you?” she asked. “I’m sure most of the furniture you ordered for the estate arrived by now. You didn’t get anything too esoteric, did you?”

“Just… normal things,” he said. “They sent me an invoice, I haven’t been by to unpack it yet.”

“D'you want help?” Ron offered. “Or is that something you’d do, uh, together? Let’s go tomorrow, we’ve got nothing better to do.”

Harry thought privately that the chance any of them could get out of bed tomorrow was unspeakably low. “Thanks, mate. Sunday, though?”

“Oh. Yeah,” he grinned. “Sunday. Have you found any ghosts yet? Probably haunted by Slytherin himself. Hey, you should ask the Bloody Baron to move in, bet it’d suit him.”

Ginny had glanced over at this, and so had Tonks. “There’s not _ghosts_ now in Grimmauld Place, are there, Harry?” Ginny frowned at him. “I shouldn’t be surprised if there were, except that the ghouls would normally scare them off. Dad knows a para-exterminator, if it’s a problem….”

“Not Grimmauld Place. Uh. The estate of Slytherin.” He looked to Tonks, who already knew of the estate, since all of the Aurors and most of the Ministry did. “ _Could_ I take them, Sunday?”

She shrugged, indicating her t-shirt and baggy jeans. “I am _so_ off-duty,” she said. “But why not? Mad Eye cast the security spells himself.”

“I took Ron and Hermione once before,” he muttered. “We got in a lot of trouble. For… other reasons, I mean.”

She shook her head, dark waves of hair bouncing. “He’s given up on telling you to be careful, you know,” she fake-chided.

He grinned back, guilty. “I know.”

Drinks, and then a three tiered cake in bright pink and green, and more drinks. And when the twins lit their cigars and they _didn’t_ explode, they both looked distinctly disappointed.

Fred and George opened a pile of gifts at the end of the table – Bill and Fleur had gotten them cloaks with an infinite number of pockets, and Oliver had gotten them new brooms. (“You’re _joking_ ,” George said when the gifts expanded to size, and Oliver shrugged. “They were only for review, and the team ended up getting a set of the Saturnalia line instead….” “Oliver, I love you,” George said quite seriously, to see him blush.) Charlie had sent a letter saying he could get them a pseudodragon _if and only if_ they never even thought of breeding it. Harry, as usual, got them new and highly explosive apothecary ingredients. They beamed at him.

At eleven, the restaurant closed, and they weren’t quite done celebrating but nothing else was open. Bill and Fleur exchanged a look in silent negotiation. “Back to our place?” Bill suggested to the group. “You could sleep over if you don’t mind a sofa. Wait, where are the students?”

“All the ickly bitty ones,” Fred crooned beside him. Ginny caught him in the ribs with an elbow.

Bill looked to Hermione, because clearly she was the most responsible among them. “Is anyone expecting you back tonight?”

“No, not really.”

“Excellent. Tonks, lend us a couple portkeys?”

Tonks had one arm wrapped around Ginny’s waist, because Ginny was giggling uncontrollably into her shoulder. “Sure, yeah.” She fished in a bag, pulling out a few Ministry standard portkeys. “You know how to cast them?”

“God, d’you know how many illicit portkeys we’ve had to seize? Most of them are just _stupid_ , not _cursed_ , but….” He was casting with drunken confidence. A quick headcount to be sure they’d gotten everyone, and they departed.

Harry had heard about Shell Cottage before, but never actually been there. It was gorgeous, he could tell even in the dark, with the sea past a shimmering field. The spray of salt reminded him of the summer days at Cornwall, and he found himself inappropriately nostalgic.

They filed in, dropping cloaks and bags over a coat rack in the front entry way. “Hey, you got a telly!” George called, entering the sitting room. “Does Dad know?”

Bill had made his way into the kitchen, pulling out liquor and glasses and finger food to soak up their drunkenness. “I mentioned it. They haven’t been by recently, but he gave me instructions to set it up. God, at this hour, it’s all bad films probably. Turn it on, they’re a riot.”

George poked at the glass and fiddled with the knobs, making a face at his own reflection. Harry, not quite an expert but nearer to it anyway, stepped forward. “Here, press that one – Has it got a remote?” he called to Bill.

“Yes, but I don’t understand it!”  


He grinned. Tonks came up behind him, fiddling with the remote. “Dad says he misses telly most of all,” she said. “Sometimes he’s got to go to the Muggle pub, just to experience it again. Here – “ And she’d just set it to the right channel when she shoved the remote into Harry’s hands, turning away to have a coughing fit.

“Oh my god.” Would _Anapneo_ make it better or worse? He conjured a glass of water, pushing her into the nearest chair.

“I’m fine, I – ugh.” Clearing her throat, she downed the water in a go. “You wouldn’t believe the _regimen_ of potions I’ve still got to take. Ginny’s helped a lot, too.” She cocked her head to look up at him. “I see why you like it.”

Sharing magic. “Yeah.” He sank into an adjacent chair. “Still… sorry,” he said. He could barely see the scars at her throat and collarbone above her shirt, but he could surmise the damage was extensive. “I am sorry. If you hadn’t had to be there with us….”

“Don’t,” she said, rather sharply even as her voice rasped again. “It’s not the worst thing that’s happened.”

“Sorry,” he said again, and went to get Ginny.

She’d been in the kitchen, opening a butterbeer with Angelina. “Hey Gin – “

Somehow she already knew. “Nighttime is worse than the days,” she said. “It’s fine, she’ll be fine. Here.” She went to minister to Tonks.

Ginny and Tonks retired to a quiet part of the house. Most of the purebloods were crowded curiously around the television set, where a drama was on. Luna was giving a little lecture: “And sometimes, they put on shows or music just for the _noise_. I think it’s to make up for how unstimulating their world is, without magic.”

Harry caught Hermione’s eye; she shrugged. “I think she’s right.”

They flipped through the channels, ending up on a replay of a football match from that day. Since half the room were athletes, they watched curiously.

Bill and Fleur brought out crisps and great pitchers of water, at last saying _they_ were going to bed anyway, and the sofas or soft bits of the floor were catch-as-catch-can. Nobody was too drunk to conjure their own pillows and blankets, so about a dozen of them huddled in the living room.

“Truth or dare?” one of the twins suggested behind Harry.

“Ew,” Angelina objected. “ _How_ old are you now?”

“Spin the bottle? Seven minutes in heaven? – Hermione, what are some other Muggle games?”

She looked back at them with a weary smile. “I am not indulging you.”

“That’s our girl. Prefect through and through.” Hermione threw a handful of popcorn at them.

They got drowsy all at once, the conversation getting slow and inane. Tonks had gone to sleep in a guest bedroom, but Ginny had come back out, conjuring a blanket as she sat between Harry and Luna. “Ugh, rum makes me stupid,” she lamented, putting her head in her hands.

Luna patted her on the shoulder. “Maybe try something anise-based next time. It has consciousness-expanding properties.”

“Think I will,” Ginny agreed. She was still watching the footie match when she said, “So, Harry, tell us about your haunted house.”

“It’s not haunted, it’s just old. The Slytherin estate,” he said to Luna, to catch her up. “We rebuilt it all – there was really just rubble and a floor left – and now I’ve got to put furniture in. Oh god, and wedding gifts,” he sighed, because he’d had the lot of them shipping from his Gringotts vault to the estate.

“Are the heirs of Slytherin’s snakes friendly?” Luna asked.

“… You know, they’re alright.” She hummed happily.

Quieter. One of the twins was having a low conversation about the nearest place to pick up hangover potions in the morning. The lights were off, and the telly muted, throwing strange shadows on the room. Thee was low, steady breathing from the sofa behind him.

And there was more insistent breathing from _another_ sofa. Harry glanced back discreetly to see George and Lee necking, in a way that he would’ve thought was a joke except that they didn’t think anyone was watching them. Huh. And in an even darker corner, Ron and Hermione were huddled under a blanket, her giggling lightly as he ran his fingers down her neck.

Luna’s breathing had gone soft, but Ginny was still awake, and followed his gaze. “Right. Well. I’m going to go climb in bed with my _wife_ ,” she said in a posh way, shifting the blankets.

“Has it always been like this?” Harry asked, fascinated. “Did I miss the bit of Gryffindor parties where everyone hooked up?”

“I expect you did, honestly,” she said, near-apologetic. “Don’t feel bad. From what I’ve heard, you’re having better sex than us all.”

He flashed her a smile. “Well. Sort of. ‘Night.” He let her out.

 

But it was nearly an omen: having thought of Voldemort as he fell asleep, his dreams were already nearby. But Voldemort was asleep, too, trapped in his _own_ dreams, and maybe he didn’t realize Harry was there and maybe it was just uncontrollable for him as well. But the dream, _their_ dream, was so hideously familiar – the dark claustrophobia of the cupboard and tense voices just beyond, the dust in his nose and tears on his cheeks – but then the space is shifting, from the wooden slats of the staircase to blocky concrete, the room of the orphanage he’d seen in Dumbledore’s memory, and while it was inconceivable the place was _actually_ in grayscale, Harry couldn’t recall a single instance of color there.

Tom Riddle isn’t sitting on the bed. Harry is, younger than he ever really remembered being. The circular glasses were slipping off his face, as he kept his head down, picking at a thread on the dull comforter. There’s a voice speaking from behind their vantage point at the doorway, a man’s steady tone: “Of course you must stay here. There is nowhere else for you to go.” And the pity Harry feels for his younger self sears him – but there is something else – he can taste the anger in it too, and it tastes like Voldemort’s. Harry forces them to look back, to find them looking at Dumbledore as he'd been in the orphanage. He still wears the plum suit but there are splotches of what looks like blood on it. Their gaze keeps dragging downward, away from his face and toward the stains.

But Harry is pleading like he’d plead through the door – he can’t tell if it is the voice of his present dream self or the tiny child on the bed. But the words are ones he’d use when he was young enough to _want_ the Dursleys’ love or attention. “But I’ll be good, I promise I’ll be good, don’t leave me alone – “ And the feeling that echoes in Voldemort means he has begged for the same at some point – to whom? The caretakers here? To Dumbledore himself?

And then the moment they somehow both are bracing for: Dumbledore sets the wardrobe ablaze and firmly shuts the door behind him.

 

And then there were strong hands on Harry’s upper arms, holding him steady. “Harry. Harry.” And he was so confused, expecting to wake up beside Voldemort, but Voldemort feels nothing like this warm body beside him –

He opened his eyes, blinking through tears to find himself staring at Oliver. “Oh,” he said stupidly, before he even understood where he was. His back hurt from falling asleep against the sofa, and his skin prickled from barely beginning to detox from the alcohol.

Oliver had been asleep beside him, he surmised, to leave Fred and Angelina the sofa. “Sorry,” Harry muttered, picking the blanket out of his lap. “It’s nothing, let me – “

“You can stay,” Oliver said, as quiet. “I don’t think anyone else is awake, you’re alright.”

But Harry needed to go stand in the shower for a bit, as though to rinse off the grime that would collect in his cupboard. Muttering an excuse and wrapping himself in the blanket because he was freezing and sweating at once, he padded upstairs.

He still shivered under the hot water. It was everything: the nightmare, the alcohol, the beginnings of kaval withdrawal, the beginnings of _magic_ withdrawal, the way his magic stretched and warped around Voldemort’s, the complicated grief and pity that curled his insides. He was _hard_ , which was stupid. He was actually wildly lucky he hadn’t pissed himself in his sleep. Sleeping beside his sort-of boyhood hero. Jesus. Anyway, he was too nauseated to wank. Nevermind.

At least twenty minutes in, he heard a knock on the door. “Harry?”

Bill. Good man, Bill. Harry shut off the water immediately, already feeling scolded for wasting it. “Sorry,” he called back. “Er, how’d you know it was me?” If Oliver had awoken them as though Harry were a sick child, he would die.

“Just a guess,” Bill said, sounding a bit amused. His voice echoed through the door with an enchantment. “Look, take as long as you want. It’s only, ah, four or so, I think. The cupboard on the far side? There are towels and bathrobes in there. You probably don’t want to sleep in your jeans anyway.”

He was so full of love for all the Weasleys right now. “I won’t be long,” he said back. “Thanks.” And then the floorboards outside creaked as Bill returned to bed.

He did take a bathrobe, a dark blue one that nearly swept the floor. He couldn't sleep yet anyway; he needed to write Voldemort.

Taking his bookbag into the kitchen, he lit the long tapers at the center of the table. He flipped to the back without knowing quite what to say, only to find in surprise that Voldemort had already written to him.

_You shouldn’t have been exposed to that. They were memories you’d discarded. Typically my Occlumency contains them more adequately, but as always, our magic slips against one another’s._

_Had_ it been one of the memories he’d taken out? Obviously he couldn’t remove every moment of his time in the cupboard, unless he were to remove his childhood altogether. There was nothing extraordinary in that memory, as far as he could tell. **_Are you alright?_** Harry wrote, because the orphanage just felt so much worse. Dumbledore’s gaze looking through them felt so much worse.

_Yes._

**_I saw Dumbledore today,_** he wrote, desperate to understand. ** _Is that why? We talked about Grindelwald, but I also said I forgave him._**

_No. That is not why._

Since this sounded like Voldemort knew something, Harry remained quiet and still. Words bloomed on the page. _I have kept your memories in my own mind. They are safest there. Perhaps I have been prodding at the edges of them too often, or perhaps the ebb and flow of our magic will cause them to surface. I have been rather taken with the visceral sensation of pity, and I didn’t keep your memories far enough from you. I am sorry._

**_What does that mean? About pity._ **

_You know what it means._

He sort of did. Not in those words. But the sharp tug that accompanied pity sat low in their stomachs, and it really wasn’t far off from more erotic sensations. When either of them looked small or helpless – when they would cry, or struggle to breathe, or wince in sudden pain – there was fascination in it also. They hadn’t spoken of it really, that Harry thought of it more in line with Voldemort’s fondness for _causing_ pain than anything. But… it was something else here. Something nearer to guilt.

 ** _What have they done to you?_** Harry wrote.

_Nothing extraordinary. Nothing relevant._

How painful it was to be apart, and how much more painful to not be there when Voldemort was… _growing_ in some fashion. Harry could tell that the way he was turning his own pity over wasn’t out of cruelty, just curiosity. **_Can I see you now?_**

_No. Unfortunately. Aren’t you with friends now, anyway?_

**_How would you know that?_ **

A flutter of amusement – and thank god for it, that they weren’t entirely separated. _I know everything in your head I care to know. Anyway, you never get this drunk alone._

Oh god, he hadn’t been thinking. **_I’m sorry. I hope it didn’t ruin anything for you._**

_No. It didn’t._

But before he could write anything more, Harry had glanced back up at his words and been newly horrified. **_You need to keep my memories somewhere else than your own head,_** he wrote, the force of _that_ revelation hitting him. **_Are you mad?_**

_I should be, you mean. It has made no difference._

But Voldemort had used those memories to punish Vernon and Petunia. It was quite conceivable that he’d consider them a punishment of his own. **_I don’t want them to hurt you._**

_They do not._

**_Really_** , he wrote firmly. **_You can look at them, I don’t care, but you don’t get to punish yourself with them. Especially without me there._**

A pause. Then: _You should return to bed, Harry._

**_I bloody mean it._ **

_So do I. I will keep my Occlumency more rigidly around your memories. I will never expose you to that again._

It was the best they were going to do, at this time of night. **_I love you_** , he wrote, and went back to bed.

 

 _Saturday, April 3._ The next morning, breakfast – well, _brunch_ , since they got started somewhere near 11 a.m. – was a production to rival the Burrow’s. Bill made frittata and Ron put on sausages and Fleur baked impossibly fluffy croissants. There were no hangover potions in the house, nor stocked in any nearby shops, so they all suffered together.

Neither Oliver nor Bill said anything to Harry about the previous night. It was still humiliating.

The dining room was too small for them all, but it was a nice day out. They ended up outside, on great stone slabs overlooking the ocean. Harry was quiet, breathing in salty air, until Ron came to sit beside him. “Alright?” he asked. His tone implied he’d been awake to hear Harry last night.

“Nightmares,” Harry said, because that was still embarrassing but easier to explain than the truth.

Ron frowned. “About him?” he said, because it did sound funny.

“Sort of. Not really. I dunno.” He watched the sea birds circle high overhead.

“Ginny was like that for a long time,” Ron said. “I know it’s not the same, but….”

But really it probably wasn’t so different, sharing a mind and all the hardships that entailed. “Where is she?” he asked, looking back. Tonks was out now, currently drinking coffee and talking to Oliver, but he hadn’t seen Ginny at all this morning.

“The twins took her somewhere. They wouldn’t say.”

Harry arched his brows. “You’re not worried?”

“They’ve always brought her back in one piece before. _Ugh_ ,” he muttered abruptly, dropping his fork and going green. “Maybe they’ve gone for potions, that’d be brill.”

But they came back within the hour, bearing great tote bags. “We’ve rented Quidditch gear,” Fred said, opening a bag to extract passable brooms. “We’ve got enough for real teams, even! Weasleys versus non-Weasleys, you think?”

“Weasleys and spouses,” George amended. “Oi, Tonks, when are you changing your name?”

She gave him a playful smile. “To what?”

“Tonks-Weasley. Tweasley.”

“Don’t be disgusting,” she chided. “And – ah,” she added, catching Ginny’s look. “I can’t _exert_ myself so much yet. I’ll have to sit it out.”

“Funny, Ginny hadn’t mentioned you were a pillow princess – “ Fred began to say, but then Ginny and Tonks hit him with simultaneous hexes, one that filled his mouth with sand and the other that turned his fingers to tentacles, so the rest of his bon mot was lost to a spluttering, gooey spectacle.

“We get Harry then,” Bill said brightly, restoring order, “if you all have got Oliver.” And Harry beamed at him.

They played for hours – the brisk air was fantastic for a hangover, as it turned out. Angelina played Seeker opposite him, and they were both lax about it, preferring to watch the teams work. Oliver played Keeper, but Luna was a surprisingly passable Chaser as long as she didn’t get distracted. (“Oh, a dolphin!” she shouted once, looking over at the sea _while she had the Quaffle_ , and Ron had found this so unexpectedly hilarious that she’d scored on him.)

Late in the afternoon, after two solid games, they all landed, collapsing on the grass. Harry gazed over the scene happily. “Are there rec clubs?” he asked George, who was nearest. “I can’t play at Hogwarts this year, and I’d forgotten how brilliant….” _How brilliant it feels to be that far off the ground._

George looked at him curiously. “Yeah,” he said. “They’re pretty popular. We haven’t got one – no time – but Angelina does. Ang?” he called her over.

Oh thank god. Of all the things he anticipated missing about Hogwarts, Quidditch was in the top five, at least.

Everyone departed shortly thereafter – the twins and most of their friends back around Diagon Alley, and Oliver to a flat outside Edinburgh, and Luna to her father’s house. Tonks and Ginny would return to Tonks’s flat, and the rest of them back to Hogwarts on a portkey Hermione had carried for them. “I’ll be back tomorrow,” Ginny promised, taking Tonks’s arm to apparate, and gave them a little wave before they vanished.

There wasn’t time to have a nap. There was time for a wank. All the delayed feelings of last night – pity _really_ wasn’t far from an erotic sensation, for either of them.

He wondered if he could make Voldemort cry.

He got off without a particular thought in mind, but when he arched into orgasm, he still felt Oliver’s strong grip on his upper arms, steadying him in the dark. And that was nice too.

 

After dinner, walking back to the dungeons with Ron and Hermione, he thought of something quite horrible. “What if… I brought the Horcrux to the Slytherin estate tomorrow?”

They both looked at him – Ron in terror, Hermione in anger. “ _Why_?” Ron asked. “Really, I’d make Ginny come if you needed more help. I’d make the twins come if you needed a _lot_ more help.”

“He – it – whatever, actually knows the magic. He did a lot of the casting on the estate.” He looked at their unyielding figures. “Nevermind.”

“Honestly, we _should_ meet this… figure you spend so much time with,” Hermione said, though not in a relenting way. “To tell it if anything happens to you, we will melt it down in Fiendfyre.”

He smiled at Hermione, fierce and just. “I haven’t spent a _lot_ of time with him,” he said. “Not recently. He’s been with the Slytherins. But he’s been involved with the estate because… it’s his family, not mine. And he’s brilliant at the magic there. Can I show you something?” They were at his door.

“He’s not here now?” Hermione asked, raising her eyebrows.

“No. He’s at Grimmauld Place. This is… in the Pensieve.” He let them in.

He hadn’t had the pensieve out in awhile. He really ought to; it was a fair solution for depression quite often. They both expected to see a memory of Riddle; instead he took out the memory of the Slytherin estate. “This is… it’ll be easier to show you. It’s a time lapse of the estate.” He poured the vial into the pensieve, and they took a breath before following him.

They stood on the front steps, of the lower sturdy building it had been in the medieval era. “He extracted the memories from the walls,” Harry said. “Magic buildings carry imprints of their owners, he said. Here.” He brought them in.

They were quiet and wide-eyed, watching the space shift before them. Looking at it now, Harry was quite pleased with how much they had recreated – the stones were similar, the windows and arches. The hearth was in the same place, when he entered the shifting space of the kitchen.

“This is….” Ron was sort of breathless behind him.

And Hermione was brisk. “Did you give this to the architects?” she asked. “It’s very esoteric magic. What on earth did you tell them?”

“No. I didn’t. They had blueprints. Let me show you the upstairs.” He took them up the sweeping staircase. This was in the early Victorian era by now, and there were intricate wooden children’s toys on the landing. “Watch it – it’s mostly bedrooms up here, but there are a few back rooms for research – and this is when the library gets another floor.” They entered the shadowy, secret part of the house, where the potions lab vented into the sky. There were plants everywhere, some contained in glass and some free. Hermione peered down at a couple, while Ron looked into the bedrooms.

Harry loved this house. It was all aspirational – in most ways, bringing Voldemort back here still felt impossibly far off – but he loved the idea of it, anyway. “Most of this floor I’ve left empty,” he said. “For now. We will probably need a potions lab. And I’ll put in guest bedrooms. The master bedroom’s always been at the end of the way, with its own balcony….” But Hermione was moving in the opposite direction, toward the library. Harry smiled, following her.

“What happened?” Ron asked, peering at the impressive vaulted ceiling above them. “It was _ruins_ before you got to it. Did it get attacked?”

“I asked. There wasn’t any record of it. But Parselmagic – or maybe Parseltongue altogether – became illegal sometime in the 1800s, and they started to go into hiding. This is just… abandonment. Is that right?” he asked. “Magical homes, I dunno enough about them, but – “

“Could be, I guess.” Ron ran a hand over a cracked bannister before him. “Wonder if that’s what happening to Hogwarts, making it fall apart,” he said idly.

“Mm,” Harry agreed in a non-committal way, trying not to die inside.

But Ron stopped, staring. “It _is_ ,” he said, in wonder and horror. “Hogwarts is because of _him_.”

Harry shushed him – Hermione had gone ahead into the library and he couldn’t handle both of them at once. “Maybe,” he said in a low tone. “We’ve only guessed. _Don’t_ tell her, she’ll never let it go.”

“Harry....” Ron said in a strangled tone.

“The Aurors already know. Think. Please. It’ll just make everything worse if I’ve got to answer for it. Or if the school found out.”

Ron was openly sad – as he should be, because he and Hermione didn’t keep a lot of secrets. She’d told him about Riddle, after all. “Alright,” he said in a sigh. “But if anything happens….”

“It’s on me. I know.”

Ron walked ahead of him, joining Hermione on the upper floor of the library. He didn’t get credit for his own sort of cleverness often enough, living in Hermione’s shadow. Anyway, the memory would start to loop soon, so he went to get them out when it did.

 

Before bed, he hiked to Dumbledore’s office, dropping a note addressed to Tom in that floo: _Do you want to come to the estate tomorrow? I’m taking Ron and Hermione to set up furniture. You wouldn’t have to help._

Fawkes was out, so he was obligated to sit by the floo and wait for a response. The parchment whooshed out a few minutes later, though: _Yes._

Well, that was perhaps the stupidest thing he’d done in awhile. He incinerated the note as evidence before leaving.

 

 _Sunday, April 4._ Harry delivered the news to Ron and Hermione over breakfast. (“He’s coming along. _Is_ that alright?” he asked in an anxious undertone. Short nods.) And then he went to Grimmauld Place, stumbling out of the fireplace into an empty room.

Clanging from the dining room indicated they were still at breakfast. “Hello?” he called, so as not to take them by surprise. A slight hush. He entered.

It wasn’t all the Slytherins, but it was at least half of them, with a bright breakfast spread before them. Most of the younger ones, too – Beatrice Yaxley and Gotlinde Rowle sat across from him, Cephas Huxley to his left, Uli Archuleta to his right. Malfoy was at the head of the table (Harry would shit himself if Malfoy fancied himself a _father figure_ , honest to god) and Riddle was tucked away in a back corner, without food but with a cup of coffee in one hand and newspaper in the other. “Hi,” Harry said to the room at large. “Uh, do purebloods care about Easter? Happy Easter.”

Some incredulous looks. “Ostara was weeks ago,” Malfoy said, raising his sleek eyebrows. “Happy Muggle Easter.”

Harry spared a glance to roll his eyes at Malfoy. Then: “I’m taking Tom… out. I’ve only come to collect him.”

“They know of the Slytherin estate,” Riddle said, folding the paper before him.

“Do they? Did you tell them? Did Malfoy?”

“Yes,” Malfoy said, though his mouth curved slightly. “I must have.”

“… Right,” he said, though he didn’t fancy Malfoy’s tone. “Can we go, then?” he said to Tom. “Or is there anything you need to do here? Is there anything _I_ need to do here?”

“You need to re-charm the security in the entryway,” Riddle said. “Moody hasn’t been by recently. Nobody else is authorized.”

“Yeah, sure.” He was unbuttoning his cloak. “Can you show me?” A nod.

But when they were alone in the entryway, Harry turned to Riddle. “ _Why_ are they still here?” he asked. “Rowle and the Yaxleys were supposed to be released by now. At least.” It had taken him a bit to place why it’d been such a surprise to see their daughters here. “And why hasn’t Moody been by? Has anyone? Has Scrimgeour?”

Riddle shushed him, opening the wards around the massive doorway for Harry to infuse. “There have been _setbacks_ , so we have been told,” he said darkly. “And internal strife within the Ministry. That half a dozen people understand what is happening and they all _virulently_ disagree. The students aren’t inclined to trust them anyway, since everyone involved arrested their parents to begin with. They are hardly optimistic.”

The Order of Lua Saturni had been established for the Death Eaters with commuted sentences. As legally required, it’d been published in the papers. Since then, nothing had happened publicly – but really, it shouldn’t, since most of it was covered under their contract and non-disclosure. Harry thought of Dumbledore’s urgent business at the Ministry on Friday. He thought of Tonks saying Moody was taken away by an emergency that night.

Moody, Scrimgeour, Robards, Bowersock, and Bones. They were all already nearly at a civil war over the problem of Voldemort. This might destroy them.

“They know they can stay… as long as it takes,” Harry said instead. A short nod. “Do you know who’s fighting it?”

“No. We only know what has been intimated in the letters they’ve sent. And the papers know nothing.”

By now Harry was re-aligning the security wards, putting his wand in one of the joints to infuse it with magic. “Alright,” he said in a sigh, because he could interfere with a lot of things, but not the highest echelons of the Ministry.

To take Riddle to the Slytherin estate, he would have to carry the diadem. “You’ll need something more permanent,” he said as they approached the basin of fire.

“Yes. I haven’t yet found an alternative. The Ministry did at least send back the library on Horcruces.”

“Did they?” Harry was massively surprised, as he’d never expected to see those books again. “Those have got too be so illegal, though.”

“Mm. They are. Most are so _coy_ about the magic, however, they’re scarcely even useful. Moody said to leave them in the library here. They are only as illegal as everything else it contains.”

“Huh,” Harry said. “Alright. Give me your wand.” Riddle handed it over silently. And then he dispelled the fire of manifestation, picking the diadem out of its basin. He left.

 

His portkey, with Ron and Hermione, from Dumbledore’s office. Thinking a silent apology to the diadem now worn on his hand like a ring, he was saying to them, “If he’s too much, I’ll put him back. He’s… not like Voldemort,” he said, whatever they thought that might mean. “Voldemort… I don’t even know how to say it. Voldemort enjoys conflict in a way Riddle doesn’t, exactly.” _Voldemort likes being hated_ , the blunt version of what he was attempting to express. “Riddle is still sort of the Head Boy.”

There was a wrenching in his soul as the diadem reacted to _that_ , but Harry didn’t recognize the emotion enmeshed in the reaction so he disregarded it.

The Slytherin estate was structurally finished. He looked up at it fondly when they arrived on the imposing front steps.

Inside, the smells of fresh-cut stone and wood and wallpaper paste had barely settled. Most of the interior walls were stone as well, and he had to hang a sphere of witchfire in each room without windows facing the sun.

He couldn’t stop _touching_ it all.

He came to the kitchen, conjuring a similar basin on the countertop. They needed the hearth for a real fire, because the house was cold. “ _Hithgalach_.” He dropped the diadem in, stepping back when Riddle emerged.

“I need to see the wards,” he said immediately, taking his wand offered by Harry.

“Do you? – Wait,” Harry pled, even as Riddle was mid-stride. “Let me introduce you. So they haven’t got to avoid you.”

“This is mad, you know.”

“Not so mad as spending all year with the Slytherins. Ron? Hermione?” he called across the house.

Hermione had put a kerchief over her hair already, pulling it back from her face. They emerged, tentatively, and Harry watched Riddle’s face to ensure he didn’t _glower_ too overtly. “This is Ron Weasley, and Hermione Granger. This is Tom Riddle. Uh, Tom’s done  lot of the magic on this estate, repairing the wards. And – probably other things too,” he said with a sidelong look at Riddle. Perfect indifference.

“I want to see them,” Hermione said immediately.

“Hermione – “

“Fine,” Riddle said. “ _I_ am not here to hang curtains, anyway.”

This was true, and he hadn’t quite told Riddle what his purpose here might be. He hadn’t thought that far. “Okay,” he said, blinking at them. “Are you… looking for something? I left the wards open enough to have everything delivered, but we should close them again.”

Hermione was already going in front of Riddle, as though she already knew where all the wards were. Riddle strode after her. Ron sort of looked pale.

“They’ll be fine,” Harry said to him. “Just… keep an ear out, would you? They won’t be long.”

So he and Ron moved to the front room for social events – it’d be where they would hold parties and balls, if they ever became so legitimate. For now there was a lot of shrunken furniture and boxes of wedding gifts.

Harry had cleverly brought sharpies and duct tape (borrowed from Hermione), to label where everything should go. He levitated a sofa set out of the way, to take it into the sitting room later. “Upstairs there’s only our bedroom and a bath, I’ll get to them later, if we could put the ground floor in order….”

Ron stood, looking rather overwhelmed amidst the trappings of a house. “What could you need a flat with us for?” he asked. “When you’ve got… this.” He looked up – this room extended to the floor above, and Harry thought faintly that they might paint murals into the paneled ceiling. “You could about play Quidditch in here,” Ron said. “Hang hoops where the _chandeliers_ would go, and you’ll be sorted.”

Harry set down the box of cutlery he’d been looking at. ( _Best on your matrimonial bliss, Gladys Antwerp_ , read the card.) “I don’t _need_ your flat,” he said carefully. “It will be yours. I wanted….”

“You don’t need to pay us to stay around.”

“No. I know. It just seemed like it was… hard on you both, not knowing if you’d have a job right out of school, and all.” Ron and Hermione had been tense around one another a lot recently, mostly in relation to money, and it made Harry feel guilty. “Anyway, I want the sort of friends who will come around to _your_ place. Not the sort who’d come around here.” He lifted his chin with a wry smile.

“I think I could fit my entire house in here,” Ron muttered.

“Ron – “

He shook his head. “Nevermind,” he said firmly. It’d hurt them too much to do this now, with hours ahead of them. “I’ll take the dining table out, if you take the chairs.”

“… Yeah, alright.”

Trekking across the house, they were both listening for Riddle and Hermione, who’d gone back outside to examine the wards. They didn’t hear anything through the front doors, and exchanged a look. “They’re fine,” Harry said. Thinking of how Ministry diplomatic meetings would take place without wands, he regretted not demanding each of theirs.

“Is that also going to be the floo?” Ron asked when they passed the kitchen hearth. “Because you shouldn’t put any furniture so close – I think there’s regulations, six feet of clearance of something, Percy would know….”

“No, the floo’s in one of those rooms behind the stairs, next to the sitting room? We haven’t set it up yet. The Aurors put about _every_ security spell on this place.”

“How did you ever convince them?” Ron asked, somewhat awed. “Really, to give him back ancestral property….”

“I know. Uh.” Honestly, Moody had agreed to this out of guilt, when he’d confronted Harry about all the abusive memories, and Harry had _cried_ in front of him, and he still didn’t know that it was worth it. “It’s complicated,” he ended up on.

They set the long dining table and chairs in their place. The dining room branched off to a smaller room that would hold a wet bar. On the way out, Ron opened the pantry, peering in. And then he reached for the adjacent cellar door.

“Oh – don’t – “ Harry didn’t quite jump in front of him, but Ron jerked his hand back anyway. “Sorry,” Harry said. “There’s a… terrarium down there.”

“A terrarium?”

“I put heat and humidity charms on it. So the snakes had somewhere to stay in the winter. You can’t be _surprised_ that snakes live here,” he said. “They say they descended from Slytherin’s snakes. And I couldn’t ask them to leave when they were here first, anyway. They’ve been quite nice, letting all the construction happen. D'you want to see them?” he offered.

“ _No_.”

He shrugged, flashing a guilty grin. “I know it’s soft,” he said. “Maybe they won’t stay forever. But we don’t need the cellar for anything else. Oh – that’s the other thing Riddle’s done, apart from the wards. Negotiated with the snakes. They care much  more about the _heir_ than about me.”

“We should go find them,” Ron said, to get out of this.

“Yeah.”

So they went out the front door, and were about blinded with the matrix of wards outside. Riddle and Hermione were beyond the front steps, pulling apart a ward that would mark a path to the door. They looked to be fighting.

“ – just because it’s historic doesn’t mean it’s safe,” Hermione was saying, holding up a cord with runes dotting it like fairy lights. “This is a security risk as soon as anyone crosses it with copper – “

“It wouldn’t be if you kept the insulating ward on – “

“It scarcely matters when you cast it like _this_.” She happened to catch a glimpse of Harry and Ron out of the corner of her eye, but when she looked over, she seemed even angrier. “Harry! Come here.”

“I’m not really sure I want to,” he said wryly, but he approached them nonetheless.

Hermione pressed another strand of wards into his hands. “Do you recognize this?”

He looked down. “It’s… a security charm,” he said slowly. “It vanishes – all the doors? The front doors? I don’t think we’ve designated the front doors in runic yet – it vanishes some door if an intruder is spotted.”

“Have you seen it before?”

“… No?”

“ _I_ have,” she said severely. “At _Hogwarts_. The night the ceiling malfunctioned and we had to fix the wards, there were all these knots – new, with a distinctive way of being tied off. They weren’t McGonagall’s, or Malfoy’s, or Flitwick’s, or the Aurors’. I thought somebody had broken into the castle to install new wards,” she said with a laugh that was sharp and a bit angry.

Harry glanced over at Riddle, who stood impassively with his hands in his pockets, watching. “I knew Tom was working on the wards there.”

“Harry,” she moaned. “Why? Why would you let him?” she added with a glare at Riddle. “They aren’t accessible to everyone. That’d be chaos.”

“It is _my_ castle,” he said, unrepentant.

“It is not.”

He didn’t even answer. Instead, raising his hands (not even his wand, his _hands_ ), he swirled a bright ball of light into a vortex. It lifted itself like a balloon into the sky – and a moment later, the blue sky was blackened with a storm. A _crack_ of thunder rang over them, and then they were standing in a glittery, dry rain. “Hogwarts is mine,” Riddle reiterated, as though he hadn’t just crafted an insane magical storm out of nothing. “This estate is mine. I feel its needs in a native way, and I alone can finesse its magic.” Raising a hand again, he summoned the storm, wrapping it into a tiny glass ball, which he held out to Hermione. Utterly conflicted, she took it. “The castle was falling apart, and I alone could save it.”

“ _You alone_ ,” she echoed. “If you weren’t doing anything illicit, you wouldn’t have hidden it.”

He raised an angular shoulder. “I was created for survival’s sake. My own, and my bloodline.”

“And Voldemort’s.”

“Yes.”

“What other runes did you add to Hogwarts?” she challenged. “Is that how you got the Slytherins out?” Then she laughed with a thought. “Is that how you cursed the Defense post?”

Riddle smiled, because he wasn’t inclined to deny terrible accusations. “Harry wondered that as well,” he said.

“We’ll tear open the wards this summer, we’ll find it – this is _monstrous_ – “

“Hermione,” Harry cut in. “I, uh, know how the post was cursed. So does Moody. It’s not in the wards.”

And he got looks of surprise from all three of them, actually. “I can’t say,” he apologized. “Uh, Tom doesn’t know how he’ll do it, it’s a few years after… this.” He raised his chin at Riddle’s current form. “I did ask him to look. And he has. And _he’s_ got vows against harming anyone at Hogwarts, and _Voldemort’s_ got vows against… well, everything. Harming all of Britain, pretty much. I wouldn’t have let anything happen if I thought it was unsafe.”

She was flushed. “That’s really not for you to decide.”

“I’ve done what I could,” he said, exhausted. “I’ve got to get back to… all this. Are you coming in?”

They followed him, surprisingly. Ron had taken a seat on the front steps, not daring to get any closer, and scrambled up now as they passed.

But as Ron and Harry unpacked, Tom and Hermione circled each other like angry cats. Tom did not give a shit about the décor, as he’d said, but he cared very much about the house’s magic. He ended up doing something like _repairs_ , charming windows and doorways and light fixtures with optimal usage. He rarely even used a wand, instead braiding bits of magic on directly, and they all sort of looked on in jealousy.

Dining set, dish cabinet, kitchen table, barstools for the kitchen island, sofas in the sitting room and tearoom, shelving and bookcases in the sitting room, the entire _wall_ of shelves in the library, the desks and armchairs in there, floor rugs in each room, hanging light fixtures. And that was just the bare minimum, getting the large pieces of furniture out of the way so they could lay out the smaller boxes. The bedroom set was pushed into a far corner of the ballroom; he’d take it up himself later.

But Hermione was red-faced and Ron’s back hurt and they were all a little weary. “I want a beer,” Harry muttered, stretching out his shoulders. “Tom?” he called up the staircase.

Footsteps above them. “Yes?” He’d been doing something physical, because his normally-sleek hair now fell over his forehead in a charming way.

“D'you know where the nearest town is? I’ll apparate there, we can’t get floo delivery for lunch without a floo….” He only sort of knew the surrounding area yet.

Riddle arched his brows. “I will take you.”

“You haven’t got to.”

“You’ll apparate into a town you’ve never visited? – And the nearest one is a village called Blythehead. It’s Muggle,” he said by way of explanation as he shrugged off his robe, so his clothes might pass. Harry was already in tattered jeans and a jumper.

“Right. Thanks. Could we go now, then?”

So they left Ron and Hermione, with instructions to take _anything_ among the wedding gifts they wanted because Harry couldn’t be arsed to display it all. And then Riddle side-alonged him from the front steps into Blythehead.

They ended up in a bright town bisected by a greenish stream. The streets were quiet. “Easter,” Harry said. “Are there any halal places nearby? – And how _do_ you know about this, anyway? Did you need to buy things?” he asked skeptically.

“Perhaps I just wanted to mingle with the commoners.”

“Prat,” he chided. “Really.”

“There’s Mediterranean takeout down the next street,” Riddle said instead. “I take it Granger’s a vegetarian?”

“… Yes.”

Riddle strode as usual, and Harry hustled to keep up. “Sorry about… _that_ ,” he muttered. “She’ll never _not_ be angry with me for Voldemort. I’ve sort of stopped trying to convince her otherwise.”

“How tedious.”

“It’s really not. Oh – and the Defense curse,” he said, earning him a curious look. “The bit of the dungeons that collapsed – you knew that, right?” he asked, because Riddle had been absent from the castle for a few weeks now, but he expected the Slytherins had passed along what they’d heard. “Behind it is a passage to a grotto, connected to the lake. And _Moody_ said it was full of dark magic, but _I_ found the magic familiar – I, uh, slipped off there a few times. So we thought something of his was in there. It’s only a guess.”

“Mm.” Riddle was intrigued. “I’m sure the mermaids are furious.”

He grinned. “Yeah.” He let Riddle steer him into the deli.

And with food and beer in tow, they walked back toward the apparition point. “Do you want to go back?” Harry asked. “You haven’t got to stay. You don’t even _benefit_ from this.”

With a wry look, Riddle rapped his knuckles on Harry’s forehead. “I could not apparate elsewhere,” he said. “You have forgotten what I _am_.”

“Oh. Right.” Honestly they were a few miles from the estate, and already _that_ seemed like a far distance for him to have left the diadem. “Well, thanks, then.” And he apparated them back himself.

Ron and Hermione were sprawled in two library armchairs when they found them. “Some of the things people sent you are valuable,” Ron said. “Paintings and things. And some of them are cursed.”

“Oh. Neat. I brought beer.” And he ushered them into the kitchen to eat. Riddle came along, taking a beer bottle when Harry offered it, but he remained standing at the other side of the island.

The room was tense, and it wasn’t even Tom’s fault. Since Harry had some experience intercepting Ron and Hermione’s fights, he said brightly, “There used to be stables on the edge of the property. And a greenhouse. Actually,” he looked to Tom, “ _were_ they herbologists? I showed them the memories, and there are just so many plants around. For generations.”

“Herbologists, apothecarists, potions distributors, healers. At least one dealer in poisons. Those would all be plants of magical utility.”

Hermione was watching him closely, even if he was ignoring her. “I found a book,” she said. “Well, a title, you would have to request it from the Cambridge Library of Mages. It’s….” She was rummaging through her bag to find a slip of parchment. “ _Genealogy and History of the Slytherin, Rowan, Tarquin, and Gaunt Families_. To find out what happened to the estate, at the end.” She held the parchment out to Harry.

God bless Hermione, she was exhausting and self-righteous but she was good, and she also tried harder than anyone he knew. “Thanks,” he said with a smile.

“We’re not so far from our flat, are we?” Ron asked, stabbing at kebab with a fork. “We were talking, Harry – d’you want to learn to drive? We’ll be in a Muggle area, and I think I want to. Just for a lark.”

“It’s not a _lark_ , it’s an entire ton of metal on the road,” Hermione objected.

Harry drank deeply because they were definitely snappy _with each other_ , not just in general. “I might,” he said. “But I’d like to fly too, when I can. Oh, Angelina told me about her Quidditch club? If I’ve got time I’m going to join one. Want to?”

“Oh – yeah, that’d be brill. I miss Quidditch.”

He smiled at Ron. But Hermione was looking at Riddle. “That shouldn’t even be _possible_ ,” she said at last.

He was so taken aback that he didn’t even look contemptuous for a moment. “Pardon?”

“You’re not _real_ ,” she said. “This isn’t magic, it’s physics. Thermodynamics. Where is that _going_?”

He looked at her, then swallowed a sip of beer deliberately. “Are you asking whether I piss?” he asked with genteel sincerity.

“ _No_.”

A shrug. “I signed a contract with the Minister in blood last week,” he said. “So rather a lot is predicated on my circumstantial _realness._ ”

“This is absurd,” she muttered, dropping her spoonful of baba ghanoush. “I feel like I’ve gone mad. The diary, at least that subsisted off another person.”

“ _Hermione_ ,” Ron said, horrified.

“ _Well_. Ginny had better not ever find out,” she added to Harry. “It took _years_ …. But you.” She looked back to Riddle. “Your existence is – monstrous.”

Harry’s chest constricted, expecting Riddle would take this really badly. He was getting to his feet, ready to break up a duel, when Riddle gave a short laugh. “Just because you don’t understand something, Ms. Granger, does not make it _monstrous_.”

“That’s not at all what I said. – Harry, sit down,” she said, grabbing his sleeve. A look of exasperation. “Tell me you wouldn’t have brought him if you thought he’d _attack_ me.”

“Well. No.” He sat.

“I can no more answer for the circumstances of my creation than you could of yours,” Riddle said. “Harry would pass along your objections to Voldemort, I’m sure.”

“This is mad,” she re-iterated. “You’re the _same person_. Just hideously broken.”

 _That_ , that did irritate him. “We’re not,” he said sharply.

Hermione hadn’t expected this reaction, but it didn’t stop her. “The same soul, the same magic. You’re apparently bound by the same vows – which, _good_ ,” she added. “What’s the difference?”

A couple weeks ago Riddle had shouted at Moody and Scrimgeour that Voldemort had abandoned him, imprisoned him within the artifact. Harry thought there was some lingering embarrassment in this, because he wouldn’t repeat it now. “We want quite different things,” he said. “And apart from grievous harm, I neither know of nor care for his well-being. He feels the same.”

It was fucked up and dysfunctional, clearly, even without naming how traumatized Riddle still was. Hermione was working through all this, her look clever and shrewd. “Alright.”

He raised his eyebrows, making a gesture as though grateful to be excused. Beer still in hand, he returned upstairs.

Ron only exhaled when they were alone. Hermione looked over. “Oh, what.”

“Nothing.” He was nearly finished eating, and stood from the barstool. “I’m going for a walk.”

“There’s a boundary a mile out. I think,” Harry said. “You’ll probably find it.”

“There’s a pond out there, I’ll see if it’s near enough.”

Harry and Hermione took more beer to go through wedding gifts, though neither of them had an eye for décor. “Put the vase in the front hall,” she said. “You’ll need – probably a _cupboard_ more than coat rack, unless there’s one outside the ballroom. Purebloods don’t still have calling cards, do they?” she mused.

He’d begun a list, of things they’d need in the house. Mirrors in the toilets. A dishrack. A coat rack, now. “Could you take a few sets of dishes?” he asked. “And some of the towels, too. I understand having a lot of dishes for dinner parties, but we will _never_ need this many towels.”

She smiled at him, pulling a set of sky blue towels toward herself. Then, with some hesitation, “You’ve spent a lot of time with him this year. Like… this?” She waved her hand in the direction of the stairs.

“Yeah. We haven’t got to, I just like it.”

“Do you?”

A neutral tone, but what she’d really wondered. _Do you even like him_? “We can share magic, too,” he said. “It really helps. And… he’s just been really useful. To me and – “ And then his throat closed, because the words _the Slytherins_ were covered by the gag order. Huh. “He’s been useful,” he revised.

Hermione didn’t miss that, and squinted dubiously at him. “Good,” she said. “He wants something.”

“I know what he wants,” Harry said. “And it’s fine.” _Freedom, autonomy, as much distance from Voldemort as he can manage_. “I can’t say. I’m sorry. He said he signed a contract – actually, it’s surprising he could say _that_ – but I signed it too. Not to tell.” He thought of Moody telling him there’d come a time when he should no longer share everything with Ron and Hermione. He hoped this wasn’t it. He’d asked Ron to keep a secret today, he couldn’t ask Hermione to keep another.

“Did he help the Slytherins escape?”

“I can’t say.” Which was as good as a yes.

A very long pause. Then: “Good.”

 

Ron rejoined them within the hour. “The pond’s just beyond the barrier,” he said. “It’s pretty murky. There’s probably something living in it. And there’s a few other buildings beyond – I think one was the stable, and the other was, I dunno, the gardener’s shack? Servants’ quarters? Hey, what’re you doing with Kreacher?” he asked with interest.

“Ugh. He’s not coming here.” Having him underfoot at Grimmauld Place made Harry nervous, even as good at his job as Kreacher was. “I’m giving Grimmauld Place to the Order, he should stay there. It would kill him to be free,” he added, intercepting Hermione’s look.

Ron gave him a lopsided smile. “Can only have so many nutters under one roof, I guess.” Harry pitched a stupidly expensive tea towel at him.

 

And then Ron sat with him as Hermione went off. Some of the gifts had been books; and Harry had brought back loads more that he’d borrowed from Voldemort, so she volunteered to put them all in the library. “You built him a _library_ ,” she marveled, even though she’d seen it before.

He grinned. “It’s good, isn’t it? Some of the shelves still need to be anchored to the wall, be careful.” She went.

Ron opened a box. “Oh hey, for your potions lab.” Someone had sent a cauldron, a sturdy one that expanded from tabletop to floor-standard, and a set of nice ingredients.

“I’ll take them up,” Harry said, putting it in a pile of things that belonged upstairs. “When Slytherin vented the potions lab _out_ , he had the right idea. Honestly, we shouldn’t be working on toxic fumes in a dungeon.”

“Probably driven Snape mad. Madder.”

“Ha. – Oh my god,” he said, finding the next gift. Incredulously he extracted a length of silk from a gift bag. Some leather cuffs and a blindfold sat beneath it. The shimmery container was – he was already positive – lube. “Who would _send_ this? What sort of….”

 _To Harry Potter, consort of Lord Slytherin: You are an inspiration!_ The card was unsigned.

Because he was shameless, he passed the bag to Ron, who read the card and went a brilliant red. “That is really – “

“Keep it,” Harry said hurriedly. “Or chuck it. I don’t want it but they’re, ah, nice.”

Ron threw it behind himself, too casually, and cleared his throat. “Bet that won’t even be the weirdest one.”

When they’d grown bored, their legs cramping from sitting so long, they began moving household items again. Ron took a load of boxes to the kitchen, while Harry at last took up the bedroom set.

The bedroom was in dark wood, but the walls were paneled in a delicate white and gold damask. There were arched windows, over which he’d hang floor-length curtains. A four poster bed, with a sort of headboard that they could loop restraints through. He hadn’t bought sheets yet, but thought rather perversely that he wanted them in colors that would stain well. Then, nightstands for each side of the bed, where Voldemort would set his papers and Harry would set his glasses and soother, and they’d both set their panopticons. Two dressers, fitted into niches he’d had made specifically for them. A bookcase, just a small one, to hold their nighttime reading. He sat on the bare mattress for a moment, but he still couldn’t picture bringing Voldemort _home_ to this. He went to go get the pile of goods that went in the upstairs bath.

But as he approached the staircase, he heard voices from the upper story of the library – Hermione and Tom, their tones pointed if not angry. Harry knocked on the great door, letting himself in.

He didn’t understand how they’d ended up _here_ , on one of the library’s mezzanines that overlooked the ground floor. They were arguing about – _Arithmancy_ , by the look of the parchment before them. “Ng’s been completely erased from the scholarship, even though _everyone_ uses her uncertainty principle,” Hermione was saying hotly. “At least cite her before you misunderstand her.”

“I’m not rewriting the wards to give your pet scholar a break.”

“Madigan stole her work wholesale. She’s not a pet, she’s a _casualty_.”

Lost and bewildered, Harry about backed out of the room, but they both saw him. “Harry,” Hermione said. “Nevermind. We disagree about the wards, is all.”

“Perhaps we should each cast one half of the house and see which holds up longer?” Riddle suggested innocently.

“Don’t be stupid,” Hermione chided.

The bang of a door below, and Ron brought a few throw pillows into the library’s ground floor. “Hey,” he said, seeing them gathered on the upper floor.

“Just leave those,” Harry said, leaning over the balustrade to gesture toward the sofas.

“Is there a staircase up?” Ron asked, looking around.

“Ha!” Hermione said, as though this were a triumph. “I said it should be invisible, _he_ said it should retract. Nevermind that it’s a safety hazard.” And with a flick of her wand, she revealed a spiral staircase in the corner.

Ron trudged up, looking back down on the ground floor. It was done in the darkest colors in the house, in deep reds and dark woods, and the effect was impressive. “You said you’re putting in _more_ bookshelves?” he asked Harry.

“Probably, yeah.”

Riddle said indifferently, “I dated a great many scholars when I was young. Professors of literature and philosophy. One of botany, one of philosophy. Psychology. They all gave me boxes of books as parting gifts.”

Hermione frowned. “Psychology?”

“They were Muggle,” he confirmed her unspoken question. “Though Muggle psychology is quite useless for wizards. So is a great deal of their philosophy, really. Their lives are so fleeting and blind.” Hermione was quietly incensed, but Riddle had looked to Harry. “You should get his books from our father’s house. At least a few rooms are dedicated to storage.”

“I will, yeah. … Do you want that house?” Harry asked. “I think he wants to torch it, honestly. I’ll tell him he can’t if it’d be useful to you.”

Riddle shuddered faintly. “I’d like to be present when he does ignite it,” he said. Harry gave him a tentative smile.

And Harry and Ron departed to unpack further, and Hermione and Riddle got stuck in another argument about the effect of astronomy on the wards. Hermione was sketching a star chart furiously when Harry left.

They worked through the beer. They hung paintings with sticking spells. (“Mum would kill me,” Ron said, pressing a frame directly to the wall. “I dunno the real mounting spell, though.”) Most of the sculptures and vases and sheer _knick-knacks_ went into a few closets for now. Harry couldn’t stand to look at them, they reminded him of his countless wasted hours dusting for Aunt Petunia. It was too late to be resentful, but – he was resentful.

And so was Ron, it seemed, though Harry didn’t realize it until they faintly heard Hermione shout from the next room ( _laughter?_ It might have been laughter) and his mouth went tight.

Harry set down a tea set to listen. “I think they’re alright.”

“I’m sure they are,” he muttered.

Harry got up to put the tea set in the kitchen, and also take a bit of a walk. He’d stiffen up if he sat still much longer.

So he passed through the pantry, taking hold of the door that led to the cellar. A brood of vipers, he thought to himself cleverly, though most of them now were constrictors, not even venomous snakes. He descended.

The cellar was dark and rather musky; wrinkling his nose, Harry cast some cleaning spells. “ _Hello?_ ”

 _Thump_. One very sleepy burmese python had lifted itself to see who had entered, and dropped itself dejectedly now. “Sorry,” Harry said, amused. “I’ll send Tom down if you’d rather see him. D'you need anything?”

“A vole?” the python said hopefully.

“A _vole_? I could transfigure one,” Harry said doubtfully, “but, er, it’d revert back, and….”

“With a summoning spell,” the python clarified.

He could try, anyway. He crossed the cellar, to the outer doors. “It’s warm enough in here?” he asked. “I could conjure some… straw, or wood chips or something. I dunno, I’ve never cared for a snake before.” The idea of bringing a snake back into the Dursleys’ made him smile anyway.

“We are not pets,” the python rebuked, though still rather sleepily.

“Right.” The storm cellar door was already propped open to let the snakes pass; he pushed it open the rest of the way. “Accio vole?” he tried, raising his wand.

It took a minute, but there was a rustling in the bushes along the house, and his magic surged, and a thrashing rodent was summoned right into his face. “ _Ahh!_ ” He batted the furry thing away.

“ _Useless_ ,” the python chided, darting past Harry to sink its teeth into the scampering vole. It was hardly big enough to squeeze first, and the python swallowed it whole. Harry looked away.

“Sssend me the heir,” the python said when it had eaten.

“Right. Sure.” He re-cast some of the heating and humidity charms before letting himself out.

Ron was in the kitchen, nursing the last beer as he stretched out his shoulders along the counter. “Doesn’t even make sense,” he muttered. “To be so sore after levitating things. We’ve got magic to _avoid_ hard labor, haven’t we?”

Harry grinned at him. “Thanks,” he said. “A lot.”

“Don’t mention it.”

“The – snake in the cellar wanted to see Riddle. Then we should get Hermione, and go.”

“Think they’re still in the library,” Ron said with false casualness.

So they were. Harry nearly walked into a web of wards strung across the entrance, Hermione gesticulating wildly and saying something about how the Torch knot was fifty years outdated but _he wouldn’t know, would he_? Harry sidestepped being whacked on the nose by her wand before she turned around.

“Oh!” she said apologetically. “I lost track of time, Harry – I’m sorry.”

“No problem,” he said, though Ron definitely had a problem. “Tom, there’s a python that wants to see you.”

“It _wants to see me_?” he repeated in amusement.

“Well, it wasn’t thrilled to see me, anyway. And then we should go, it’s rather late.”

Riddle strode right through Hermione’s wards, to her annoyance, and she took a minute to dismantle them. “Sorry,” she said again. “I’ve been reading a lot about wards recently – they’re affected by astronomy and nearby charms, which everyone knows, but they’re _also_ affected by things like ambient pressure and humidity. Which wixes don’t tend to understand or care about.”

“Ron’s in the kitchen,” Harry said, leading her out. “We’ve boxed up a load of stuff for your flat too, he’s got it already.”

“Really? _Thank_ you,” she said. And when she found Ron, she’d start to look through the box of home goods, even while Ron himself was trying not to edge away from her.

And the cellar door shut and Riddle re-emerged. “There will be fewer snakes in the spring,” he said to Harry, “but more in the summer. You’ll have to re-cast the humidity spells by June.”

“Thanks,” Harry said. “Is that it?” A nod. He looked over at Ron and Hermione. “You should go back to Hogwarts. We’ve got to go to Grimmauld Place. I’ll be back late. You can apparate?”

“Yes.” Hermione was pulling her kerchief out of her hair, fluffing it back into shape.

“Great. See you tonight, then.”

Ron and Hermione left together awkwardly. Harry spelled out the lights before reaching for the diadem. “Ready?”

“Yes.”

He apparated to the street before 12 Grimmauld Place, letting himself in out the beginnings of a cold drizzle. “Hello?” he called into the house.

“Master Potter, please do not drip on the floors, they have just been mopped.”

He looked down at Kreacher. “Sorry.” Slipping off his cloak, he let Kreacher hang it. Into one of the sitting rooms with a fireplace, and he manifested Riddle again. “There,” he muttered, stepping back. “I’ll be going – “

Riddle caught his arm, and he hadn’t even realized how tired and shaky he was until he’d been steadied. “You will not go back to Scotland like that,” Tom said. “Go shower. Perhaps sleep. The bedroom I keep is at the top of the stairs on the second floor.”

“We were only levitating things,” Harry objected. “I didn’t _actually_ exert myself.”

“The students are quiet,” Riddle said instead. “I need to find them. Just stay, for now.”

Honestly, he wasn’t even inclined to argue. He wanted to sleep and already knew he’d regret it, as sore as he’d be upon waking up. Anyway, he trudged up the steep staircases ( _ow_ ) and cast cleaning charms on himself before falling into Riddle’s bed.

Harry could hear voices down the way – it was an effect of expanding the house into about twenty bedrooms, that the walls had become thin. It sounded like the eighth years – Pansy, Goyle, Malfoy. Maybe others. Their tones were dark, and serious, but he couldn’t make out the words. It wasn’t until Riddle entered (could Harry tell by the sound, or by the way his magic flared when Riddle passed?) that he cast a silencing charm around the other room, and Harry slept, shoving his face into a deep down pillow.

 

Later: the crack of the door, and then something furry hurled itself at him, startling him awake. “ _Ahh_ – oh my god – “ And then Moira was bouncing on his stomach, licking his face.

Clearly she was an opportunist, because Riddle had opened the door to find him. “Would you eat dinner?” he asked politely. “And you need to charm one more ward. It’s above the floo.”

The magic of the floo sounded well beyond him. He tried getting up, failed as his back seized, and groaned. “I’m fine,” he said, though Riddle was hardly concerned. “Espiskey? Ah.” Some marginal success. He sat up. “Are the Slytherins alright? I heard – I don’t know what I heard. They sounded bad.”

Riddle shook his head, but then said, “Their parents won’t possibly be moved until Bowersock and Bones have had it out,” he said. “All their previous skirmishes have been over Voldemort, so obviously there is a great deal of misplaced anger by now. It’s heightened by the non-disclosure, that they cannot rally anyone to their side.”

Harry looked at him curiously. “How do you know this?” He’d known so little that morning.

A faint smile. “Amelia Bones sent a _missive_ ,” he pronounced. “Obviously she can commute their sentences, but Bowersock and the legislative branch can impede her with legal procedure. She wrote that he’s argued that joining an order under duress is legal slavery.”

He hated Bowersock so much. But Amelia should hate _him_ , and Voldemort, both. “What does she want?”

He gave an elegant shrug. “Who can say? She’s a Hufflepuff.”

This wasn’t enough. He knew Madam Bones to be fierce to the end. “You’ve killed her entire family.”

A glimmer of amusement. “Have I, though?”

“You know what I mean.” He held Moira to his chest as he got up, shoving his feet back into his trainers. “Show me the floo.”

The Slytherins were mostly on the ground floor by now, and it was awkward to work in front of them. Huxley and Bernthal had scattered when Harry had entered. But Malfoy was here, and Warrington, and Flint. Harry was pulling open the wards to avoid really interacting with them.

“Heard Weasley had a bad time of it today,” Warrington said, too casually.

Harry didn’t look over. “Yeah?” Had _Tom_ said that? He must have, but – that was obnoxious. Harry should never forget what a prick he could be. But Tom had left so Harry swallowed his irritation.

“He’d better hold onto the Mudblood, though, he’ll need the new tax break for marrying her – “

And before Harry had even lifted his wand from the ward, there was a surge of magic, and Warrington shouting in horror, and when Harry whipped around, a blanket off the back of the sofa had stuck itself into Warrington’s mouth, gagging him. Flint was pulling on the end, and Malfoy was laughing himself sick.

“Finite. _Finite_ ,” Harry cast, with some ambivalence. And the blanket dropped, docile, and Harry was laughing but he also had his wand ready in case Warrington attacked in return. “This is _my_ house,” he said. “And it’s loyal to me. Be careful.”

“Blood traitor,” Warrington snarled even as he stalked out. Flint followed. Malfoy stayed.

Harry raised his eyebrows at him. “You’re not going with them?”

Malfoy gave a slight shake of his head. “The curtains would always trip me when I’d given my mother grief,” he said with something nearing nostalgia.

“I didn’t mean to… sod it,” he said with a sigh, returning to the wards.

“That is going to explode when an object cursed with blood magic is brought through the floo.”

Harry stepped back to examine it. “Why?”

“Because that is what _happens_ when you put the entire family of location spells too near the Emilias braid. We’ve gone over this.”

Harry smiled at him, and Malfoy was utterly taken aback. “Class is boring,” he said. “Are you sure you can’t come back?”

“No,” Malfoy said curtly; but then, as Harry was erasing the ward, thinking of a non-explosive way to rewrite it, he said, “But you could come here.”

“For class?” he clarified.

“Yes.”

He considered. Professor Valentine was competent and so nice and so boring. Some days he was nearly falling asleep in class – which was much less acceptable when he was the only student. “Alright,” he agreed. “But I’m mostly revising now.”

“Just come during class time.”

And then he and Malfoy just… stayed together. Since Harry would’ve missed dinner at Hogwarts by now (Ron and Hermione were probably worried about him, he reflected faintly), he wandered into the dining room, and Malfoy followed him, even if he brought a book along. Daphne and Pansy sat at the head of the table, painting Pansy’s nails; otherwise the room was empty.

“Tom said Madam Bones wrote?” Harry prompted Malfoy carefully as Kreacher popped plates into existence before them.

“Not with anything useful. Is she one of yours too?”

“One of _mine_?” he said incredulously. “No. And she’s not Voldemort’s, either.” (Pansy huffed a noise of protest through her nose at this.)

“She was the witness to your wedding,” Malfoy said flatly.

He really couldn’t account for that himself. “Isn’t that what purebloods and politicians do?” he said instead. “It wasn’t because she _likes_ us. She does want to help. And she wants peace and we want peace, so….”

“Mm.”

Harry couldn’t argue, anyway. Instead, he slid his Panopticon over to Malfoy, to read about the outside world as he ate. The silence was alright.

And he nearly asked Riddle if he could sleep over – being near his magic today had been a quiet sort of relief; sleeping next to him would be infinitely moreso. But it was too pathetic in the end, so he said an awkward goodbye and left.

 

 _Tuesday, April 6._ He didn’t realize anything had gone wrong between Ron and Hermione at first. Hogwarts was still on Easter holiday and classes wouldn’t resume until Wednesday, so the castle on Monday morning was loose and quiet. Harry took Hedwig flying, and he read in the Gryffindor common room, and he took a nap near the lake. He did try to peer into the water, looking for the mermaids or the passage to the grotto or (hideously unlikely) something that would contain the DADA curse. Nothing.

Tuesday at lunch, when Ron was sitting at one end of the faculty table and Hermione at the other, Harry faltered. He nearly walked out again, honestly, but then Ron looked up and he was stuck.

Sitting down beside him, somehow feeling like a traitor, he mumbled, “Alright?”

“… You know.”

Really, he didn’t, but he and Ron weren’t brilliant at discussing their feelings. “Sorry,” he said. “Come flying after this?”

“Yeah, alright.”

It was only when they were tugging on flying gear in the locker room that Ron said, in an abbreviated sort of way, “I thought she’d be proud. For the tactical weaponry assignment. I didn’t even _tell_ her because I thought I wouldn’t get it.”

“She was thrilled for you, though.”

“For an hour, maybe. Then back to….” He shook out his gloves with too much venom. “Nothing.”

Ron and Hermione bickered as a sign of affection, and Harry was mostly okay with it; he rarely thought it indicated anything wrong with their relationship. But now he wondered if he’d underestimated their… strife. Whatever. “ _Don’t_ let him ruin anything for you,” he said, because they might as well talk about Riddle. “He’s a cock. I shouldn’t have brought him.”

“It’s not – I mean, it _was_ him, but it was her, too.” He tugged his kneepads on. “Nevermind. We’ll be alright. Or maybe I can sleep in your gardener’s shack,” he said with a strangled laugh.

Harry pitched a Quaffle just past his head. “Shut up.” Then, summoning the ball back: “Hey,” he said, quieter, “thanks, though. That was a lot. I owe you.” Ron grunted non-committally, and they shuffled out.

 

He ate dinner at Grimmauld Place again that night, before handing his runes books over to Malfoy for class. It was a little tricky, casting any example wards in here because it was already _so_ enchanted, and because the magic kept conforming to Harry’s wishes before he’d properly cast it. At last Malfoy hissed, grabbing a ward that curled toward him. “Occlumency,” he said. “You child.”

“For the _house_?”

“For any setting that might be affected by your emotional state. We went over this _months_ ago.”

He remembered it vaguely. He really didn’t do well with the non-practical parts of Runes, of wards, of magic altogether. It probably _was_ childish. “I’ll try.” But he had no idea what it meant to do Occlumency on a house, or indeed on anyone but Voldemort.

Late in the evening, Riddle entered the study, where they’d strung a checkerboard of wards just off the ground. Stepping through them gracefully, he dropped onto a leather sofa along the wall. “This is private,” Harry muttered, straddling two wide boxes as he tried to create a ward that would merge them. “Go away.”

Riddle tsked. “I put your dog to bed. She was poised outside the door, ready to bound through here.”

That would’ve been quite bad, really. “Okay,” he said. “Cheers.”

“The Ministry has ignored everything I have written to them.”

“Maybe they’re out. It was a holiday.”

“The charms on five different scrolls to Moody, Scrimgeour, and Robards indicate they were handled but never opened.”

Harry did look up at that. “Sorry.”

“So I am going in tomorrow.”

“To the _Ministry_? No. Absolutely not.”

A wry smile curled his lips. “Darling, I wasn’t asking permission. I thought you’d want to know, if you’re pulled out of class abruptly tomorrow.”

“You really can’t do this. The vow….”

“Let me worry about it,” Riddle said in a buttery tone, and Harry gave him a disgusted look. “And let me advocate for the Slytherins as I see fit.”

“I want to come,” Malfoy said suddenly.

An arch of Riddle’s brows as he thought. “No, no – Malfoy, you can’t go out,” Harry pled.

“If they can’t protect the _Ministry_ , who could they protect,” he said coldly. “Leave it alone, Potter.”

“I will seal this house up – “

“You will not,” Riddle said. He didn’t expand on this, but he didn’t need to. Riddle could still hold his soul hostage, could still paralyze and devastate Harry when necessary.

Harry glared. “Get out.” Stepping with perfect caution through his wards, he did.

When Tom had gone, Harry tried not to snarl as he cast a clarifying ward. “You really shouldn’t,” he said to Malfoy.

“I should,” Malfoy said, level and cold. “The ones whose families remain in Azkaban, _they_ shouldn’t. Their parents could face their repercussions. I have no such obligations.”

“Malfoy – “

“ _Don’t_ tell me you’re sorry. Just stay out of the way.”

Harry gave him something of a hopeless look. “Be careful.” Malfoy shrugged – _why_? – and Harry ducked his head to work on the crackling wards before him.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is it still a curtain fic if the otp is separated and everything is terrible?
> 
> And while I will probably never write Tomione, I can see why people do. So cutthroat and ambitious and perfect.
> 
> Allusions for Chapter 32:
> 
> “And sometimes, they put on shows or music just for the noise.” – This comes from an offhand comment in [In Loco Parentis, by Dolores_Crane](https://archiveofourown.org/works/109558/chapters/151674).
> 
> “brood of vipers” – Matthew 23:33


	33. Chapter 33

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tom confronts the Ministry, Harry brews a potion, Voldemort dreams.

_Wednesday, April 7._ Classes were back in session the next day. Somehow, Harry’s students had forgotten the past month of revisions over the four days of Easter holiday. It was a frustrating day. And Ron and Hermione were avoiding each other, which sort of worked out to avoiding Harry too, so he spent meals alone, reading.

Of course, all day he was braced for news from the Ministry. If Riddle had _actually_ stormed it, Harry wanted to be there to mediate, at least. He heard nothing; the papers all said nothing. It was, itself, maddening.

He was sitting on his bed, planning tomorrow’s classes, when there was a small and precise knock at his door. He spelled it open to see Hermione standing there, her nose red but her mouth set. “No,” he said, seeing the boxes levitating behind her.

“I just wanted to tell you I’d be putting some boxes in the corridor,” she said steadily. “I will have them moved by tomorrow.”

“Hermione – what happened – “ He was scrambling up, before she could close the door again.

She set a box of books down too hard, outside the room that had been her study. “Nothing,” she said. “Nothing you can fix.”

“If it’s about the Horcrux – “

“No. Not really. We’re taking a break right now.” She levitated more books from her room, stacking them neatly.

“But – you teach together.” It wasn’t his actual concern, his _actual_ concern was ‘but you’ve planned a life together,’ but he couldn’t bring himself to say it.

“As adults, we can maintain professional decorum,” she said. “Really, Harry, it’s not….”

“It _is_ my problem,” he interrupted, anticipating her words. “Because both of you are my friends and…” _You’re so happy together_ wasn’t quite right. “You’re miserable when you’re not together.” There.

“We’ve both got quite a bit to do before the end of term,” she said. “There isn’t time for… that.” She waved her hand agitatedly in the direction of their (Ron’s, now) bedroom.

“You should be really proud of him, you know.”

He didn’t expect the fury in her eyes as she looked up. “I knew you’d take his side,” she said. “Because he’s so _cool_ with everything that’s happened, right?”

“No – “

But Hermione had her wand pointed at him, and then she’d cast a cold wind tunnel that made him stagger backwards. “Just go,” she said. “You don’t need to be here.”

“Hermione – ” he began, but her posture was rigid and she was no longer looking at him. Fine, he wasn’t inclined to apologize to her right now anyway. He returned to his room, closing the door.

Sitting on his bed, he sifted through the bedside drawer for something he hadn’t seen since Christmas: the joined scrolls in which he and Ron could write each other. It was wildly unlikely that Ron still had it anywhere nearby, but. And on second thought, there was nothing Harry could say to him either, right now. He slid the drawer closed again.

 

_Thursday, April 8_. On Thursday morning, there _was_ something about the Slytherin students in the papers. One, anyway: _The Galleon_ , with a text-only blurb a few pages in. _Reports say a group of students, most children of convicted Death Eaters, were seen in the Ministry yesterday. They did not answer onlookers’ questions about their business, but reportedly made their way via lift to the second floor. With the creation of Lua Saturni and commutation of their parents’ sentences, might these heirs and offspring be delivering themselves in a sort of exchange?_ What a mess.

Still, he took the Panopticon with him back to Grimmauld Place that evening, when he’d gone for Runes. He found Nott, Flint, and Pritchard in the living room, beers before them. “Where’s Riddle?”

“Dunno,” Nott said. “Upstairs?”

But Harry looked at Nott curiously, because he was rather in the same position Malfoy was – his father had died in the war, and he didn’t have other family, so they were equally divorced from _consequences_ , really. “Did you go to the Ministry yesterday?”

“Yeah,” he said, indifferent.

“How did it go?”

Nott looked up. His strong jaw and deep eyes looked _so_ much like his father’s, Harry was actually unnerved. “You’re not as central to all this as you think.”

“Nevermind,” Harry muttered. “I’ll find him.”

But Moira found him first. “Hey – that’s new,” he cooed when she more flew than hopped, getting herself high enough to lick his face. “Did someone teach you that?”

“Yes,” Malfoy said, descending the stairs alone. “Not me,” he added at Harry’s incredulous look. “Dogs are barbaric.”

“Albino peacocks are much more civilized,” Harry agreed. But he hadn’t been thinking about it: he’d only known of the peacocks from Halloween, when his parents had been killed –

But Malfoy’s face shifted in a wry smile. “You dare malign my grandfather’s wedding gift to my sainted grandmother?” he said. “I’ve no idea what to do with them, really. They’re now on a Black property my mother inherited, one with an elf caretaker.”

“Purebloods have such ridiculous problems.”

“Someday your authentic Slytherin-era snakes are going to eat a hapless Ministry employee, and _then_ see who’s got problems.”

Harry grinned at him, because this was too wonderful an image. “I was looking for Riddle,” he said, setting Moira down so she could run off on important dog errands. “Unless _you’ll_ tell me what happened at the Ministry? Nott wouldn’t.”

“… You should find Tom.”

Harry frowned at him, but moved to take the stairs. Malfoy actually followed.

A knock on Riddle’s bedroom door; he let them in with a spell. It was a _cozy_ scene, with Tom seated on the floor against his bed, a pile of books on either side of him. He didn’t look remotely evil, like this.

But he stood when Harry and Malfoy entered. “What?” he said, looking between them.

“What happened at the Ministry?” Harry asked forthright.

“Why do you think anything _happened_?”

“It had to. Didn’t it?” He took the sofa Riddle conjured as he sat on his bed. “There was – not even an article, but a paragraph in the _Galleon_. I didn’t hear from Moody or anyone, though.”

“You wouldn’t have,” Riddle said. “We went to Robards’s office. He summoned Bones and Bowersock. They told us it was _complicated_ , that it was for national security, to say nothing of their own safety. They said it was unlikely they’ d be moved before the Humnerë were neutralized.”

Harry bristled. “That’s _not_ what they said before.”

“No. So I asked what they were doing to more efficiently dismantle the Humnerë, and I received the same answer. I asked who was abroad, pursuing any relevant leads. I asked how our ambassadors were addressing these international relations. I asked how the Unspeakables and researchers on soul magic or quasi-humans or political wards were proposing research.” A cold pause. “You can anticipate – not their _answers_ , which were empty words, but the implications thereof.”

“They can’t – “ Harry was about spitting in anger. “Moody and Scrimgeour both said they’d been _negligent_ , that they should’ve dealt with the Slytherins months ago. I thought that was real.” He felt stupid now, for thinking that a politician would say anything other than what he’d wanted to hear. “ _Did_ you see either of them?”

“No. They were out. But really, their answers would be the same. The Ministry _unites_ under scrutiny, as you well know.”

His entire fifth year, with the Ministry and most journalists aligned against him. “Yeah,” he said, bitter. Then – “ _Could_ we go to the papers?”

It wasn’t Riddle but Malfoy who snorted. “Your faith in the general populace,” he marveled. “No, Potter. If people cared, they would have cared last year. It was never unknown that students were leaving. Even before Avery’s death – about which they _also_ did not care. We are quite disposable. Abstracted casualties of his regime.”

How strange that Malfoy would be so critical of Voldemort while Riddle sat before him, but then, Riddle himself was critical of Voldemort. “They can’t just – _leave_ you.”

“They can,” Malfoy said. “If you’d like your house back, we’d return to – our shelter,” he said, and his voice caught as though he’d first nearly spoke the place of their Fidelius. “Really, it was unspeakably optimistic to expect this would be resolved in a matter of weeks, anyway.”

“They said they were setting everything up – all the security on your homes – “

“Well, maybe,” Malfoy said dubiously. “But really – if you’ll work for the Ministry next, _this_ ,” he gestured at Harry altogether, “must stop.”

The part of him that still trusted and believed in people. “No,” he said. “I won’t stop. But – of course you could stay. Honestly, I _hope_ it inconveniences Moody, maybe he’ll fix this faster.” But already he was cycling through the implications of keeping the Slytherins around longer. Was it impeding the Order? Surely they could meet ( _have already met_?) elsewhere. And the students must be restless, reckless…. He thought painfully of Sirius, imprisoned once more and in a house he despised. “You must be bored.”

They both blinked at him. “Not really,” Malfoy said with delightful honesty. “We drink our way through the Black family cellars and look at the most illegal books in the library. We duel. We’re all quite effective at Disillusionment now, and we’ve still got that cloak, so we may go out a bit. You’re not getting it back yet,” he added, at Harry’s noise of indignation. “Come to us when you’ve got a better reason to have it than we do.”

“Prick,” Harry said, nearly fondly.

“We help the OWL students with revisions,” Malfoy went on. “Some of the girls have taught your dog tricks.”

This was the first good thing he’d heard tonight. “What sort?” he asked, fascinated.

A shrug. “As I said, dogs are barbaric.”

“Right,” Harry said. He wondered if the Slytherins would like a television. “Well, I’m glad you got such prominent members of the Ministry to ignore you, anyway. Better them than a clerk.”

“Yes,” Tom said, and he was right, it was his doing – that they could hardly hand off the Slytherins to someone who didn’t know Riddle existed, and he’d implicated the highest echelon of the Ministry in this secret.

“Thank you.” Harry met his gaze; Riddle made an indifferent gesture.

So Harry and Malfoy took a room on one of the upper floors to practice runes after that. They were all rather shadowy and esoteric – the room of swords from which Riddle had failed to escape wasn’t even the weirdest collection. Poised in the doorway off a room of hunting trophies, he shuddered. “We set the house wards to only give you useful rooms, and it keeps _this_?” In the place of pride was a mounted unicorn head. He avoided looking at it.

Malfoy snorted but pulled him out, into another room with only a fireplace and an elaborate chess board. “Better,” Harry decreed, and set to drawing a matrix of wards in the far corner.

They were working on psychological runes tonight, and Harry actually couldn’t bear to fill the room with the essence of depression or ennui or anger, so he wrote all his runes for cheer and well-being instead. It probably helped. Malfoy sat before the fireplace, fiddling with the chess set. “They at least said they’d fix the Hogwarts wards,” he said after a time. “Did you hear what Slughorn and Moody worked out? _Summer school_ ,” he said with deep irony.

Harry had only vaguely recalled that Slughorn would be involved at some point. “Good?” he said tentatively. “And really, Tom should be involved in fixing the castle, if they’ll have him.” Even though it wasn’t so simple – that either they had to get Voldemort out of danger or sever the tie he had to Hogwarts, and neither sounded very plausible.

Malfoy shook his head in some disbelief. “Why nobody expects _sabotage_ of him….”

“Do you?” Harry asked curiously.

A dark smile. “The Slytherins got no great plan to sabotage, have we? But he’d have reason to see the Ministry fail – to see Hogwarts fail – “

“He loves Hogwarts,” Harry said, too sharply. “Or – whatever he feels instead of love.”

Malfoy’s smile went crooked. “It wasn’t an accusation,” he said in a mock-soothing tone.

“And Tom’s not really making decisions in Voldemort’s interests, either.”

“ _That_ I know,” Malfoy said, in a way that Harry wondered what had precipitated it.

“… Alright,” Harry said, with a peculiar look at Malfoy. No response.

And then he had to draw some less pleasant wards, to practice his pain and paranoia runes. “You should go,” he said. “I haven’t done a paranoia ward before. And,” he said, looking down his list, “all of these are pretty dire.”

“I’m quite sure I’ll survive.”

Harry began writing out the first runes, and nearly by instinct, his hand traced the rune for _protection_ instead of _paranoia_. He scrubbed it out. Again. When he made a frustrated noise – it was only that _paranoia_ had a flourish at the end curling in the other direction, it was such a small bit – Malfoy raised his eyebrows. “ _Protection_ is too much like all these runes,” he half-explained. “They couldn’t have made them any more different?”

“Runes are ideographic,” Malfoy said as though speaking to a child. “Tell me you know the similarities are not coincidence.”

“Er. I know that’s why the dungeon’s wards decay into dangerous things.”

“Potter. What do fear and protection have in common?”

Furiously he sketched both of the runes in midair, gesturing to the tiny flip at the end of them. “Just about everything, it looks like.”

“You are hopeless,” Malfoy pronounced. “I am getting a drink. You need to have a better answer than _that_ when I’ve returned.”

“Right.”

He had to work sitting back from the wards, as though he were working with noxious fumes. When he heard Malfoy’s steps at the doorway again, he said without looking, “Bring me one?”

“If you deserve it.”

Harry looked back, to see Malfoy holding wine for himself and a lowball of whiskey on the rocks, as he’d usually take it. This was sweet and surprising and weird, that Malfoy even noticed what he drank. “Protection and paranoia are the same thing?” he guessed. “To different degrees. Or fear protects you, or anger, or dread.”

Silently Malfoy handed him the cold glass. “Cool,” Harry said, pleased with himself. “But there must be other runes for protection. Ones that don’t decay into this.”

“You’ll return Tuesday with an answer to that.” Harry rolled his eyes at him.

 

Just before leaving, he knocked on Riddle’s door. “Come in.”

He’d moved to a desk now, copying out some hideous mathematical formulas. “What – “ Harry peered at it.

And Riddle charmed the parchment with a privacy spell, so it all became scribbles before his eyes. “Yeah, right,” Harry said with a laugh. “It all looked like nonsense anyway. Arithmancy?”

“In part.” He turned in his chair, kicking out his long legs. “What do you need?”

Harry took a seat on the edge of the bed. “Why _have_ you got a bedroom?” he asked curiously. “Why’ve you got a _bed_?” Riddle was ever-adamant that he didn’t need sleep.

His lips curled in a mischievous way. “Who am I shagging?” he mocked.

“No. Nevermind.” He’d wondered about it in an abstract way – he and Voldemort had only read and drank and fucked in captivity last summer, and the Slytherins were doing at least two of three already. “But I’m going to write Grindelwald – is there anything you’d have me say?”

He leaned back, considering. “Why?”

“ _Why_?”

“Why write to him? You haven’t inherited him from Albus as well, have you?”

“No. Because – “ _he’s alone._ In that way he _was_ picking up Dumbledore’s work. He didn’t say that. “Because everything he wrote me was useful and interesting. And he knows more of politics there than either of us. If he’s got anything that would help….”

“I quite doubt he’d put it so plainly.” Still, Riddle was intrigued. “I also doubt our government or theirs would allow such correspondence. You are already _compromised_.” He pronounced the word exactly.

“I really don’t think I’ve got anything that Grindelwald wants,” Harry objected. A shrug from Riddle. “So…?”

“If you wouldn’t ask him whether he wants to die, ask him about the integrity of Nurmengard.” When Harry gave him a confused look, Riddle said patiently, “It must be his Horcrux.”

_Oh_. “Really?” Harry said, fascinated and horrified. “But – it’s a castle.”

“Built of his own magic. He slaughtered hundreds of people in there, magic and Muggle alike. It would be the simplest thing in the world.”

By now, Harry had taken a seat on the edge of the bed, and he sank back to consider this. He’d thought of a Horcrux as extraordinary magic, but that wasn’t it at all, was it? The texts were inaccessible, but otherwise the _magic_ …. “Could you use any death?” _Murder_ , he should have said. Murder.

Riddle being so close to his soul, saw his thoughts. “Any non-essential death, done without regret. The wartime casualties might carry different magic than any of _mine_ ,” he said with a small and terrifying smile, “but then, we may well conclude that your Horcrux was borne of your mother’s death. Regardless – ask him.”

“And then what?” A questioning raise of Riddle’s eyebrows. “What if it _is_ a Horcrux, and he does want to destroy it? And what if he doesn’t?”

“It is not your problem,” Riddle said. “And unless he’s more _desperate_ than I am inclined to believe, he will neither tell you nor want your help.”

“Right. Yeah. I’ll ask, though.” He got up to go, but stupidity made him say one more thing: “What did you say to Hermione?”

A curve of his mouth. “Quite a bit about arithmancy, runes, and transfiguration. Nothing about her insecure yet underachieving boyfriend. Why?”

He hardly registered his fury before he’d stepped in: he threw a bruising punch into Riddle’s face. It partly connected but still felt like a strange, cold mist. Riddle was up, seizing Harry’s shoulders, seizing his _soul_. “You fight like a Muggle,” he said in disgust, pulling him toward the door. “Tell Weasley that he is stupid to be jealous. Tell him I want nothing to do with Mudbloods.”

Harry’s arms were pinned to his sides with magic, or else he would’ve hit Riddle again. “You arsehole,” he breathed even as he was being shoved out the door. “You utter – “

“You still need me,” Riddle interrupted curtly. “Your beloved _students_ need me. I am useful. I am not good.”

“Just – “ Harry thrashed out of his grip. “Let me go. Twat.”

He stormed down the stairs, thinking furiously that he ought to take the diadem and pitch it into a bog, trap it somewhere for eternity. He nearly wasn’t looking where he was going, until he was in the grand living room and Pansy said sharply, “Potter.”

“What?” he snapped, taken out of his reverie.

Pansy looked at him in surprise and delight. “What, did you and Draco have a tiff?”

“What has _Draco_ got to do with anything?” A basin holding the diadem sat atop the grand piano in the corner. He wanted desperately to chuck it at the wall, but Pansy and Daphne were watching.

“Did you and Tom have a tiff?” Pansy asked, less delighted at this prospect.

“It doesn’t matter. I’m going.”

“Wait.” Daphne. She held out a stack of letters. “Could you give these to the school owls? You’ll need to read out the addresses.”

He blinked. He’d carried letters between Daphne and Lisa, whom he saw in class anyway. This was rather more than that. “Uh, yeah. Why now?”

A faint scowl. “Normally the Aurors would send them out.”

Right. “Yeah, here.” He took them, stowing them in his bookbag. “’Night.”

 

Dumbledore’s office was near enough the owlery that he went there directly, before curfew. Only a few owls were in, but it was enough. Hedwig was out, and maybe that was for the best, because she’d be hideously jealous at his divided attention. He approached a perch of fluffy barn owls, holding the envelopes and twine. “Hi,” he said, at their impatient blinking faces. “All of these… huh.” He had thought they were all going to Azkaban, and half of them were, but the rest…. “I’ll read them out.” All the Azkaban ones could go out at once; he cast a sticking spell to hold them together. The Yaxleys, Flint, Rowle, and Avery. ( _Avery_? His son was dead. Harry didn’t recognize the handwriting but it didn’t matter.) “Right, who will go to Azkaban? … I know,” he said at an ostensible (imagined) shiver from one owl. Finally another stuck out its leg. “Cheers. Then… Olena Greengrass, in Hale. There you are.” Another owl. “Locusta Zabini, Windermere.” And another.

“And… oh, I’ll take these.” Another to Lisa from Daphne. One to Orla Quirk, a fifth year Ravenclaw. And one to Romilda Vane. He blinked at that. A Ravenclaw-Slytherin friendship wasn’t uncommon, but a Gryffindor-Slytherin friendship (or whatever) was pretty unprecedented. Anyway. “Oh, and one more.” He got to the bottom of the stack. “The Parkinson household, in Brooklyn, New York. Er, any of you know where New York is? There you go,” he said to a patient owl that stuck out its leg. “Thank you,” he said to all of them. More blinks.

 

_Friday, April 9_. He hand-delivered the letters at breakfast. First to Orla, then Romilda. He hung around awkwardly as she flipped it over. “Who’s it from?” he asked, desperately curious.

She looked up, skeptical. “ _You_ collected them.”

“I got them….” He moved his hands awkwardly, to indicate the stack he’d been handed.

She was amused at his ineptitude. “Hypatia,” she said. “We’ve been potions partners for years. Everyone else does it wrong.”

“Right. Brilliant.” How did he feel so stupid, talking to a student. “Er, good work.”

“Befriending a Slytherin?”

“… Yeah.”

She flashed her teeth, bright against her dark lipstick. “Thank you, _sir_.”

Lisa had just walked in with the Patil twins; Harry escaped in her direction. “Harry, hi,” she said, looking at him expectantly.

He passed her the envelope, but then looked curiously at her. “D'you want to write more?” he asked.

“Whenever you’re… wherever she is, is good….”

“No, here.” He sat at a table with them. “Have you got two scrolls?”

He pulled out his diary, revealing the wards to be copied. “It’s magic in real time,” he said, stringing a ward along the top of one scroll. “So whatever she writes, you’ll see. There,” he said a minute later, tying the two in a bow before casting the final spell. “I’ll… well, I can drop it in the floo today, anyway.”

Intrigued, Lisa pulled out ink. A line drawn down the side of one scroll blossomed on the other. “Oh,” she said, surprised. “Thank you.”

“No problem.”

“Did you create that?” Padma asked, still studying the wards.

“No. Er. He did.”

“… Right. Of course.”

 

_Saturday, April 10. Separation was not the most cautious decision._

It was late on Saturday afternoon, and Harry had just come in from flying with Hedwig. Ron and Hermione were both still making themselves scarce, and Harry was lost and lonely. If he weren’t still furious with Riddle, he might have gone to Grimmauld Place, to see Moira if not its human inhabitants. Hagrid was out, or else he would’ve gone for tea. Ginny was gone this weekend, likely at Tonks’s or Andromeda’s. Luna had been busy at work on something. So he’d set Hedwig on the end of his broom and flown toward the mountains for a few hours.

Now, back in his suite, he’d grabbed the diary by chance while unpacking his Quidditch gear, and found it warm. He was reaching for a quill. **_Good. I want to see you._**

_Not yet_ , Voldemort wrote back immediately. (And how strange, that Voldemort was available now; he tended to work until evening and write to him later at night.) _You need to brew a potion first._

Harry glanced dubiously at the half-full cauldron of kaval that he’d brewed a few days ago. **_What?_**

_It is a solution meant to counteract Amortentia. They use a variant of it,_ Voldemort wrote. _You will need pomegranate seeds, pelican blood, and cacao nibs._

Harry would be okay with consuming only two of those things. **_Why_** , he wrote, then thought to clarify: **_What are they doing with Amortentia?_**

_It makes a soul malleable. This variant does not seem to be an aphrodisiac, happily. But it does grant them access to my soul, in spite of Occlumency or every magic of sovereignty I have cast._

Well, the vampires probably weren’t fucking him, even as alarming as the presence of Amortentia was. **_I only want a potion that protects you_** , Harry wrote. **_Not one that only protects me._**

_As though there is a difference._

He took Voldemort’s point but that didn’t mean it wasn’t a dodge. **_There is. Will the potion help you?_**

_It will create resistance, yes._

**_Alright._** Harry carried the diary with him as he approached his cauldron, to decant the remaining kaval into jars. **_I can brew now. But I don’t think the potions stores have got pelican blood._**

_Slughorn will keep some in his private stores. If it is powdered, it must be re-hydrated. The potion isn’t so complex, but you should involve him if you need to._

Harry could already imagine the blood draining from Slughorn’s flushed face, if he should be asked to brew for Voldemort. Still, he wrote, **_OK._**

Kaval decanted, and he took a swallow just because he could. He threw on a robe to go to the potions stores.

There were voices in the potions lab – not the classroom, but the smaller room where the Potions Master would brew for themselves. Harry caught the bitter tone of Snape, the whoosh of a flame being lit, and a murmur from what must be Slughorn.

He sighed. He could certainly wait until Slughorn was alone, but it might not make anything particularly better. He took the provided jars, filling them with pomegranate and cacao, and then dithered in the stores for a bit.

Then, a rush of magic that swirled around Harry in a rather predatory way. “Potter,” Snape snapped, and it was unclear if he was actually summoning him, but he went anyway.

“Hi, sir. Headmaster.” He still had the jars in either hand, to make clear he wasn’t simply eavesdropping.

Snape arched his eyebrows dubiously. “How studious,” he said, “to be brewing on a pleasant Saturday afternoon.”

“He is quite talented, is that such a surprise?” Slughorn said, though this was unspeakably generous since Harry had been nothing but mediocre this year. “What have you got, dear boy? Something exciting, I hope.”

More exciting than Slughorn may be able to handle. “Er. I actually needed to ask – is there pelican blood in your stores, sir?”

Slughorn’s smile faded. “Yes,” he said carefully. “What _are_ you brewing, then?”

“I… can’t say.” He hoped his tone conveyed that he _couldn’t_ , he could hardly explain the potion or its purpose.

Slughorn caught on that he didn’t know what he was doing. In a careful tone, making clear he was not yet accusing Harry of anything, he said, “Pelican’s blood is most often associated with the magic of sacrifice.”

“Oh,” he mumbled. “I don’t….”

Snape put out his hand impatiently; Harry blinked at him. “What are you holding, you fool,” Snape said.

“Pomegranate. Cacao.” He set both jars on the desk with a soft click.

Neither of them were suspicious ingredients, at least. Still, Snape glared at them as though they were contraband. “What is _he_ doing,” he muttered.

He didn’t seem to expect an answer, so Harry remained quiet. And really, what could he say. But then Snape looked up. “Give me your book.”

The diary. “You don’t – “

“How dire his circumstances must be, to rely on _you_ for brewing. _Give me the book._ ”

“No. Listen,” Harry said in frustration. “You haven’t got to have _anything_ to do for him, ever again.”

“If you believe I would poison him, I had a hundred chances before now. And poisoning is an effeminate assassination, anyway.”

Harry gaped. His hand was ineffectually crammed in his bag for the diary. This was… surprising. He wondered how long Snape had _resented_ Voldemort, to speak of him so coarsely now. It was better than deference, at least. “That’s not it at all,” he said. The diary hung between his fingers.

A whimper from across the desk. Slughorn was tense, actually edging toward the door. “I must….”

“Horace, go,” Snape snapped. He fled. Snape turned back to Harry with an unpleasant expression. “Stay out of what remains between us. You will never understand.” With a twist of his wand, he wrenched the journal from Harry’s hand.

So Harry was helpless to watch as Snape flipped to the first unused page. “I should tell him you’re….”

“He will understand,” Snape said, conjuring a quill.

The quill scratched in quick, precise writing. A minute later – Harry’s heart felt wrenched from his chest. He couldn’t help but gasp. Snape stopped.

“It’s… nothing,” Harry said, though his soul buzzed. It had been months since their Legilimency had been so acutely affected. He couldn’t put the emotion of Voldemort’s to words, it was simply deep and complicated. “He’s not angry. He’s just….”

“You are a threat to everyone around you, that you allow him in so easily,” Snape said, disgusted with him. “Or is it only that you still cannot keep him out?”

“I don’t want to keep him out,” Harry said, sincere even though Snape’s tone was nasty. “Just write him already.”

“He writes that you must brew it yourself.” Snape picked up the quill again, writing another few lines across the page. “I am giving him my condolences.”

“Alright,” Harry said, unimpressed. “I’ve brewed for him before. I haven’t mucked anything up.” Secretly he was hoping Snape wasn’t offering a more complicated brew than what Voldemort had asked of him – three ingredients, an hour of tending and a night of steeping – but he just might, out of spite.

“In your newfound potions _talent_ ,” Snape said, “you must know of Amortentia?”

So Voldemort was telling him everything. “A love potion,” he said. “Or… not quite that. He said it’s supposed to make his soul malleable.”

“What soul,” Snape muttered, but then he dropped his attention to the parchment once more.

The quill scratched. Harry slid onto a lab stool. Both Snape’s and Voldemort’s handwriting were too ornate to be read upside down, so he could only wait.

At last: “Soak the pomegranate in pelican’s blood for a day,” Snape said, writing instructions into the diary as he would put them on the board. “It is too potent on its own. Discard the liquid. Muddle the seeds in a cold marble cauldron….”

And so on. Snape hadn’t consulted any books, hadn’t done anything but contemplate the problem for a few minutes. It was impressive. It was….

Compelling? Harry’s own emotions were overshadowed by Voldemort’s, and Voldemort’s emotions were a more complex tangle, that would give Harry a headache if he sat with them much longer. At the very least, Voldemort _liked_ Snape more than Harry did, and wasn’t that funny. Harry half-listened to the instructions as he prodded at this strange fondness.

“… Steep it in moonlight with a birch branch laid across the top, pointing north. It should be applied to abrasions directly with a bandage, or if they have healed him, injected into your thigh muscle.” He glared at Harry’s probably vacuous expression. “If you bungle it well enough, it shall be two nuisances eliminated from my life.”

Harry snapped to, mildly embarrassed. “I thought you said poisoning is effeminate.”

“Quite.”

“Right. Uh….” He reached for the diary. “Thanks.”

Snape raised his wand without looking. A cabinet behind him snapped open, and a vial of deep purple-red blood lifted itself from a shelf. Harry caught it easily; it was somehow warm. “Thanks,” he said again. “Do you… need anything?”

“Not anymore,” Snape sad darkly. Harry got out.

 

He wrote to Voldemort as he brewed, and it was nice. Nice enough, anyway, a mimicry of spending a quiet day together. Today had gotten nearly warm, and the sunshine and togetherness made him perversely nostalgic for last summer at the safehouse. He would give quite a lot to be quietly imprisoned with Voldemort again, really.

The pomegranate was soaking and the marble cauldron was on ice when he could settle on his bed, free for a moment. What he wanted to ask most was what feelings had arisen, when Snape had written to Voldemort. They were complicated in a way Harry had never been exposed to before.

He couldn’t. Instead he wrote, **_The Ministry is tearing itself apart over you. They’re holding the Slytherins hostage._**

_How_? Voldemort wrote back immediately. _There was a passage in the Galleon, that they had gone to the Ministry en masse._

**_Amelia wrote them, that it was for security. They don’t agree about letting the Death Eaters out. Tom took them so only the ones who know about him could handle it. Robards, Bowersock, and Bones all said it was complicated. And they said it would probably stay that way until the Humnerë are gone._ **

_They do not mention the students. They will tell me nothing when I ask._

**_Astoria was lured out when they impersonated her brothers, we think. Avery must have been lured out by his father._ **

_I could be of more assistance if I understood why they were wanted at all. Memories, or magic. You, perhaps._

**_I can’t let anyone else die for me._ **

_I know._

**_They’re not happy, and it’s shitty to lie to them. But they’re only missing being with their families. They won’t go back to Hogwarts until it’s fixed. They’ll take classes over the summer, but maybe not there._ **

_Would you be teaching over the summer?_

He’d like to. The Slytherins felt like his responsibility, anyway. **_Maybe. Nobody’s asked me. Why?_**

_It would be safer if you also stayed there._

Harry considered it. He didn’t know exactly how summer would unfold, if he’d get back Voldemort in time. He could live in Slytherin’s estate alone, of course.

Maybe he’d asked Ron to live there too, if he and Hermione were still the way they were. What would happen to their shared flat now?

Whatever.

**_I want you back_** , he wrote with horrific honesty. Typically he was undemanding, because Voldemort could scarcely do anything about his circumstances now, and he was so timid about being _wanted_ anyway. **_I’ve got a house. We moved a lot of furniture last weekend. I don’t want to live there without you._**

A pause; a blot of ink where he rested his quill. _Thank you,_ he wrote. _I do wish you’d stay at Hogwarts until this has been resolved._

**_I’ll ask. I like teaching. You don’t think the Ministry will need me sooner than that?_ **

_Not if it is busy cannibalizing itself._

**_Right_** , Harry wrote, sighing faintly. **_Are you alright?_** ** _Have you raised the dead yet?_**

_And made the lame to walk, the deaf to hear, and the blind eyes to see_ _._ _I wrote their research, but I will not handle unicorn blood myself. It’s not worth it. I must remain in their lab as their scientists work now, is all._

**_Good_** , Harry wrote. **_I’ve watched the papers for news of the Undying, but there’s nothing. At least in English papers._**

_The Humnerë will shelter me from the wrath of the others until they’ve sufficiently benefited._

Harry quietly hated this. It was complicated, all of it was complicated, the negotiations between captive and captor. Voldemort’s relationship with Scrimgeour and the Aurors had been complicated. Voldemort’s relationship with _Bowersock_ was complicated. He hated to think so. It was easier to just have villains. **_Be careful,_** he wrote. **_And whatever you’ve got to do, is okay._**

A flutter of amusement – such a relief, since feelings passed between them were uncommon these days. _The Ministry would strongly disagree_ , Voldemort wrote.

**_Then we’ll run away together_** , Harry wrote, mostly kidding. **_But I wouldn’t want to live in Albania. You promised me Greece, and Rome, and Turkey. Or any of the Parseltongue communities._**

_Do they suit you?_

**_Maybe. What about France? I never get to hear you speak French._ **

_I was in a duel once in Paris, for speaking French as an Englishman would. I don’t know that I am yet welcome back. Belgium is too small, Monaco too expensive, Algeria too anti-imperial. I suppose there is Quebec._

Harry didn’t care about Canada at all, but he would be thrilled to see Voldemort flinching and glaring through the US _. **Nevermind Quebec. Take me to America.**_

_My god, why._ (Harry was startled into laughter at this.) _Americans cast as though they’re street magicians._

**_Since you like feeling so superior to everyone, you’d have a good time, then._ **

Another flutter of amusement. He had _missed_ Voldemort’s reactions, shadows of his presence, and he didn’t want to let them go again. He pushed his magic and thoughts and love to the place where Voldemort’s soul intersected his own. **_I want to see you._**

_Yes. But not without the potion. They could, hypothetically, access your soul through mine._

**_Monday, then_** , Harry wrote. When the potion would be ready.

_Yes._

 

_Sunday, April 11._ He felt perversely fortunate that he had to cast the airspace shield that Sunday, since it would keep him out of Hogwarts and away from Ron and Hermione’s implosion. He didn’t understand how they could teach together without speaking, but nevermind.

Equally fortunate was that Moody came, along with Rye and Willoughby. Harry fell in step as they trudged toward the anchors on the Cornwall cliffs. “The Slytherins – “

“Don’t,” Moody said severely. “You don’t understand. You shouldn’t have sent them to begin with, and it _didn’t_ make anything easier.”

“I didn’t send them!” Harry was reckless but not like _that_. “… _He_ told me they would go, but I couldn’t stop them. You shouldn’t be ignoring them, though. They’ll just _leave_ again and next time you couldn’t persuade them back.”

“They know as much as we do. It is for their safety and their parents’.”

“Did something _change_ , after you’d promised them they’d be out by now? Or was that never true?”

Moody squinted in his direction. “What has _changed_ ,” he said, mimicking his inflection, “is our belief in Voldemort’s allegiance. As Rufus said, his relationship with the Dëshmitar is a factor we’d never known.”

“He doesn’t want – “ But then, thinking better of it, Harry took a breath. “This isn’t what I wanted to ask. Sir.”

“What, then?”

“This summer – if he’s not back – I should stay at Hogwarts. I would teach the Slytherins, too.”

Moody considered this. “Stay at Hogwarts if you’d like. Granted, you’d have to get permission from Snape, so I dunno that you’d think it’s worth it. But you’ll be needed at the Ministry. You haven’t gotten an employment contract yet?”

“No, sir.”

A tightening of his mouth. “I’ll talk to Winston,” he said. “It’s been alright without you this year, with bigger pieces of legislation being put in place than you needed to be involved in. But at the end of May, a lot of ‘em go into effect, and _then_ you’ll be needed.”

“Right.” He had no idea. He was behind on everything. “Who _will_ teach them Defense, then?”

They were out of earshot from Rye and Willoughby, but still Moody’s magical eye swirled to check on them before saying, “He will.”

“ _What_?” Harry actually laughed, it was just so unlikely. He meant Tom. “Why? I didn’t think you’d ever….”

“Because he must stay as long as Voldemort is gone,” Moody said. “We’d rather keep him nearby, and prominent enough that he couldn’t hatch any conspiracy among the students. They won’t cooperate without him – which is already a problem,” he frowned. “He’ll have a very confined curriculum. I’d go oversee classes myself.”

This was _wild_. It felt like history self-correcting, to give Riddle the DADA post fifty years later. “Ah, good,” Harry managed. “I mean, it’s his fault we haven’t got any professors for Defense anyway.”

Moody was clearly unhappy with this decision, but he’d stand by it regardless. “The Slytherin estate isn’t secure enough for you?”

“It is. I only want to live there with him. Er, he doesn’t know yet. There’s no real reason he shouldn’t, just….” He made a vague gesture.

“So he told you to stay at Hogwarts.”

“Yeah.”

“What is he doing now?”

“Er.” Voldemort’s accusation of him being an _informant_ still stung. He skipped the bit about unicorn blood. “Still researching their Inferi. And – they’re using something like Amortentia on him. He had me brew an antidote. Snape and Slughorn helped,” he added, for credibility. “In a few days I’ll be able to find him in sleep again. That’s it.”

“He is doing nothing to stop them, then.”

“He is,” Harry said, though deep down it was one of his fears too. “The surrender….”

“Isn’t all-encompassing,” Moody said. “As he knows. Tell him to _do_ something.”

“Yes, sir.” He hated this.

And then they separated, and Harry was left alone. So he read as he cast, perched atop a weathered picnic table near the edge of the cliff. The sea crashing below nearly settled him.

 

_Monday, April 12._ Sunday night, he’d left Voldemort’s potion outside with a birch branch atop the cauldron. In the morning it had taken on a sheen, like a layer of perfectly clear ice covered the top. Tonight, with this, he could see Voldemort.

But at breakfast, Hermione was there first, and he approached cautiously. “Can I?” he said, reaching for the adjacent chair.

“Yes. Of course.” She was looking at him with strange expectation. “You haven’t seen yet.”

“Seen what?” She had the _Galleon_ before her, but he reached for his panopticon. The headline ran: _Muds for Liberation: ‘Ministry must denounce its supremacist loyalties.’_

“Fuck,” he said in a quiet sigh.

“You said there should be protests,” she said, a bit tense and a bit… satisfied? Something.

He wondered if they only gained strength with Voldemort gone, so they could deal with him in his absence.

Muds for Liberation were a long-standing protest group, as it turned out. “They say purebloods still run the Ministry, they’ve just got plausible deniability about it now,” Hermione said, watching his face as he read. “We’ve become more _tolerant_ , perhaps, but tolerance implies they’ve still got to validate us. And they really don’t.”

He glanced over at her. He had experienced the world as an outsider, too, but he had the distinct sense that he was not included in the _we_ of her words. “What are they doing?” he asked carefully.

She lifted her chin to the panopticon. “Protesting,” she said. “In the Ministry atrium.”

“Huh.” He read on, not dependent on Hermione to distill his information for him. There was a new law being implemented, one which Voldemort had co-authored. It was complicated, encompassing a lot of economic policy as they’d begin to get Muggle money in. The purebloods would get wealthier – _ancestral wealth_ , it said, but there were hardly any old Muggleborn fortunes to be preserved. Purebloods already made their money in Muggle stocks and investments, and those were protected in new joint-world regulations.

He didn’t know anything about money. The Muds said this law was enforcing systemic poverty. They probably weren’t wrong.

He didn’t see his own name in the article, but he’d expect a few scathing letters at lunch anyway. “Whatever I can say to him….”

“It’s not _him_ ,” she said. “Though he is symptomatic of their politics. The entire Wizengamot, voting in their own interests, and they’re _all_ pureblood – “

“Really?”

A pitying look. “Don’t you keep up with this sort of thing now? Of the fifty-one, six are not descended from the old family lines. _One_ is properly Muggleborn. They think they’ve come much farther than they actually have.”

“We need you,” he said sincerely. “I really don’t know what the Muggleborns want, I don’t really have to think about this.”

“No. You don’t,” she said, but she wasn’t entirely angry with him.

“Who’s the Muggleborn on the Wizengamot?” He couldn’t think of any.

“A witch. Charna Isaacs. She’s in the judicial branch. Madam Bones introduced us once.”

He hadn’t had much to do with the judicial branch of the Ministry, except for Madam Bones herself. “Oh.”

“Anyway,” Hermione sighed. “She’ll probably be in the photos tomorrow, if they properly report on this again.”

“Would _you_ be part of the….”

“Muds for Liberation,” she said decisively. “And no. It’s precarious. Not that many of them could get important jobs _anyway_ , but certainly not as agitators. Maybe when I’ve got job security.”

“Right,” Harry said. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he caught a flash of red hair, as Ron edged toward the high table.

Hermione looked over Harry’s shoulder. “Ron, come here. For goodness sake. Have you made a lesson plan for today?”

So Ron took a seat on the other side of Harry. And Harry, who had spent months throwing himself in between Voldemort and the Aurors, thought that would be less volatile than this. “I did,” he muttered, not really looking at her, “but then I left the box of light bulbs in the classroom, and Peeves found them, and….”

Hermione surprisingly waved this off. “I’ve got more,” she said. “We’ll have to put them in groups, though.”

“Oh – yeah – great.” He reached half-heartedly for a sausage.

“Have you sent the DMLE their paperwork yet?”

“No. I will.”

She gave him a frustrated look, then thought better and returned to her paper.

Ron looked over at Harry’s panopticon. “Protests?”

“Yeah.” He pushed it over, pouring himself coffee.

“Huh. _Pureblood supremacy_ ,” he read from a quote. “Lot of good it’s done us.”

_Slam_. Hermione dropped her hand to the table, making the silverware shudder and a few faculty look over. “You’ve got no idea,” Hermione said lowly, “how _much_ you’ve got by being a pureblood.”

“Oh, _have_ I?” he snarled back. “Is that why you can never be happy for me, you think I haven’t worked at any of this?”

Harry couldn’t take it, he shoved his chair back to go. In a final act of grace, he cast a silencing spell in a bubble around them for some privacy.

He couldn’t shake the guilt, that this was his fault. Riddle had fractured their relationship at the Slytherin estate, and Ron was jealous and Hermione mentally unstimulated. Or maybe it was that they no longer had a _thing_ to work on together, that they were no longer on a mutual quest to defeat Voldemort and keep Harry alive.

Maybe he should manufacture some sort of crisis for them to solve. Nevermind.

\\\\\\\\\ ////

By Monday evening, the potion was ready. Harry had abrasions across his shoulder blades, but since he couldn’t quite reach and he sure as hell wasn’t getting Ron or Hermione to inject it there for him, so he’d bee injecting it into his thigh. He conjured a syringe.

_Inject once a week_ , Snape’s directions read. _Adjust it if the side effects are too significant. Soul damage will be averted as long as necessary._

The last step Snape had given was to purify the injection site with honey. He dabbed it on left-handed as he wrote to Voldemort with his right, **_Are you safe now? They must be nearby._**

_Yes. You should not see them tonight._

He injected the potion. It made him go very cold, then very warm. It wasn’t unpleasant. **_Do you need anything else?_** he wrote, swallowing a mouthful of kaval.

_Take baobab. 300 mg if you haven’t taken any today, 200 mg if you have._

He hadn’t. He was reaching for the tablets now. Baobab was their antidepressant, both of them, which must mean Voldemort had run out. **_I’ll keep taking it._**

_Please._

(Wouldn’t a proper psychiatrist make a day of them both.)

And within the hour Harry was in bed, being pulled under, and the touch of their soul made one of them gasp. It felt good – it felt fantastic, intoxicating. He’d missed this in the past few weeks, not being able to share magic in sleep. And he hadn’t realized how painful the fissures in his soul had been until they were flooded with magic. _Oh thank god_ , he thought faintly.

Voldemort is in his bedroom, at a carved oak desk. His hands are folded on the surface, oddly formal, as Harry takes in the scene. It is a modest room, but it is enough. There’s a bed with a chest of blankets at its foot. Oil lamps on the bedside tables. A bookshelf, filled with books on soul magic. The desk is clean but for a bowl of fruit at the edge.

Harry is relieved first. But second, he thinks of Moody’s ire yesterday, that he doesn’t believe Voldemort is _doing_ enough sufficiently disruptive. And Harry intends to keep his own thoughts separate, but Voldemort seizes on the moment when Harry had the same suspicion.

He is not angry and not hurt, even though it feels like treason. Nobody else in the world trusts Voldemort; Harry needs to.

“No,” Voldemort murmurs, unmoved. “Ask Snape. Or read our correspondence. It is there.”

Harry wonders if anything he has done has worked.

“It will,” he says. “The new moon is Friday, and they will pursue some of the magic then.”

_Do you want it to work?_

He _is_ irritated at that. “I do not fail,” he says precisely. “But… no.”

_Okay._

He rises from the chair. “I need to shower,” he says. At Harry’s questioning thought, he adds, “We are not quite alone. But neither do they really live here, and I am not needed tonight. We will probably not be interrupted.”

_Will they know…?_

“Possibly,” he says with a raise of his shoulder. “But – Harry, I am sorry. Staying apart is more dangerous to your soul than being together. I was paranoid about the potentials of their magic – I still am,” he says lightly, “that I didn’t see the realities of the damage done to you.”

Harry wonders precisely what the danger is.

And Voldemort draws a breath. “If they should like to remove your Horcrux – or your soul altogether,” he adds darkly, “it should be easier when it’s carved into pieces.”

Harry considers this in quiet horror. Voldemort steps into the bath, charming the cold stone floor warm as he kicks off his boots. Undressing perfunctorily, he says, “You know the symptoms of soul damage. If the potion has any significant side effects, we might adjust it.”

_We_ , Harry thinks, because Voldemort does not mean him. Voldemort means _Snape_ , and how strange this is, that he should want to rely on Snape now.

“We are scarcely obligated to one another any longer.” He hangs his robe, begins popping open the buttons on his shirt.

_You don’t feel like that about the others_ , Harry thinks. He is better at catching emotions than thoughts, and he is always so taken aback at the storm of feelings that swirl at the mention of Snape – that there is anger and betrayal alongside nostalgia and a peculiar fondness.

Voldemort stands in only underclothes by now. “We can discuss Severus _or_ have a wank in the shower,” he offers, amused.

Harry flushes with interest first, but then his thoughts become a hideous tangle – _Won’t they know_? he thinks. There is something about the relation of the soul to sex, that at one point Voldemort had planned to fuck his Horcruxes to reclaim them, and if the Humnerë caught him wanking, maybe they’d….

It is charming, really. “It poses no particular threat,” he promises. “It will likely help your mangled soul.”

Harry thinks that he is pathetic, that they’ve only gone a week and a half without contact, and already depression has settled on him like a blanket.

And Voldemort isn’t the reassuring sort, but he kicks his pants down his legs and steps into the shower. “I want you to touch me,” he says, charming the spray warmer.

_To possess you?_ Harry is vaguely horrified.

“This nearly is already. You _have_ taken physical control before.” Because they both recall that in the caverns, it was Harry who pulled them back from a crumbling ledge.

_But that was important._

He shrugs, lathering his hands in sweet goat milk soap. “As you wish.” He presses the heels of his hands into the tense part of his shoulders.

But Harry is prodding carefully at his mind – he’s acquainted enough with the emotional parts, less so his memories, and not at all the parts which govern his physical embodiment. Voldemort is patient, giving him access, remaining open even when the contact tugs or stings. And Harry can feel the slip of his hands on his skin, and he follows that sensation until – Voldemort’s hand jerks up his torso as Harry takes control.

Harry is so surprised that he almost loses focus. _Is that okay?_ he thinks anxiously. _Does it hurt?_

“You would know if it hurt,” Voldemort points out. “Since you are able to feel everything.”

Harry is still so careful. He is interested in what it feels like to be in Voldemort’s body altogether – how fragile and serpentine he feels, the long limbs and sleek skin. He runs his fingers around Voldemort’s navel, then smears soap upward. He lifts both hands to finger Voldemort’s nipples, and flushes in satisfaction as they firm in his touch. But then his hands continue upward, dipping a finger into the deep hollow of Voldemort’s throat. _Not yet_ , he thinks, because it could be a precursor to being choked. _Let me touch you._

His prominent collarbone, his long neck. Harry holds his hands up to the spray, rinsing off the soap, before pressing a finger to his thin lips. _Open_ , he thinks, because he does not control the rest of Voldemort’s body yet so much as his hands. Voldemort parts his lips; Harry closes them again around a finger. He sucks.

His other hand continues along his face, his flat nose and pronounced cheekbones. He does have eyelashes, though they are sparse, and Harry runs a careful finger along them when Voldemort closes his eyes.

Harry moves both hands to his scalp. It is the softest and thinnest part of his skin, and Harry does like to run his fingers along it, because it always elicits a deep shiver inside him. Over the curve of his ears, back down toward the nape of his neck. He finds the spot, and a thrill courses down Voldemort’s spine. Harry is delighted.

These infinitesimal touches are peculiar in a good way – a different sort of eroticism than he had taken time to experience before. Granted, Harry is gentle with him the days he doms, because Voldemort tolerates carelessness better than care. Will he ever find tender attention anything but excruciating?

_It’s okay_ , Harry thinks, because he _likes_ Voldemort’s humiliation at the most innocuous things. _It’s sweet_ , he thinks, a bit teasing.

He has run Voldemort’s hands down his sides, counting each of his ribs. He thinks faintly that they’ve both gained weight recently, that the space between their ribs is a bit less pronounced now.

“Good,” Voldemort says aloud, because Harry can have some anxieties about his body that he has not yet consciously engaged.

And Harry shakes the idea off now. His hands run over Voldemort’s narrow hips, fingers playing at the iliac crest. _I want to finger you_ , he thinks. _Are your nails short enough?_

An eminently pragmatic question. Voldemort looks to his hands, and charms his nails short and blunt with a twist of his fingers.

_Lube_ , Harry thinks, because the soap won’t do.

“Cast it yourself.” He is merely curious whether they can. But if Harry could maintain a patronus for him, such a minimal spell as lubrication should be simple. “Here.” He draws magic, warm and loose, into his palms.

Harry is doubtful. He flexes Voldemort’s fingers, to recall the gesture by which it was cast. Then: _Lubrico_ , he thinks deliberately, and Voldemort’s hands are dripping with it. He used too much magic to begin with, but it is otherwise perfect.

Harry is pleased with himself. He seizes enough of Voldemort’s movement to pull him against a wall. The shower is too wide to prop his leg up, so together they bend his knees, arching backwards, and Harry presses two slick fingers inside of him.

His fingers dab shallowly, just at the ring of muscle, and his belly goes taut. He has tipped his head back, and Harry has taken his other hand, running his thumb around the hardening head of his cock.

Their magic is entwined, burning against one another’s. Neither of them could muster imagination, nor much thought at all, and for once Voldemort’s mind is quiet. He relaxes into Harry’s touch, experiencing his own body in its newness of being used like this.

Harry’s grip is firm, falling into an easy rhythm as though wanking himself. He revels in the way Voldemort’s shoulderblades draw together, his breath hitches, his toes curl into the smooth stones. He jerks – a soft gasp – and he spills a broad streak of ejaculate across the floor.

And he sags, but Harry does not stop: the fingers inside of him curl tightly, pushing another finger in so that he properly gapes. The hand on his cock scrubs at the tip, painfully sensitive after coming. His body spasms, stomach coiling in pleasure and pain. But when he attempts to pull out of Harry’s grasp (as it were), Harry seizes control sharply. _Let go._

It surprises them both, both that Harry could and that he would. “Yes, sir,” Voldemort murmurs, almost entirely sincere. His flesh stings with post-orgasmic sensitivity, as Harry already knows he feels so acutely. He fingers him through this, pumping his cock so it could never go soft. If they had been together, he would have restrained Voldemort. He must be stronger, he thinks faintly, since Voldemort’s physique is so delicate. To grab his shoulders and pin him –

Voldemort attempts to pull apart again, because the sting of being pushed past his limit has shot up his spine, buzzing in his brain. But he pulls carefully, because he does not truly want to escape. Harry captures his magic as though capturing his grasp, and twists his fingers to brush past his prostate, still firm and throbbing. And Voldemort bucks, eyes squeezed shut. Harry thinks, light and sweet, that they could be done as soon as he has come again. He draws a breath through his teeth. “I am not eighteen,” he reminds his paramour, unnecessarily.

_I am_ , Harry thinks, chipper. The rest of his thoughts are a flurry of curiosity, about the Horcrux and magic between them and sex magic. Harry has all the confidence in the world that the erotic charge in their magic is enough.

Voldemort has recast the lubrication charm in both hands, so the slickness is nearly leaking from his arse down the back of his thighs. The tip of his cock is a bruised blush. The shower’s steam has overwhelmed his other senses.

_Let me_ , Harry thinks, expecting Voldemort to cede the rest of his control. And… he does, in trepidation and excitement and relief. He expects Harry will take care of this.

Harry dips into fantasy – no, memory. Voldemort had wrung multiple orgasms from him, often enough: he thinks of a time last summer when Voldemort had dropped a vibrator down the front of his nappy and simply _left_ , until he was wrung out by dry orgasms that left him senseless.

_That’s what I will do for you_ , Harry thinks. Perhaps he’ll tie Voldemort spread-eagle with a vibrator held in place with a sticking spell. Perhaps he’d charm a buttplug. _You would go out in it_ , he thinks. _And you would hope I didn’t charm it on in public, somewhere humiliating_. _I’d make you come while we’re out, to see how quiet you could be. And I’d let your pants just stick to you afterward._

The hand on his cock has quickened again. He is properly hard. Magic can be an aphrodisiac, itself.

_Or I’d make you ask permission. Or I’d pull open your robes to watch. Or I’d pull you into a quiet corner to punish you._

His balls have tightened at this prospect once more. And Harry has lost himself in the idea.

_And maybe if you’ve been too much of a problem, we get a cock cage for you. And you could beg me to let you come, but you wouldn’t actually want it. And I would be so proud of you._

A final twist of his fingers in his arse, his hand on his cock, and he is gasping. His hips buck, the orgasm more diffuse a sensation this time, but it makes him glow inside. Harry forces his eyes open because he would like to see the meager dribble of come across his palm. And while Voldemort does not otherwise care about such crude displays of masculinity, Harry’s scrutiny makes him feel self-conscious. He steps back into the shower spray.

But they are both taken by this – that Harry is surprised with himself for so easily slipping into control, and Voldemort is captivated with Harry’s more forceful side. It is such a novel feeling anyway, to be vulnerable and powerless. Even the times of his youth when he would bottom for important Muggles, the lawyers and doctors and professors who wanted what their respectable wives couldn’t provide, he had never conceded _control_ truly. He is left without words for a long moment, then finally he says, “Thank you.”

Harry finds this delightful and unexpected. _You’re quite welcome_ , he thinks in a posh way, and gives Voldemort back enough control to finish bathing.

But he remains in his mind, with something like Legilimency as he prods at Voldemort’s memories. Voldemort towels off, pulling on a soft bathrobe. He is still slack and sensitive from the sex, and the contact on his mind also feels oddly charged. He decides he likes it.

Harry is looking for the Humnerë’s treatment of him. Voldemort allows him in, pushing him in the right direction. He still resides in the cloisters. There are voids surrounding it – redundant ones, since the terms of surrender will likewise already drain his magic with escape. Harry looks at the research he has done, animating the captured souls. When he finds one, a new soul attached to a weathered Inferius, he jerks back (as it were) in surprise to see the way its face shifts. Voldemort had restrained it to cast on it, and it is furious with him, moving its face into those of people he’s known, from Bella and the Malfoys to the casualties of the first war. It is an abstract but horrifying punishment.

Voldemort is indifferent. “An illusion, desperate and senseless.” He pulls him away from the memory.

_Can you stop them, though?_ Harry is politely attempting to be generous and non-accusatory, but he is concerned.

“Yes.”

Harry accepts this, because he is endlessly good and trusting. He looks for the nights they have used Amortentia on him. He can tell little difference, but he is wary anyway. “It should draw my soul closer to them,” Voldemort says. “For capture. I… may not have enough of a soul to work. Certainly not enough to be worth their time otherwise.”

Harry is turning one night over in his mind. _You might, though_ , he thinks.

“For all that you have done to – _restore_ my soul….”

But Harry thinks that is not it at all. He pulls at a moment of one memory – the scent of the potion he couldn’t place, that he would have assumed were the components of the Amortentia variant but it didn’t smell like potions ingredients, really. Soil, and the scent of magic like a lightning storm, and….

_My broom wax_ , Harry supplies in soft amusement. The resin scent he hadn’t been able to place. _Ginny says it’s good for my cuticles, too._

God help him, he had fallen in love with an athlete. “Broom wax,” he repeats faintly.

_And the soil is just Hogwarts. Mostly in the walls after it’s rained. It’s in mine, too._

His blend of Amortentia, he means. Voldemort is on his bed by now, and sits back hard against the headboard. He had told Harry before that Amortentia never smelled like anything but its ingredients to him. He is less broken now than he’d been as a teenager, and that is… stunning. Unnerving. “What have you done to me,” he mutters.

Harry wonders – in a way he may not have intended Voldemort to hear – if it would offend him to phrase it as how _human_ he’s become.

“Human, all too human,” Voldemort says in a sigh. He is not offended, only wildly taken aback. “Just… leave it for now,” he requests in a lower tone. He would like to consider it alone.

_Should I go?_

“No.”

Harry passes him magic, and it is helpful, because they are both damaged by separation. Really, if Voldemort now has enough of a soul to incur soul damage again, he will be so irritated. He draws a breath. “As much as can be done to keep your soul whole, should be done. This. Snape’s potion. The potion of magic replenishment. Sex will be rare. The diadem is at Grimmauld Place?”

_Yes_ , Harry thinks, then has a delayed reaction of surprise and dis-ease that Voldemort knows of their Fidelius’ed hideout. “Mm,” Voldemort says. “Like your aunt’s house, I may not be able to approach it. I have not been in that part of London quite some time, anyway. But I knew the house once. Before your godfather was born. I was in school with Orion and Walburga.”

Harry still finds it dizzying how small their world is.

He nearly smiles. “If the diadem is at all inclined to be helpful, take its magic. If you can avoid any amount of emotional turmoil, you should.”

Harry thinks that it is all quite circular, that the primary _turmoil_ in his life is the anxiety and depression of being apart. “I know,” Voldemort says softly. “I am sorry.”

This surprises him. _Don’t be_ , he thinks, because he will not accept any measure of guilt from Voldemort. He thinks how much more Voldemort needs to protect the integrity of his own soul, and how impossible it is to promise that. He counts off the measures: magic, sex, potions, baobab for them both. _Don’t kill anyone_ , he thinks in a strangled way. _You can’t afford to._

Voldemort laughs abruptly, because he had reached the same conclusion. “I cannot kill anyone,” he speaks aloud. A promise. “It is… complicated. Tell the Ministry, if any of them ask,” he adds in a sigh. “They have doubtless thought the same thing.”

_Do vows fracture your soul?_

He considers. “Not their existence. Transgression would.”

_… Okay._ Harry is not happy, but all of his negative emotions still ring so loudly in Voldemort’s head, he is careful to temper his reaction. _Let me stay._

He nods. It is late and the cloisters are quiet; he can be something nearer to at ease. He opens the Panopticon, but there is nothing new published since this morning. ( _Protests._ Muds for Liberation are always good for sowing seeds of dissent, anyway.) He looks to the bookshelf beside his bed. “ _Frankenstein_?” he asks. “Or _Metamorphosis_?”

Harry is familiar enough with them both, and he is rather exasperated with Voldemort. _You are not a monster._

He picks up _Frankenstein_ , then. “Tell me who the real monster is, in the end.”

He reads aloud. He hasn’t got to, Harry could just as well read words through his eyes, but it is familiar, quiet, gentle. At one point they hear curious footsteps slow outside his bedroom, but then they move away. Harry settles deep into his mind.

At last, their minds and magics are quiet enough that Voldemort sets the book down, dousing the lamps. Harry’s magic curls inside his own, and Voldemort’s breathing goes steady. His mind wanders in that way before sleep, to the Humnerë and Inferi, the potion. Severus. This, his thoughts snag on.

There is an intricate string of memories, his long history with Severus, the recent betrayal of turning the Minister over to his Order so that Moody might not throw him in Azkaban for treason. Further back, to his work on Voldemort’s potions. They would meet most often at Malfoy Manor, making Lucius anxious and annoyed at being left out. Voldemort had a familiarity with Severus that he’d had with no other Death Eater. Severus was shrewd before he was loyal, and Voldemort wouldn’t have allowed it in anyone who didn’t remind him so much of himself.

Further back. In his dispossession, he had thought that Severus was among the most likely to seek him out. Not for loyalty, or for power, but in a hunger for magic itself.

He really was wasted as a pawn. If circumstances had been difference, he would have been a proper protégé instead. There were nights in the first war…. He’d sent Snape for Muggles generally, so that he wouldn’t be faced with fighting his erstwhile classmates. There were nights when Severus had sniped Muggles in the middle of the street without being seen. He could shoot through propped windows; once a knot in the wall; once in a mirror’s reflection…. It had been impressive. It had been _beautiful_ , when he’d thrown off his hood and mask, dark eyes glittering, high on dark magic. Morsmordre glittered above them, throwing his features into sharp relief. Sometimes, breathless, he would beg Voldemort to let him cast it himself. Sometimes Voldemort would acquiesce.

Further back, then, from the way Morsmordre illuminated his face to the way the Malfoys’ great fire had, and this time it was tears on his cheeks that glittered. This is among their earliest meetings alone, in the summer of 1979. Severus was weeping openly: his mother had died and his place in the wixen world had never been so tenuous. Voldemort hadn’t comforted him, but observed this breakdown in fascination. When Severus sinks to the carpet, it is hardly in prostration, merely his knees giving out. Voldemort leans forward, running his pale fingers through Severus’s dark hair.

They hadn’t fucked that night, but the very next one. Voldemort holds him facedown, a hand on the back of his neck, and he can’t draw enough breath to cry. Voldemort had said that as a condition of sex, that he must be fully open to Legilimency, and he’d agreed. Half-smothered against the pillows, Severus is grateful.

There are other times: it went on for six months, as Severus cleared out his mother’s estate. He’d been in some Muggle university classes for chemistry but quit, even after Voldemort had said that Lucius would pay all his expenses. He had returned to Hogwarts, as loathsome a setting as he found it, to collect recommendations from the faculty. Slughorn had pled with him to take a job in research or, barring that, to brew for St. Mungo’s. He knew an apothecary in Knockturn Alley that would need a new owner in a few years, and certainly an apprenticeship…? Severus takes the man’s address but never writes. He sells his mother’s jewels to Muggles, putting glamours on it to conceal that it is mere costume jewelry.

Severus worries often whether the security spells on Spinner’s End would keep his father out. Voldemort said once that he would cast the spells himself, but Severus cannot bear to bring him to the poor, Muggle neighborhood where he had grown up.

(“I grew up in poorer and more Muggle circumstances,” Voldemort offers, and he reveals so little to the Death Eaters that even this insight is a gift.

Severus looks from the potion he is brewing, peering at him through dark lashes. He _loves_ Voldemort in this moment, this apparent intimacy. “Nevertheless, my lord,” he demurs.)

Voldemort had offered to kill his father only once. Severus had been distraught that night, such that even Legilimency was overwhelming and nearly painful. “You haven’t got to,” he says thickly. They are sitting on the wide four poster bed, where Voldemort would sleep when he’d stayed with Abraxas, then Lucius. Severus is picking at his already-ragged nails. The lines of his face would typically make him look older than nineteen, but tonight the lighting suggests some childish softness in his cheeks, around his eyes. And normally such weakness would make Voldemort feel disgusted, if not predatory. This time he is merely fascinated.

He presses Severus to the bed, undoing the fastenings on his robe by hand so he can watch the anticipation in the boy’s face. “If you kill him,” he offers, “you may wear my Mark.”

Severus is surprised by this – and he nearly sits up, because it is an absurd conversation to have while sprawled on his back. Voldemort holds him down with one hand, the other working at his belt buckle. “Yes,” Severus says. “My Lord.” He lifts his hips so that Voldemort may slide his trousers off, pressing, a palm ministering to the front of his pants before taking them off as well.

Severus is looking down at him in some confusion: Voldemort is still dressed in his heavy robes, while Severus’s clothing has been moved away between navel to knees, bearing his pale-translucent skin, dark rose cock, the mat of hair creeping from his groin up his stomach. Voldemort lowers his mouth, and Severus chokes back a gasp.

That had been over the Christmas holidays of 1979. Severus comes around a few times more, and says nothing of his father for a fortnight. Then, on his twentieth birthday, Severus will come in with dark, bitter magic clinging to him. But his complexion is bright, and his eyes glitter. Another dead Muggle.

Voldemort hadn’t been alone that night, but he excuses his company – Rosier, Mulciber, and Lucius – immediately. And then he is touching Severus, peeling his mind back with gentle Legilimency, to watch the death himself. Severus doesn’t use Avada Kedavra to begin – he crushes the wretched man’s lungs and then his windpipe with magic, a number of times so Tobias can scramble nearer to the door, or to grab a knife from a drawer behind him, or to strike Severus in the face. Severus had worn his cloak and mask but the man recognized him anyway. After the first gasping, “Severus, please – “ he no longer had the oxygen to beg. Avada Kedavra, as was safest when killing Muggles. Severus did not dare even take the money from the man’s wallet, as little as he wanted it to look like a crime scene.

Voldemort fucks him before he Marks him, so that he is loose and filled still with his come when Voldemort lifts his wand. Severus sways on his feet at the scorching spell, but he does not fall as the snake is branded onto his skinny forearm. “Thank you, my lord,” he murmurs afterward, voice thick.

Voldemort pulls him close to kiss him – and Severus is unready, his mouth slow to reciprocate. “ _This_ ,” Voldemort kisses him, “cannot persist.” His tongue darts along Severus’s lower lip. He only imagines that Severus tastes like blood – his father hadn’t bled, but the essence of it clings to Severus anyway. “People would call it favoritism.” He grabs Severus’s elbows – he hisses, Dark Mark inflaming his entire arm – but he pulls them both onto the bed. “It is for your own safety.” Kiss.

“I don’t care.”

Voldemort looks up sharply, and Severus draws back. “I do,” he says. “It would be a stupid reason to foment dissent. You see how Lucius looks at you already.”

Severus’s jaw works for a moment. Finally he settles on, “I understand, my lord.” Voldemort leans in to kiss him not on the mouth, but on the forehead, brushing back his long hair from his face.

Severus remains in his intimate company, even without the sex. Voldemort teaches him curses and countercurses; he teaches him how the air warps differently like a charge of lightning before a spell is even cast. He is a brilliant sniper; he would make a better spy. Voldemort assumes his Occlumency is perfect.

He proves himself as a spy in late March of 1980. He summons Voldemort, a sufficiently painful spell from their Dark Mark to deter all but significant needs. Voldemort meets him in a home in rural Switzerland. Severus is still breathless. “There is a prophecy.”

In years since, he has probed Severus’s mind any number of times, to find whether he knew the prophecy’s second half. But then, his Occlumency was perfect.

The Potters and Longbottoms were sufficiently prominent, that their pregnancies were already known. Alice was recently absent from the war because her curses are nearly as dark as the Death Eaters’ themselves; such exposure could poison a fetus. But Evans cast stupidly light charmwork, as safe for a pregnancy as a war could be, so Voldemort assumes she and her husband are both recently absent because they are precious. He had no members among Dumbledore’s ranks – the Ministry yes, Dumbledore no – and wondered whether he’d overlooked some other disgusting coupling. “Who would bear a child in the midst of a war?” he muses darkly. Severus shakes his head, but Voldemort doesn’t expect a response. “We will bomb the hospital.”

“Yes, my lord.”

Of course he didn’t bomb the hospital. Dumbledore launches attacks late in July that are clearly distractions, but expensive ones – he would have been forced to concede a good amount of Knockturn Alley, and the ley lines under the Forbidden Forest, and an abandoned castle in Wales he’d charmed as a panic room. On July 30th, into the morning of the 31st, Malfoy Manor is attacked – what begins as a Ministry raid ends in blood. Lucius is fighting back less charitable feelings as he asks, “What do you require of us, my lord?” He has a new child himself, and complications of the birth still keep Narcissa bedridden.

“Take them,” Voldemort says. “You will still have your estate in the end.”

Lucius had expected Voldemort to ask he sacrifice his home. But Voldemort had been sheltered at Malfoy Manor by Abraxas before anyone else would take him in, and he had an irrational fondness for the place.

Severus himself has been at St. Mungo’s, to listen for any news. He is occasionally commissioned to brew for them, and Voldemort does not yet have any proper Healers, so he is the least conspicuous spy Voldemort can employ. He has sent no word of either pregnancy. Voldemort wonders if the promise of seeing Evans has fractured his loyalties.

_Lily_. Voldemort hates her. He hates the subtle shift in Severus’s tone, in his _magic_ , when he speaks of her. But his feelings toward her will become useful, in the end. Neither child of the prophecy is born at the hospital; neither family is seen again. Dumbledore is sheltering them both, and Voldemort will capture their entire Order to find their secret keepers. He is very annoyed at this inconvenience.

The war wages for another entire year. By now both sides are hemorrhaging soldiers, and morale is critically low. Then, one sticky night in August 1981, Severus summons him again, and Voldemort brings them both to the cliffs where he’d been taken as a child, above the cave in which the locket resides. Severus has a moment to blink at the surroundings – but then Voldemort grabs him by the throat. “You come to me, reeking of Dumbledore’s magic?”

Severus stills in his touch, but there is no fear in his eyes. “Yes,” he says. “Rookwood and Macnair are useless. The Ministry bends to Dumbledore’s will. You need someone nearer to him.”

“I will _tell_ you what I need,” Voldemort snarls. He never loses his composure like this, but the hot sting of betrayal blisters the air between them. He assumes that Severus is like some of the other Death Eaters, who have tried to fall away as the war trudged on. Some he Obliviated so they might forget their reticence; some he tortured; some he talked back with sweetness and light. Tonight he is vicious: “Why should I not kill you?”

“He gave me a job. At Hogwarts.”

Voldemort drops his grasp. “And what did you give _him_?” he asks, cynical to mask his shock.

Severus’s lips curl. “A bit of indignity,” he says. “Dumbledore believes in _love_. As power and redemption.”

“I know,” Voldemort mutters, and for a moment he is fifteen again, fighting Dumbledore in one of his hideous detentions. “You told him you have been redeemed?”

“Allow me to show you, my Lord,” and he is reaching carefully for his wand. Voldemort nods this on: he has never felt threatened by Severus, anyway. Severus lifts his wand: “ _Expecto patronum_!”

A silver doe bursts forth, the same as Evans has used on the battlefield when Voldemort had incited the Dementors to fight. It is impressive magic, not unto itself but from one whose soul has been so marred with violence. Severus holds the doe in existence, allowing it to gambol close to the cliff’s edge, and again Voldemort sees how his magic shifts.

“Your feelings for her are childish and disgusting.”

“Yes, my Lord.” He looks to Voldemort carefully. “Dumbledore cast the Fidelius on both houses himself. Their secret keepers must be people mutually trusted. The Potters would have asked Black. I will listen for the Longbottoms’. This must end before either child grows up.”

“You prefer I would pursue the Longbottoms.”

“No,” he says, blunt. “Their son would be the more powerful – a proper pureblood, an old line. But… you know my feelings on Potter.” His tone is dark. It was among the earliest bits of anger Severus divulged: that Black and Potter thought his life was worth less than a prank, and the faculty had judged it worth only fifty points and a month of detentions. “I would prefer to see him gone. Prophecy or no,” Severus says with a crooked smile. “But… spare the girl. She is only a mudblood, but I would keep her as my own.”

“ _Keep_ her.” Voldemort plays with the word. His war is not particularly invested in sexual violence, at least not under his watch. His soldiers will be upstanding and pure, unpolluted. “A halfblood and a Muggleborn? Your children will be squibs.”

“We would drown the squibs,” he says easily. “I do not yet care for a family. When your – reign,” (he stumbles over the word, but Voldemort does not correct it) “requires new blood, I would take a suitable pureblood wife.”

Voldemort’s gaze follows the doe along the cliff. “Why not,” he says at last. Severus’s eyebrows twitch at the easy and colloquial response. “I have no use for her otherwise. Perhaps we might even reform her, into a _model_ _citizen_. I am merciful.”

“You are, my Lord, immensely,” Severus says, and his tone slips with sincerity.

“Hogwarts, though…. Are you quite sure being in Dumbledore’s presence will not _radicalize_ you?” He lets the word sound almost teasing.

Severus sneers. “Hardly,” he says. “This year would be an apprenticeship beneath Horace Slughorn. Next year he shall retire, and I would take over the Slytherin house as well. Their dissatisfaction with Dumbledore’s school is palpable. I will craft the soldiers you need.”

Voldemort is momentarily surprised. “Why haven’t I heard that Slughorn would be retiring?”

“I don’t know, my lord.”

“Dumbledore seems in much more dire need of a Defense professor, is he not?” The curse on the post was becoming widespread rumor even among the general public by now. “Take the Potions post,” he instructs. “But you must ask Dumbledore for the Defense post, when you can. When you have already inherited the Slytherins. As you say, I need soldiers.”

“Yes, my lord.”

Severus does not understand the decision. But for Voldemort to kill Severus openly, if or when he should demonstrate any inclination of treason, would foment dissent within the ranks. He could not admit to ever having been deceived. Nor could he look so capricious, as much of a threat on his own soldiers’ lives as the war. But if Severus was duplicitous, and met an unrelated unfortunate end… well, the Death Eaters would even drink the wine of Malfoy’s cellars in Severus’s honor, as a good and loyal servant, and nobody would have to know otherwise.

The doe circles back toward them. It is to Severus’s back, and Voldemort watches over his shoulder. “Dismiss it,” he orders, and with a glance and flick of his wrist, Severus does. Voldemort steps in, and Severus flinches when he raises his hand, but it is only to run a lock of Severus’s hair between his fingers, as though they were still intimate. “I can no longer trust you,” he says, and some part of him feels sincerely sad at the loss.

“No,” Severus says. “But you can use me.”

“Yes.”

After that, he and Severus see less of each other. He rarely took Severus into battle anyway, with Dumbledore watching so closely. He will join the Death Eaters while summoned. Neither of them has told the Death Eaters they now have a spy at Hogwarts; but Lucius is on the board and the Ministry oversees the curriculum, so it is not quite a secret. Severus has made no gains on the Longbottoms’ secret keeper, but they agree that Sirius Black’s disappearance has thoroughly implicated him as the Potters’.

Severus reports that Hogwarts has a higher rate of enrollment this year than normal: there have been battles in Hogsmeade and in the mountain range beyond the castle, but never on the grounds. This is among his inner circle, and there is much muttering about Dumbledore at this point. “How safe he is, using schoolchildren as human shields,” Rookwood sneers. “My lord, if access to the castle may be arranged….”

He gives Rookwood an unpleasant look. “Do you think I have not already considered our options?” he asks in a chilled tone. “We will not yet attack the castle. Do not _doubt_ me, Augustus.”

Rookwood goes pale and he’s whimpering for forgiveness. “Get out,” Voldemort says. “And devise a plan to breach the Department of Mysteries.”

His expression of fear shifts to confusion. “Yes, my lord.” He scrambles out.

Voldemort must do something about Hogwarts. Dumbledore has made clear he can and will recruit children, and Voldemort hesitates to make the youngest generation casualties of his war, if only because their race is so genetically brittle already. He will not destroy the castle, his first love and his birthright. But Dumbledore may have swayed the loyalty of not only the students but the castle itself. It would be a crushing betrayal if Voldemort found that the castle no longer loved him.

Severus lingers when the others leave. “Dumbledore would like my help in his Order of the Phoenix,” he said, mocking the name. “He would not initiate me – yet. He asked me to brew for his war efforts.”

“Will you?”

Severus arches his brows. “If you’d prefer it.”

“Yes.” Dumbledore’s warfare has never been chemical – strange, since so few wixes knew of Muggle warfare but Dumbledore would, and caustic chemicals are such a potent weapon for them. “Healing potions?”

“Yes. And for speed, reflexes, vision…. Nothing offensive.”

“You should,” Voldemort agrees. “He can’t _trust_ you already?”

A wry smile. “A test,” he says. “He has attempted to pry into my mind before, but now he must take more subtle measures.”

“Fine. Brew for him. Do it well,” Voldemort adds sharply. “He has every reason to doubt you.”

“Yes, my lord.” He hesitates. “And the Longbottoms….” He stops himself. “I would not mislead you, my lord, but….”

“What?” He is actually impatient at this deference. He prefers Severus direct, bold, intimate.

“Their secret keeper may be Alastor Moody. He seems to carry news of them to Dumbledore.”

Voldemort grits his teeth. The secret keeper may not be coerced in any way. Moody hates Voldemort on a deeply personal basis. He hates _every_ Death Eater on a deeply personal basis, so Voldemort would have trouble even accessing him, much less persuading him of anything. “Fine,” he says. “And Black?”

“Bellatrix says several of the family properties have been cloaked. She is pursuing them,” Severus says.

But he shakes his head faintly. “I need Bella elsewhere,” he decides. “And I have one servant more suitable anyway. Do you know of Regulus Black?”

Severus’s brow furrows. “Yes. Of course. He was only a year beneath us.”

Voldemort hadn’t brought Regulus before the Death Eaters before. He is quite young, even if his admittance to the ranks would be no surprise – the Black family have been among his staunchest supporters. “Regulus must prove himself,” Voldemort says. “You will bear responsibility for him. And Severus… it seems that after Black has served his purpose, it would be cruel to ask Regulus to kill his own brother. Would you bear that responsibility as well?”

A faint twitch of Severus’s mouth. “Yes, my lord.”

He remembers that October as frantic – the war had drawn on long enough, that both sides were drained of resources and stamina. A group of Death Eaters led by Lucius leave a Muggle rights activist strung up in the center of Hogsmeade; someone of Dumbledore’s burns the Rosier manor to the ground while they’d been inside. Voldemort kills an entire squad of Aurors at a go, leaving only Moody alive; the Ministry removes Macnair from his position on the Wizengamot, putting him in the useless department of dangerous creatures. But the Minister has been moved to an undisclosed location, most of the Prophet is sympathetic to the pureblood cause, and they have some international support. They might have been winning.

This lures Pettigrew to him. None of the Death Eaters had yet been made aware of Pettigrew, who had passed Voldemort some bits of intel from the Order within the past few months. He had been mildly useful, and he needed such a meager amount of praise to satisfy him. It cost nothing to keep him around, but neither would he ever prove himself so invaluable to Voldemort.

He comes to Voldemort on October 30th.

They are having a celebration, of sorts. An early Hallow’s Eve party, to carouse and to plan their movement tomorrow night, when the magic of chaos and danger will be most fertile. The inner circle had gathered at Malfoy Manor, with others stopping in to pay their respects. They all arrived by floo, so when the Malfoys’ house elf discreetly tells Voldemort that it had let a visitor in through the front entrance, seating him in the guest parlor, Voldemort frowns at the creature. “His name?”

“He requested we do not say, if you were not alone,” the elf says in an undertone, its ears drooping in deference and fear.

This is irritating. He sees the nearest Death Eaters, Travers and the Yaxleys, straining to listen discreetly. But Severus had been with Voldemort before the elf approached, and he addresses Voldemort directly. “Shall we dispose of him? My lord, do not trouble yourself with interlopers. They are not worth your magic.”

“My magic is hardly a limited resource, Severus,” Voldemort chides, but it is bloodless. “I will be brief. If he merits it, perhaps I shall introduce him,” he says in a lilting tone. Bloodsport. Voldemort is somewhat opposed to the Death Eaters killing for sport – it would be prosecuted more severely than wartime deaths, in the unlikely event Voldemort loses and his Death Eaters are put on trial. Anyway, he must be able to convince the populace that he is merciful, even-handed, generous. Nevertheless, he goes to meet the visitor.

Pettigrew is twitchy in the parlor: crossing and recrossing his legs, running his hands through straw-colored hair that is already thinning at the age of twenty. Voldemort glides in as though he’d expected him. “Wormtail,” he greets. “Forgive the revelry, we are celebrating.”

“M-my lord, no. I knew you were here, from Snape,” Pettigrew says. “He told the Order.”

“As I instructed,” Voldemort says, a bit sharply in case Pettigrew was accusing his spy. “I know Snape’s business. What is yours?”

Pettigrew’s face is drained of blood. Voldemort wonders if an elf would revive him if he were to faint, because Voldemort himself would not deign to do it. “The Potters have gone into hiding,” he says. Pettigrew trailed after Potter and Black at school, Voldemort has seen these pathetic displays in his memories, and he expects another pathetic display now. He might kill him if Pettigrew is here to beg for mercy on his friends’ behalf. But instead Pettigrew licks his lips. “I know where they are.”

Pettigrew’s loyalty was so cheaply bought.

Voldemort will send him away in a bit, with promises of a special place among his Death Eaters if tomorrow night is successful. “If I find that they have been warned….”

Pettigrew’s eyes go wide. “No – my lord.” He stumbles over the words, unused to saying them. “I am yours.”

“I should hope so.”

Returning to the Malfoys’ ballroom, Voldemort’s head is buzzing. He does not particularly drink at these events – whether he fears another attack by the Ministry or some internal violence, he cannot be slow or unguarded – but tonight he wants something to quiet his thoughts and put his mind in some sort of order. He finds Lucius. “We must celebrate. Where is your cognac?”

When Lucius goes, Snape approaches, too easily. “My lord?” He is only curious.

Typically Voldemort would not indulge curiosity, but tonight is special. He rewards Severus with a smile. “Your betrayal is no longer my most valuable.”

“Oh,” Severus breathes. “Black?”

“No.”

And Severus, misunderstanding everything, smiles back at hm.

He will go to Godric’s Hollow alone that Halloween. (Godric’s Hollow. _Gryffindors._ He wonders if Dumbledore found the house for them.) His magic is wild with anticipation. The moon is a meager sliver overhead, and he moves in darkness and disillusionment.

It is not only his own magic that was wild that night: the power of Hallow’s Eve, the breached Fidelius, Lily’s sacrifice, his promise to Severus. When the killing curse rebounds and the house is crumbling around him (around _them_ , the wailing infant now his only witness), Voldemort dies thinking of Severus, that he has been betrayed, that the insignificant promise he made has ruined everything. And then he is standing over his own body, and he’s got just enough magic to immolate it, and then searing pain engulfs his formless presence, and then he remembers nothing more.

\\\\\\\ ////

Voldemort wakes in that same searing pain now, and he panics. For a moment he can’t feel his new body, and he doesn’t recognize the setting, but the earthy magic of Albania hums around him. He is dispossessed, trapped in non-existence once more, and –

And then his mind shifts violently, and it is Harry thrashing away from him. He is furious, confused, upset.

He wants to kill Severus.

Voldemort captures his mind, holding him down in sleep. And just opening his mouth to speak ignites new pain from his temples to his jaw, and he is furious too, because Harry must know he’s hurting him, that his anger always hurts Voldemort physically when they’re too near to one another. “Harry – fucking _stop it_ ,” he hisses, throwing a hand over his eyes. There must be potions – he can’t think of any analgesic spells –

_Good_ , Harry thinks coldly, and then he is attempting to extricate himself again. Their magic stretches and warps but Voldemort will not let him, and then Harry is panicking, feeling claustrophobic in this setting. _Mercy_ , he thinks miserably. Their safeword. _Mercy, mercy_ , and Voldemort flinches because Harry will never trust him again if he disregards it, but he can’t be left on his own right now.

It hurts to open his eyes, but he slips onto the floor because he must fumble through the potions in his trunk. In quick succession he snaps the top off a purple analgesic, and a blue calming draught. They taste hideous together in his mouth, and he slumps against the trunk, unable to even pull himself into bed again. “Harry. Harry.” He is senseless with fury and pain.

_Let me fucking go._

“Not yet.” Harry will not listen; his anger is white-hot in their mind. Desperate, Voldemort reaches for another calming draught – it would make him slow and stupid, and it would certainly qualify as an overdose, but his anger and Harry’s are reciprocal, and Voldemort _wants_ him to go but he can’t, yet. The second calming draught hits hard and, still seated on the floor, he lets his head fall back against his bed. It hurts to speak, and he grounds out the words. “I am not fucking apologizing because I warned you, that you wouldn’t want to know about Severus. That you couldn’t leave it alone….”

_You let me_ , Harry accuses. In the twilight between reality and dreaming, their barriers were gone. But Harry had been subtle, in a sense – Voldemort hadn’t been startled out of his thoughts earlier because Harry had withheld his reactions. He had felt nothing foreign or differentiated in his contact.

They both feel betrayed, and it hurts. “I have – _never_ let anyone in so deep,” Voldemort says. “And I never will again. Stay out of the entire fucking _war_ , you won’t like what you would find there.”

Harry is disgusted, viscerally so in a way that turns their stomach. _Monster_ , he thinks. _You promised my mother to Snape as a **sex slave**._

“That’s not the least of it,” Voldemort mutters, and there is a sick satisfaction in Harry’s horror at that. “She would be lucky. Do you know what we _did_ to Muggleborns?”

_No_ , Harry thinks, and there is pleading in his soul.

“I _am_ a monster,” Voldemort says. “I believed you knew. That you weren’t so naïve.”

And Harry is pulling away again. _No no no._

Voldemort holds him here for a moment longer. “I didn’t tell you about Severus,” he says, and he can hear the torpid tone of his calming draught in his voice, “because it was not mine to tell. I didn’t fuck him again, after his Mark. It has never….” His voice is thick and slow, but the analgesic has begun to work too, and the searing pain in his face recedes. “I have never wanted him back. But I gave him everything,” he says lowly. He allows so few people _in_ , and Severus’s betrayal – _betrayals_ arguably – hurt the most. How stupid he must be, to be abandoned and betrayed not once but twice, and not even by a respectable wizard, but a slick and brooding halfblood. It humiliates everyone.

Harry shoves this thought away from himself, and Voldemort’s eyelids flutter in pain. They will hurt one another. Still, Harry wants to _kill_ Severus, and he will not be able to.

And Harry is spitting venom, at that. He thinks that Voldemort had planned to kill Snape when he was no longer useful, and how _dare_ he feign concern for his well-being now. Harry had accounted for Snape’s safety _first_ in every vow he’d taken. _And I’ve never even shagged him_ , he thinks viciously.

“It would be stupid of you to be angrier at _that_ than the entire war.”

_Let me go_ , Harry thinks coldly, because he cannot stand to have Voldemort tell him how to feel about anything.

“In the morning.” He does not particularly want to be in Harry’s presence right now either, but the boy will do the stupidest and most reckless things when he is upset. “Just… stay.” This time he is reaching for a sleeping potion, pulling himself back into bed. Harry seethes but he is quiet otherwise, and Voldemort swallows more of the sleeping draught than he strictly should but it hardly matters. “You impulsive child,” Voldemort mutters, catching a glimpse of Harry’s vicious thoughts.

It is enough. Harry pulls his magic back hard, and Voldemort is slow from the potions, and his Legilimency is wrecked, and then Harry is gone and they are both hemorrhaging magic. Fuck. But Voldemort is exhausted by all this _caring_ , the novelty of needing another person, so he finds a vial of magic replenishing potion (that Harry brewed for him, for the strength that it infused into it), and throws that back as well. Fuck.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SORRY, I’M SORRY, but also the scene of Voldemort and Snape is one of my favorites in this entire fic. Maybe I just like writing in Voldemort’s voice. Sorry for ruining everything. 
> 
> Allusions for Chapter 33:
> 
> Locusta Zabini – Locusta was a famous Roman poisoner, favored by Nero. Zabini’s mother has seven dead husbands. So. Also, when Snape says later that poisoning is effeminate, he is right – in ancient Rome, at least, poisoning someone was thought of as too passive and weak a means of murdering them to be properly masculine. So, women’s work.
> 
> Antidote to Amortentia – Most of the potions in this fic mean nothing, but this one does. Pomegranate seeds for the story of Hades and Persephone, in which he traps her in the underworld for half the year by feeding her pomegranate seeds. Pelican blood is from medieval Christian imagery, in which there was a myth that a pelican mother will pierce her own breast and feed her blood to her babies if they are starving, so it carries connotations of sacrificial love unto death. Cacao because it’s complex and bitter. So they all connote the dark, imperfect, or harmful parts of love, as an antidote to Amortentia’s enthrall.  
> (Also, I was going to say, ‘Someone should write a Voldemort/Harry AU as Hades and Persephone,” and then I remembered someone already _has_. Go read [Divine, by ObsidianPen.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9304541/chapters/21089624)
> 
> “Have you raised the dead yet? – And made the lame to walk, the deaf to hear, and the blind eyes to see.” – Isaiah 35:5.
> 
> Muds for Liberation is inspired by Mud Pride in [In Loco Parentis, by Dolores_Crane](https://archiveofourown.org/works/109558/chapters/151674).
> 
> “Human, all too human” – the title of a book by Friedrich Nietzsche.
> 
> “Tell me who the real monster is, in the end.” – In Mary Shelley’s _Frankenstein_ , the creature is a thoughtful and intelligent being struggling to survive, while Dr. Frankenstein is cowardly and negligent of his creation. 
> 
> Some of the relationship between Voldemort and Snape is inspired by [Hauntingly, by ObsidianPen.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7582462/chapters/17252554)


	34. Chapter 34

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry breaks into Snape’s quarters. Voldemort tests his magic under the new moon. Tom plays the piano.

Harry woke up in a cold sweat, his sheets balled in his fists. He couldn’t breathe. Nevermind, though. The entire surface of his skin buzzed with free magic, and anger, and restlessness. He grabbed his robe off the back of a chair, shoving his feet in trainers. He had to go.

He scarcely thought about it as he stormed across the dungeons. He knew the corridor he needed, if not the room. And as Riddle had told him, Parseltongue was the castle’s skeleton key. “ _Open_ ,” he snapped at a portrait of some medieval alchemist, and it harrumphed even as it swung open.

His gait faltered: he thought he’d get in to a corridor like he and Ron and Hermione shared, but instead he was in a decorated space that was clearly Snape’s living room. Good, he decided.

There were frantic noises behind one door, and Harry took a light fighting stance. The bedroom door opened a crack, and he saw a raised wand – “ _Bombarda_! – Oh fuck – “ he gasped at Remus’s scarred face, wrenching his wand away but it was too late. Remus staggered back with a cry –

And Harry was petrified perfectly, crashing backward against a coffee table and then a cabinet, glass shattering around him, and he couldn’t even flinch or shield himself from it. He slumped to the floor mostly facedown, so he could only hear the voices above him, Snape casting healing charms furiously as Remus wheezed. They were fighting as they did it, but he couldn’t make it out with the blood rushing in his ears.

And then Snape kicked him over at last, so Harry was glaring into his face. He thought he could overcome the petrification by sheer will, because he’d never felt hatred like this before. Snape summoned his wand, pocketing it, but it didn’t even fucking matter because Harry would rather strangle him. He tried thrashing, and it was exhausting but he’d get it – Remus was doubled over, wincing, at the far side of the room, so at least he wouldn’t interfere –

“A hundred points from Gryffindor for whatever _this_ is,” Snape said with utter disgust. “You are going outside. The elves will find you in the morning.”

“Severus,” Remus chided. He was healed, but still moved tentatively.

Watching him, Snape cast another healing spell, and Remus’s stance uncurled a bit. “Thank you,” he said quietly. “Harry – I must agree. What the _hell_.” But lifting his wand, he removed the petrification from Harry’s face, at least.

It was stupid to do this on the floor, bleeding shallowly, disoriented, spitting with anger. “He wanted to make my mum a sex slave,” he hissed. The phrase had gotten a strong reaction from Voldemort, and he saw it hit hard now. “You disgusting coward, you wanted my father dead so you could imprison her and what, _breed_ her in the Death Eater regime? Let me up, you _fucking. coward._ ”

Snape gazed down at him for a long moment, then sneered. “I am returning to bed,” he addressed Remus. “ _You_ stay up with him. Or get Moody, if only to watch him perform the feat of making trouble disappear for him _again_.”

Remus was approaching slowly, as though Harry were a wild animal. “Did you know?” Harry demanded of him. “He was fucking Voldemort while fantasized about my mother. Or did you _love_ him too?” he asked Snape, whose sneer flickered.

“Why would he tell you this,” he said flatly.

Surprisingly, Remus ran a hand across Snape’s shoulders. Harry went sick with jealousy and anger and disgust. “Would you put on tea?” he asked Snape. “You haven’t got to do this. I will.”

“How the hell are you so good,” Snape muttered, but he moved into an adjacent room, where Harry heard the sounds of a kettle.

Remus inched off the petrification, as though Harry would attack. “I didn’t mean that hex for you,” Harry said, weak and awkward with guilt.

“No. But you meant it for Severus, so I’m afraid I will still take it rather personally.”

Harry gritted his teeth. Remus wanted him to apologize, to Snape more than himself, but Harry just fucking couldn’t. He wiped the minute splatters of blood off his face and hands as Remus motioned him to the sofas. “Healing potion?” he asked Harry, sizing up his injuries.

“I’m fine. Uh… _reparo_ ,” he said, and the cabinet reassembled itself. Remus raised his eyebrows at the wandless magic, but Harry didn’t even find it interesting. He settled, practically crouched, on the sofa.

He thought he was calmer, but when Snape strode back into the room, levitating a tea tray and carrying a bottle of whiskey, fury ignited inside him again. This man, this _fucking_ man, he could nearly still feel Voldemort’s tangled web of residual feelings for him. It was harder being jealous of _Snape_ of all people; and harder because Snape suited Voldemort so much better than Harry himself did; and because Snape was so good at duplicity, Harry doubted there was any true person beneath his façade to even fall in love with; and because….

_Had_ Voldemort fallen in love? He’d felt _something_. He still did. Deep down Harry wanted his love to be Voldemort’s first, and clearly redemptive and good and pure. Not _that_ , that shrewd and bloodstained courtship. _Mentorship_. Maybe that was it, Harry wanted the slippage between lover and mentor to be his alone.

He must have been giving Snape a rather predatory look, because Snape slammed the tea tray down before him, and took the moment in which Harry jumped up to hex him with blindness. He shouted, flailing until Remus caught his hands.

“Potter. You _fucking_ child,” Snape snarled. “You are taking a calming draught, and veritaserum. We haven’t got time to coax your melodrama out of you. I only need to know for my own safety,” he spat the word. “Not that you or Voldemort care for such things.” He wrenched the blindness hex off, making it hurt to do so. “I expect, as Headmaster and a wizard specially protected by the Ministry – including in your own vows – I will be obligated to report all threats on my person, and perhaps _finally_ you shall face any sort of repercussion.”

He didn’t care. There was still a ringing in his ears, and his breath came hard. He had wandless magic, he could –

Snape made another noise of disgust. “And why the _fuck_ have you not learned Occlumency?” he demanded. “If you threaten us again I will find a way to send you to Azkaban, I swear on my mother’s grave.”

“I….” He looked down at the tea tray. A calming draught, the same blue elixir as Voldemort had taken. It would help, certainly, but he hated having it forced on him. “I can’t take that,” he said. Snape made a grinding noise in the back of his throat. “He already took one of those. Well, two.”

“How profoundly stupid of him. Hold out your hand,” Snape said, and he pierced the tip of Harry’s index finger, doing a rapid analysis of the pinprick of blood that appeared as a cloud of shapes and colors before his face. “Do you find it romantic, to share potions effects?” he snapped. “There can’t be a benefit.”

So Snape saw his concern was well-founded, at least. He spun the cloud around. “Sleeping potion,” he muttered. Then a snort. “And kaval? Just numb yourself with alcoholism like the rest of us.”

Before Harry could do more than blink at that, Snape had snatched away the blue potion and replaced it with a green one. Reluctantly, Harry downed it. The tea before him was no doubt Veritaserum’ed, and he looked at it with distaste. Snape, meanwhile, poured three fingers of whiskey into a lowball, and offered the bottle to neither of them.

Remus cleared his throat. “I don’t know quite where to start. Why _did_ he tell you… whatever he told you?”

“He didn’t,” Harry said bitterly. “I found it, in his memories.”

Snape snorted. “You’ll find worse than _that_ , if you ever showed an ounce of interest in the war.”

His stomach lurched, because Voldemort had said the same. And it felt so revealing, that they were so… close. Something. He threw back the spiked tea just to get on with things. “I don’t care about casualties of war,” he said “I mean… I do, but they don’t make me think less of him. But this was – everything else. Ugh,” he protested as the Veritaserum hit: it was more than he’d expected Snape to use, and his inhibitions melted away. “I saw the way he recruited you, and you let him fuck you like that. Were you going to be his _protégé_?” Harry asked nastily. “Seems like you were angling for it.”

Snape’s expression was indifferent. “Yes, Potter, I was. Get on with it.”

He stumbled on his words. “And I – heard about the Muggles you killed. Sniped. Coward,” he spat again, and he was pleased that the Veritaserum allowed it, that Snape was objectively a coward. “And that you killed your father and he fucked you _then_ as a bloody reward.” He could not even look at Remus, knowing it’d hurt him too. He dropped his gaze but he couldn’t stop speaking: “I saw you kill him.” The way his father’s face had gone bloated and blue at the end, before the neat resolution of Avada Kedavra.

“Unlike him, I do not need your acceptance or forgiveness in anything. _Get on with it_.”

“Fine,” Harry snarled. “The rest is about my parents. D'you think Remus knows everything you did to them?”

“Yes,” Snape said, but Remus’s voice was soft beneath them both: “I can fend for myself, thank you.”

“I saw the prophecy,” Harry went on, reckless. “And how you searched for us. You were going to bomb the hospital.” No trace of guilt on Snape’s face. He poured himself more whiskey. “And the way you offered yourself up to both of them, that you _used_ my mum to trick Dumbledore into believing you. And that you told Voldemort – “ He choked on his anger, bubbling hot in his throat. “That you wanted my dad dead regardless,” he hissed the word. “And that you wanted _Sirius_ dead. You fucking, _fucking_ monster,” he snarled. Snape’s indifference infuriated him. “That you wanted my dad _out of the way_ so you could have my mum to yourself. But she’d never want you, not if she had a choice, so you’d have to _keep_ her like some sort of animal, you disgusting waste – “

Snape lifted his wand and Harry jumped up, but he lost a split second reaching for his own absent wand and Snape’s curse hit him squarely. His lips closed and his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, and he was clawing at his face. “Harry, sit down,” Remus said, only lifting his own wand when he’d done so. His mouth peeled itself apart, and he glared.

“Did you know all of this?” he demanded of Remus, who did not deserve his ire.

“Yes,” Remus said, but he looked weary at this exchange. Before continuing, he took Snape’s lowball, swallowing a long draw before he asked, “Is that it?”

“He said he wouldn’t even marry her, just keep her around along with a pureblood wife. He said if they had squib children, he’d _drown_ them.”

Neither of them reacted to this. “You have never looked into the war, then,” Remus said. “We – have tried not to embroil you in the first war. Any of you,” he added. “You shouldn’t have had to grow up in the midst of the second, and there was no reason to tell you about the – _horrors_ of the first. It seems he hasn’t told you anything, either.”

“So what,” Harry said in disgust. “We all made it through the war without threatening to take on sex slaves and drown their children. _The war_ is no excuse.”

The ice cubes in Snape’s lowball clattered as he drank deeply. “ _Now_ you’re horrified,” he muttered. “Has your redemption narrative not gone as planned?”

It was a rhetorical question, but the Veritaserum compelled him to answer anyway. “It has, mostly.”

Snape raised his eyebrows at the prompt and sincere answer, recognizing it as Veritaserum-based. “What were you looking for?”

_I don’t know_ , he tried to say, but his mouth stopped abruptly. Of course he knew. “He wouldn’t tell me what it meant, how much he reacted anytime he even heard your name. And – it wasn’t like that with all the Death Eaters. He doesn’t care about the rest of them. Just you.”

“Touching.”

Harry glared, but he couldn’t stop his stupid mouth. “He died thinking of you,” he said. “That it all would have gone alright without promising he’d spare my mother. And he wanted you as a – whatever,” he muttered. “Protégé. And now he’s so angry and betrayed by you, but it’s not just that, that he feels.”

“If you are threatened by a tryst from twenty years ago – “

“Yes,” Harry snapped, and then flinched because he wouldn’t have confessed that otherwise. It sounded so stupid. _Fuck_ Veritaserum. “But don’t – this isn’t _petty_. You wanted my dad dead. You wanted Sirius dead. Just _because_.”

A minute shrug. “They wanted me dead.”

“They grew up!”

“ _Did_ they?” Snape asked, tone dangerously low. “Remus wanted to keep you from the full portrait of Black’s character. He says it no longer matters. But Black was as mad and vicious as his charming cousin Bellatrix, except that he was _on your side._ ”

“Tell me.”

Remus made a small noise of protest. “Must we do this tonight?” he asked Snape.

“Go, if you don’t want to hear it.” But Remus shook his head, even as his posture curled in on itself. Snape’s dark gaze bore into Harry. “Black and Potter clearly didn’t give a damn whether I lived or died. They didn’t,” he cut off Harry just as he opened his mouth to protest. “But one would hope they would care about their friends’ well-being. Instead – do you know what happens to a werewolf who has _mauled_ someone?”

He’d never thought about it. He went sick. “No.”

“Execution,” Snape said, with some grim satisfaction. “Remus would be killed, and likely the school would be shut down in the wake of the scandal. As it was, they didn’t get a proper punishment lest it become too _visible_. Their families were wealthy and prominent, ours were not, surely even you understand how the optics go.”

Harry’s jaw was tight. “They weren’t thinking. They – “

“Black and your father hated me more than they cared for Remus,” Snape said curtly. “Just _consider_ this for a moment instead of running your precious apologist mouth. Black was reckless before Azkaban, and profoundly so afterward. He _was_ dangerous. You have never heard anyone profess to believing he was innocent in that time, have you?”

“… No.” ( _Fuck_ Veritaserum; he really hadn’t wanted to agree to that.)

“Because there was precedent. Pettigrew wasn’t his first attempt on a friend’s life. He was the _second_.”

He hated this. His entire life was coming apart in the span of a day. He’d dropped his head to look hard into the carpet – but then there was the thud of glass on wood, and he looked up to find Snape had put whiskey before him. “Thanks,” he said, surprised and confused. Snape grunted.

Remus spoke. “That – all of it happened near enough to the summer holidays. I didn’t speak to them the rest of the year, or all summer. But….” He twisted his hand vaguely. “I needed them. More than they needed me, certainly. And they would be formidable antagonists. And as much as they knew…. Which is not to say I was pressured into friendship,” he added hurriedly. “I wasn’t, at all. But it certainly fractured our dynamic, for a very long time.”

Snape’s whiskey was smoky on Harry’s tongue as he drank. He was quite sure he wouldn’t get through this sober. “I’m sorry,” he said to Remus.

He didn’t want Snape to pick up the narrative again, but naturally he would. “Black continued to be a danger to himself and others at Grimmauld Place. _Dumbledore_ thought he shouldn’t be allowed in public.”

“Of course he shouldn’t – “

“ _Pardoned_ ,” Snape hissed. “Dumbledore, at the time, presided over the Wizengamot. He could have done more but he didn’t think Black could _handle_ going free. Anyway, Dumbledore did always keep broken people around himself. The ones he _saved_ , who should be _grateful_ ,” he said with deep bitterness, swallowing another mouthful of whiskey. And because Snape couldn’t let it go, that he needed a reaction out of Harry, he said, “I did want Black dead. I wanted your father dead. It was quite mutual. And, as you say, they would be casualties of war.”

Harry didn’t know what this emotion was called that settled in his chest. Some sort of dull hatred tempered by resignation. It’s not as though he ever expected better from Snape. “Okay.”

Snape gave a tiny nod, but Remus looked between them in confusion. “Is that it?”

“No,” Snape said, before Harry could say yes. “There is something confidential to discuss.” Harry looked at him curiously; Snape wasn’t looking back.

Remus frowned in curiosity as well. “Alright. Harry, would you need anything? Do you want to stay over?”

“ _Absolutely_ not,” Snape said.

Remus grinned at him. “Guess not.”

“I… yeah. I’m fine.”

“Right. Goodnight.”

When the bedroom door had closed, Snape cast a slew of privacy spells around the boundaries of the living room. Harry watched warily. At last Snape said, “I was recently introduced to Tom Riddle.”

“… Oh,” Harry said. “Uh, you shouldn’t have been. Does Moody know?”

“It is he who introduced us. I signed your hideous vow with him.”

“Huh.” Harry drained his glass of whiskey. “So?”

Snape hissed in annoyance. “You put the castle in danger the _entire year_.”

“No,” Harry said, indignation breaking through the ice of depression. “He – he’s not _good_ ,” he said, because what he’d said about Hermione still stung. “But he loves the castle, and he wanted to keep the Slytherins safe. The _purebloods_ safe, that is.”

“You knew the chamber could be breached.”

Harry laughed roughly. “I didn’t. I asked him a hundred times, and there were protective spells on it…. I asked him where the Slytherins had all gone, too, and I still don’t know where they were staying. Uh, is this just to tell me it was stupid of me? No offense, _sir_ , but Moody’s already furious with me, and he really outranks you.” He could not fathom being given detention for something for which he could probably be prosecuted.

“As though Moody will ever let you see anything like true justice,” Snape muttered. “No. You need to have at least enough control over him to compel him to repair the castle’s wards.”

“Oh. Yeah. I’ll tell him, but I think he wants to.”

“And to defuse the Defense curse.”

“Yes, sir…. Why did they tell you?”

“Because the castle is _my responsibility_ ,” he snapped. “It is hardly practical to bring the Minister out just to discuss summer school. And Horace wouldn’t go back.”

Coward, Harry thought in disgust. What the hell was Slughorn even scared of? At least Snape should fear the Slytherins’ retribution, as the Death Eater who went free. “Right. Uh. Thanks. I’ll see them tonight.”

“You let him out to – _sabotage_ the wards.”

“What? No.” It took him by surprise. Snape should be much angrier with them both if he thought they were actively destroying the castle. “He was fixing them. His magic _is_ the castle’s magic…. You don’t know why the castle is falling apart, then?”

“No,” he said stiffly.

He should probably know. “It’s in the vow,” he said, so Snape couldn’t repeat it. “It’s – it _is_ his magic. When he’s hurt….”

Snape jerked as though to slap a hand to his forehead, before stopping himself and glowering. “I take it you didn’t know _that_ either?”

“ _He_ didn’t know that,” Harry stressed. “Until a couple weeks ago. He never should’ve gone abroad. He wouldn’t have, if he’d known.”

Snape ground his teeth. “No. He shouldn’t have. Whatever _punishment_ the Ministry thinks it has administered by sending him….”

“I know.” He didn’t want this, to be bound together with Snape by Voldemort, but they were uniquely located and uniquely obligated. Goddammit. “You don’t need to do anything for him.”

“You have no idea what I _need_ ,” he snapped.

“I mean… okay,” he muttered. Wanker.

Snape got up. “Stay out of his mind for awhile,” he said. “Though you deserved to see everything you went in search of.” And then he was opening a drawer. A handful of dreamless sleep, and the same green calming draught. “Don’t take another calming draught for the next twelve hours, unless you don’t want to wake up again,” he said darkly. “The Veritaserum wears off before breakfast. When you will get your wand back.”

_Wanker_. “Fine.” He stashed the potions in an inner pocket of his robe. “Goodnight.”

But Snape followed him to the door, making the wards visible with a twist of his fingers. “How did you get in?” he asked lowly. “Your magic feels like his.”

Harry looked over in surprise, because only Voldemort spoke of magic having texture or particularity. But the Veritaserum made him answer promptly, “Parseltongue is a password.”

Snape was not amused. “You have not been punished for half of your delinquency.”

If he were in a better place he’d have found this funny. _Delinquency_ , though, sounded like what the Dursleys had snarled at him for years. “Okay,” he said, feeling dead inside by now, and got out.

 

Dreamless sleep was a fantastic idea, he realized as he got back into his bedroom. But he knew from enough fights – that letting things fester would only make it worse with time. With the Veritaserum still in his bloodstream, he didn’t want to have a real conversation, but he flipped open the diary to write curtly, **_I want to know about the war._**

It must be true, but ambivalence still stabbed in his stomach. Did he _really_ want to know? It could only hurt them both. It could only make Harry love Voldemort less and fear him more. Nevertheless, he took dreamless sleep and went to bed.

 

_Tuesday, April 13._ He threw himself into class today. After going to breakfast to collect his wand from Remus, who was exasperated and amused that Snape had withheld it last night, he skipped meals. Ron and Hermione weren’t speaking, Voldemort hadn’t written him back. He still fucking hated Riddle. He counted out the hours before he could take another calming draught, and kept a jar of kaval on him all day. He was a mess. His magic was falling apart. His _soul_ was falling apart.

He went to Grimmauld Place early so he could eat there, and so he could pass along everything Snape said to Tom. Still, when he entered through the floo, Tom found _him_ first. “What is wrong with you?” he demanded. “Both of you.”

“Nothing,” Harry said, even though the Horcrux was anchored to his soul and likely knew exactly what was wrong. “You didn’t tell me Snape had been here. Or knew about you.”

“Oh. Yes.” Riddle was unconcerned.

“And _he_ didn’t know why the castle’s wards were failing.”

“And you told him.” It wasn’t a question.

“Yeah.” A little because of Veritaserum, and a little because – god fucking help him – Snape was at least analogous to an ally sometimes now. “He said you need to fix the wards over the summer.”

An arch of his brows. “Of course.”

“And you need to remove the DADA curse.”

“Fine.”

“… Okay.” He turned in the direction of the kitchen.

“Harry. Darling.”

The word hurt. And while it was clear they just weren’t going to acknowledge last time, he was still irritated with Tom. “What? Come watch me eat if you want, but I need to finish runes homework too.”

Riddle followed. In the dining room, Pansy and the Pickering twins were eating peeled grapes and looking at a book that seemed _very_ cursed. “Oh my god – “ Harry reached for it.

Pansy pulled it out of his grasp. “Okay, _mum_ ,” she mocked, holding up her hands, the tips of her fingers glowing purple. “Gloving spell. It’s fine.”

“Alright,” he said with a sigh. Taking a seat at the other end of the table and asking Kreacher for a shepherd’s pie (“unless that’s too complicated?” A withering stare), he tossed his runes textbook on the table. _Thunk_. “I don’t think there’s anything I need to tell you,” he said to Riddle. “You must understand what happened.”

“I understand that you took a half dozen calming draughts and sleeping potions between you. There are more effective ways to kill yourself.”

(A curious glance from the girls at this. He ignored them.) “I wasn’t going to kill myself. I wanted to know about… the war. The first war.” He really couldn’t implicate Snape in mixed company, it would be cruel.

“What did you imagine you’d find?” Riddle asked in deep skepticism.

“Nothing. I mean… I’ll tell you later,” he said lowly. “But I want to know about the war. You must have read about it.”

“Yes.” His tone was crisp. “If you’d like to read propaganda.”

“… Yes?” he hedged. “I know none of it would be flattering to him. I don’t want it to be.”

“And what if you find things you don’t like?”

“I’ve already found things I don’t like,” he muttered. “Then we’ll talk about it.” It was a lofty answer, since he and Voldemort weren’t currently speaking, but it was what he wanted.

So Riddle gave a short nod. “Would you stay over?”

Harry blinked at him. “Sure. Yeah.” It might fix his fucking soul, to be in Riddle’s presence tonight. At least it would slow his decline.

A snerk from Pansy at the other end of the table. He turned to roll his eyes at her. “Grow up, Parkinson.”

“I heard Weasley and Granger were polluting the school with embarrassing public spats.”

“Where did you hear that? … Oh, Lisa?” he guessed. A contented nod. Now that Lisa and Daphne could write freely, the Slytherins had one more channel into Hogwarts. It was probably a good thing, rude gossip or no.

Kreacher popped in with dinner for Harry and more peeled grapes for the girls. “And for you, Master Riddle?”

“No, thank you.”

When Kreacher had popped back out again, Harry raised with eyebrows at Tom. “ _Master Riddle._ ”

A shrug. “I have made clear that in your absence, I am the head of household.”

“He must know that’s not true.”

“But hasn’t it simplified everything?” Tom said easily. With an exasperated look, Harry flipped open his runes text.

 

The Slytherins trickled in to the dining room. None of them seemed surprised to see Harry here early – except for a tight trio of Uli, Flavia, and Johan Twigg, whispering and giggling with Moira sort of fluttering in their midst. She barked in excitement to see him; they all startled.

“What? – Come here, Moi.” He held out his hands, and she quite deftly fluttered across the few meters between them. “Good girl, look at you,” he cooed, catching her.

Flavia took a cautious seat beside him. “The house elf cooks for her too,” she said. “And you’re sitting in her seat.”

This was quite wonderful, because Harry was at the head of the table. He grinned. “I didn’t know.” She gave him a tentative smile. Moving to get up and restore Moira’s seat, he asked, “Have you seen Malfoy?”

A few glances. “He was with Cass and Greg, I think,” Huxley said.

Fantastic. Harry had no problem with the younger Slytherin boys, but the older ones seemed so threatening and cruel. Still, he went.

Malfoy found him upstairs first, alone, thank god. “In here.” He brought Harry into a little-used tea parlor. The runes he’d set up were a cumulative set, since the beginning of the year, and Harry looked at them in mild hopelessness.

“And give me your book.”

“I’ll never finish this without it.”

“Hm,” Malfoy said in utter disinterest, taking the textbook and leaving Harry to work.

By the time he’d returned, roast beef sandwich in hand, Harry had trapped himself with three different wards, all of them biting at his skin. “For god’s sake.”

“I _told_ you.”

Malfoy threw the book back at him. “You _are_ taking the NEWT?”

“Uh-huh.” He flipped through the book. “She – the substitute – put my name down, anyway.”

“You’ll destroy the Great Hall.”

He grinned. “At least I’ll be alone? No witnesses.”

Malfoy snorted and took a seat on a sofa out of range of an explosions. Harry worked for awhile, on a knot he hadn’t seen before, that _bit_ him as he attempted to untangle it. But in the silence, at last, he asked, “Were your parents friends with Snape?”

Malfoy looked at him incredulously. “Why?”

“I… heard that they, uh, competed for him. But he was always really nice to you.”

“Of course he was nice to me, my father was on the school board. Everyone was nice to me.”

Harry rolled his eyes. “And how tragic, that they never got to know the _real_ Draco Malfoy.”

Malfoy was only amused. “Isn’t it?” he agreed, finishing his sandwich and vanishing the plate with a twist of his fingers.

It meant nothing at first, and then Harry frowned at him. “You’ve practiced wandless magic,” he said. “Did Tom show you that?”

“A bit. You are stalling,” Malfoy said pointedly. Scowling, Harry returned to the mess he’d made of the wards.

Malfoy had thrown a few paradoxes into the wards – ones that warped their appearance, or had a trigger elsewhere in the room, or masked themselves when looked at. It was half past nine by the time Harry got out of the parlor, and he was exhausted. Stalking downstairs: “Fucking hell,” he complained to Malfoy, who had come down to have a cup of tea with Zabini and Nott.

Malfoy gave him a triumphant smile. “The back of your hair is singed.”

“I know.” He reached up to rub the ash out. “I’m staying here tonight, but I’ve got class in the morning. Have I got to do anything for the house?”

Nott snorted. “Staying over?”

For fuck’s sake. “Yes, with Tom, and we’re not shagging.”

“You should be, though. You might as well be.”

Harry gave him an exasperated look. “Kreacher?” _Pop_. “Is there whiskey?” he asked. When he wasn’t distracted, he just went back to feeling shitty and depressed. And while he did want to read about the war, he had the sense it wouldn’t exactly _help_.

Kreacher had just brought him a glass of whiskey (it tasted like Snape’s, he thought, second-guessing that last night had even happened) when there were familiar footsteps on the stairs.

Of course Tom could find him. Their souls were entangled in their own way. He saw Harry, raised his eyebrows. “Finally.”

“Yeah, well, blame Malfoy.”

“Your hair is burnt.”

“Blame Malfoy.”

Tom’s teeth clicked as he smiled, taking a seat beside him. “I looked in the library,” he said. “Of course they wouldn’t have purchased copies of the _victors’ narratives_ , but I could find few other documents post-war at all. There may be more in their legal archive,” he said with a shrug. “Only you could open it. But I did bring back several of Hogwarts’s books. They are all _simpering_ and _moral_ and _deeply patriotic_ , but they’ll suit you.”

“Am _I_ simpering and moral and patriotic?” Harry asked, alarmed at this implication.

“Incorrigibly,” Tom said with distaste, and Harry grinned at him in the most obnoxious way he could.

Zabini and Nott looked confused; Malfoy had already worked it out. “ _Now_ you care about the war?”

“… Yeah.”

Surprisingly, no barb followed. “I am staying,” Malfoy said to Tom. “It is my family history.”

Tom looked at him thoughtfully. “You should be here,” he said. “Everyone should. I’ll bring the books to the library. Go tell everyone I will share what I have learned about the first war.”

Malfoy and Zabini got up; Nott lingered, looking sort of pallid. “I don’t want to know what my father was doing then,” he muttered. “They shouldn’t hear it, either.”

“I will not coddle anyone.”

“Yes, sir.” He got out. Riddle watched him go.

And Riddle too had risen. “ _Would_ you open the lockbox of their legal documents?” he asked. “Only to satisfy my curiosity. It is the panel beneath the brass bust, in the rear.”

“Not if it’s got papers from the Order in it.”

“As it hasn’t been disturbed since 1985, it must not.”

Documents from Sirius’s parents, then. “Sure, whatever.”

They split off. Harry into the library, Riddle upstairs. When he found the lockbox, it yielded easily to his touch, and he lifted out a dry stack of papers. The deed to the house. Bank accounts. (Those _couldn't_ still be open, he thought; most things had been seized after Walburga’s death, since Regulus was dead and Sirius was a felon.) Taxes and write-offs and quite a lot of political donations across the 1960s and 70s, for pureblood names that Harry assumed, well, aligned with the Blacks’ interests. He was suddenly furious with Professor Binns for never covering twentieth century history, and at himself for never caring before.

The library door swung open, and there were a few quiet voices, and then the yip of a dog. Grinning, Harry got up, leaving the lockbox open for Riddle.

Malfoy and Zabini, Millicent and Daphne. Goyle, with Pansy hanging off his arm. Beatrice Yaxley and Gotlinde Rowle, looking much younger and much more tentative. Hypatia Pickering, carrying Moira.

And Tom behind them, with an armful of books. “Good,” he said, looking over them. They had gathered around a long table.

“What are you doing, though?” Hypatia asked, Moira still tight against her chest.

Riddle set the stack of books before them. “You haven’t heard about the first war before. Not really.”

“My grandparents told us… something. Uncle Anatoly was out of Azkaban before we were old enough to ask.”

“Yes.” Tom looked around. “The rest of you?” A few shakes of their heads. “The curriculum of Hogwarts is useless,” he said viciously. “There were some laws against speaking about particular parts of the war – especially anything remotely positive about Voldemort’s policies – but it seems that more often the silence was only socially enforced.”

Had Britain _recovered_ from the first war? It had been a clear endpoint, and there had been trials and sentences and reparations. On the other hand, since the second war (not that it had been a war, lasting only for a few months, but what else could they call it?) had happened at all, implied that they hadn’t resolved the first one. Maybe it would’ve been different if Voldemort had been properly caught and brought to justice then. Or now.

He picked up a book, a thick one with a deep red and gray cover. _Bloodsport: The Dark War, 1968-1984._

( _The dark war_ , the other name for the first war that a few books used. He supposed it hadn’t actually been Britain’s _first_ wixen war.)

“None of them explain _why_ ,” Riddle stressed, his lip curling, “it had to be fought as a ground war. As though we’ve got the population for it. As though it wouldn’t be elegant and – _noble_ to persuade people instead.”

A sticky silence elapsed. Malfoy picked up a book. “My parents said he couldn’t,” he offered. “After Tuft was forced out, and _especially_ after the pureblood revolts.”

“Sorry, _what_?” Harry blurted.

All eyes were on him. Riddle’s mouth was pursed. “Squibs and Muggleborns had a string of civic rights afforded them in the 1960s. The only Muggleborn Minister was elected then.”

“Not for long,” Pansy muttered. Goyle shushed her.

“Muggles were afforded more rights under our laws. Non-purebloods got preferential treatment in hiring, or buying homes. Inherited wealth was taxed more heavily. Hogwarts brought on the Muggle Studies professor full time, not just as a specialized subject. There were tax breaks for intermarriage. Which,” he added darkly, “he is implementing _again_. I recognize the genetic challenges of pureblood marriages, but if we put that money toward research instead….”

“What were the revolts?” Harry interrupted.  


“A load of dead Muggles,” Zabini said coolly. “And tortured, and robbed, and Imperiused. My mother said he killed the instigators himself.”

“Thus bringing an unnecessary end to the Blishwick and Shafiq lines,” Riddle said with a frown. “Little of it was ever prosecuted – the Wizengamot has always been largely pureblood. But it turned public opinion abruptly.” A breath. “Why he decided that open warfare, rather than integration in the prevailing opinion, was the more suitable option….”

The Slytherins were all looking at Tom carefully. Harry had the sense that he hadn’t expressed his dislike of Voldemort so openly before. Maybe it was confusing. “Did you know?” Millicent asked lowly. “What he was doing.”

“We diverge after my creation in 1952. So no, not strongly. Some of the magic of the castle shifted with us. I could feel his serious injuries as my own – I assume we absorbed some of the damage that would have otherwise been mortal. And then dying _fucking hurt_ ,” he hissed. They were all intrigued and horrified.

“I wish you could’ve done something,” Daphne said, too low and too serious.

A dark smile. “I exist for his survival. I would have been quite inefficient at anything else.”

“If he’d just stayed… palatable,” she said. “But then, maybe it’s best he became what he is. So he didn’t….”

So he didn’t take over the world with his immaculate charm. Harry had thought the same thing before. Voldemort had at least implied that his serpentine visage was voluntary, that his removal from the easy world of merely charming humans was voluntary. “Or that he didn’t tell everyone he’s – you’re, of Slytherin’s line,” Harry threw in, thinking. “If the Slytherins in _your_ time didn’t let you in because they didn’t know your family….”

“That was strategy,” Tom said, with grim satisfaction. “I never would have learned who my peers truly were, otherwise.”

“What, that they’re well-suited to bully Muggleborns?”

Tom flashed his teeth. “ _Yes_.” His smile grew wider when Harry shuddered.

Quiet as they looked through books. Harry had the sense that the Slytherins hadn’t known much of this either, not about the war proper. They paused over photos, handed books across the table, marked pages. At one point Malfoy raised his chin in Pansy’s direction. “Your family’s in this one.”

“Let me see?” She reached over. “They never even let me see photos of Papa’s estate. He’d already been living with us, as long as I can remember…. Oh.” She scrunched her nose. “No loss,” she declared, looking over the photos. She had asked Scrimgeour before about reparations; Harry gathered this home had been a casualty of them.

“Those look like thestral stables in the back,” Millie said, leaning over her shoulder.

“Mmhm. He raced them,” she agreed. “Before it got banned.”

(Pansy’s grandfather raced thestrals. _Purebloods_.)

“Yours are in this one, Malfoy,” Hypatia offered.

He took it, but his mouth curled in distaste. “I must know it all already. I _still_ haven’t found all their caches of documents, but they all seem to be duplicates by now.”

“You’ve gone back?” Gotlinde Rowle asked, eyes wide. “I could never….”

“I had to,” he said, too abrupt. Then he tried again. “It was fine. Worse things have happened in that manor. Thank fuck it’s not haunted, but it really ought to be.”

“Draco…” Rowle began, but Beatrice Yaxley shoved her shoulder in warning. She shut up.

“It was just bad magic,” Tom said, looking down at a photo of an explosion. “Even the Muggles had progressed beyond trench warfare. We _watched_ their war. We could have….” He rapped his fingers on the desk, thinking. “He is more cunning than this. It is embarrassing.”

Not that Riddle had a life properly, but what he had instead of one had been taken from him. His wasn’t the worst loss by far, and he wasn’t the most traumatized, but…. Riddle was a strange and unlikely advocate for Voldemort’s victims. Including these students.

He flipped through _Bloodsport_ , to a glossy photo insert in the center. There were newspaper excerpts: “Knights of Walpurgis organize to preserve historic estates,” “Rosier family to throw benefit for St. Mungo’s,” “Minister Leach meets resistance from oldest families,” “Wage increase bill narrowly fails,” “Opinion: Muggle rights bill will have unforeseen detriments.” All dated between 1968 and 1972. There was another page of Muggle terrorism linked to Voldemort, either conclusively or speculated: some plane crashes, car bombs, tainted drugs. The wixen deaths were marked by Morsmordre, but the Muggle deaths less often.

“Why kill them if you’re not even going to take credit for them?” Harry asked in faint disgust, pushing the book toward Riddle.

He looked down at the aftermath of a car bomb. “Perhaps we were politically aligned with the Muggle rebels,” he said sweetly. “You believe in _freedom_ , don’t you, Harry? Or do you think of Muggles as just an undifferentiated mass not clever enough to self-govern?”

“Piss off.” He took back the book.

“I cannot justify any of this. I do not agree with it. Though if it’s after about 1974, he openly claimed all of his deaths. And occasionally some falsely attributed to him as well.”

Since Riddle also never denied any accusations Harry made, this was not surprising. Still. “It’s the difference between war and terrorism, though,” he said. “The Muggles didn’t know you even _existed_ , so….”

“They should have,” he said. “You don’t understand, it’s what we wanted. It seems there was never a demonstration too large to be Obliviated, though,” he said with a frown. “Or killed.”

“Or _killed_?”

“Some Muggles are resistant to Obliviation,” he said with a shrug. “The Muggle Liaison Office must account for them as well.”

“No.”

 He felt the Slytherins’ eyes on him as though he were hopelessly naïve. Riddle’s expression was worse. “Yes,” he said. “An _ineluctable loss_. I would tell you that there were no heroes in this war, but it wasn’t merely a wartime procedure. It’s still quite standard. Even after the Unification."

“ _I_ work with the Muggles, why haven’t I heard of it?”

A smirk. “Because they assumed it would upset you. Clearly.”

Wanker. Still, he couldn’t fight with Riddle because he needed his magic later. “I will do it differently, then. We’re not patronizing them any longer.”

In response, Riddle reached to tug a lock of his hair, as he did (and Voldemort did, fuck) when he thought Harry was being precious. Harry slapped his hand away, and everyone else eyed them like they were shagging. Whatever.

A flip of the page, and Harry choked on his reaction. The first _bodies_ that had been in the photos. They had been strangled – without magic? There were bruises around their throats, a man and a woman who were sprawled across a living room floor. The opposite page had a destroyed street, homes gutted by an explosion. Morsmordre glittered over both scenes.

He made himself look. More bodies. The captions speculated which Death Eater had killed which people, based on their MOs. “Magical signatures were wiped from most scenes,” the book said. Harry wondered how many of the trials last autumn had uncovered these details. How much the interrogations at Azkaban had uncovered.

He’d gone quiet, his fist pressed against his mouth. Riddle, less cocky himself now, slipped into the seat beside him, saying in low Parseltongue, “You are hurting us.”

“Oh.” His Occlumency was shit, and got worse when he was distressed, which was quite useless. “Sorry.”

Leaning in, Tom pressed their legs together beneath the table. It was mild – it worked better to share magic with their hands, or on exposed skin – but it was nice. Harry could pull his eyes away from the photo of a dead Auror, a woman who must have just been out of training. “Did he make the masks to look like himself?” he asked. Voldemort hadn’t been in the photos, but some Death Eaters were, and Harry had never experienced the white flat expanse of the masks as _familiar_ before.

“Mm. Perhaps.” He flipped past the photo insert, back to text. _Chapter 11: The Beginnings of Open Warfare (1973-1976)._ Harry couldn’t read any more right now, though, and slid the book over to Riddle.

It was late, and many of the Slytherins had left by now. Goyle and Pansy had moved to a sofa, where he was rubbing her shoulders genteelly as she murmured something in his ear. Millicent was chewing off her nails as she read a slender volume about the trials. Malfoy had disappeared into the stacks.

And it would be shit bedtime reading, but he took it with him anyway. Tom followed after a bit, carrying the stack of papers from the safe. And when Harry fell across Riddle’s bed, he let himself just lie there, looking at the ceiling for a moment, as his mind settled.

Riddle was entirely unsympathetic, shoving Harry’s legs out of the way as he sat. He had a stack of the Black family papers. “What’re you looking for?” Harry asked curiously, lifting his chin at them.

Tom was shrugging off his robe. “The Black family was consistently my greatest supporters. I have already seen everything that is public knowledge. There must be more.”

“But… why?”

“Go to sleep, Harry.” Reaching over with his free hand, he began unbuttoning Harry’s robes.

Riddle was hardly the sentimental sort, and to the extent that he belittled Voldemort’s decision, Harry didn’t understand what his interest would be, exactly. But the touch felt good, and he was tired, and he didn’t really care. He kicked his trousers down his legs, to sleep in his pants. Instead of brushing his teeth, he took up his wand to cast a cleaning charm on his mouth. When he put it back in his bag, his fingers grazed the diary. It was warm.

He shouldn’t have opened it. He did. Beneath Harry’s single line earlier about the war, Voldemort had written back only one line as well: _But I can’t lose you._

Harry’s stomach twisted in pity. Vulnerability from Voldemort still slightly unnerved him, even as he had to encourage it. He pressed his thumb into his mouth as he stared down at the page, considering.

He was still angry with Voldemort – maybe moreso now, the images of the first war burned bright in his mind. He was angry at being kept in his head after he’d pled _mercy_ , that Voldemort should have let him go as though he’d been restrained physically. He was a bit angry at himself, knowing he’d brought on those memories with his curiosity alone. And he was angry that he wasn’t free to wallow in his feelings for as long as he might otherwise, because they would both deteriorate. It was unpleasant for Harry but dangerous for Voldemort, who couldn’t go without his magic.

At last he took up a quill. **_You won’t lose me._**

He should have added something concrete, what he needed from Voldemort now, but he honestly didn’t know. **_Give me a few days_** , he added in the end.

Lying there, pressed against Riddle’s side as he read, Harry was suddenly wide awake again. He longed for the dreamless sleep Snape had given him, habit-forming as it was. He could not stop tallying up the fractured bits of his life: Voldemort, their magic and souls, Ron and Hermione, what he’d learned of Sirius, how frustrated Moody and the Order must be with him, everything to do with the Ministry. There were many ways in which the armistice had brought peace, but it had also put Harry in opposition to nearly everyone he cared about.

“Stop,” Tom snapped. Harry had turned away from him for privacy, and of course it meant nothing when Riddle was stitched into his soul. Dropping his papers on the bedside table, he ran a hand down Harry’s arm. The magic between them crackled. But Tom did not soften. “Your sentimentality is useless.”

“No, it’s not.”

And then Tom was lying behind him. They were both shirtless, and Tom’s cool chest pressed against Harry’s warm back. It felt really nice, and then Harry’s breathing slowed, and then he let his eyes fall closed.

There was a pawing on the door.

And Harry was awake again, smiling. “Can I let her in?”

“… Yes.”

He spelled the door open, and Moira bounded in, as though he were her favorite person in the world. She jumped onto the bed, and Riddle let go of Harry.

“Hi, good girl.” Her ears were soft, and he scratched behind them. “Is it time for bed? Here.” Lifting a corner of the duvet, he let her settle against his bare stomach. It was warm – he was now strangely _sandwiched_ – but it was nice. He kept a hand on her back as he looked to Tom.

He pursed his lips. “I was going to get you off, but not in the dog’s presence.”

Harry choked on laughter. “No. It’s okay. Uh, thanks. You can….” He made a gesture to the papers behind him.

“Good.”

He had liked the times he had fallen asleep as Voldemort read beside him. It had felt safe. Riddle was not so invested in him, but it sort of worked anyway. He fell asleep with Moira against his chest and the soft glow of the oil lamps on his eyelids. Fortunately, he did not dream.

 

_Friday, April 16._ The only thing that marked Wednesday or Thursday as different was that more ritual cuts appeared on Harry, mostly across his chest and down his stomach. He smeared the potion over the wounds, but it infuriated him to think of the Humnerë undressing Voldemort and experimenting on him like some animal. His anger _at_ Voldemort nearly burned itself out in this time, and late on Thursday afternoon, before leaving for Grimmauld Place, he wrote in their diary, **_I want to see you._**

By the time he’d packed his bag for Runes, Voldemort had written back. _They are preparing for the new moon tomorrow. I am meant to join them. The varri have been newly enchanted, and they do not believe my work was done in good faith. I must be there._

**_Be careful._ **

_Yes, of course._ A pause, then Voldemort wrote, _This weekend, if you are free._

If he was _free_. If he wouldn’t be spending his nights in someone else’s mind. He smiled. **_Yes._**

 

Harry was restless and anxious all of Friday, then. Honestly, it was likely _Voldemort_ who was restless and anxious. Harry left their Legilimency open enough, and took extra baobab in the morning.

The news that day was bad: there were more protests, both by wixes and by religious Muggles, and Harry wondered faintly if someday they might unite. Since Rita’s book had come out, journalists had been obsessively digging into Albus’s past, re-arbitrating his prior decisions in light of “previously unknown motivations.” For fuck’s sake. Even the Quibbler was in on it (“Did Dumbledore hold a secret stash of Muggle drugs for his lover?”), leading Harry to snap at Luna in Charms that afternoon. So Luna was cool toward him and Ginny properly angry on Luna’s behalf; and Ron and Hermione were still spending time apart; and Remus hadn’t been able to look at Harry since Monday night. It all threw Harry into survival mode: that he had to avoid trauma for the sake of soul damage, and whatever terrible coping mechanisms he had would be less harmful in the long run than letting the depression settle in, so he skipped dinner, eating chocolate and drinking kaval alone in his room. He was not so much reading as holding a book before his face when there was a knock on his door. “Harry?” Ron’s voice called.

He stifled a groan, setting the book down to get the door. Ron frowned at him. “You weren’t at dinner, so Snape sent me – “

He laughed abruptly. “ _Snape_ sent you?”

“Yeah. I know. He said you’ve got to be at dueling club tonight.”

“Oh.” In the midst of everything else, it had slipped his mind. “Sure.”

Ron looked at him warily. “Alright?”

“Yeah,” he lied. “You?”

“Yeah.”

(“ _Men_ ,” Hermione was not there to scoff at them.)

The Great Hall was buzzing with excitement: the faculty had decided that the fifth years and up could now hold proper duels, supervised but not otherwise interrupted. So the older students were chattering, pairing off, deciding strategy, while the younger ones milled around as spectators.

McGonagall found them both arriving. “Oversee the sixth years,” she instructed. “Granger has a space in which they might prepare already.” She gestured; they went.

Hermione had marked out a glowing green circle, around which the sixth years gathered. “Hi,” she said with a glance. “Harry, what have they been learning recently?”

Oh, she wanted this to be a teaching moment. Fine. “Non-verbal magic,” he said. “We’ll ask if they need help, then?”

“Yes, please.”

So they circulated among the students. While the actual duels would take place in the center of the hall, they had an hour to prepare and strategize among themselves. So Harry worked with two Ravenclaw girls who wanted to cast psychological spells on each other; Ron took two Hufflepuff boys who wanted to essentially swordfight. Hermione had set up all the necessary protective barriers and then consulted with a group of Gryffindors about their strategies. Harry was watching surreptitiously: that both Ron and Hermione could speak courteously to one another and cooperate was a good sign, but he missed the teasing and loving exasperation that used to be their mode of communication.

There were few enough students interested in dueling publicly that they could perform in turn, beginning with the fifth years. The school clustered around the central arena, faculty taking time after each bout to discuss tactics, how footwork or casting or blocking could have gone differently. And while Harry secretly thought he’d been a very shite teacher this year, distracted and novice as he was, when he watched his students pull off most of what they’d learned, he found himself smiling. It was gratifying. He cheered them all on, as though it were a Quidditch match.

Romilda Vane dueled Isolde Gramercy, one of Gryffindor’s prefects. Two Hufflepuffs, Ashwani and Freya, dueled in a fight that knocked all the candles out of midair. One of the Ravenclaws, a tiny girl named Yvonne, had apparently been practicing her magic knife throwing. The students had been warned that they’d be held accountable for any serious harm they caused, but happily Lavender had only had to fix some scratches yet.

When the seventh years stepped up to prepare, Ginny grinned at Harry. “Gonna try something.”

“I hope it’s exciting. Or funny.”

She hummed. “A bit of both. Are you dueling?”

Enough of the eighth years had come out that they could have their own round. “Maybe.”

Ginny dueled second, with their Head Girl, a Hufflepuff named Trinity Jones. And Ginny’s curses caught each of Trinity’s in midair, creating loud bangs and the smell of rotting fruit. They were both athletic, both sprinting across the arena –

And then Ginny raised her wand and made the entire Great Hall go dark.

There were real shouts of fear amidst the laughter. The Great Hall _had_ gone dark not long ago, for real, and Harry could see figures around him looking up to the ceiling, watching for another vortex.

Ginny spelled the lights back. And she was gone.

The white glow of the circle indicated she was still within it, that there was no winner yet. But she’d Disillusioned herself, so thoroughly that Trinity only stood in befuddlement. And then a shower of gold sparkles shot out from an empty space, and the crowd gasped and laughed, and Trinity just barely jumped out of the way.

Harry shouted too, pumping a fist – and Ron let out a strangled gasp. “Harry – “

He looked. Blood was running from parallel cuts in the back of his hand. “Oh – shit.” He shoved his balled fist into his robes, but even now he could feel the sting of ritual cuts on his arms. He tried ducking away, and Ron and Hermione, standing on either side of him, followed him.

So did Auror Rye, positioned at the edge of the Great Hall for crisis management. “Harry?”

“Voldemort. It’s fine.” Or, it was only as bad as anything else they’d done.

Her heart-shaped mouth went tight. “He’ll destroy the castle,” she hissed, ducking her head low because that wasn’t public knowledge. “It’s not _fine_. Let me get Moody, we’ll evacuate – “

“No. I mean, get Moody if you want. Here, into the infirmary.” The door was open, even as Lavender and Sabita were both in the Great Hall, and Ron and Hermione stepped in first to go through the stock of potions. He said lowly: “The castle’s fine, if it’s just this. They’re not trying to hurt him, it’s just part of the magic….”

He was shrugging off his robes, pushing up his sleeves. Blood was smeared up his arms, along with ritual cuts and carved runes. He should put on the antidote to Amortentia; but he hadn’t brought it with him. Gratefully he took bandages and a coagulant poultice from Ron and Hermione respectively. When the blood was mopped off his hands, he would get the diary out, anyway.

Ron was handing him handfuls of potions, Rye was summoning Aurors (even though it was _fine_ , he was fine). Hermione was looking carefully at the cuts. “Soul damage,” she said. “But he hasn’t….”

She knew of the Horcruxes, how little of his soul Voldemort even retained. “They want _my_ Horcrux,” he said. “They think it’s powerful. And they wanted him for other things, too.”

Her fingers hovered over a string of runes. “Attraction. The relation between body and soul. A drawing out. There should be a rune for the vessel….” She looked at his upper arms, his sleeves already partly pushed up.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “They’re not getting it. There is a potion, we’ve already made it –”

The door was thrown open, and Lavender rushed in. Harry jumped up. “Is someone hurt?” he asked, fearing for Ginny.

They all looked at him in varying states of surprise and exasperation. “You are, dummy,” Ron answered first.

“Not too dumb to get into my stocks,” Lavender said, eyeing the bandages he already wore.

“Er. Sorry. I’m used to all this, really….”

Lavender flashed him a weary smile. “I should keep a bed just for you, like St. Mungo’s has got for hitwizards. Let me see.”

He held out his arms dutifully, cleaned up but not yet healed. Blood was still welling up in slow dots.

“And is it….” Lavender followed the lines up his arms, under his sleeves. He could feel a warm sting on his shoulders and his chest. It was more than they’d ever done to Voldemort at once, and he gritted his teeth as he unbuttoned his shirt, standing there in only a thin vest as the room took in the delicate map of incisions traced along his shoulders and chest.

“What are they _doing_ ,” Hermione said in quiet horror.

“It’s the new moon. They’re strongest now, and they’re going to… do something. I don’t know,” he said. The varri would be animated, Voldemort’s magic holding their stolen bodies together with their stolen souls.

The hospital wing swung open again – the crimson of Aurors’ robes, and the aristocratic features of Tonks unmagicked. “Anya,” she greeted Rye with a nod. Her voice rasped but she was otherwise alright. “Harry? Moody’s off elsewhere, he sent me.”

“You really didn’t have to,” Harry mumbled, blotting his collarbone with a cold cloth. “It’s normal. They’re not hurting him, anyway.”

“Uh-huh,” she said skeptically. “You haven’t said much about what he’s been doing, though. Can we take your office?” she asked Lavender.

“Take Sabita’s, it’s nicer.” Lavender charmed open the therapist’s door.

“Go,” Harry said to Ron and Hermione even as he worried that they probably shouldn’t be left alone together. “Tell Ginny sorry I missed her thing.”

“She won,” Tonks volunteered. Harry shot her a questioning look; she shrugged. “I stopped to watch a bit. Assuming you weren’t bleeding out so rapidly.”

“I am bleeding out very slowly,” he agreed, and brought the Aurors into the office.

He took a seat on his usual sofa. It felt strange to be in here without Sabita herself, to listen and question and affirm. Whatever. He pressed the bandages to his arms, cool poultice drawing out the inflammation.

Rye and Tonks each pulled out an Auror’s ledger. “just… what d’you know?” Tonks prompted.

“Nothing,” he said, with too much bitterness. “Voldemort has kept us apart for weeks. I told Moody at Cornwall that we’d made a potion to make it, uh, safer? They’re using Amortentia on him, and if I take it, it counteracts the effects…. So we did. On Monday night. He said they still want our Horcrux, but soul damage is hurting me too, just from… being apart.” This sounded pathetic. He was pathetic. “And he’d made… something for them, for their Inferi, that they’d be trying tonight, when they’re hunting. He was supposed to go with them.”

“Hunting?” Rye frowned.

“Werewolves.”

“Ah.” She scribbled it down. “has he told you of any subversion? Or plan to undo this magic he has given them?”

_No_. “Yeah. He didn’t say what. They’re… really strong, especially with psychological magic, and we can never be sure we’re alone when he’d on their land. But he had a plan.”

“If their Inferi, animated with Voldemort’s magic, invade Britain….”

“I know,” he said miserably.

“When will you next… see him?” Tonks stumbled on the phrase. “Whatever,” she added, flashing her teeth.

“Later. This weekend?” he guessed. “I’ll, um, tell you then.”

Rye had risen, hanging a bulb of fire above him. “I want to copy the runes,” she said.

“Oh. Yeah.” He shifted the bandages around, so she could see all of them.

And as she drew, Tonks spoke. “We _have_ got people out there,” she said lowly. “It’s for their safety that they’ve been kept a secret. If he needs to get out….”

Harry strongly doubted he either _would_ or _could_. The magic of the Humnerë was unmatched, anyway. He shook his head. “Watch for the Undying,” he said. “After they’ve used him for magic, they’re supposed to….”

“Decide what to do with him,” Tonks supplied the words that Harry didn’t have.

“Yeah.” He was not equipped for this.

“We… I can’t say what we’ve done,” she said apologetically. “But the Ministry hasn’t abandoned him out there.”

The Ministry didn’t trust Voldemort enough to leave him alone there, unless they didn’t expect him back. He managed a smile. “Alright.”

Tonks looked up at Rye, still writing. “Anya, are you…?”

“Nearly done,” she affirmed. “Has it progressed to your chest?” she added to Harry.

Yes, it had, and he tried not to groan. “Here.” He reached for the hem of his vest.

She colored. “Should I bring in…?” The only other Auror on the grounds now was Squire, no men.

“It’s fine.” He pulled the undershirt over his head.

And they both gasped, and it flustered Harry, because he was a little self-conscious of his body, and a lot self-conscious of the barbell piercings in his nipples. Voldemort had said they’d be a more pleasant mark than his scar, and he loved them for that, but he also wanted to die when other people saw them.

Then he glanced down. “Oh.”

An intricate pattern of ritual cutting and runes ran down his torso, done with a blade so sharp that it didn’t yet hurt or bleed. He couldn’t make out all of it upside-down, but Rye was writing rapidly. She frowned even as she drew out the pattern. “They _really_ want your Horcrux.”

“Yeah,” he said. “They’ve wanted it from the beginning. Or my soul. If there’s a difference.”

There _should_ be a difference,” Rye said. Harry shrugged. “You shouldn’t be out. You haven’t got the airspace shield this weekend?”

“No. Next.”

“Don’t go out beyond Hogwarts. Not in public, _especially_ not alone. We can put Auror detail on you – “

“Please don’t.”

Her look was unpleasant. “We are responsible for your safety. Not your happiness. Anyway, if you stay with him and he gains any sort of – prominence,” she said the word carefully, “you’d best get used to security.”

“I know. But not yet. I’ll stay in the castle.” He lifted his chin so she could copy runes off his chest and he’d be spared looking at her.

“Does it go the other way?” Tonks asked. “That he gets your injuries.”

“It hasn’t, before.” But then, the way their magic interacted shifted constantly. It was a force in growth. “Why?”

“In case you could disrupt this.”

He imagined slashing a knife straight through the careful ritual, and sort of smiled. But: “No,” he said. “Then they really would hurt him.” Tonks hummed in doubt.

And then Rye finished drawing, and they both looked at him with worry, but had nothing more to do now. “I’ve got to write him,” Harry said, by way of excusing himself. They got out.

And he stayed alone in the quiet office, dropping onto the sofa again. His magic was… strained. He dithered between leaving his Legilimency open to share magic, and closing it for their protection. He wanted it open while he wrote, at least.

Their brief exchange earlier was still visible, and he hated it. He hated feeling apart. **_What have they done to you?_** he wrote, attempting to keep his Legilimency neutral.

Nothing. Of course there was nothing; he’d be out with the Humnerë. Slaughtering the werewolves like he had done for them in his youth.

**_Be careful_** , Harry wrote as always. **_I love you._**

 

By the time he exited the hospital wing, dueling was over, and there was an anxious crowd gathered in the corridor outside for him. He blinked at Ron and Hermione, Ginny and Luna, with Tonks, Lavender, and Sabita hovering in the background. “I’m fine,” he assured them again.

“Is _he_?” Hermione said sharply.

“Well. Sort of.” He pressed the bandages against the cuts on his arms. Trying to avoid this conversation, he said, “Gin, sorry, I hope I didn’t distract from your thing. That was a really good Disillusionment.”

Recognizing he wanted the distraction, she flashed him a grin. “I had her in a headlock, in the end.”

“It looked quite violent,” Luna agreed serenely.

Before they walked off, Tonks handed him a roll of potions. He looked at her in question. “For magic,” she said. “The Unspeakables want to ask you about the effects sometime. Before they put it in trials.”

Oh thank god. He tucked the bottles away. “It helps,” he said. “A lot.” And Tonks frowned in sympathy, and Harry got away before anyone else expressed concern on his behalf.

Ginny and Luna departed in the direction of the towers; Harry went with Ron and Hermione toward the dungeons. And really, they seemed more alright than they had in weeks, talking easily about dueling club. “You should sleep in Ron’s room,” Hermione said to him, when he had his hand on his door. “So you don’t bleed to death overnight.”

It’s not that this was an _unfounded_ fear, but – “They’re really not trying to hurt him. And he won’t let them now, if it’d hurt me.” _If it’d hurt the castle_ , moreso, but only the Aurors knew about that magic.

Hermione frowned at him. “Are you both… alright?”

Together, she meant. He had enough _other_ reasons to have been withdrawn this week, so he thought he’d been subtle enough. “I’ll tell you, uh, later. We haven’t had time to talk.”

More concerned looks. He couldn’t handle any more. “’Night,” he said, and retreated.

 

_Saturday, April 17._ That weekend, apart from making sure he was seen at meals, he spent his time immersed in memories. It felt important, as significant as the past had been recently. He didn’t look at anything contentious – nothing to do with Snape, nothing Remus had given him after his parents had gone into hiding, nothing of the war. The memories Voldemort had given him, from the prophecy through his own death, were kept in carved crystal vials in their own stand. He would never watch them, but he felt he never had to. He’d already forgiven him.

Instead he watched the good, simple, warm memories. Hagrid had given him his parents’ wedding, and he watched all of it – it was more traditional than Bill and Fleur’s had been, with both James and Lily in billowing gold robes with purple cloaks, the traditional colors for wixen weddings. Sirius was characteristically loud, Remus uncharacteristically so. Lily’s hair had been pinned up during the ceremony but she’d taken it down as soon as the dancing began, so her long hair swirled around her bare shoulders, vibrant with her golden robes. They must have already been in the Order, because Harry saw a number of its members there, along with many wixes from Hogwarts. Dumbledore toasted them, McGonagall ended up drinking Sirius under the table (who _knew_ , Harry thought with admiration), and Hagrid could hold both of them in a hug at once.

Remus had given him a memory of that same day: the afterparty, most of the guests departing to a spacious lakehouse where they’d be staying the weekend. They’d stayed out under the stars for a long time, James draping his cloak over Lily’s shoulders, both of them standing a little apart from everyone else. She was running her hand through his hair, murmuring something with a bright smile. Then – _splash_! Laughter, and shouting, and Sirius sprinting away from the scene as Pettigrew, dripping wet from being pushed into the lake, fired curses at his retreating back. Harry’s heart stuttered. He was not yet ready to confront what he’d learned of Sirius. Carefully, he withdrew and chose a different memory.

Earlier, at Hogwarts. There were some memories of Christmas – the four of them hadn’t spent it together properly, but they’d get back from holidays early enough to have the castle to themselves for a few days. (Probably how a lot of the map got made, Harry thought.) He watched Remus worry as James and Sirius built a snowbank and then took turns jumping off their brooms into it, sending up clouds of powdery snow. It looked stupidly dangerous and fun as hell.

Remus had done the best he could to give him memories that kept Pettigrew in the background. Lily was often in the background too – Remus hadn’t offered any of the especially obnoxious overtures from James among his memories. Harry had heard in Voldemort’s memories that her charms were powerful and above reproach; he saw in a few classes how easily she animated objects, or put glowing spells around them for protection or security. In one, Remus had caught the tail end of a conversation in the corridors with Flitwick, Lily speaking animatedly: “… if we could charm food, some of the old potions with those awful side effects might be phased out….” And for the first time, he wondered what his parents had wanted to do when they’d grow up, if they _had_ grown up, if they hadn’t been conscripted by Dumbledore. Potions and charms and herbology; perhaps his mother would’ve been a healer.

In between memories, he watched the diary obsessively. The cuts from last night had all already faded to thin white lines, and he otherwise couldn’t feel anything in their connection. Voldemort hadn’t written yet. He was probably fine.

 

_Sunday, April 18._ Except by Sunday, Harry started to believe he wasn’t fine – or _they_ weren’t fine. A week of dreamless sleep left him unable to find Voldemort in sleep with such ease as he used to; and their magic was closed off, and he even wrote to Tom that day, who said Harry was nearer to Voldemort magically than he was. By Sunday evening, he’d worked himself into a lather. He wasn’t dead and he wasn’t hurt, so…. So.

In bed that night, stupidly unable to sleep, he wondered if it was a punishment. He’d been too concerned about Voldemort these past few days to be angry, but Voldemort had likewise been angry with _him_ , and it all still stood unresolved. He didn’t want to write more in their diary, in case it was monitored, but he had the feeling that he _needed_ to see Voldemort, and he couldn’t, and it was awful. This week’s use of dreamless sleep kept him awake now, not that he’d find Voldemort anyway, but what if he was missing him, or it looked like Harry was avoiding him, or… something. _Something_ has happened.

 

_Monday, April 19._ Harry skipped his Monday morning classes, not that Flitwick or Slughorn were at all surprised by now. His life was a mess of potions: the Amortentia antidote, magic replenishing, kaval, and a few tablets of baobab thrown in as a chaser. That’s what it took to make him functional, when their magic was separated. It was pathetic.

But at lunch, Ron and Hermione were already waiting for him – together. It was such a relief, to sit down between them and pretend they were okay. Hermione ran a sympathetic hand across his back, and it almost felt nice, even if he usually didn’t like being touched. “Could we do anything?” she asked.

“No. Thank you.” There was a Ministry envelope at his place setting, one with a stamp that indicated it had been searched. Huh.

Inside was a deep red envelope from Ollivander’s, and a note. In Moody’s handwriting, it read simply, _How many wands do you need?_

He grinned at this. His friends leaned in with curiosity as he pulled out Ollivander’s package.

The wand inside was light, nearly white, and polished to a sheen. The handle was carved with a pattern like scales. It was beautiful.

Ollivander’s spiky handwriting, in a brief note: _These components would not rest until this wand had been crafted. The wood is olive, which is too precious to be harvested, but I received a batch of gathered wood from an ancient tree in Athens that had been felled by a storm. The phoenix feather is inset in an inverted position, also atypical, to recall rebirths past. It is a wand intended for greatness, wisdom, and diplomacy. Tell him to use it well._

Harry held the olive wand carefully. Its magic felt vibrant, alive. Fawkes’s magic was familiar to him by now. The magic of life and death was familiar by now.

Ron and Hermione had leaned in to read the note. “Diplomacy,” Hermione echoed when she reached the end.

“Yep.” He pretended not to catch her tone.

“What – why does he need one?” Ron asked. Harry made a grim motion of snapping the previous one in half, and Ron gaped. “But – _they_ did it?”

“Uh-huh. But when we went to Diagon Alley? Fawkes had just given me a feather, so.” He spun the wand through his fingers.

Ron reached for it first, weighing it in his hand and then running his thumb over the scale pattern with a bit of a smile. “He’s got a _thing_ , hasn’t he.” Harry laughed.

He shouldn’t have written. But before going to his afternoon class, he pulled out the diary. There was still nothing from Voldemort, and he wrote, partially just to fill up that weighty blank space: **_I got you a new wand. Please be OK._**

 

_Tuesday, April 20._ Tuesday was another shitshow, as far as the news went. Muds for Liberation and a few other pureblood-critical protests (“There are _more_?” Harry asked Hermione, who gave him a pitying look) were not only protesting, but protesting laws that involved Dumbledore specifically – ones derived from legislation he’d endorsed before his death, or new legislation that cited bits he’d passed or supported. From the Galleon: “’ _Knowing what we know now of his conflicting loyalties,’ a spokeswitch said, ‘we must reluctantly apply suspicion to actions previously assumed above reproach. We must refuse to be held back by prior generations’ imperfections, instead interrogating and correcting their missteps.’”_ And while Harry didn’t _disagree_ with any of this in theory, he was also furious with the idea that Dumbledore was in any way the enemy.

Had Voldemort really written legislation derived from Dumbledore’s? Apart from everything else, _that_ was fascinating.

Dumbledore had been the Supreme Mugwump of the Wizengamot for years: a non-voting position, but a mediator and widely-respected statesman who would weigh in on cases frequently. The spokeswitch and author went through some legislation in question now: a tax law that preserved historic wealth, exemptions for pureblood children from compulsory education, legacy political seats that would never leave pureblood lines. There was a law that a portion of the Sacred Twenty-Eight must always be represented in the Wizengamot. (Harry _thought_ that was how Voldemort’s Wizengamot seat was secured, as an overdue representative from the Gaunt line.)

“ _Of course, the Muggle Rights Act (1962) – its efforts secured by a joint council of Dumbledore, Black, Bones, Doge, Greengrass, Marchbanks, and Rosier – revolutionized the relations between purebloods and non-pureblood wixes. Employment, housing, and education for non-purebloods improved significantly. And the eloquent and ambitious Nobby Leach was the first Muggle-born to be elected Minister of Magic, in 1962,_ ” the paper wrote. (“The _only_ Muggleborn to be elected Minister,” Hermione would’ve said if she’d been reading over his shoulder.) “ _Non-pureblood representation among the Wizengamot quadrupled within this decade_ ,” the paper went on. (“From two to eight,” Hermione would’ve said.) “ _It is an era still resonating strongly within our current political climate.”_ And _that_ meant Voldemort, and that was true enough, in any case.

Harry was not political by nature. He wanted peace more than anything, and that meant that he was not a natural at ideological conflict. The way Hermione saw the world exhausted him. SPEW and the hunger strikes and the knitted socks exhausted him. But – it was a way he’d buy back Voldemort’s salvation, because Voldemort certainly couldn’t buy it back himself. He should write Winston and the Muggle Liaison Office, to offer his help. Whatever that meant. He reached for his bookbag.

 

On Tuesday night, he slept over at Grimmauld Place. Tom raised his eyebrows at the bag Harry brought with him, but didn’t argue. “Do you know anything?” Harry asked, a bit desperate, as he levitated the bag up the stairs.

“He is alive.” Harry gave him a frustrated look; he shrugged. “His magic is dormant. Perhaps he is held in a sort of stasis?”

“Bloody great,” Harry muttered. He went to find Malfoy.

But Malfoy handed him a practice exam and went to go sit outside in the last of the spring sunshine, so rare for London. “Don’t you burn?” Harry asked, eyeing Malfoy’s milky complexion.

“Burn… what?”

“Your skin?” A blank look. “A sunburn. For fuck’s sake, do wizards not get sunburns?”

“The _sun_ burns Muggles’ skin?” Malfoy looked disgusted. “How pathetic. Are they not terrified to go outside?”

Harry did not point out that wixes were the weak ones, inbred to hell and back, with soft undefined bodies since they’d always choose magic over manual labor. Dizzy with yet another bit of knowledge that would forever keep him from being a true wizard, he went to write his practice exam in a quiet nook

An hour and a half later, Malfoy cast a spell on the parchment that told him he’d failed by three questions, and handed him a whiskey. “Thank god it’s only a matter of national security that you should understand runes.”

“Wanker,” he chided. “I understand a shield charm, anyway.” Malfoy hummed in a doubtful way.

Being among the Slytherins, he couldn’t fathom how they did it. They were all trapped and betrayed and disappointed and alone, and they just… bore it. Maybe there really was some specifically pureblood stiff upper lip. He ended up in Tom’s bed, working on tomorrow’s lesson plan, before Tom himself was in for the night. But Moira had run in to sleep beside him, and that was really all he needed.

Tom entered, and then his cool, sort-of immaterial body pressed into his side. Harry was taking more kaval to sleep this week, and it was going to become a Problem rapidly. He took a few deep swallows, then slumped backwards into the pillows. “Could I take the piano?”

Riddle blinked at him with perfect confusion. “Pardon?”

“The piano. In the major drawing room. I don’t know if it can even be moved, but… I want it.”

“Mm. If it’s not too cursed to be disturbed.”

“Maybe. Do you play?” Harry asked, suddenly desperate to know. “He said he… you, could play piano in a church when you were young. But he got rid of those memories.”

“How perfectly tragic.” But Riddle tipped his head back. “I do recall the church. It was before Hogwarts.” He was throwing the covers back, his pajamas shifting into robes with a thought. “Come.”

“What, now?”

“Yes.”

So Harry pulled on a heavy robe over his pajamas, padding downstairs. The ground floor was dark, until Riddle lit the drawing room’s oil lamps. The shadows writhed along the wall.

The grand piano was made in dark wood, immaculately polished but otherwise abandoned. Riddle slid onto the bench, and Harry beside him.

“It’s no loss that he would take those memories,” Riddle said, putting one hand along the center keys. “I scarcely remember playing, anyway. But why?”

“He didn’t mean to.”

“Hm.” He plunged down an ivory key, and frowned at the low, strange sound it made. “There are spells to tune a piano,” he said. “I do not know them.” He reached for the piano’s lid.

Harry knew it would happen, somehow, before it did: he felt the creeping cold that had infiltrated the room. But when Tom lifted the lid, a hand seized it from beneath, shoving it open. Tom’s mirror image was crouched inside the piano, but it was pallid, with limp hair sticking to its face. The doppelganger locked dark eyes with Tom, smiled too wide for its mouth with too many teeth, and then its eyes rolled into their sockets and he fell forward, dying with gruesome twitches.

The cacophony of its body slamming against the keys nearly drowned out Tom’s strangled cry. He was up, wand out and his lips moving silently – and then Harry snatched the wand from his hand. “Riddikulus!” The doppelganger spasmed hard, flopped over, and then vanished in a cloud of mist.

Tom was very still and very pale, even in the low lighting of the oil lamps. Harry stepped in, handing back his wand and reaching tentatively for his shoulder. “Sorry. This house gets infested with boggarts easily, we had to exterminate about a dozen of them when we first moved in….”

But when his hand touched Tom’s shoulder, he flailed, throwing off his grasp. “Don’t,” he snapped. “I am not him.”

Well, no, but they were never more alike than in their shared fear of death. Harry drew back. “Right,” he said. “Sorry.”

Tom drew a deep breath. (An affectation, as he didn’t breathe unless he wanted to. Harry watched in fascination.) “Go to bed, Harry. I would like to look up the spells for maintenance.”

This really wasn’t what Tom wanted or needed. Harry gave him a soft look. “I’m staying here,” he said. “I’ll stay out of your way. Just….” He fell back, taking a seat on one of the deep sofas.

“Your pity is disgusting.”

“Yeah,” he agreed easily, and pulled a blanket over himself.

Riddle left. Harry heard the doors to the library swing open and shut.

Harry stared into the darkness, not even trying to sleep. He’d seen himself dead before. In Molly’s boggart first, and the varri surrounding Voldemort later. He always found it more disorienting than distressing. Maybe he was the broken one.

The boggart had gone for Tom directly, and Harry supposed it made sense. Tom was nothing but a concentration of fears, really. He wouldn’t exist if Voldemort weren’t so pathologically afraid of his own death.

The swing of the library door again, and Riddle returned with a slim volume. He didn’t even acknowledge Harry again, but slid onto the piano bench, casting a muffling charm. The plunk of a few keys, that sounded discordant even to Harry’s ears, and then Riddle flipped open the book.

Harry turned toward the sofa, closing his eyes at last, so he could only listen to Riddle work: a methodical casting of spells for repair, tension, and flexibility on each of the strings in turn, then tested by playing a scale until he was satisfied. He put spells of fluidity and ease on the keys and pedals. At last, he got up again, moving to the library. When he returned, it was with sheet music.

He probably believed Harry was asleep, so he remained still as Riddle flipped through the pages. Setting the music before him, he picked through the keys experimentally. It was a piece slow but not sad. Finally Harry sat up, wrapping the blanket around his shoulders to listen.

Riddle stopped abruptly, without even looking at him. “There,” he said curtly, picking up the sheet music again. “You may cast featherlight on it, but if you shrink it more than twenty percent, it will go out of tune again. It couldn’t go through the floo or in apparition. You might have to drive it.”

“I didn’t mean to make you stop.”

He shook his head, looking tired. “I scarcely remember it,” he said. “Even as I would spend hours in that church. A waste of time.”

“It wasn’t.”

Riddle gave him a wry look. “Fine,” he said, unmoved. “Enough for tonight, in any case.”

He could not be persuaded to play anymore. Harry followed him back upstairs. But in the dark, facing away from each other so their bare backs touched, Harry said quietly, “Thanks for that.” Silence. “… Tom?” He couldn’t be asleep.

“It was only a piano.”

Harry grinned. As bloody arrogant as Riddle (and Voldemort) could be, they both handled praise and gratitude very poorly. “Still.”

“Go to sleep, Harry.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Allusions for Chapter 34:
> 
> The detail about some Muggles being resistant to Obliviate is from [Hauntingly, by ObsidianPen](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7582462/chapters/17252554).
> 
> Olive wand – Olive is the tree of peace; and Ollivander is right that the wood is rarely harvested, because olive oil is so valuable. The inverted phoenix feather, I was thinking about how inverted tarot cards reverse or complicate their meaning.
> 
> The piano in Grimmauld Place is also from Hauntingly.


	35. Chapter 35

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry continues to fall apart. Somehow, spending time at Grimmauld Place is the only thing to sort of stave off the depression.

_Wednesday, April 21. **Bones recommends new leg. for pop. growth and health**_ , ran the inside headline of Wednesday’s Prophet. Harry was awake early to eat at Grimmauld Place, because Kreacher’s crepes were better than any of Hogwarts’s breakfast fare. Maybe he _should_ bring Kreacher to the Slytherin estate, he thought idly as he popped a blueberry between his teeth.

The article explained, in _very_ simple terms, what Amelia and Voldemort had discussed months ago. The current wixen population was too small to be self-sustaining; inbreeding was damaging their health and leading to sterility; they needed to introduce more genetic diversity or else they’d die out within the century. Madam Bones said it more eloquently and less alarmingly than that, but she said it nonetheless.

The legislation was in part what Harry had already known. There would be incentives to marrying and having children with Muggleborns and halfbloods. Other incentives for bringing in immigrant spouses. The part that most surprised him was that there would be new research done on Muggleborns, “to determine the origins of apparently-spontaneous magic.” The article implied that if they couldn’t birth new wixes quick enough with mixed marriage, they might get the Muggle population to also breed Muggleborns into existence. It was… unexpected. Harry knew of the concerns and even some of the proposals, but they had all been so associated with Voldemort and blood purity, he had never expected to see them implemented. But – he reread the article to be sure – Voldemort’s name was nowhere on this. And everyone found Madam Bones trustworthy enough that her legislation would never be suspect. Really, this _could_ blow back, it was a contentious law, but it was good of her to sponsor it anyway.

He mopped up cream with the last bit of crepe. He should probably go, before he had to make awkward breakfast conversation with the Slytherins.

 

He sort of got ambushed on his way back into Hogwarts, and he sort of deserved it. “Potter,” Phineas Nigellus said sharply as he came through the floo. “Stay here. The Aurors will see you in a moment.”

“… Why?”

A snort through Black’s nose. “Are you so impatient? They will be _with you_ in a _moment_.”

“Why aren’t you ever at Grimmauld Place?” Harry asked curiously, setting down his bag. “Or are you, and you’re, uh, hiding?”

“I do not care to transmit messages between the Slytherins and their starcrossed lovers.”

He blinked. He only knew of Daphne and Lisa as a couple, but they could write each other directly anyway. “Okay.”

Steps on the tower stairs, and then Kingsley and Brightbone let themselves in. Harry’s stomach tightened, because they weren’t the two guarding Hogwarts this week, they had come in specially for this. He considered that he may be in trouble for sleeping away from the castle, but didn’t yet want to admit his guilt. “’Morning.”

“Sit,” Brightbone said, until Kingsley shot her a look of, well, pleading. “Please sit,” she amended, and they all took a seat around the coffee table where Harry had had so many terrible meetings before. “Phineas says you spent the night at the Black home.”

“Yeah. Yes, ma’am,” he amended. “But – I have before. I go there for runes twice a week, because that’s where Malfoy is staying.” He had a belated moment of panic, wondering if they knew that the Slytherins were sheltered there, but neither of them reacted. “And then I stayed over. For… magic. Moody would understand,” he said awkwardly, not able to speak of Tom. “But there’s a vow, and I can’t….”

“Fine,” Kingsley interrupted, before he embarrassed himself any further. “Harry, that’s fine. You ought to tell the Aurors, though, really. You take the floo there directly?”

“Yeah.”

Kingsley looked to Brightbone. “He’s never outside of a secured area, then. The Black home was Fidelius’ed by Dumbledore, and Moody’s added another layer of spells every month,” he said with a smile.

Brightbone didn’t understand why he’d sleep there, but that didn’t matter. “Fine,” she agreed curtly. “That is not why we’ve come, anyway.”

“What’s happened?” Harry asked, his mouth drying. It had to be Voldemort, they found him or heard something about him or found his _body_ –

Brightbone squared her shoulders, looking to Harry. “The Undying have been agitated at Voldemort’s _obsession_ with immortality,” she said, saying the word with distaste. The Undying were the global consortium of immortal and quasi-immortal beings; and the Humnerë were supposed to be _protecting_ Voldemort from the rest of them. Harry was irritated at this. “Britain has few connections or insights into their politics typically. However, yesterday we received information.”

“What – “

A look of frustration, because obviously she’d go on to tell him. “They want his Horcrux – _your_ Horcrux – extracted from his soul. They believe they can sever the connection he has to the others as well. And then, if he survives it, he may go _free_.”

Harry wanted to argue. He couldn’t – they couldn’t – he would miss _so much_ of what drew them together without the Horcrux. Instead, feigning professionalism, he asked, “Is that what the Ministry wants?”

“We can’t impel him to do anything with his Horcruxes,” she said, and Harry nearly sighed in relief: that was in one of their vows, that he’d forgotten about. She went on: “But yes, generally. You know he could not keep those – horrific things indefinitely. If he wants any measure of legitimacy or prominence within our politics, he would not seek public office while _immortal_. It would be grotesque.”

He had heard that word about Voldemort’s magic too many times before. “I guess they won’t let him go without taking it, anyway,” he said dully.

Kingsley leaned in, because he was good and gentle and kind. “This is not to say – we don’t want to understate how significant your connection has been, and how much good you have done with it. For him and for everyone else. But we are quite confident that you will both, ah, adapt to the new, necessary circumstances.”

 _If they survived._ His throat was going sticky. “Okay.”

Kingsley gave him a pitying look. “Of more immediate relevance – you cannot go out unprotected. They would want you, quite a lot. Don’t go beyond Hogwarts’s boundaries, don’t go beyond Grimmauld Place’s boundaries, don’t go to Hogsmeade or Diagon Alley. You shouldn’t cast on the shield either, until this is resolved.”

“Someone should,” he said. “I was meant to cast it this weekend….”

Kingsley looked uncomfortable, but Brightbone was brisk: “The Muggles don’t know the difference. If this security risk remains for more than a month, we’ll look to other options. For now – be quiet.”

Harry should’ve objected. It was his job to sustain a better relationship with the Muggles than they’d had before, one that didn’t involve deception and paternalism. But he was numb and selfish right now. “Alright.”

“Good,” she said, surprised at his compliance. “Then – what has _he_ said? He has been among them, he’s had a relationship – he must be advocating on his own behalf.”

Oh. Did they think it was okay because Voldemort had _agreed_ to remove the Horcruxes? “He’s – gone,” Harry muttered. Shocked looks from them both. “I mean, his magic doesn’t touch mine anymore. I last saw him in sleep on Monday, last week. We wrote on Thursday, when he said they were taking him hunting for werewolves Friday. I told that to Rye and Tonks. Then – nothing. He said we should share magic in sleep more often, but he hasn’t, and he hasn’t written.”

Saying it aloud, it seemed obvious that the Humnerë had done this – either Voldemort was in stasis, or his magic had been removed, or their Horcrux was rendered ineffective, or he was dead. The stupidest part of his brain added that perhaps this was just a punishment for their argument earlier. But it wasn’t, it wasn’t. Voldemort could be spiteful but not toward him.

Both Kingsley and Brightbone were distressed by this revelation, for some reason. “We haven’t located them directly,” Kingsley said. “But – the informant said he worked with them.”

“Well, he did, on the Inferi. But Friday they took them out, and – he must’ve done it well enough that the Humnerë were finished with him. Giving him to the Undying was the next step.”

Kingsley ran a large hand over his face. “It would not change our preferences or decisions,” he said. “It may change our relationship with the Undying.”

“Does it matter?” Harry said, a bit bitterly. “ _He_ won’t have a say in it either way. He might as well be comatose.”

“Mr. Potter,” Brightbone said sharply. “The Ministry does not exist to accommodate him, but it does rely on his present cooperation. The _primary_ requirement of his has always been a high degree of autonomy. There are political stakes in making a decision with or without him. Whether we can honor his – _wishes_ or not.”

This was rather nice, for her. “I really don’t think he’s had any part in anything, after last Friday.”

“We need to speak to Rufus,” Kingsley murmured, with a glance at Brightbone. “Harry – we didn’t know. I am sorry.”

He still didn’t understand what difference it made, if they’d take the Horcrux regardless. “It’s okay,” he said.

“Would you ask Rufus for a meeting today?” Kingsley requested of Brightbone. “The Wizengamot is in session, I assume they could step away for this. Moody’s in the field but he’d come in, too.”

“Yes,” she said crisply, rising. “Dumbledore’s been with the Wizengamot all morning. Should he be present, too?”

“He probably should be.”

Brightbone took the floo; Kingsley gestured Harry out and, to his surprise, fell in step alongside him. “You are not usually apart for so long,” he said.

“Well. The Humnerë know enough, and wants me enough, that Voldemort was keeping us apart. In sleep, with Occlumency, all of it. For the past month, really.”

“Does it hurt?”

Harry looked over; it was a sincere question, because Kingsley was good. He didn’t know how to answer that. “Sort of.”

“Remus says it’s been a difficult week.”

He would forever be ambivalent about the ways the Order looked out for him. It was embarrassing, but… in a good way. “Yeah.” He was holding his emotions back, because this was already awful. “I mean – yeah. Our soul sort of deteriorates when we’re apart, and then….” Then the depression hit like an arctic chill. “Moody’s sent me potions of magic replenishing, and they help. Both of us,” he clarified. “And I take baobab for us both, and… it’s better if I’ve got a lot to do,” he said, anticipating that Kingsley was going to offer to teach his classes today. “And Grimmauld Place is better for that. And for magic.”

A frown. “It was intended as the place most impenetrable to his magic. I hope he hasn’t infiltrated it somehow.”

God, if he only knew. “Well. No. Ask Moody.”

“I believe you.”

They’d reached the ground floor, just off the Great Hall, from which Kingsley would leave and Harry would return to his suite. Kingsley looked at him seriously. “Is there anything else that we should know?”

He hesitated, and then said it in a rush, before he could change his mind. “He wants the Horcrux more than he wants Britain. So do I. I said I’d, uh, leave for him.” _Run away with him_. “Really, it’s so much of us both, I’m not just being stupid or sentimental or whatever.”

Kingsley’s face was carefully, diplomatically neutral. “You’re not.”

“And so much of his – _humanity_ is bound up in it.” He said the word miserably, because it was at the heart of his fear. He was scared of what would happen, to the world and to Voldemort himself, if they made him a _monster_ again. It wasn’t worth it.

Kingsley considered. “We’ll do what we can,” he said gently. “But the Undying – they don’t care for human desires or needs. Our world is quite irrelevant to them.”

“I know.” He wondered if the Muggles felt this powerless, hearing of wixen politics.

Kingsley rested a hand on Harry’s shoulder. “We’ll get you out of this,” he said. “Both of you.” And Harry gave him a wavering smile.

 

It was a poignant cruelty that, in the midst of everything, their wedding invitations arrived.

Penelope had already mailed invitations to all the important political figures, but she’d sent Harry a stack of invitations of his own, “for your personal guests.” He stared down at the handful of gold envelopes, in utter doubt that the wedding would ever happen, that their _life_ would ever happen.

He’d been sitting alone at the high table for lunch, until Ron and Hermione walked up together and took a seat on either side of him. “Those look official,” Ron said, peering at them. “Wedding?”

“Uh-huh. Here.” Peeling off two, he handed them in turn to them.

Ron promptly handed his back. “Don’t be thick.” Harry looked up, startled and heartbroken. _Hermione_ didn’t entirely approve of this marriage, but he thought Ron nearly did. Seeing his face, Ron went on hurriedly, “I’m going as Hermione’s date.”

She laughed. “ _Are_ you?” she asked. “Maybe there’s someone else I’d like to take.”

“Well, what’s McLaggen doing that weekend then?” Ron said, and Hermione smiled fondly at him.

A knot behind Harry’s breastbone loosened. Ron and Hermione walked such a fine line of fighting-as-flirtation and fighting-as-fighting, and he couldn’t always tell the difference. Neither could they, he thought. But the ease between them now felt so good. “What don’t I know about wixie weddings?” he asked Ron. “Traditional ones. More than Bill’s.”

Ron’s brow furrowed. “There’s Latin in them. And some spellcasting. From the guests too, for well wishes and fortune and all. Oh, sometimes there are fertility rituals, but….”

“I am _not_ getting pregnant.”

“I still don’t see what the big deal is…. People ring bells. You could release an animal, or make plants bloom. Oh, you should exchange gifts, too. Usually at the reception.”

“What sort of gifts?” he asked, mildly alarmed. “Publicly?”

An odd look. “Well, _yeah_. Uh. There’s loads of symbolism, we’ll look it up….”

Brilliant. The possibility of a safe and uneventful life with Voldemort had never felt more distant, but sure, wedding planning. Looking around the Great Hall, he began tallying up who might accept the invitation. Ginny and Luna, and most of the eighth years. Hagrid was at the other end of the high table, but he’d need to be specially persuaded. Remus would come but he should probably be able to bring Snape, so – well. They’d talk about it. “Should I invite Neville?” he asked. “Or is that, uh, cruel?”

“Aren’t most of the pureblood families going anyway?” Ron asked, frowning. “If you’ll have everyone _important_ there….”

“I’ll write, and ask him. I’m writing your parents, too,” he said. “I need your entire family there.”

Ron sort of grinned. “People will think there’s been a mistake.”

“Well, they’ll feel stupid, then.” Most of Hogwarts’s faculty should go, and all the Order, and really all the Aurors since he and Voldemort had monopolized so much of their time this year. “Ugh.” Putting the invitations into his bag, he pulled a tureen of carrot soup toward himself. “I saw my parents’ wedding,” he offered, too casually. “Hagrid gave me the memory. Remus gave me the reception.”

“Oh,” Hermione said in a tiny voice. “That must’ve been nice.”

“Yeah.” He would forever be struck with how much his parents had still looked like students themselves, that they could practically be in the halls of Hogwarts with him. “It was nice. It was useful.”

“Should you… do something for them?” she said, her voice still small and careful. “For the wedding. I know you haven’t got much of theirs – did they have wedding rings? Or if some of it could be near Godric’s Hollow….”

She did mean well, but that sounded like the worst idea. Voldemort had already said he wouldn’t accompany Harry to Godric’s Hollow, anyway. “Well, there’s the cloak,” he said lightly. “Maybe I should wear it?” Hermione smiled and batted his arm.

(He did want his cloak back. The Slytherins had no right to it, anymore. Tomorrow, he’d ask tomorrow.)

But he looked to Ron. “ _Are_ there parts for family, though?”

Ron snorted. “For normal weddings, yeah. They’d sit up front and cast first, things like that. For _your_ wedding, like you’re uniting two great bloody kingdoms, it’ll all be by status. Hope you invited some fit politicians, because they’ll be who you’re looking at in the front row.”

Well, that’d be Scrimgeour and all the Wizengamot then. Bollocks. “Muggle parents will give them away. The bride, that is.”

“Like… she’s been imprisoned?”

Hermione snorted at this. “Sort of,” she answered before Harry could. “Harry, we’ll look up everything with you. I don’t expect _he_ knows all of it, either, so he couldn’t plan it all anyway.”

Voldemort had mentioned attending weddings before, at least, all the hideous pureblood marriages. But it was only for Harry that he’d be dragged into sweet domesticity himself. Harry sort of smiled. “Yeah.”

“You’ll need to give a vow to one another,” Hermione said. “A speech.” She watched his face, already knowing how he’d feel about _that_. “And you’ll need to open the dance.”

He groaned. “Fine,” he said, as though she’d personally inflicted this on him. “Hey, at least it’s not the Yule Ball. At least I’m not _fourteen_ this time.”

“That was so inappropriate of them,” Hermione muttered. “You should really, uh, learn pureblood etiquette. Just for this,” she said in a rush. “With everyone there and watching you.”

She was right, though. “Are there books?” he asked.

“Yes. They’re all about a hundred years old. It’s all like – a password. They keep people out, that you don’t know unless you know.”

“Percy studied it all,” Ron said. “When he interviewed with the Ministry. Did you know there’s spells for putting a napkin in your lap the right way? It’s all – fiddly. Hey, you’ve probably seen him more than I have this year; next time you’re at the Ministry just pop in and ask him. He’d be thrilled.”

Percy was a law clerk or something under Amelia now, so Harry probably _had_ seen him more recently than Ron. “He might be there,” he said awkwardly. “If he’s, y’know, high up enough. Voldemort’s done a lot with Madam Bones. Does she need to be a witness again?”

“Uh-huh,” Ron said. “Each of you needs one, I think.” He gave Harry an apologetic look. “I don’t know. We don’t have _those_ type of weddings. I’ve only heard of them. Or d'you still see Malfoy? Ask him.”

Fantastic, another instance where all the Slytherins would look at him like he was stupid for not having grown up in their world. “I think I’ll just ask Penelope.”

Ron patted his shoulder in consolation. “At least you’ll get another thousand dishes out of it.”

“Oh my god.”

 

 _Thursday, April 22._ So that was a corner turned for Ron and Hermione, that at least they were friends again, and Harry could eat with them again, and he wasn’t so terribly alone. As such, he was nearly late to Grimmauld Place on Thursday evening, having spent too long at dinner with them. He nearly tripped over himself getting out of the floo, looking up to be met with Theo Nott’s scornful gaze.

“Hi,” Harry said. “Is Malfoy here?”

A tiny smirk. “Where else would he be?”

Right. He didn’t bother responding, instead turning to go.

He found Tom first, reading in the library. “Hi,” he said, taking a seat across the table. He’d been thinking of propriety and purebloods and the wedding recently, but Riddle probably found this a non-sequitur: “Would you want to come to our wedding?”

Blink, and a perfect stare. “Is this how you have been distracting yourself from despair? Wedding planning?”

“It is a distraction,” Harry agreed. “But no. They sent me invitations to give out. Would any of the Slytherins want to go, either?”

Tom needed another moment to collect his thoughts. “I intend to be quite far abroad by next year,” he said. “Anyway, it makes you anxious to have us together.”

“ _Well_.”

“If the Ministry invitations were typical – which they are _not_ , given how many purebloods are imprisoned now – all of the Sacred Twenty-Eight would be invited. Flint, Nott, Parkinson, Greengrass, Bulstrode, Malfoy. There you go,” he said, at Harry’s expression. “You don’t actually want them there. Why would you ask?”

“Because I want things to be normal. Well. Better.”

“Hm,” Riddle said doubtfully.

“Ugh. I’ll ask them myself, then.”

He found him with Pansy in a tea parlor, looking at a photo album. Malfoy scarcely nodded him in.

“Maybe I should cut my hair like that,” Pansy mused, peering at a woman with the same lithe build as all of the Black women. “I’m quite tired of this.” She flipped her bob out of her face.

“Only don’t borrow her fashion sense,” Malfoy said, studying the robes with voluminous sleeves.

Harry had taken a cautious seat across from them. “If you’ve just got another exam, I’ll take it – “

“No, no.” Malfoy waved him off. “I must teach you runes first. As stupid and Sisyphean as the task is.”

Harry wasn’t even annoyed. He shot a look of surprise at Malfoy, because Muggle allusions (or _was_ it Muggle?) were rare among the purebloods. “Cheers.”

“I want this,” Malfoy said, nodding to the album. “It is my family. It is not yours.”

“We made a deal that you had to take the mounted elves first.”

“I’m quite sure we didn’t,” Malfoy said, but his lips twitched.

“Yeah,” Harry relented. “I don’t care, that’s fine. I don’t think there’s anything else in the house that’d make a good memento? Except maybe some things Kreacher has kept,” he said, thinking of the hoard beneath the stairs. “But, uh, leave those to him.”

“Sometimes he carries around a bracelet of Aunt Bella’s,” Malfoy said, faintly wrinkling his nose. “Tom offered to alter it so he could wear it, but he said he wasn’t worthy.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake. Fine,” Harry said, shaking his head as though to clear it. “I want to do runes.”

So Malfoy brought him upstairs, into an open observatory. The last of the sunlight tinged the windows red. A swish of his wand, and the matrix of wards appeared around Harry. “I put aging spells on half of them,” he said. “Good luck guessing what they will decay into.”

Harry actually laughed. It was clever, and it was useful, and it sort of sounded fun. He had become far too studious this year. “Alright. Here.” He passed Malfoy the Panopticon, carefully, so he didn’t bump the glowing strands before him.

“I want one of those,” Malfoy said, turning the Panopticon over in his hands. “You must have gotten it abroad. It is nothing like the artifacts made here. India?”

“Itinerants in the middle of the Jordan desert,” Harry corrected. “Really,” he said at Malfoy’s look. “If you mean it, I’ll write her and ask her to make you one.”

“Yes.”

“She’ll need fifty galleons to begin, and another hundred afterward.”

Malfoy shrugged, reaching into his robes, then stopped. “Ah, you should not handle metals directly while in contact with those wards,” he said. “But fine.”

“What the hell did you do,” Harry said, glancing around at the suspect wards.

But then they settled into a sort of ease, Malfoy reading and Harry working. He’d cleverly wrapped all of the aged wards in protective barriers, to contain any explosions if he didn’t get to them in time. Malfoy almost looked at him with near-approval.

When he thought he’d disarmed all the most urgent wards, or so he thought, he looked back over at Malfoy. “Did you get an invitation to our wedding?”

“Don’t worry, I don’t intend to go.”

“Is that a yes?” he said, exasperated. “I asked, uh, the wedding planner, to just invite everyone who would expect to be invited to important things. Tom said it’d be at least the Sacred Twenty-Eight, and I assume some other purebloods, too. So….”

“I will warn them off if you’d like, but none of them would have gone anyway.”

“ _Who_?”

Malfoy’s gray gaze was cool on his own. “Nott and I received invitations as the _heads of household_ ,” he pronounced. “Bulstrode’s parents were invited with her. Unless you mean insignificant families like Pickering and Twigg, most other Slytherin houses are mired in ignominious legal straits, aren’t they? Quite unfashionable to have at your wedding.”

Quite illegal, now that he considered it, since Voldemort wasn’t to have any contact with Death Eaters. ( _Former_ Death Eaters? Who could say.) “Right. Yeah. You could come if you want. They’re paying for a lot of it, so you should at least come to drink their wine.”

Malfoy’s eyelashes fluttered in a faintly amused way. “Perhaps.”

“Great.” And then he saw an aging ward, one he’d missed the first time around, begin to unravel at his hip. He grabbed for it and it promptly exploded in his hand. _That_ , Malfoy did smile at.

 

When he escaped, fairly unharmed, Malfoy said they had to go downstairs. And there he _did_ have a practice exam ready in the dining room, which he pushed toward Harry. “Here.”

He sat to take it beside the chair where Moira now slept. “Also, I need my cloak back,” he said off-handedly to Malfoy as he pulled out a quill. “Have you got it? Has Tom?”

“Why would you need it?”

“Because it’s mine. Because I am _wanted_.” He said the word mockingly, even though it was true. “Because they want me more than they want you.”

“The ones young enough to have not learned Disillusionment yet should also be allowed to see the sun again, Potter.”

“Then they can go stand in the back garden.” Harry was unpleasantly surprised – the Slytherins had so little claim on the cloak that he hadn’t expected any resistance. Anyway, he and Malfoy had nearly had a rapport tonight. “Malfoy, I’m serious.”

“So am I,” he said. “Wait until summer, when we have been _freed_. Why would you need it now? You should be revising.”

“I hate you,” Harry muttered, opening an ink bottle. “Every time I think I don’t, you remind me again.” Malfoy shrugged, and moved to go.

 

This exam went quicker than the last one. He’d memorized a few formulas for conversion after last time, and they helped. He forgot the Slytherins were seated there after a time, and then they left entirely. Harry could faintly hear the Slytherins chattering in the sitting room, laughter and repartee and the plunking of a few piano keys.

Malfoy was out there too. Quietly, Harry set down his quill, slipping out through the kitchen and up the staircase.

Malfoy’s room was on the second floor, down the way from Tom’s – they’d passed one another in the night a few times before. Harry wasn’t positive the cloak would be there, but nobody else seemed more likely. He hovered a hand over the doorknob to feel for security. As many as a paranoid-but-also-actually-wanted Slytherin would put on their bedroom door; the ambient air was warm with the thrum of magic. Rolling his eyes, he tugged on the wards.

The first thing he noticed, studying the runes, was that Malfoy _hadn’t_ crafted them only so the room could be accessed by himself. That was the quickest way to keep people out – it could be circumvented, but it was a weird omission. Maybe Malfoy had a lover here, Harry thought idly, who’d come and go from his bedroom. Nevermind.

He worked carefully, but by now Malfoy’s style of wards was second nature to him. Malfoy favored psychological spells – a lot of paranoia, dread, and aversion. Anyway, joke’s on him, since Harry already felt like numb shit anyway. He untangled the wards carefully.

At last he let himself in, pushing the door open to the immaculate bedroom. He stepped in –

And a tripping jinx caught him at his ankles, sending him crashing to the ground. “Goddammit – who _does_ that – “ But the clothesline subsequently ensnared his legs, and he was still attempting to kick it off when Malfoy approached, looking very unamused.

“What the hell.” He threw a few more jinxes at Harry’s face, more as a gesture than anything. “What the _hell_ ,” he repeated, stepping over Harry without letting him up, and for a hideous moment Harry wondered if Malfoy was going to curbstomp him. Instead, he threw open the wardrobe, reaching toward the back and undoing a few security spells before pulling out his cloak. “You can have it if you go. You’ve spent too much time here recently.”

“It’s _my_ house _,_ ” Harry said in disbelief.

“We know,” Malfoy said dryly. “Where’s your exam?”

He hadn’t finished, obviously, and he shook his head. “The dining room. Would you please explain – “ He made a vague, exasperated gesture, “what the fuck?”

“No. Not yet.”

Harry pulled the last of the wards off himself so Malfoy didn’t have to liberate him. He snatched back the cloak, wondering if he could also punch Malfoy just once without destroying their relationship. Probably not. “Prick.” He clutched the cloak to his chest, as though someone would take it away from him again, when he returned downstairs.

The dining room was no longer vacant – Daphne was at one end of the table, scribbling rapidly on the scroll she shared with Lisa, and the Pickering twins and Millicent were watching. Only Millie looked at Harry when he entered. “Why aren’t you doing anything for the protests?”

He sighed. “Which ones?”

“All of them,” she said curtly. “The Mudbloods – “

“ _Don’t_ – “

“It’s what they want to be called,” she snapped. “ _They_ hate all the old families anyway, and now the Muggles want to burn us alive again, and you think this is an _improvement_ – “

“The Muggles don’t want to burn you alive.”

All the room was looking at him now. “My great-grandfather was killed by Muggles because his flowerbeds bloomed before anyone else’s,” Millicent said. “Or since everyone’s on about _Dumbledore’s_ scandals now – “

“Keep his name out of your mouth.” He didn't want to hear it, he hadn’t yet accepted anything he’d read about Ariana.

“But you’ve only read the _Bagshot_ text, right? Wendolyn the Weird and the _fantastic_ time it was, being burned alive, and _certainly_ nobody actually died because that would be awkward for mage-Muggle relations. Bagshot wrote that just when the Muggle Rights Act was passed, and any texts that do tell the history of their violence against us gets banned as supremacist. _Grow up_.”

The room rang with the silence. Millicent had been direct with him before, but not like this. Still, he was furious. “ _You_ grow up,” he snapped at her. “You can’t have the world back like it was fifty years ago, and nobody would want it if you could. You’re making everything worse.”

“This is genocide.”

He gave a strangled laugh. “We’re trying to keep the wixes alive. It’s just hard, when you all are so inbred – “

At least three curses were hurled directly at his face. And he’d jumped up, but before he could even cast a shield charm – _something_ happened. The space of the house twisted on itself, curving the spells back toward their casters. Millie and both the twins barely dodged; Daphne, untouched, was intrigued but also furious. “You should go.”

He was paralyzed by vertigo, whatever that magic had been. The house would protect him, and it was still dizzying, exciting magic. He pushed his hair off his face. “Nobody is on your side,” he said. “Not with regard to Muggles, anyway. The Ministry’s not. I’m not. _He’s_ not, even. Just – be fucking careful. Don’t make yourselves a target again for stupid reasons.”

He shoved the runes exam in his bag, because it really didn’t matter. It was an act of faith, turning his back on the Slytherins so he could go.

He had to cross the sitting room to reach the floo. Most of the Slytherins were still in here; they all looked somewhere between wary and shocked. Tom was with them too, and raised his eyebrows. “What did you _do_?”

“Dunno. The house did it. I’m going now, bye.”

Tom rose to follow him to the next room, looking – well, not concerned, but engaged. “This,” he said, gesturing to Harry’s agitation, “ _hurts_. If you cannot be a well-adjusted adult, as least keep your Occlumency in place.”

Tom was so non-comforting, he actually smiled at the shittiness. “Right. I’ll try.”

“What – “ He’d stepped out of sight from the sitting room, switched to Parseltongue. “We didn’t catch _all_ of your row with Bulstrode. What was it?”

“Muggles. The protests. Malfoy was shitty first. He thought he should keep my cloak, the _wanker_.” He slipped his hand into his bag, just to ensure the silky cloak was still there. “But you don’t manage them, so – whatever.”

“No,” Riddle said with a crooked smile. “I manage _you_.” He pressed a hand to Harry’s forearm, and the pulse of magic was gratifying.

“Thanks. I can’t stay. I mean – thanks,” he said stupidly, sort of leaning into the touch like a cat. Not only was it a hostile environment with the Slytherins, he should also learn more about the autonomous magic of the house. It was a _weapon_ – it had choked Warrington before, and it could have hurt the girls now. Even if they’d deserve it. But this house was never really cleansed of dark and wild magic, and it probably wasn’t the wisest place for Harry to be, in this state.

Riddle probably understood this in part, even unvoiced. “They are restless, and anxious,” he said. “They feel quite extraneous to the world being negotiated without them, or without their parents.”

“Yeah, well.” Harry was not feeling generous. “Maybe it’ll show them what it feels like to be powerless, for once.”

He meant it to be biting, but Riddle only smiled. “I like you much more when you are _vicious_ ,” he crooned.

“Ugh. Get off me,” Harry said, pulling his hand away from Riddle’s, but he was laughing. “Just… I’ll be back this weekend, I think. Tell Malfoy not to be such a cock then. And tell the rest of them – I dunno, to take up meditation or something.” He stepped away for real now, but gave Riddle a smile as he turned to the floo. “’Night.”

“Wait.”

Harry faltered, looking at Riddle curiously. “What?”

“You haven’t found him?”

“No. He’s not in sleep, he hasn’t written.”

“Have any of his injuries been manifested on you?”

“… No,” he said. “They haven’t hurt him. And nothing ritual, either. I think they’re just done with him.”

“Hm.” Whatever he thought of that was private.

“What would it mean for you,” Harry said tentatively, “if… anything happens? The Aurors think the Humnerë can take you, too.”

“That would be quite unprecedented,” he said. “But then, it is all unprecedented. What would become of my very existence? It seems ungrateful that he should sacrifice me, but then, he sacrificed the chalice.”

Harry had a brief moment of horror, imagining each iteration of Riddle being killed off as the diary had. “You don’t deserve to… die.”

He thought Riddle would react badly, as Voldemort always did at the prospect of death. Instead, his lips twitched. “I should think not.”

“The Ministry,” Harry said in hesitation, “says that he can’t keep the Horcruxes. Not if he wants, well, public office. It seems convenient for them, that the Undying would remove them first, but if they wouldn’t….” The Aurors would do it themselves, was his sense of things. He hated it. He tried not to hate the Aurors, but he hated it.

“Including yours?”

“Uh-huh.”

He clicked in what might have been a performance of sympathy. “Nothing I could say to them would make them less likely to pursue this. If I sufficiently annoy them, it may indeed make them more enthusiastic to destroy me.”

“I didn’t think you could change it,” Harry muttered. “You should just know.”

“Thank you.” But taking in Harry’s miserable form, Riddle stepped close, running his hands down Harry’s arms, so he shivered with the contact. His magic was so fucked.

And with that, he pulled away from Tom again. He didn’t want to feel that way about him. He didn’t want to feel this way at all. “I’ve got to go.” And this time, Tom stepped out of his way.

 

 _Friday, April 23._ He bloody should have slept over with Tom after all, because on Friday morning he awoke sobbing. _Sobbing_ , as he’d done from the effects of the soul curse last autumn, and not before or since. What the hell. It was embarrassing but also simply annoying, he thought as he mopped off his face.

The depression had good days and bad days – or even more granular, good hours and bad hours. As he curled into his duvet, willing the cold inside him to stop, he realized he’d fallen asleep last night without taking either baobab or kaval. Goddammit.

At least he was not so pathetic as to return to Grimmauld Place, crawling desperately into Tom’s bed for the warmth of magic. Though – god – if he’d had any amount of self-preservation he would’ve kept the Horcrux, the _artifact_ , with him for magic instead. It was far too late now. He trudged to breakfast and opened the Ministry post.

 

> _Dear Mr. Potter:_
> 
> _Enclosed is a formal letter of employment, as the Mediator of Special Muggle Relations for the Muggle Liaison Office. Your date to begin is the 1 st of July, contingent on graduation from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry._
> 
> _Regarding recent unrest among a minority of Muggle communities: we are seeking further compromises, from the gains won from February’s meeting. Would you be available to join us for another non-confrontational, non-binding discussion with select Muggle civic and religious leaders, in the first week of May? We are eager to address their continued concerns and our evolving relationship within our shared world._
> 
> _Please share your availability with Madam Lucaro. The High Priestess Winter, Ms. Jones, and Mr. Seabury will also be in attendance. I am confident that our shared goal of peace and mutual well-being will allow us to resolve the Muggles’ concerns readily._
> 
> _In Merlin’s name,_
> 
> _Emeric Winston_

Harry read this letter with mild despair. It wasn’t enough, it didn’t at all feel like enough. He didn’t quite trust Millicent’s accusations yesterday, but even accounting for some exaggeration – well. Perhaps the wixen population was old enough to still be traumatized. Dumbledore had said before that wixes were made cautious and conservative by how long they lived; maybe they also carried communal trauma longer as well.

 _Dumbledore_. He thought not only of Dumbledore himself, but of his father and sister. His father had died in Azkaban, Rita’s book had said; and while she’d been vague on the details, it had been to avenge Ariana, and her magic that had been broken at the hands of Muggles. Dumbledore had carried this trauma, but not, in the end, resentment or cruelty. How was that.

It was additionally frustrating that everything had gone to shit with Voldemort gone. Maybe he _had_ created a power vacuum somehow, that without his place in the Unification, everything fell apart. At the very least, their society was broken in different ways with him than without him.

He really needed someone else to tell him what to do. To tell him it’d be fine, it would all be fine.

And because he was in a strange and dangerous mood, he rose, packing his bag. He had over an hour before his morning class began. He wanted to see Dumbledore.

 

The tower door yielded to him with Parseltongue, and he let himself in. The room was quiet but for Fawkes, smouldering near an open window. Lifting his head, he fluttered to Harry’s shoulder, rubbing his face in Harry’s hair. “Hi,” Harry said softly, reaching up to stroke his plumage. “We made another wand for him. Olive wood. I hope it’s his last.” A soft warble. “Could… do you know where Professor Dumbledore is? It isn’t important, but….”

A louder warble, directed at the portraits. Then there were voices on the other side, and shuffling, and Dumbledore walked into the frame above his desk.

“If you were somewhere else – I don’t want to interrupt you – “ Harry said.

“Please sit,” Dumbledore requested, watching as Harry sank into the chair before his desk. “The Ministry continues as it always has, with bombast and typical inefficiency. They shall not even notice my absence. However,” he tipped his head to look over his glasses, “there has been quite a lot of concern regarding Voldemort recently.”

“Well. Yes. What have you heard?”

More than Harry himself had, as it turned out. What he’d told Kingsley and Brightbone, that Voldemort was likely unconscious all this time, and had certainly not negotiated regarding the Horcruxes, had reached them. It would make no difference ultimately, but they at least knew that it would fracture their relationship with Voldemort if they agreed to destroy them.

“That is,” Dumbledore said with a frown, “those jurists who would like to see him back at all. You understand that not all of them would.”

Right. It could be a life sentence, if not a death sentence, to leave him in Albania. Anyway, he was in exile and had been stripped of citizenship – he didn’t have any _right_ to return to Britain, necessarily. “I know,” he said. “But – they’ve already used him this much. I don’t _trust_ them,” he added with a bitter laugh, “but things were better with him, than without him. Weren’t they?”

“You are speaking of the Muggles?”

“The protests. All of it.”

“Ah. Yes.” He folded his hands before him. “Most of my time has been spent among the Wizengamot. They are not overly concerned with the protests – or indeed, with the Muggles at all. I have noticed the uptick in civil unrest, though, myself. Perhaps it is cause for optimism – now that we have collectively escaped the crisis of war, we may discuss things other than sheer survival. These protests negotiate just what sort of world we would like to craft for future generations.”

“We haven’t really… talked with the Muggles. About – uh. I saw the Slytherins yesterday, and Millicent Bulstrode said her great-grandfather was killed by Muggles. That our history now has been _sanitized_. But then, we’ve also never told them how often we’d Obliviate them. And – kill them if we couldn’t.”

A raise of his eyebrows. “I too am opposed to the exploitation of Muggles, but you understand that, at least, it was not done out of cruelty.”

“I don’t care,” Harry said, too blunt. “Will it all just – go away if we don’t tell them?”

“It seems that the decision belongs to the Muggle Liaison Office. I would encourage you to pursue it, when you are working there properly.”

“Yes, sir.” He looked down at his hands, words warring in his throat. “They write a lot of awful things about you now, in the papers.”

“They wrote awful things about me when I was alive,” Dumbledore said serenely. “You are surprised?”

“About you and – Muggles. And Grindelwald.” And his father’s attack on local Muggles, and Ariana, and Dumbledore’s imperfect redemption. The insincerity, artifice, scheming that they have accused him of. Harry couldn’t speak of the rest of it.

“Ah.” Dumbledore looked at him carefully. “And you are here for reassurance that my politics are sincere, and overall good?”

“No. I mean – no, sir. I believe you.” Dumbledore, too, had given up everything once. “But, I don’t know how to talk about the Muggles now. Millicent should be allowed to be angry.”

“Did my family have a right to be angry?” Dumbledore offered the question for him. Harry exhaled, in hesitant affirmation. “Perhaps. Ariana did, certainly. My father went to prison to avoid public scrutiny of her magic. She would have been found a danger to herself and others. But Ariana was not a justification for Gellert’s war.” He took in Harry’s expression. “I don’t know,” he said gently. “Your capacity for empathy shames us all. The MLO, maligned as it currently is, may become a centerpiece of our politics with your insights.”

Whenever Dumbledore said these things about Harry, how good or loving or moral he was, he had the sense of an out-of-body experience. “I’m not that good,” he muttered. “And I’m not that important.”

“Harry. Really,” Dumbledore said with some mirth.

“I’m not. It just seems like things should be better than they are, after all this time. And – maybe it’s gotten worse since he’s gone.”

“Ah. It is not that we are more stable with his leadership – as it were,” Dumbledore said, a little coolly. “Merely differently unstable. The tensions previously concealed within the Wizengamot and Ministry as a whole have begun leaking into the general populace, it seems.”

He couldn’t even keep track of the Ministry conflicts. The Aurors and Wizengamot disagreed about Voldemort and the Horcruxes; Bowersock and Bones fought about the direction of the Wizengamot; they fought as well about Voldemort and Bowersock’s _fucking_ abuse. He couldn’t even speak of it. “Could you just tell me it’ll be alright?” he said wryly. It was stupid, he knew it was stupid, that that was all he’d really come here for.

“It will be alright.” Dumbledore’s tone was quite sincere. Harry looked up at him, surprised. “You are resilient. And he is – death-defyingly so,” he said in half a sigh. “You have the public’s confidence and quite a lot of support from those around you. Please don’t lose sight of that.”

That was honestly a bit worse – he wondered which of his friends he’d neglected, because he’d felt so isolated this year. Ginny had shouted at him at the end of his fifth year for being stupid like this; maybe he needed a reprise. “I know,” he said. “I know I’ve got them all. But – sir, I didn’t even mean _me_. I meant the rest of the world. Will _it_ be alright?”

“We persist, do we not?” Dumbledore said with a bit of a smile. “I cannot speak for the Muggles. But among the most remarkable things about wixen society, I have found, is our general impulse toward unity. For better or for worse, as you yourself have experienced,” he said, wry. “The current unrest is atypical, though warranted. In the end, and following popular storytelling about the sort of country we should like to be, they shall be ready to stand together, behind one so inspiring.”

“I’m eighteen,” Harry said flatly. “I will not be Minister.”

“No. But he will be,” Dumbledore said, gently amused at his misunderstanding. “You have already garnered a great deal of faith – if not yet proper trust or forgiveness – in him. For our collective health and confidence, it seems the best thing you may do.”

There was nothing more to tell the public about Voldemort. They could believe in him or not. “Yes, sir. Thank you.” He reached for his bag, then stopped. “Sir – what the Wizengamot has to say – do they even want him back?”

A pause of consideration. “They do,” he said. “Not all of their motives are pure or above reproach. But then, few are.”

“… Okay,” Harry said in a sigh. He could do more to secure Voldemort’s place in popular society than in the Ministry. “Could you, uh, encourage them to get him back? I can’t talk to the Wizengamot,” he said with a tentative smile.

Dumbledore clicked, though he was clearly amused. “He should be very annoyed to have me as an advocate.”

A real smile at this. “I know.”

“But yes,” Dumbledore said, more gently. “To the extent that I am able. The Wizengamot is still fairly incredulous at my support of him. They believe it is an inexplicable disjunction from my beliefs at the time of the portrait’s creation. I do not find it to be such a contradiction. Apart from my feelings about him – and about you – I swore a vow to protect Hogwarts with my life. It has animated all of my decisions since. Including this one.”

Right. Hogwarts was mutual collateral, for Voldemort and the Ministry both, as much as Harry was. He was so grateful to this strange, ancient magic. “Yes, sir. Thank you. And – he should thank you, too. Really.”

“You are both quite welcome.”

If it wasn’t enough to see him through the end of this crisis, it was enough for today, at least.

 

At lunch, Hermione ran a hand along Harry’s shoulders as she passed him to sit, and his back tensed because she only touched him when she felt profoundly bad for him. “We’re going out to the house this weekend,” she said. “Our furniture’s all arrived and we should bring it in. Would you like to come with us?”

He was happy that Ron and Hermione were going to live together after all. They may have worked out their row, he wouldn’t ask, but they spoke to one another with ease again. “I don’t think I can,” he said. “I mean, I don’t think I can leave at all.”

“Oh,” she said, looking at him in a curious way. He supposed _rules_ were not his MO, but he wouldn’t do anything to imperil Voldemort. Or the rest of the world, really. “We’ll stay then. It’ll be nice tomorrow, maybe we can go to Hagrid’s?”

“No, you should go – “

“Harry,” she said sternly. “No.”

He wondered if anyone suspected him of a suicide risk. His face didn’t move precisely in the right way to form a smile, but he tried. “Alright,” he said. “Thanks.”

The act of handing out the wedding invitations became significant, then. He’d been ambivalent about the wedding itself – it wouldn’t change their relationship, after all, and it was all quite showy and artificial – but in inviting people, he was prompting particular responses from everyone else in his life. He would have their support or he wouldn’t, and both of those were mostly fine but he wanted to know.

So he began with Ginny, for an easy start. She was sitting with Luna and the Patil twins, comparing the Transfiguration essays due later that day. “Hi,” he said, sliding into a seat. He peeled off four envelopes. “Come to our wedding? It’s next year, on the spring equinox.”

Luna beamed at him. “This generation no longer embraces the magic of the equinox.”

“… Yeah,” he agreed.

The Patil twins each took an invitation, but Parvati looked at him questioningly. “Harry…?”

“I’m inviting our entire year. I want to still be together after Hogwarts.” _Our children will come to Hogwarts together_ , he did not say because _that_ was far enough off. “You can say no. It’ll be… important, anyway,” he said with a sigh. “But that’s exactly why I’m inviting people I like.”

“Alright. Yeah.”

“Cool,” he beamed at her. Padma also nodded. Luna was humming happily, but he was sure that was a yes from her.

Ginny was turning it idly in her hands. “Can I ask Tonks?”

“Yeah. ‘Course. She may have already been invited, it’s everyone important in the Ministry, and we’ve spent the past year with the Aurors anyway, so….”

“Huh.” She cocked her head. “Think I’ll ever be assigned to mind you both?”

“It’s not exactly a coveted job so yeah, they’ll probably give it to the scrubs.”

She grinned. “Right. I’ll be there, then.”

Then he gave invitations to Lavender, Terry, and Justin. He needed to find out where to send them to Neville and Dean and Hannah and Ernie. When he handed an invitation to Lisa later that afternoon after class, she sort of frowned at it. “ _All_ our year’s invited?”

He saw her point. “I’ve asked the Slytherins. Honestly, pureblood families have all been invited already, I think…. But you should bring Daphne, if you come.”

“They are stuck,” she sighed. “I don’t know how they’re going to, well, re-integrate in things like this. Not that they were great at mixing before.”

 _Maybe their hatred of non-purebloods had something to do with that_. But instead he said, “They didn’t really agree. I’ll ask again when I see them next. I do want things to be – normal.”

“Yeah,” she said, a bit wistful.

 

All this socializing drained him though, and he ended up sleeping through dinner, and he’d planned to skip dueling club, until there was a pounding on his door. As always, it was Ginny, come to tell him he was being stupid. Pulling up the covers around himself, he charmed it open, expecting Ron and Hermione. Instead Ginny stood there, arms crossed. “We need you tonight.”

“Do you?” he asked, dubious. He hadn’t gotten up, so Ginny entered, coming to sit cross-legged at the end of his bed. He moved his legs obligingly.

“Some of them,” she said carefully, “were asking how to use Patronuses in combat. They asked about the battle of the Forbidden Forest,” – one of their better victories in the war, when Voldemort had brought Inferi into the forest, that had been held off by their Patronuses – “and how it’s cast differently from, y’know, the other times.” Her brown eyes were wide and sincere. “We all learned Expecto Patronum from you, it would be unfair to do it without you.”

He sighed as though put-upon, but he was smiling too. “I guess. There’s really nothing _special_ in any of it, I just….”

“Shh,” she chided. Leaning in, she ran a hand down his arm, and at first he thought it was merely an effort at comfort (why did everyone want to _touch_ him when he was sad?), but then he recognized the tingle of magic at her fingertips. “Does that help?” she asked.

It was a pleasant sensation, but it didn’t ease him from the inside like sharing magic with Voldemort or even Tom. “Save it for Tonks,” he said gently. “It’s not… well, you know how it’s different.”

“Ah. I thought it might….” That they might still be close enough emotionally to share magic. She took her hands off him. “You already know you’re not alone,” she said. “And it doesn’t help anything, to pretend that you are.”

“I know,” he admitted. He was still numb and exhausted, but not in a way that sleep would help. “I need to get dressed. I’ll be out in a bit.”

At that, she arched her eyebrows teasingly at the covers, drawn high to his torso. “What, you’ve been talking to me with no pants on, then?”

More shameful than that, he’d been asleep in a nappy under his sweatpants. It helped to settle him, physically and emotionally, and if he weren’t so self-conscious, he’d have worn it to dueling too. Anyway, he shook his head with a smile. “Lucky knickers before battle, you know.” Another one of the dumb things they’d said in the war last year, to get them through it. Ginny grinned back at him.

So he was the last one in the Great Hall, scrambling to join McGonagall and Flitwick as they prepared a presentation. The youngest students would practice the use of items in dueling – summoning, dispelling, dropping a troll’s own club on its head – but the fourth years and up had variously been introduced to the Patronus before. It was valuable defensive magic, not only against Dementors but most dark magic, and it’d been Harry with many of the Aurors who’d honed the technique of using it in battle.

It was only when he pulled out his wand that he wondered whether he’d be able to cast it at all.

A breath. He didn’t want to find out he was too broken before the entire school. He ran his wand through his fingers, seeking out the strand of vibrant magic that connected him to his Patronus.

But the magic of his wand felt… complicated. It was good, but it held death. Ollivander had warned him once that tragedy clung to phoenix wands in particular – that the magic of rebirth also carried the weight of the past.

But he had another wand, one not so mired in time and tragedy. He had carried the olive wand alongside his own since receiving it; the current of magic between them made it simple and obvious. He drew it from an inner pocket now.

The wood was bright and well-polished, reflecting all the candles in the Great Hall. He ran his thumb over the pattern of scales in the handle. He’d rarely used Voldemort’s yew wand – only a few times when it was nearer at hand to clean up messes, and once when Voldemort was demonstrating how poorly Harry’s wand performed dark magic by contrast – but this one felt better. Stable, reliable, _good_. He wondered how Ollivander had ever come to associate it with Voldemort.

Flitwick had concluded his demonstration of the wandwork best suited for charms in combat. He had brought Kingsley to the front with him, as one of the Aurors protecting the castle this week, because it would be simpler for him to perform dark magic in their demonstration than anyone else. “Dark magic can be greatly damaging not only to the recipient but also to the caster,” he was addressing the students, who’d gone quiet and solemn. “Outside of circumstances of peril, you should never expect to use it. But within those circumstances – well, your opponent will likely have no compunction about using dark magic.”

He said it neutrally, but there were a few murmurs at this. Of course they would picture the Death Eaters, but the Death Eaters were _gone_. Or they would picture Voldemort, who would never pose a threat to Britain again. So the hypothetical attackers in this circumstance, nameless and faceless, seemed themselves more a threat than – well, the devil you know.

“Tonight, in drills, the dark spell each of you is _allowed_ to use,” he stressed, “is a slow-acting poisoning, _Plumbunto_.” He cast it without a target, allowing the ring of magic to dissipate. “And if I may cast it on Professor Potter,” he said, raising his eyes to find Harry in the crowd, “he will demonstrate how to dispel it with a Patronus.”

Stepping in, he saw the concern in Kingsley’s face. He wondered what Harry himself wondered, if he was too broken for this. But he gave Kingsley a short nod, before bowing and raising his wand.

“Plumbunto!” “Expecto Patronum!”

He had thought of nothing more than the anticipation of seeing his Patronus – _their_ Patronus. So when he felt the warm rush of magic down his arm that came first, and then watched the silvery shape coalesce at the end of his wand, he nearly went slack with relief.

The thestral charged in, catching the dark ring of magic in midair. It shuddered, and shook it off. It circled back to him, allowing Harry to rest his hand on its long neck. It helped.

“Would you like to explain the technique?” Kingsley asked.

“Oh. Yeah.” He was still rubbing the thestral’s neck as he addressed the room – there were some curious whispers, because not everyone knew about the thestral and not everyone would even recognize it. Anyway. “The Patronus comes out of your own magic. When it intercepts dark magic, it lets you avoid all the effects but the damage to your soul itself. But, uh, we can fix that afterward. Any sort of exposure to dark magic – even secondhand – can be dangerous, but a Patronus can also neutralize the worst of it and heal damage, so… it’s useful. Those of you in my fifth year class and up, we’ve worked on controlling your Patronus?” A few nods, as he looked around the room. “You still should. You will have to make decisions for it when there are multiple threats. But you saw how this one charged – I didn’t do it consciously. It will put itself between you and danger naturally.”

That’s it, he had nothing grander or more complex to say. But his Patronus – his _stag_ – had seen him through  the battle of the Forbidden Forest admirably. He’d been grateful. And this thestral – he did think of it as the same one – had protected Voldemort from the Inferi that night he’d been captured. What had either of them done, to deserve something so unrelentingly good?

The drills went slowly – a faculty member had to watch each pair, with dark magic involved, so every year had to practice two at a time. Harry was with the seventh years – and enough of them had fought last year to have known this magic already, so he was not terribly burdened. He kept the thestral by his side, anyway.

Elia Long looked at it curiously as she took a spot beside him to watch. “We were so accustomed to looking for the buck,” she said, because she’d fought in the forest, too. “Did you know, that it had changed?”

“Uh-huh. Earlier this year.”

“All the books will have to put in a note.”

He made a face but she was right, it was iconic – photos of his stag had made it to the few books on the second war that had already been published. One book used it as the cover. Fred and George’s terrible erotica used the stag as a sort of icon for hero _Hadrian Parker_. He quite liked ruining all their publications, anyway.

The students struggled. The dark spell Kingsley had chosen was really quite mild, but its miasma hung in the air and made everything feel dire. Even if most wixes couldn’t feel the cling of magic like Harry had become accustomed to with Voldemort, they were still clearly affected by it. He had to coach them through just casting a Patronus in this atmosphere again, to begin.

But by an hour in, they were getting it consistently, Patronuses dodging in front of them to intercept dark magic. Harry was warm and easy by the end – being in the presence of Patronuses always made him this way. “Good, excellent,” he said as Luna’s rabbit scampered in front of her. She beamed at him.

The residual effects of dark magic would wear off overnight. The ones who hadn’t avoided the curse each got a sludgy vial from Lavender, that made them gag as they swallowed it. Harry had moved to leave at the end of the evening with Ron and Hermione when Kingsley approached. “Harry?” he said, rather apologetic.

“Yeah.” He peeled off, at last dispelling their thestral that hadn’t left his side all night.

Kingsley looked to the dissolving mist. “You could have kept it,” he said gently.

Harry shook his head. He found it easier to pretend everything was fine, than talk about how it wasn’t. Not that it mattered, because Kingsley said next, “What do you need from us?”

Harry blinked at him. This was uncomfortable. The Aurors – and even moreso, the Order – had always prioritized his well-being, but they usually kept it more subtle than this. “Nothing.”

Kingsley was handing him new vials of magic. “The researchers expect there is a tolerance,” he said, at Harry’s look. “And they are quite sure you are consuming more than you once did.”

Because magic was his substitution for anti-depressants. He nodded. “Er, thanks. When I’m allowed out again I’ll let them study me.”

A faint smile. “If you’d like. And he is still…?”

“Gone,” he confirmed. “Unconscious, we assume.” (Kingsley’s eyebrows arched at _we_ , not knowing the extent of the Horcrux. Harry pretended it was a mistake.) “There’s not even…. Normally our magic touches just normally. Without doing anything. There’s not even that.”

“I expect you don’t need dreamless sleep, then.”

Sleep didn’t bring them any closer together now, but he still hoped. “No.”

“We haven’t heard anything about Voldemort directly,” Kingsley said, his tone even and dispassionate as it always was when giving him news. “We have heard of more activity among various groups of Undying. We assume we were _meant_ to hear some of it, but….” He lifted a hand. “They are typically isolated communities, but there seems to be some sort of collaboration along the Mediterranean.”

“They’re deciding what to do with him.” Whether to kill him. _How_ to kill him. His mouth had gone dry.

“Well. Maybe. Within recent events,” – all that encompassing the global revelation of magic – “they have been reconsidering their own relationship to the Muggles. Voldemort _catalyzed_ it – as did you,” he said with a careful smile,” and they may also feel as entitled to him for such matters as they do for immortality. Or because of his significance in Britain’s politics. Or for your Horcrux. He is – valuable,” he said in a sigh. “Our operatives abroad would look to removing him, but for the international crises it would cause.”

“So what are they doing instead?”

He tried not to say it snarkily, but it didn’t quite sound sincere, either. Happily Kingsley was impassive. “Pursuing relations with the local Undying. We are nearer to some than others. Mapping the wards and ley lines, to be dismantled later if necessary. They might be able to lure out the Humnerë, for the right price.”

His reflexive thought was _no, nobody else can die for me_. He knew that was too much to promise. “Thank you,” he said. “Uh, should I do anything?”

“Merely stay… okay,” Kingsley said carefully, skipping words like _alive_ or _sane_. “Nobody expects you to rescue him. As attractive as your shared magic is, it would be foolish to offer you together.”

It made sense. But he could imagine nobody else saving Voldemort. Nobody else wanted him back even a fraction as much. “Alright,” he said anyway.

“And… Moody suggested that keeping one of his Horcruxes on your person might stabilize your magic. If not fully supplementing it.”

Would wonders never cease. Moody hated the Horcruxes more than he hated Voldemort himself. Harry couldn't explain why to Kingsley, of course. Maybe if he had the locket that would be plausible, but he considered the diadem much too human to be worn now, apart from the times he was transporting it. Still: “Yeah. I might. It’s a good idea.”

“Good.” Kingsley hated the Horcruxes too, the concept of them, but his tone was neutral now. “Harry, just – be careful. You aren’t useful to him if you’re broken.”

It was a strange appeal, especially from an Auror. But Harry being Harry, he was much better at taking care of other people than himself. He nearly smiled at the gentle manipulation. “I know.”

“Good,” he said again. Resting a hand on his shoulder momentarily, Kingsley left him.

Ron and Hermione had hovered in the background; he rejoined them. “It’s nothing.”

“You always say that,” Ron chided.

“Well. It isn’t. They don’t know anything more than they knew weeks ago. Kingsley just wanted to make sure I wouldn’t kill myself,” he said with a dry laugh. Ron and Hermione exchanged looks. “Oh for fuck’s sake.”

“We worry about you,” Hermione crooned. “Let us worry.”

Maybe it was because he’d grown up without a mother, that all this care being lavished on him made him deeply uncomfortable. “You can worry,” he allowed. “But I don’t understand what you think will happen. I don’t mean to make you worry, anyway.”

He was walking just a bit ahead, ostensibly to ask Abzu to let them in, but also so he didn’t have to see their expressions at this. He thought perhaps Voldemort was a little more correct than he’d been given credit for: human softness was both useless and exhausting. “Hagrid’s tomorrow?” he asked, in what he hoped was a bright tone. When they made noises of affirmation, he fled to his room.

It was only when he’d gotten ready for bed, staring at the ceiling in a sort of fugue state of not being able either to move or sleep, that he realized how much he wanted Tom beside him. Ugh. One more thing to be dependent on. Still, needing the sleep, he grabbed a bag to take with him and departed for Grimmauld Place.

He expected the wards before the floo this time, so he didn’t smash into them on arrival. Still, it was a very narrow box created by the wards and floo, so he worked quickly before the feeling of smothering caught up with him. It was all Malfoy’s work, the same magic he had dismantled all year. Freed, he looked around the ground floor: empty. He heard voices upstairs so they must congregate there, but right now he only wanted Tom.

He knocked on his door; the flutter of magic that slipped out to examine him made his nose itch. Still, the door swung open, to reveal Tom alone on the bed, reading. “Oh thank god,” Harry muttered, and nearly threw himself on the bed beside him.

“You are so certain I _want_ you in my bed,” Riddle chided.

“You should.”

“Perhaps I’ve taken a lover.”

Harry looked up to make a face. “Everyone knows Slytherins are enormous pillow princesses. Bummer for you both if you have.”

Riddle was only amused with him, really, and shifted so Harry could lie down fully. “You were disastrous today.”

“Mmhm.” It was easier to talk to him, since they couldn’t exactly have secrets from one another anyway. “Nothing’s changed, though. The Undying are together, but it’s not about him, what they’ve heard. But I heard from another Auror that Moody thinks a Horcrux will _help_.” He said it in a particular way. “So I’m here.”

“So you are.” He returned to his book, but dropped a quilted blanket over Harry carelessly. He liked these gestures better than sincere worry: so small as to nearly be dismissive. He liked them a lot.

 

He woke up intermittently, as Tom moved or at the muffled voices down the way. He didn’t mind it: sleeping with other people around had the positive connotations of the dormitory; sleeping alone felt like his cupboard. But deep in the night, he stirred to find Riddle lying beside him in the dark, warm breath ghosting along the back of his neck. “Tom?”

“Mm?” In the dark he was soft, unguarded.

“They can’t take you, either.”

“The Ministry? There is a vow in place, Harry, they can’t.”

“No, the Humnerë. Any of the Undying. They can’t take you.”

“Ah.” Quiet, thinking. “They would have to find magic to sever the connection first. Or destroy the diadem itself, in the hideous event they found it.”

“Just – no matter how it is between you and Voldemort….”

“You believe he would sacrifice me?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know anything.” But his mind had wandered in the dark, and everything felt quite dire, and it seemed plausible. “Nevermind.”

The bed shifted, so Riddle could wrap his arms around Harry, squeezing in a mocking way. “My hero,” he crooned, allowing a torrent of magic to spread along his bare back. He groaned. “Close your eyes.”

He would have asked why, but Riddle’s hand between his legs a moment later made it apparent. He was nappied, and Riddle pushed the warm fabric against him first in a mocking way. Then he reached over Harry’s hip to slide his hand down the front of his sweatpants.

They hadn’t done this – whatever _this_ was – in such a long time, and Harry felt stupid for neglecting it. “Tom – “

Promptly his other hand was dropped over Harry’s mouth. “I do not want your proclamations or your gratitude,” Tom murmured in his ear, even as he ran a thumb around the head of Harry’s cock. He shuddered too hard to answer, then.

His motions were firm and practiced, infusing his touch with magic so Harry’s toes curled. Whenever he tried to turn over, to pull closer or reciprocate or just _look_ at Tom, he got shoved over on his side again. “Just – enjoy it,” Tom muttered. “I don’t want you.” He’d pressed Harry’s cock against his belly, conjuring warm lube so it slipped against his skin. More magic, warming him from the inside out, and the talented jerks and twists of Tom’s touch. His hips slam upward again and again – his come spills out along his stomach – he slumps into the pillows.

Riddle casts a cleaning charm with a touch, and pulls away from Harry without another word. Harry’s still so dazed, he does not ask why Riddle is going when the door swings open; but Riddle wouldn’t have told him anyway.

 

 _Saturday, April 24._ He got another handjob on Saturday morning, when he awoke panicked and miserable. He was wet by then, and with his free hand Riddle had pressed the warm, swollen nappy against his balls and arsehole. Once again he held Harry facing away from himself. But even impatient, perfunctory sex was good enough to patch up his broken soul for the day.

Kreacher’s crepes for breakfast, and then he scooped up Moira on his way out. “I’ll bring her back,” he promised Twigg, the only one up early enough to witness his departure. A short nod.

Back at Hogwarts, he found Ron and Hermione in the Great Hall. “Hi, Moira,” Ron said, petting her head so her tail thumped against Harry’s ribs. “Have they made you into a Slytherin yet? You may have to learn to slither.”

Harry nearly smiled. As long as they were talking about her, they weren’t talking about _him_ , which was his entire strategy.

And it continued to work when they arrived at Hagrid’s hut, with Hagrid already out in his garden and the door propped open to let in springtime air. Hagrid’s face crinkled into a smile when he saw them, and he leaned the shovel against a beanpole. “What’re yeh doing out here?”

“Do we need a reason?” Hermione asked, standing on her tiptoes as Hagrid bent to kiss her cheek. “We wanted to see you before everyone got too busy at the end of the year.”

“Awful kind – Fang! Be good,” he scolded as Fang bounded out of the hut at the sound of visitors.

“Whoa – hi, Fang – good boy – “ Harry shifted to avoid getting thrown to the ground by the dog, but he let go of Moira in the chaos. She _leapt_ from his grasp, fluttering over Fang’s head, and then darted off. “Moira -- !” But it was too later, Fang was bounding across the lawn with Moira fluttering just out of reach.

Hagrid watched fondly. “I never thought she’d get so strong,” he said to Harry. “She was so small, at first.”

“She is spoiled,” Harry said. “Massively spoiled. Kreacher cooks for her. She’s got, well, _everyone_ paying attention to her. It’s been good for them all.”

They’d all started on a walk behind the dogs, easy and without direction. Harry saw out of the corner of his eye that Ron and Hermione were holding hands, and he nearly sighed in relief.

Hagrid was hesitant when he asked, “Are they alright?”

The Slytherins would never entirely be _alright_ , but – “As near to it,” Harry said. “They’re all just waiting, honestly. For – something to change.”

“Remus was out here earlier this week,” Hagrid said, with some hesitation. “Said Snape’s been _negotiating_ with them, how to get them back in the castle. But he’s not just talking with them. Some of the governors aren’t tickled by the idea, either.”

“Oh for god’s sake,” Harry sighed. (Hagrid frowned, brow furrowing, since _God_ was so rarely invoked among real wixes.) “Do you know who?”

“Yeh can’t fix this, too,” Hagrid said, giving him a sidelong look. “Slughorn’s been with the governors too, he’s good at tha’ sort of thing.”

“It’s just….” Harry dragged a hand down his face. “Alright. We thought it was important they get back in school. And we were supposed to fix the castle’s wards over the summer.” He hesitated – should he warn Hagrid that Riddle might also be here over the summer? How the hell _was_ he going to handle that, anyway?

“Yeh believe it then. That the castle’s cursed.”

“Well – the wards are.” He realized that _cursed_ meant something specific, and he tried to revise. “The wards are decaying, but we think we know why, and how to fix them.”

“ _We_ ,” Hagrid echoed, blunt and bitter. “Voldemort, then?”

“… Yeah.”

“Makes sense,” Hagrid allowed. “It’s _his_ castle, isn’t it.”

Harry blinked, surprised that he’d intuit what was so close to the real problem. Then again, the _heir of Slytherin_ had ruined Hagrid’s life. “Sort of,” he said. “If – if he’s ever at the castle, I will warn you first. You haven’t got to….”

Hagrid’s expression was still dark and guarded. “He doesn’t scare me.”

“No. He shouldn’t.” _He should infuriate you_ , but he didn’t say that. What he said was even less politic: “This is the wrong time, but – would you come to our wedding? They sent me invitations, here.” And he was going through his bookbag, pulling out an envelope. It looked so small and so bright in Hagrid’s hand as he took it, albeit with skepticism.

“They don’t want me there.”

“You haven’t got to see Voldemort at all if you don’t want. I’ve invited… everyone else. Most of the faculty, all of the Order.”

“Not Voldemort.” (He was clearly not at ease saying his name, but he soldiered on.) “The rest of ‘em. The Ministry. The purebloods.”

Harry was quietly crushed because he hadn’t considered this, that Hagrid wouldn’t be particularly comfortable around such casual bigotry, as most of the Ministry’s was. “That’s not a reason not to invite you,” he said. “Actually that’s _more_ reason I want you there. They all can get stuffed if they think anything about it.”

Hagrid tsked at his language, but then he was silent again. Finally: “I’ll think about it.”

It was as good as he could do right now. Harry smiled up at him. “Thanks. Really.” A noncommittal noise.

Ron and Hermione had veered off on their own, talking seriously by the look off it. Harry let them go, instead following the dogs toward the lake. Fang was typically afraid of water, and by the time Harry and Hagrid reached them, he was baying at the lake’s shore as Moira skimmed just over the water. “You are a nuisance,” Harry told her fondly, beckoning her back. She licked his face.

But, walking back toward the castle later, he wondered if Remus faced the same inherent hostility in pureblood settings. Or even Hermione. She’d told him that the wixen world really hadn’t made as much progress as it says it has, and Muggleborns were still underrepresented, and quasi-humans were still not able to advocate for themselves legally, and…. And Harry was going to be a part of this Ministry, as much tacit acceptance was wrapped up in his belonging. Hermione had accused him before in being complicit in Voldemort’s politics, but it was everyone _else’s_ politics too, that he would become an icon for.

He occasionally had felt or even said that he would change things – and he believed he could, and would. But the weight of inertia was strong anyway, and stronger among a race that lived to about two hundred years old.

Really, _Voldemort_ was the best chance at large scale change. He’d already implemented a lot – in commerce and art and education. New legislation was being optimized now, for health, science, and research. Slipping in some civil rights for quasi-humans and mixed race wixes on the end of a bill shouldn’t be so hard, really. Maybe Harry could put it on the end of some Muggle legislation, if he ever proposed some. He’d like to.

 

 _Sunday, April 25_. When he returned to Grimmauld Place that night with Moira, he didn’t quite mean to stay over, but he didn’t quite mean to leave, either. The Slytherins regarded him as something of a fixture by now, even if they hadn’t parted on good terms on Thursday. He was, for some reason, most wary about seeing Malfoy again – he was talented at nothing if not drawing out drama for months. ( _Buckbeak_.) But when Malfoy saw him wander into the drawing room on Sunday morning when they were all flipping through dark, _dark_ magic books together, he sighed but moved so Harry might sit beside him.

Harry watched warily as Graham Pritchard and Hypatia Pickering practiced some dark vanishing spells. (Dark because they could vanish _humans_ , and while they might show up again it wouldn’t be in one piece.) “Can you cast a Patronus?” he asked Malfoy in an undertone.

“Why? Would you find it tragic, otherwise?”

“I mean. I would. But that’s not why.”

Sitting so close together, Malfoy’s gray eyes looked especially dark in his skeptical glance. “What is it, Potter.”

“In dueling club, we practiced using a Patronus to deflect dark magic. They should probably know it, too.”

A quirk of his mouth. “You have re-established _Dumbledore’s Army_ ,” he said. “That is charming.”

“Ugh. How can you even live with yourself after that year,” Harry muttered. “And – sort of. They should at least know the Patronus. And whatever Tom has shown them, I don’t think he can do that one.” Riddle’s humanity surprised him sometimes, but not _that_ much.

“We understand the Patronus. He believes – and I am inclined to agree – that merely holding off an attacker will never truly win.”

Of course they believed that. “If I cleared out the ballroom, could you join me, with whoever wants to practice?”

Malfoy actually dropped his head in his hands, sighing. “You don’t stop,” he muttered between his fingers. “You just… _never stop_.”

Harry grinned, not quite guilty. “I’m cleaning out the ballroom, then,” he said. By now they’d attracted the attention of some students. “You need to learn how to cast a Patronus,” he addressed them.

Pritchard wrinkled his nose. “Gryffindor magic. _Hero’s_ magic.”

(“ _Ha_ ,” Malfoy said beside him as though he’d proven something.)

“You need it for OWLs,” Harry told Pritchard reasonably. “So you’ll have to tolerate it that long, at least.”

A glare. He’d given the OWL and NEWT students copies of the old exams, they should know what was expected of them. Harry rose. “Where’s Tom?”

“The library,” Daphne said, from her spot in a quiet corner.

“Tell him he should be there, too.”

It would be for Harry’s sake, not Tom’s, if he came. Harry needed the magic, the substitute for happiness. But when Harry was in the unused ballroom, one of the least pleasant and most filthy parts of the house, Tom let himself in silently. “What are you doing?”

“You couldn’t have shown them the Patronus. But they need to learn it.”

“Now?”

“Well. I showed it at dueling club this week. I may as well keep them on some parallel schedule.”

Riddle had crossed the room, casting a spell that froze all the doxies in the drapes. Their bodies fell to the floor; he vanished them. “You’re correct, I haven’t shown them a Patronus. Do you understand why?”

“Because you’re not real?”

Riddle tsked. “Try again.”

“Because… you’re not real,” Harry said again. “You’ve sort of got a soul but it’s hardly your own.” Riddle’s expression made clear that wasn’t the right answer. “ _Don’t_ tell me you haven’t got a memory happy enough. My god. I’ll give you one, if you want.”

“No. But that is nearly closer.” He stepped in. “What sort of memories must they use, _Professor_?”

“Good ones. Simple and strong, usually ones with lasting impact. Oh,” he sighed, realizing. “Pure ones. Not malicious, not where anyone else is being hurt. But you _must_ – “

“No.” Riddle was impatient with him now. “ _Why_ can’t they use compromised memories?”

“I don’t know. I mean.” He kicked up a cloud of dust by swirling his wand in frustration. “The books all say something to do with _purity_ and _goodness_ , but that’s – ugh. It’s not goodness in any way I recognize.”

“This isn’t a _morality play_. Malicious acts are like malicious magic, they taint the person. Anyone who has performed dark magic should avoid the Patronus if they have not repented. Their soul will come apart otherwise. Perhaps not all at once, but – eventually.”

“The Slytherins – what have they _done_?” Harry asked, sad and bewildered. “They can’t have – really used dark magic.” _They can’t have killed anyone_. “None of them were in the war. On either side,” he emphasized. “When would they have reason to use magic like that?”

A shrug. “There is no grand moment of transformation,” Riddle said. “But they have been exposed to more dark magic than you have. It is in their blood,” he said, his mouth quirking. “And it is – revealing, to learn such things in front of their peers.”

“Even if they don’t trust anyone else, can’t they trust each other?” Harry said, exasperated.

“Some magic is personal.”

Fine, he saw the point of it. “Then I’ll give them privacy spells. It doesn’t matter. I wasn’t going to show them as some sort of _espionage_.”

“Of course you weren’t,” he said, in a way that implied Harry was unspeakably naïve. “I will bring the students to you, nonetheless.”

“Do you want to cast a Patronus?” Harry blurted, before Riddle could leave. “I mean – I did it for Voldemort before, out of our shared magic.” Though of course Riddle already knew this, it was when Harry’s Patronus had changed.

“I experience all of your magic,” Riddle said. “I do already know how it feels to cast.”

“But do you – “

“No.”

Wanker. Harry waved him off, and returned to dusting the ballroom.

The Slytherins dribbled in, curious if not committed. Tom and Malfoy were last in, looking at least as skeptical. As an afterthought, Tom conjured bright pouf chairs like the Divination classroom where the Slytherins then settled. Harry offered him a tentative smile; he didn’t get one back.

“I showed – the rest of them,” he said awkwardly to the group before him, “at dueling club – that Patronuses could be used also to deflect dark magic. Not just creatures, dark _spells_. The older ones, you’ve seen Expecto Patronum before. Practice it first, it usually takes a bit. And then if you could pair off, with one partner casting… hm.” He frowned, looking to Tom. “A good dark, offensive spell? We used Plumbuntium but that’s because Lavender had the antidote.”

“What an inefficient use of potions ingredients. Try _Praefoco_.”

“What does that do?”

“Suffocation.”

“Are you mad,” he said (over a few laughs from the students). “We can’t – “

“The effect is lifted when the spell is. It is quite harmless.”

Harry shuddered, contemplating the full range of what Riddle would deem _harmless_. “Fine,” he said. “Could you cast it at me? I’ll show them how to deflect it.”

A faint frown, but then Riddle stepped up, bowing in a shallow motion. Harry returned it, raising the olive wand.

“Praefoco!” – “Expecto Patronum!”

But this time, his magic faltered, sputtering at his fingers. The dark ring of magic shot through the silvery mist of his failed Patronus, hitting his chest and surging upward, closing his throat and sticking his mouth shut. He stumbled back, fumbling for any non-verbal magic –

And then Riddle drew the spell back, and his throat was opened again. He gasped for air and then he was fine. Riddle caught his eye. “Harmless,” he said easily. But then he was stepping in, pressing a hand to Harry’s forearm, diffusing magic in their touch. “As you see,” he addressed the room, “it will do more harm than good, if you are not confident in your Patronus. It is a significant drain on your magic, making it difficult to recover quickly in a duel, so if you would rather rely on more magic-efficient spells….”

Harry hadn’t noticed the reactions of the Slytherins when his Patronus failed, but looking out at them now – they were deeply amused. Bloody fantastic. He didn’t mind making a spectacle of himself while teaching generally, but the combination of sullen skepticism and malicious laughter was fucking hideous. He took a breath, letting himself only look at Tom for a moment. “Again,” he said stubbornly.

“Cast your Patronus first,” Tom told him. “It will intercept the spell anyway.”

Oh. That was less stressful, not having to cast at precisely the right moment. With a last bit of magic pressed into his touch, Riddle stepped back. Pushing all his negative thoughts away and focusing on the gentle comfort of his thestral, he lifted his wand. “Expecto Patronum!”

His thestral emerged easily this time, swishing its tail and flicking its ears. “Hello,” Harry said, too low for the room to hear. It tossed its glittering mane. “Tom, could you – “

“Praefoco!”

Wanker. Still, the thestral charged in, intercepting the spell effortlessly. Harry felt the echo of it, the way dark magic chafed against his soul. Still, he was fine, and the thestral was too as it rejoined him.

“Perfect your Patronus,” Tom addressed the room (and Harry was quietly annoyed because these were _his_ students). “Harry will take those of you who have yet to learn Expecto Patronum. I will take the older ones, to practice strategy.”

“I created battle strategy with the Aurors,” Harry said, irritated. “Why should you get to do it?”

“Because I cannot cast a Patronus,” Tom said with false patience. “As you know. As everyone knows. I could only give them so much instruction, theoretically. I do understand dueling, quite well. I will excuse myself, if you’d prefer I not be involved?”

“Ugh. Fine.” He hated _losing_ in front of his students, who already had so little respect for him. “You will have the smaller group, then?” he asked, looking around. “Could you take them – I dunno, anywhere else. The garden, or the crystal suite. Even the entryway has space….”

Riddle took the 6th years and up out. Harry was left with – well, everyone else. He took a seat on a pouf before them, as though they were friends, before leading into his Patronus lecture.

 

The day went nothing like the dueling club. The Slytherins were sullen and doubtful and distracted. Typically they had been the boldest of his students, since so many of them had grown up native magic users, but on this they were oddly reticent. “Alright,” he sighed, looking around at the complete lack of progress. Some of them didn’t even have their wands out, what the hell. “Would it help if you practiced on your own? You won’t get it at first, that is normal, but it gets easier as you begin to recognize how the magic feels. So if some of you stay here, and some take the tea room, and some take the entryway – “

They had all left in a cluster, every one of them. “Brilliant,” Harry said to the empty room. They hadn’t been _bored_ , so he thought, and it’s not like this had been compulsory, but they were all so eager to get out. Relieved of teaching duties for the moment, he went to find Tom.

The eighth years were in the garden, mostly chattering and milling about. He let himself out the door quietly, his thestral still trailing behind him because it was that sort of day. Zabini noticed, and sort of smirked. “Don’t,” Harry said, now tired.

Riddle was on the far side of the garden, with Malfoy and Millicent. They hadn’t noticed him, so Harry hung back, curious. Then Millicent cast ( _not_ the spell they were supposed to practice with) and Malfoy attempted a Patronus. Incorporeal, but the mist was thick enough to disperse the curse. He gritted his teeth, raising his wand again. Millicent cast; this time Malfoy’s Patronus was weak enough that the curse passed through it. He winced, stepping back. Riddle was saying something to him, and he dropped his wand.

“Why a thestral?” Nott said, sizing up Harry’s Patronus. “It’s awfully grim for you, isn’t it?”

“No. I like it. We used them in the war.” He tried to say it neutrally, but Nott’s father had died in the war. He’d been cornered by Aurors in Hogsmeade, and while he’d already been quite injured, he’d killed himself with a blasting curse to his chest rather than be captured. Nott deserved to _not_ talk about the war, in any case.

But there was no visible response. “Oh,” he said, and returned to ignoring Harry.

And Riddle, Malfoy, and Millicent were drawing back toward the fountain, where the rest of them sat. Millie was saying something lowly to Malfoy, but Riddle looked to Harry and his thestral immediately. “You’ve left them?”

“They left me. They wouldn’t practice in front of me. Or maybe one another.”

A quirk of his mouth. “As I said. It is revealing. Much can be learned from a Patronus.”

Harry shrugged, drawing his thestral closer. “Nothing _bad_ , though. Nothing dangerous. You’d do better with a boggart.”

“If a Patronus dispels dark magic,” Pansy said, mischievous, “why hasn’t yours charged down Tom?”

Because Tom was already part of his soul as well. Because he served a similar function, diffusing magic and stability to Harry’s broken soul. That _would_ be too revealing, so instead he shot a grin at Tom. “Why _hasn’t_ it?”

Tom was unmoved. “You might try. But – “ He moved to run his hand along the thestral’s long neck. “It will do nothing.”

“What about him?”

Harry looked in surprise at Goyle, who had posed the question. His thick arms were crossed over his chest, but his expression was tentative. Harry drew a breath. “You should learn magic because – well, you’re not really safe. But Voldemort is not a threat to you. Really,” he said at a few skeptical noises. “He – well, nevermind. But the Humnerë _are_ a threat to you, and – I don't know if _they’re_ repelled by Patronuses, but the Inferi they use have been.”

“All the undead should be,” Riddle murmured.

Harry shrugged. “I only saw him with the Dëshmitar. Maybe it’s different.”

Inquiring looks at that, since he hadn’t properly _seen_ Voldemort in months. He attempted to distract them: “So you should practice. I hope you never need it, but…”

“That’s enough, Potter,” Malfoy said, with a lopsided smirk. “Enough _pedagogy_ and _concern_ and _heroism_ for now. You should go find the little ones, for lunch.”

Harry rolled his eyes at Malfoy, but he went.

Similar failure among the younger students. Beatrice Yaxley managed a thin silver mist. “That’s partial credit on your OWL,” Harry told her encouragingly – but the rest of them, not even close. And failed Patronuses were emotionally draining too, so they were all rather irritable and cruel by the time Kreacher served lunch.

Harry ended up sitting beside Malfoy, with Moira on his other side. (Spoiled, _spoiled_ dog, he thought as she got the same lunch they did.) Looking down the table at quiet, glowering, miserable Slytherins, he ducked his head to address Malfoy lowly: “Should I go?”

Malfoy looked down the table indifferently. “If you’d like.”

“You know what I mean.”

“They’re _bored_ ,” Malfoy said. “They are restless, frustrated, and hopeless. Not everything is about you.”

“Can I… I don’t even know,” he muttered. He and Voldemort had passed the summer reading and fucking, and he could only endorse one of those. He’d thought magic would be a good distraction, but it had only made everything worse. “Maybe I’ll bring over some video games.”

“Please don’t,” Malfoy said, even though Harry was positive he didn’t know what that even meant.

“I don’t want you all to feel forgotten.”

“To _be_ forgotten,” Malfoy corrected. “And we have been.”

“The Ministry’s doing a lot to try to – well, fix everything.”

“They have said as much to you, anyway.”

“I know,” Harry said. “But I need to believe it. Not for their sakes.”

Malfoy still looked so weary as he went back to his plate. “It’s alright, Potter. You’ve saved enough people already.” When Harry opened his mouth to protest, Malfoy slapped his back in an especially aggressive gesture of soothing. He shut up.

 

Late that night, he slipped into Tom’s room, scarcely knocking before he let himself in. He was reading in bed, as usual, and made a noise of protest as Harry flopped beside him. “Why do you do these things?”

“Because they annoy you,” Harry said, shoving Riddle’s legs to the side.

He got a dry look. “The _other_ things. Your martyred time with the Slytherins.”

“I dunno. I feel bad that they’ve nearly been abandoned.”

“And the Patronus?”

“They need to know it.” Harry looked up. “If you’re accusing me of distracting myself – of course I am. So what?”

“As long as you’re aware of it.”

“Mm. Can I sleep over again?”

“Yes.”

“And – later this week, too? Not every night, but sometimes.”

Riddle closed his book, and dragged Harry into a sitting position so he wasn’t sprawled out like a child. “It hurts, in a quite literal sense, when your soul is coming apart. I feel quite susceptible to your madness, as though I were coming apart as well. I would prefer you sleep here.”

“It’s not _madness_ ,” Harry said, massively offended. “It’s depression, and it’s warranted.”

“My statement stands.”

If he fought anymore he might get uninvited from Riddle’s bed, so he fell quiet. He had dropped his bag in here earlier, so he summoned it now, pulling out _The Count of Monte Cristo_. Riddle even humored him as he pressed their sides together, soaking up his magic greedily.

 

 _Wednesday, April 28._ But it got worse anyway. He was crushed when he was alone, left with only his thoughts. His teaching was beginning to lose focus, and he skipped all of his own classes apart from Runes (because he’d never hear the end of it if he told Malfoy he was too sad for class).

On Wednesday morning, he’d had to leave his NEWT level class alone with practice exams while he had a panic attack in the loo. Calming draughts, magic replenishment, Verve, baobab, and kaval were part of his daily routine; and they were scarcely enough. He hoped that he wasn’t inflicting any of his feelings on Voldemort, but no – Voldemort was gone. Their connection was gone and Harry had never felt so empty.

Ron and Hermione dragged him to dueling club on Wednesday night. “McGonagall says now she only hears rumors that you teach here,” Ron said. “Have they finally converted you to a Slytherin? Is that why you’re always with them?”

“I’m with the Horcrux,” Harry said, dropping his voice as they entered the Great Hall. “The rest of them are an accident.”

“Can it… find him?” Ron asked, brow furrowing. “Or has it got magic to help him?”

“He gives _me_ magic.”

If he didn’t feel dead inside, he would really take Ron and Hermione’s looks of horror personally. “His magic is – tainted,” Hermione said in a strangled way. “It must be. No matter how much you like him personally – “

“Who said I liked him?” Harry interrupted.

“You scarcely needed to, the way you looked at him. Oh,” she frowned at his expression. “You’re not, er, together? I expected, with Voldemort….”

“They’re really not the same.” Aside from the pretty good handjobs, he’d never considered his relationship with Riddle to be a _relationship_. “And our magic is the same. For obvious reasons,” he said dryly. “That’s all.” More skeptical looks.

But when McGonagall and Flitwick sized him up, he decreed that they had tonight’s instruction sorted and why didn’t Harry just observe until students needed particular input. Well. Fine. But then later, when the students were breaking out by year, he got separated from Ron and Hermione. When he looked for students still in need of observation, he saw the fifth years standing alone.

He arrived there at the same time as Snape.

Snape glared but did not address Harry. Instead, throwing his robes back dramatically, he looked down his nose at the fifth years. “Which impediment curses has Potter taught you?”

Harry tried to answer for himself. “We’ve done – “

“Quiet, Potter. Which spells have your students _retained_?”

“The tripping jinx,” one of them said. “The spraining jinx. Curses for balance and dexterity. Spells to put things in front of your opponent, or make the floor slick or difficult to get through, or….”

“Very impressive,” Snape said in a way that meant it was not impressive at all. “Are you confident these spells will keep your opponent an advantageous distance away?” Some looks around the semi-circle; he conjured a handful of multi-colored handkerchiefs. “Pair off,” he instructed. “And each of you will take one.”

Harry watched in incredulity and delight as Snape essentially organized a game of capture the flag. No summoning spells, just strategy to get near enough to grab their partner’s flag from their collar. He was actually jealous that he could only watch, as a professional. Damn.

Snape wasn’t actually looking at him when he said, “They must also use these spells in dueling on Friday. None of your sweet encouragement will help them when they’re still doing _that_.” He gestured to a Hufflepuff boy who’d just tripped on his own jinx.

“They’re doing fine. …You won’t be here Friday?” he twigged on. He’d wondered if Snape secretly missed teaching, because he was _always_ at the dueling club. More likely, however, he enjoyed watching the students fuck up.

“It is the full moon.”

Right. Shit. He sighed. “I should keep track. Tell Remus, uh, good luck or something.”

“You could tell him yourself, Mr. Potter, as I am not an owl.”

Harry’s abrupt laugh was covered by a cough. “Yeah, alright.”

He and Remus had been awkward around each other since – well, weeks ago. They were more awkward than he was with _Snape_ , probably because Snape felt no obligation to like him in spite of everything. But while he was looking around the Great Hall for Remus, two Ravenclaw boys crashed into him in the middle of a tussle, they all went down, and Snape only glowered at their tangled, useless mass of limbs instead of helping in any way. Wanker.

 

Somehow, at the end of the night, Remus knew Harry had been looking for him, and found him first. As he watched the tired but otherwise happy students shuffle toward the doors, Remus stopped beside him. “Whatever you and Severus set the fifth years to doing looked quite spirited.”

“I know. I wanted to play, too,” he confessed with a smile.

“Have you got time for a drink? In my quarters,” Remus added at Harry’s look. “Not Severus’s.”

“… Yeah, alright.” It would be stunningly rude to ask _why_ , but he could not fathom why.

Remus’s suite was in a different part of the dungeons, nearer to the Slytherin dorms. “Have you ever mentioned the magic decaying down here?” Harry asked, looking to some crumbling stone in the walls.

“Yes. It will hold out through the summer, anyway. It’s seemed to slow, recently.” He looked over. “Will you stay for the summer? We need another pair of hands.”

“I’ll be here sometimes,” Harry allowed. “Though I’m not teaching the Slytherins.”

“You’re not?” Remus interrupted, curious. “Severus said he was making arrangements. Do you know who will be?”

Whatever Riddle would disguise himself as, as insane as that was. He shook his head. “They’re not so far behind,” he said, as Remus pulled open a door with a Turkish rug hung over it. “At least in Defense. They’ll be alright.”

“Hm,” Remus frowned, letting him in. “How are they doing otherwise? Not academically.”

Harry shrugged, hanging his cloak by the door. “They feel forgotten. They sort of have been.”

“You have been a good advocate to them.”

Really, he hadn’t, but he tried to smile. “Sort of.”

Remus was working at the high neckline of his robes. “Ugh. Pour yourself a drink – “ a flourish of his wand and a drink cart slid from the wall. “I need to get out of these. Just a moment.”

So Harry poured whiskey and paged through _Journal of Defensive Studies_ , left on a side table. Remus returned in a soft jumper, but looked no more at ease. He poured a gin and tonic before joining Harry on the sofa. “Severus is published in that one,” he said, nodding to the journal. “Did you see?”

Harry flipped back to the table of contents. _S.A. Snape_ , with an essay about the possible measurement of residual and atmospheric magic. “Huh. Nice.”

Remus smiled at his polite disinterest. “That is not why I have invited you, however.” Then he squared his shoulders. “What have you heard of Voldemort recently?”

“Nothing,” he said, miserable. “I’ve told the Aurors, his magic is just _gone_. Tonks said they’ve got people abroad, and they’ve been watching the Undying.”

“I only heard recently from – well, one of the few wolf contacts I have abroad. She said that on the past new moon, the entire Albanian pack of the Korab was slaughtered.” Though he was attempting to be dispassionate, his voice snagged on that word. “It has always been an uneasy relationship, but….” He looked into his glass. “They are discontent. They want something new. I assume Voldemort is a catalyst if not an instigator, but….”

The new moon, when they’d taken out the Inferi that Voldemort had charmed. He’d done this. He’d done this. “I’m sorry.”

Remus shook his head, looking tired. “He needs to know – other packs will not protect him, or extricate him. Whether it would be safer that he were not with the Humnerë, they will not interfere on his behalf. They say he is – monstrous.”

“Yeah,” Harry said, his voice faint. “I mean – they shouldn’t. He was a mercenary for the Humnerë when he was young.” Telling Remus this would only hurt him, but Harry couldn’t stop himself. “Because they couldn’t kill the werewolves themselves. I’m sorry.”

“You should not answer for his crimes,” Remus said, the barest edge to his tone.

“I mean – “ _He won’t, and somebody should_. “I guess.”

“But – you should tell him. In case it would affect his strategy or his plans.”

“I… can’t,” Harry said slowly, unsure what Remus already knew. “We’re not in touch at all.”

“Oh – Harry,” he sighed in hideous pity. “I’m sorry. I assumed it was only to do with your magic, that you could still write as you used to.”

He shook his head, unable to speak for the moment. Then Remus’s hand was on his back, and he tried not to tense up. “You have done well,” Remus said softly, “as much as has been put on you. Let us help you.”

“There’s nothing.” His voice sounded close to cracking. He had to get out, before he fell apart. “They are doing what they can, and we’ll be fine, when he is back – “ He didn’t believe it himself. He had the distinct sense he would never see Voldemort again. And they’d parted on _such_ stupid terms, that Harry had been so jealous and betrayed, and he’d give it all back –

Remus carefully picked his glass out of his hand, setting it on the coffee table before he pulled Harry into a hug. It was soft and warm and strange, and Harry _did_ tense at being touched now. Remus didn’t notice. “You don’t deserve this,” he said sadly. “You’ve never deserved any of this.”

Harry could not fix whatever Remus was feeling right now. “Neither do you,” he said, picking himself out of Remus’s arms. “Neither did anyone. I’ve got to go.” Before he fell apart completely.

“Harry….”

“Sorry,” he muttered, getting up. “Thanks, though. And, um, good luck Friday.”

Remus had to accept that he could do nothing more for Harry tonight. He gave him a soft smile. “Thank you,” he said. “Harry… be careful.”

 

Harry was already heavy and slow on kaval by the time he threw himself into Tom’s bed. Tom was elsewhere in Grimmauld Place, but he had left the door unlocked. When Harry was burrowed safely under the blankets, he let himself unravel, letting the anxieties he’d held back all day wash over him. He was alone, they were alone. Nobody even wanted Voldemort back in Britain, but if they could only let Harry leave instead…. No, they’d spent months keeping them apart anyway. It was cruel, vicious, and utterly reasonable politics.

He felt so empty.

The blanket pulled over his head reminded him of the cupboard. Before he’d become numb to his relatives’ pettiness, it would hurt the most when they’d made clear he wasn’t family. He didn’t belong there, he didn’t belong anywhere; but the small warm space under his blankets felt like an embrace. He had the faintest recollection of making up stories in the dark, where – well. Where he was a hero. Where he was beloved. He might have been too young to conceptualize a family other than the Dursleys, but being surrounded by friends and the kindest authority figures would have been enough for him.

Voldemort had made him belong, in a new way. _He’d_ made _Voldemort_ belong. They rarely spoke of their parallel lives; but what other relationship could two lonely orphans have?

There were footsteps, and the door opening. Harry lifted the blankets to see Riddle faintly startle. “How long have you been here?”

“Not long. Just… don’t,” Harry sighed, seeing the suspicion on Riddle’s face. “Whatever you’d accuse me of, don’t. I just want to sleep.”

Tom approached, slipping off deep green robes. (It distinguished him from Voldemort, Harry thought, that he did not prefer all black ensembles.) The high collar robes were worn without a dress shirt, and his bare chest was nicer than Harry had noticed before. “You may not cry on me,” he said. “You may not cry at all.”

“Fine,” he muttered. Tom meant to humiliate him, but he was already dead inside.

Seeing that that got no reaction, Tom raised his eyebrows and slid into the other side of the bed. The magic between them was so warm and natural, Harry nearly crawled into Tom’s lap, he wanted to touch him so much. Tom ran a hand down his arm, so gently as to tickle. “What?”

“Nothing.” And really, it wasn’t. Everything else had just worn away, and the circumstances he’d borne before, he could not bear any longer. “It’s nothing. Accio – “ His bookbag lifted itself from the floor; he pulled out the jar of kaval and a few baobab tablets. Washing down one with the other, he pulled the blankets back up to his chin.

Riddle pressed Harry to his side casually as he flipped open a book. “Shall I tell you that Moody sent a letter today?” he asked. “Or would you rather wallow in these useless feelings?”

“Ugh, piss off. Why was Moody writing?”

“The Wizengamot proposed new legislation. That any wealth gotten, directly or indirectly, from _terrorism_ , would be subject to seizure.”

“It wasn’t already like that?”

A wry smile. “In the last war, there were reparations. They haven’t required them again because Britain is more financially stable this time around, but also perhaps because public opinion is more favorable to counter-terrorism measures than to _forgiveness_ bought by reparations.”

“This is… just mean to fuck the Slytherins over, isn’t it?”

“Immensely.”

Harry groaned. He was too high to fully think straight, but at least it was a distraction. “Is it going to pass?”

“It might. And few of the students have access to their own vaults right now. Or much contact with their parents, really. Their lives still look quite precarious.”

“Tell them they can stay here,” Harry muttered. “Stay here, and live off whatever expense accounts Kreacher uses for groceries. _This_ is a house funded by terrorism, I’m sure.”

Riddle made a dry noise. “You have no idea.”

“You do, if you’ve gone through all their finances. Was there anything surprising?”

“Your godfather gave money to the Order.”

“Of course.”

“And so did Regulus.”

“Oh.” It was probably the inebriation, but it all felt so tragic. “Voldemort killed him,” he said a bit dully. “Because… he’d stopped being useful, I guess.”

“The danger of using children,” Riddle said indifferently. “They are passionate, but not committed. They have no sense of consequences.”

But Regulus had known _exactly_ what the consequence would be, for defying Voldemort. “Maybe,” he said.

Unexpectedly, Tom laughed at him. “He had been dead for twenty years,” he said. “You cannot save him.”

“No. I know. Nevermind.” He turned away, wondering if there was dreamless sleep in the house because it really didn’t matter.

And Tom… ran a hand along his back. It was perfunctory, humoring him, but there was magic in it nonetheless. He made a tiny noise into his pillow.

 

 _Thursday, April 29._ Thursday morning he slept through his alarms, and ran to the floo cussing Riddle out for not waking him. He hadn’t prepared for class today. It was the firsties first this morning, and he could fake it, but – still. He had a kaval hangover, which felt wobbly and empty and sick. He had had much better days teaching, and much better days in general.

He had taken sandwiches to his room for lunch, instead of facing everyone. Sitting on a sofa, he flipped through his Panopticon as he ate. He didn’t know why he bothered; it all only deepened his depression.

But then – his magic _shifted_. It was faint, but it was real. Again. There was nothing warm or comforting about the contact, but it meant Voldemort was alive. It was more than he’d gotten in weeks. Not thinking, he pressed magic into the space between them. He hoped it would help.

That flutter of connection was all. Meager and underwhelming, but nevertheless it felt like a gift. At least until Friday, when everything came apart.

 


	36. Chapter 36

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.
> 
>  
> 
> (A quick glossary again before the action: the Dëshmitar is the coven leader. The Humnerë are the political group that has kept Voldemort and want his Horcruxes. Lugat/lugétër are the specific type of vampire, who feed on souls. Varri are the footsoldiers, who are captured souls temporarily put in re-animated Inferi. Most of the Brits here will call them all Inferi because it’s more familiar to them, but if they can do magic, they’ve got a soul.)

 

 

 _Friday, April 30_. Friday’s atmosphere crackled. A full moon, Walpurgis Eve. Harry’s own unstable magic and his soul falling apart and the fragile connection between them.

He was obligated ( _by Snape!_ ) to go to dueling club that evening, but even then it took Ginny dragging him from his suite to get him into the Great Hall.

They would stage duels by year again. Harry took the fifth years as he had on Wednesday. “Impediments and obstructions,” he reminded them. “Don’t let one another get in close if you can manage.” Distracted nods as they fiddled with their wands.

It happened while Ginny was dueling, again. She and Elia Long both had beautiful charmwork that made the air sizzle, and the school was watching in fascination. And at a moment when Elia had nearly caught Ginny in a web of shields – Ginny swirled her wand hard through the air, and once more the lights were extinguished.

This time there were fewer gasps and more laughter. She hadn’t disclosed her spell to anyone, in spite of them asking all week, and Elia was casting experimental tracking spells in the dark. When one hit, spitting furious sparkles where Ginny stood, she shouted. The lights came up, she was still disillusioned, and the crowd was buzzing.

Ron also made a noise beside Harry, sort of strangled, and he looked over. Ginny was doing quite well, so what…? But Ron was looking at _him_ , at his hands held up from cheering. “What is _that_?”

He turned his left hand over with a sense of dread. A purple-gray indentation the size of a Snitch marred his skin. And the way it had just begun to buzz up his elbow, to his shoulder, he gathered that it was cursed and there were more.

Hermione had also looked over, and slapped a hand to her mouth. “Harry – “

“I need to go.” He’d pulled his sleeve down to his fingertips, but by now his magic had gone wild, bright and chaotic. It was nothing like when the Humnerë had written runes on Voldemort or injected Amortentia. It felt like….

Like he should Apparate. The lightness and twisting sensation in his stomach suggested it, but he couldn’t, he’d have to get out of the castle – He was peddling backwards, trying to be inconspicuous. Already knowing he was going to run, he still had to lie to Ron and Hermione. “There’s a potion we made – I’ve got to write him – Hermione, get _off_ ,” he snapped, shaking her hand from his upper arm because it bloody hurt. He couldn’t handle the look in her eyes at this. “I’ll be back – I’ll see Lavender then – cover for me, would you?” Without waiting for a response, he ducked out of the crowd.

When he was out of sight from the Great Hall, he ran. He hadn’t brought his bag with him, he needed the diary, he needed his cloak –

He still felt like his core was twisting, as in Apparition. It felt anxious and disorienting. _Soon_ , he thought, even though their minds or magic weren’t really together. _I will come for you soon._

He burst into his suite, grabbing his bag from the sofa. The diary inside was warm. _Bring the Horcruces_ , the final page read in Parselscript. He could have gagged. There wasn’t time to get the diadem, he’d bring Voldemort to it afterward, god –

But he threw open a dresser drawer, reaching for the same bundle he’d kept throughout the war – his cloak, potions, and the last of the Felix Felicis. It shimmered in its bottle, as bright as the day he’d gotten it. It was for Voldemort; it always had been. His phoenix wand and the olive wand sat against his breast.

He pulled his robe away from his shoulder, where there was now a cold, deep ache. A similar grayish indentation there, and another just above his elbow.

His magic _hurt_.

Shoving everything into his bag and shrinking it against his body – the chamber wouldn’t work, he’d have to cross the ground floor. He’d have to leave through the front door. He was already surging with adrenaline, when everything is happening too quickly and too slowly all at once. He ran.

The great entrance door could be opened by faculty, and as he stepped out into the last of dusk, the feeling of being summoned shifted. The forest, he was being pulled toward the forest…. He ran with his wand held before him, dreading what he would find there.

Then a sound like firecrackers going off, not far ahead of him. Just beyond the boundary of apparition, a _swarm_ of Ministry officials had just apparated together. Moody and Scrimgeour, Bowersock, Bones, Robards, Bragg, Herzog. They looked grim and remarkably unsurprised to find him out here. Scrimgeour, less genial than Harry had ever seen him, said through his teeth, “Where is he?”

“The forest,” he panted, and it felt immediately true. He wasn’t just being summoned to the forest, he was being summoned to Voldemort. “But why….” He didn’t understand how they already knew of the danger.

“He has breached his terms of exile,” Scrimgeour said crisply. “He’ll return to Azkaban, his right to a wand is void. We will pursue taking his magic as well. Don’t make this more difficult than it must be.”

Harry stared, incredulous. “He’s not back _voluntarily_ ,” he managed to say. “They’ve brought him – Look.” He shook back his sleeve, thrusting out his arm. The cursed spots on his hand and elbow were dark even in the uneven dusk. “There are more.” The way his magic moved now, he thought the sores ran down the entire left side of his body.

And when Scrimgeour visibly reacted to the curse, Harry shot him a look that would be satisfied if it were not desperate. “They’ve got him here,” he repeated. “They are going to….”

 _Kill him_.

Everyone’s wand was up now; Scrimgeour had turned away from Harry to address the group. “They need to evacuate. Who is here this week?”

“Squire,” Moody said, “and Brightbone. Here.” He conjured his Patronus. “Move everyone out,” he conveyed to the falcon. “To Hogsmeade.” His magical eye rolled over Harry, assessing how damaged he already was. “Within ten minutes.” He released it.

“And Gawain – “ Scrimgeour was turning to Robards.

“I have summoned them.” He was just lowering his wand. “A minute.”

It could have only been a literal minute before there were another dozen loud pops. The Aurors – _most_ of the Aurors, more than Harry had seen together than Voldemort’s initial surrender last year – stood before them. Some were still buttoning up robes or putting their long hair up. A few already stood in a ready stance, eyes on Moody.

Scrimgeour straightened to address them. “Voldemort is here,” he said. “In the Forbidden Forest. Brought here, presumably, by the Humnerë. The castle will be evacuated. Harry,” his eyes were bright as he looked over, “are you aware of anything else?”

The way the curse ran along his side, the way his magic boiled. “No, sir.”

“Would you be able to bring us to him?”

“Yes.”

The Aurors fell in around him then, in a sort of U formation so he was covered everywhere but straight on. Moody took a final look at the formation, and nodded Harry onward.

Dusk had settled into a bright evening, with a full moon on the horizon; but even so the forest looked pitch dark. They couldn’t navigate without light – the vampires would have dark vision, so Lumos at least made circumstances equal, even if it revealed their position. But then, it might be best, to also scare off whatever beasts resided in here. Harry kept his wand very close to his chest as he held Lumos before him.

His magic surged as they drew closer, following the cord at his breast that would always connect him to Voldemort. His heart beat erratically.

And then there was light ahead that didn’t belong to their spells. Harry moved to sprint; Moody grabbed his shoulder roughly. “Don’t be stupid,” he muttered. They already had a half dozen shields and protective spells before them, and he cast a few more. And then he was pushing Harry back, deeper into the formation of Aurors, as they moved toward the ethereal glow.

The first distinct thing he could make out through the trees was a set of tall glowing stakes, wedged into the ground. There was movement as they approached, and Harry got shoved deeper into the circle, so he couldn’t see the full scene as they came upon it. But he _felt_ it, the deep glow of being so near to Voldemort now. He tried pushing his way forward, but two Aurors behind him held him back.

But he did see the Dëshmitar as she stepped forward, sleek and bright and colorless against the dark forest. “Minister,” she said, moving in a low bow. Scrimgeour barely ducked his head. “You’ve come to retrieve him.”

“You can’t have come alone.”

A smile. “What do you think,” she said, and immediately Harry had the sense that creatures in the forest were peering at them from all sides.

“What have you come for?”

Her thin eyebrows arched. “I hope you know _something_ ,” she chided. “I have fought for his survival. The Undying are quite impatient with him, and with us. But we have _negotiated_ , that the Horcruces must be severed from his soul. After which – well, you may take back what remains.”

 _Bring the Horcruces_. She must have written it herself, or cast Imperius on Voldemort to force him to write it. Harry felt dizzy. He still couldn’t see Voldemort, he was held too far back, but he was certain he was staked to the ground behind her.

And he was watching Scrimgeour carefully now. The Ministry wanted the Horcruxes gone too; there should be no reason they would fight for this. He was petrified.

But Scrimgeour was cool. “And his connection to Hogwarts?” he asked. “Or to Slytherin’s line?”

She smiled as though proud of him. “Not a Horcrux properly – but the castle’s magic sustains him also. It is nearly as organic as Harry’s magic.” And she lifted her gaze to look at Harry directly for the first time, even as he was held behind the Aurors. “We shall need your Horcrux as well,” she addressed him. “It will hurt, but briefly. After it’s been removed, you may even still have magic.”

Something surged inside of him. “No,” he snarled. He was pushing his way forward without knowing what he’d do, and people were holding him on all sides, but he got near enough to at least take in the scene.

Voldemort was unconscious on the ground behind the Dëshmitar, his body arranged carefully. His arm was stretched over his head, so seven stakes ran down his side in a neat line: hand, elbow, shoulder, ribs, hip, knee, ankle. The glowing stakes somehow didn’t pierce his robes, only his flesh, as they held him flat against the ground. There must be a ley line beneath him, Harry thought faintly. The castle, it’d tie him to the castle so she could destroy them both.

Scrimgeour spoke: “You may have neither Harry nor Hogwarts. Leave him with us.”

But when he took a step forward, the Dëshmitar brandished her staff, pointing it not at Scrimgeour but at Voldemort. “Come any closer, and I will – well, I suppose not _kill_ him,” she said with a laugh. “But I will destroy this body, and with it, the castle. Or didn’t you know?” she asked, mischievous.

“We knew,” Scrimgeour said evenly. “You have terrorized our schoolchildren, directly and indirectly, for the better part of a year. You killed two of them, and more of our purebloods.”

“Your Death Eaters.”

“Our Death Eaters,” he agreed dispassionately.

“Yet you haven’t evacuated the castle,” she said. “And did your constituents ever even hear of Greengrass’s death? Or course your state is _precarious_ , but it is negligent to hide such things from them, is it not?”

“You have no interest in our politics. We could do nothing for you.”

“But we are not free to return until his soul has been dismantled,” she said, taking a step closer. “So instead… I brought them all here.”

And then, _chaos_. The lugétër, poised invisibly in the forest, moved in at this word. The explosions and voltage and thrum of spells killing their shields, ripping through them, and all the Aurors moved into battle. Someone was grabbing Harry, pushing his head down and pulling him close – he attempted to wrench himself out of their grip. Kingsley was moving him away, away from _Voldemort_. “I’ve got to get him,” he said, struggling hard, looking for a way back to Voldemort’s body.

“You will.” Kingsley had disillusioned them both, circling around Bones throwing a restraint spell back a lugat, around Tonks casting a severing charm at two more. The Dëshmitar was out of sight, and it made him sick with fear. But the Aurors had scattered the lugétër outwards, and now, Voldemort wasn’t guarded so intently.

Kingsley had a hand around Harry’s shoulder, using the other to parry stray spells. Nobody knew they were there, the disillusionment was perfect. And after ducking past Dawlish and Moody throwing vicious blood spells at three lugétër, they’d circled back behind the battle, to Voldemort.

“Don’t touch it,” Kingsley said lowly, casting something diagnostic.

“He needs my magic.” Up close, Voldemort already looked _dead_ , everything drained from him. It was awful.

“I’m getting Herzog, he’ll know the spell – “

 _Crack_! Immediately behind them, a row of trees splintered and fell, creating a perfect barrier. People shouted and scattered, and Aurors on the other side were trying to move the trees or blast through them. But Kingsley whirled, looking for the source.

The Dëshmitar shot a stunning spell at Harry, but he caught it, throwing it back at her. She was impossibly light on her feet as she dodged, bringing down another tree to his immediate left so he couldn’t escape. “Harry,” she said, sweet and soft. “Don’t let anyone _else_ die for you.” A swirl of her staff, and he was seized by his soul, captivated by Imperio. Kingsley was similarly held immobile, pushed back against a downed tree. The rest of the Aurors were still behind the wall of fallen trees, fighting to get to them.

Imperio drew him forward, warm and gentle. The Dëshmitar had a hand on the stake at Voldemort’s ribcage, and it pulsed with live magic. “You may have him back,” she said. “I suppose we do not _need_ the Horcruces, since you do not have them,” she said, looking him over. “We may merely sever the connections instead. Including yours. Including the castle’s. Then he may never pose a threat to the students again.”

Harry stood only a few feet from her now, held quiet and steady by Imperio. There was something – he needed to do something – But then the Dëshmitar was swirling her staff above Voldemort’s body. Harry was reminded of the soul damage he’d incurred last autumn, because it looked similar – complex lines and planes shifting into ghostly objects. She held a circular object before her – the diadem, Harry recognized too late – and with a violent tug, snapped the cord that clung to Voldemort’s chest.

It was enough to lift Harry out of the Imperius. His mouth worked a bit before he could let out a strangled, “No!” He tried to move but was held in place.

The Dëshmitar pulled another shape from the planes of light before her – the shape of Slytherin’s locket. A tug, and it too was severed. “Yours will be more complicated,” she said, peering into the strands of his soul for Harry’s. “As will Hogwarts. Ah, here.” She lifted a bit of light up – a blood-red mass. The philosopher’s stone, as it had been when they’d fixed Harry’s soul. She turned it over in her hand. “What is it?” she asked, lifting the Imperio just enough that he might answer.

He didn’t. He wouldn’t beg or plead, he would never give her that satisfaction. He had to save their Horcrux, their soul – after all the times their shared magic had saved them –

 _Oh_.

His wand was gripped tight in his hand, and while he couldn’t properly raise it, he was still confident he could cast a spell. This was so close to being finished, he thought fiercely, and then they would be free. “Expecto Patronum!”

The thestral erupted at his side, charging for the Dëshmitar. Letting go of the Horcrux, she threw a volley of spells at it, but she winced as it made contact with her flesh. Imperio was broken – and Harry’s and Kingsley’s weren’t the only spells aimed at her. Other Aurors had approached behind them, waiting for an opportunity, and the air hissed with spells. She raised her staff, and – _crack_! She vanished.

Harry ran in, disregarding the shouting behind him. He’d pull out the stakes with his bare hands, he didn’t care – But there was a hand on his shoulder, nearly throwing him back. Auror Herzog had hopped the barrier, getting to Voldemort as Harry did. “You do not need to be cursed any further,” he said. “Nor does he. But he will need your magic in a moment.” Then, with a complicated swirl of his wand, he chanted a spell. The glowing lines and planes of his soul began to shrink back toward his chest. Another gesture, and they were gone.

Harry swallowed. “The Horcruxes she took…?”

“I am sorry.” He cast a few spells on the stakes, frowning at the low frequency hum they produced. “Necrotic damage,” he said. As is yours. The Humnerë have used it a lot already tonight.”

Of course it was necrotic. Such magic was rarely used – Voldemort did, Bella and the Carrows, but even most Death Eaters had avoided it. It poisoned the caster as well as the victim, but the undead would not be so affected. “Will he… be alright?” _Survive._

“Rufus?” Herzog looked up, and Harry looked back. The Aurors had not moved the tree trunks, but carved out the earth underneath so they’d fallen. Scrimgeour had watched Harry with the Dëshmitar, and now approached. “He’s got to get out,” Herzog said. “It’s slow-acting, but he is already so close to death – “

“No,” Harry choked, interrupting him.

Herzog gave him a compassionate look. “He is not dying. By virtue of what he _is_ , death has always clung to him. It may accelerate necrotic damage.”

“We need him, first,” Scrimgeour muttered, somewhat reluctant.

“Yes, sir. Harry, could you give him magic – over his heart?” he suggested as Harry fell to his knees beside Voldemort. He reached across his chest, slipping a hand into his robe to touch his skin directly. He was cold like porcelain, but he breathed steadily.

Herzog lifted the stakes gently, beginning at the top with his pinned hand and moving downward. Their magic twisted and burned, but it was alive and Harry cherished it.

The final stake was pulled from his ankle, and then Herzog held his wand over Voldemort’s torso. “ _Rennervate._ ”

Voldemort thrashed and groaned but did not wake. His magic boiled. “Rennervate,” Herzog said again. A flutter of pain across his features.

“Here.” Harry leaned in. He had to recall the sound of Parseltongue, the slippery feel of it in his mouth. “ _Rennervate_ ,” he cast, from his hand to Voldemort’s heart directly.

A deep breath ,and Voldemort’s eyes fluttered open. “Harry….”

Scrimgeour moved in briskly, dropping to a knee. “Don’t move,” he said, pulling out a roll of potions. “You are at Hogwarts, in the Forbidden Forest. The Humnerë brought you here. The Dëshmitar severed two of your Horcruxes, and… your thestral,” he said, lifting his gaze as it moved in closer, “repelled her before she severed Harry’s, or the castle’s. There are at least thirty vampires here, and most of the Aurors. Here.” He’d selected two potions – Verve and some healing potion. Harry carefully propped Voldemort’s head in his lap so he could swallow them.

But he didn’t. “I won’t go,” he said coldly. “It is _my_ castle and you need my magic. I will die defending it if I must.”

“I’d rather you didn’t die,” Scrimgeour said, his tone… nearly amused. “But – yes. We need your knowledge, we need your magic. Spells are unusually ineffective against them.”

“Chemical warfare, lightning, spells of blood and water….” His voice was weak but his tone typically confident. “They will be strengthened by necrotic magic. Use the earth against the them, if only to give yourself time. And I….” He plucked Harry’s wand from his hand, swirling it above his head. Immediately the dark forest went bright, each new springtime bud on the trees now glowing. It was beautiful.

“Ah,” Scrimgeour said, looking up.

“It is _my_ castle,” Voldemort reiterated. “I assume it has been evacuated already?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“Hogsmeade.” When Voldemort grimaced, Scrimgeour added, “Many of its securities are still intact from the war. They will be fine.”

“Good.” He swallowed the potions, at last, in quick succession. When he moved to sit up, Harry held behind his elbows. He could feel how shaky Voldemort was, too fragile to fight properly. But he didn’t say so now. He looped a hand at Voldemort’s waist to stand with him. The thestral approached on the other side, corporeal enough to brace himself against. He nearly smiled at it, running fingers through its mane.

Scrimgeour stood too, stepping back. “I need….” He looked back. The battle had shifted into a shallower part of the forest. “Do not stay if you can’t stay,” he said severely. “Both of you. The Dëshmitar apparated away but she will look for you. Could we otherwise – protect you?”

“Just protect the castle,” Voldemort said. A nod. And the Aurors were withdrawing – Kingsley, Herzog, Orpington, with Scrimgeour last. They had to find the new battlefield.

But before Harry and Voldemort moved also, Harry was fishing through his pockets. “Here.” He offered the olive wand. “I know it can’t replace your old one, but….”

But Voldemort’s face softened, into curiosity and then near-reverence. He took it, running a thumb over the scale pattern on the handle. “Olive,” he said. “First cypress, now olive. Ollivander would quite like to make a hero of me.”

“Good,” Harry said firmly.

But Voldemort was still examining the wand. And with a flourish, it sprung into a polished staff, solid with a curling handle. “Oh,” Harry said faintly. “Uh – was it meant to do that?”

“Yes,” Voldemort said, pulling his weight off Harry as he adjusted to it. “How prescient.”

“Can I – I think I can cast healing spells now….”

“No,” he said. “I do not even recognize the curse. Just leave it.” He glanced down. “You must have corresponding injuries.”

“Well. Yeah. That’s how I knew.”

With the staff, they were able to move through the forest a bit quicker, but with this, Voldemort stopped. “You shouldn’t have come,” he said suddenly. “You need to go – this isn’t safe. They will _kill_ you to get your Horcrux if they must.”

“I’m not leaving you,” Harry said, horrified.

“They have learned enough about tearing souls apart – “

“Shut up, you shut up,” Harry said over him. “I’m not going to go. I’ll die with you if I’ve got to, but I’d really prefer _not_ to, honestly. Here, take this, I don’t want to see the castle destroyed either.” He thrust out the bottle of Felix.

“Harry – “

“Shut up,” he said again. Uncorking the Felix, he threw it into his own mouth. It was pleasant, light with a bit of wood and spice. Without swallowing, he stepped in, kissing Voldemort so the potion lingered in both of their mouths. He felt Voldemort smile, minutely relaxing into the touch.

The rush of Felix helped. It would only last for perhaps an hour, but – god help them if they needed much longer than that. Harry kept the thestral close to Voldemort as they moved in.

Even from here they could see that the Aurors were struggling to keep up with the vampires. They were fast and precise in their wandwork, and in an even match the Aurors would be overwhelmed soon.

But Harry choked when he recognized a swirl of dark hair nearby – Parvati, with Terry flanking the vampire from the other side. Farther, he saw McGonagall pin a vampire to a tree, stunning her with the impact before branches twisted to hold her in place. “They shouldn’t have come – “

“I need your magic,” Voldemort said crisply, indifferent to his fear. Harry offered his hand without question, Voldemort clasped it, and raised his staff. There was a shimmer and crackle in the air, strong enough that some people reacted to it. “Time,” Voldemort said concisely. “We need time.” And Harry saw it – the way the lugétër’s spells were slowed and wixes’ spells were accelerated. “I know you hate Parselmagic, but Harry – it will save you tonight.”

“I know.” And then they would have to split up. “I need to find Moody. You need to protect the castle. Keep the thestral. I’ll have someone else’s Patronus nearby. It’s already hurt them. You can control it?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” They couldn’t spare time to kiss again, but Harry squeezes his undamaged hand. “Be careful.” And then he runs in, toward a cluster of students. Their connection tugs as Voldemort moves in the opposite direction, and Harry leaves their Legilimency as open as he could.

 _Ginny_. With two other seventh years, Elia and Phaedrus. There are two vampires before them, their stunning spells clashing in midair. But when Harry runs up, the nearer vampire raises her gaze and immediately moves toward him. He recognizes her – Xenoclea, the Dëshmitar’s eldest daughter. “Your Patronus,” he gasps to Ginny. “A Patronus holds them off.” He had thrown two shield charms before himself, and even with the manipulated time, Xenoclea’s _Incarcerous_ is only just caught in it.

“Could you live with yourself if we killed them?” she asks him coolly, as the other vampire shoots a blasting curse through Ginny’s horse. The Patronus shudders, but Ginny is unharmed.

Instead of answering, Harry’s mouth twists to recall Parselmagic. “ _Diffindo_!” He casts it at her torso, and with a jolt she partially dodges but the bolt rips through her side. She does not bleed: instead, the ripped robes reveal torn, dry flesh.

She shoots vicious charms back at him – all psychological, meant to rip through his mind before his body. As his shield catches them, he is still knocked back, stumbling over the looping roots of the forest floor. “ _Sectumsempra_!” he casts desperately, seeing her advance on him. It catches her in the chest, spraying flesh outward. With a hiss of anger and pain, she raises her staff, apparating. The other vampire, now well outnumbered, follows.

“Alright?” Harry mutters, stepping in closer. Elia has a long gash across her face and Phaedrus has a puncture wound in his shoulder that looks cursed or poisoned. Still, they are steady.

Only, they are looking at him warily. “What was that?” Elia asks.

“Sectumsempra. Like – “ He demonstrates the wandwork. “It’s dark, but – it works.” He already feels nauseated from the Parselmagic. “I’ve got to find Moody. Keep your Patronuses with you.” _And get out_ , he doesn’t say, but he is devastated that Hogwarts has put itself in danger on his behalf, again.

“Moody was that way,” Ginny gestures. “Let me go with you. Your Patronus is with him?” she guesses.

“… Yeah.”

So Elia and Phaedrus go one way, toward the sound of a scuffle nearby. Harry and Ginny run where she’d last seen Moody – and there he is, holding off two lugétër with spells of lightning. When his magical eye sees Harry and Ginny approach, he whips his staff to impede them from coming any closer.

“Moody!” Harry doesn’t fight the spell, it would waste both of their magic. “Your Patronus! The Aurors should hold them off with a Patronus!” he shouts through the shield. He doesn’t look, but jerks his head to acknowledge it. And then Harry moves away as though to leave, but instead he circles behind the lugétër. Then someone grabs his shoulder, and he thrashes.

“Easy,” Hagrid murmurs, and Harry is desperately happy to see him. “Moody’s been at those two for awhile.”

“Incarcerous,” Harry suggests. “From either direction. On the darker haired one first. He’ll be alright with just one.”

Hagrid nods, moving to a proper angle. Harry counts off on his fingers – 3, 2, 1 – they both cast. “Incarcerous!”

From behind, the vampire seizes as ropes bind him, and he attempts to apparate but Hagrid has brilliantly followed up with a silent _Expelliarmus_. He struggles, and Moody _vanishes_ him, presumably to a holding cell somewhere. Harry wants to laugh.

The other vampire has whipped around, seeing Hagrid before Harry. “A giant who has aligned himself with humans?” he sneers, throwing over his shoulder a spell of bats that intercept each of Moody’s spells. “They find you monstrous, you know. You will never belong here.”

“No!” Harry runs in, spitting blood curses. He hadn’t been _angry_ before now, but it feels invigorating. While most of his curses are blocked, Hagrid again shot another curse from the opposite angle, and without being able to dodge both, the vampire is hit by Harry’s last blood curse. There was a strange sizzling, and he swoons on his feet. Moody vanishes him as well.

They might be able to win after all. When Moody limps in, his eye is studying Harry. “Put on your cloak,” he grumbles. “They want you both. The rest of us are only a distraction.”

“The faculty out here – “ Harry says, his mind garbled. “The students – “

“They know what they’ve gotten into.”

“Parselmagic has helped more than anything,” Harry says. “You won’t be able to defeat them without us. Stay away from the Dëshmitar, she is dangerous.”

A dubious squint. “Voldemort won’t kill her. Would you?”

“… Yeah.”

“Good. Where is he?”

“I don't know. That way.” He gestures. “But… could you tell everyone to keep their Patronuses out? Or at least have one on guard. I sent ours with him, so he’s protected, and it’s the best….”

“Yes,” Moody interrupts, and with a snap of his staff he casts a Patronus, that splits into four falcons, each soaring in a different direction. “Voldemort needs to restrict the eco-magic to only wixes. When you see Herzog next, ask him. Or the spell to drain magic is _Desicco_ , but it is temporary and it is Dark. Use it sparingly.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m taking yeh,” Hagrid says, grim, “to Voldemort. Yeh won’t make it across the forest alone.”

He wants to fight. He doesn’t fight. “Thanks, Hagrid.”

Moody: “Whatever other magic he can draw from Hogwarts – I don’t give a damn if it’s dark. He could use the killing curse if he thought it would work, but Lao has and it barely scratched ‘em.”

“Sectumsempra worked,” Harry says. “But in Parseltongue. Uh, I could try it again in English. I mean, Latin.”

Moody gives a tired shake of his head. “Whatever will keep you alive, Potter. Go find Voldemort.”

Harry pulls on his invisibility cloak at Hagrid’s insistence before they run through the forest, Harry’s wrist clutched in Hagrid’s hand so he doesn’t lose him. Bones and Tonks are dueling one vampire in a clearing; Flitwick is dueling another while Auror Lao, pinned already to a tree behind him, is fighting to escape. Hagrid moves in, snapping off some lower branches to the bindings go slack. “Thank you,” Lao gasps, a hand to her breast where the bindings had pressed in, but she can again lift her wand high enough to escape, and she throws a crackling electrical spell at the lugat fighting Flitwick.

The lugat throws it back; it catches the tree ablaze. Lao puts it out as Harry runs in to cast another blood-boiling curse. Flitwick pins her to the ground with creeping purple vines. “Desicco!” Harry casts, and the vampire wilts against the forest floor.

He is high on the battle now. They’re really doing alright, overall. He learned the tedium of war last year, that it is only a countdown, of methodical capture or kill until one side is exhausted. They could do this.

The battle is increasingly spread out across the forest; it is an inconvenient place for a fight. Still, the magic is strongest in this soil, and Harry can feel it thrumming as he runs. He can find Voldemort again. He will always be able to find Voldemort.

They cross battles of Aurors and faculty. There are more Patronuses nearby, as shields or reserves of magic. Harry is relieved.

At last, the cord in his chest is so taut it seems he could pluck it. And a grove of trees is disillusioned, but he runs for it anyway, with Hagrid slowing to a stop behind him. Pulling back his cloak, Harry turns to look, to be sure he’s alright.

“He’s there,” Hagrid says flatly.

“Yeah. You haven’t got to go – “

“I said I’m taking you, and I will take you.”

He manages a smile. “Thanks.”

He doesn’t replace the cloak – they’re on the edge of the forest now, away from most of the fighting. Harry crosses the disillusionment charms, with Hagrid behind him.

Voldemort hisses without looking up. “Don’t come any nearer,” he says. He is holding a crackling blue string of magic that arches from the ground. Auror Herzog is also here, casting on it. And on Voldemort’s other side, his hand is braced still on their thestral, stabilizing his magic. Good.

“I saw Moody,” Harry says. But Voldemort looks up at this, and past Harry, to Hagrid hovering protectively behind him.

“Hagrid,” Voldemort greets him evenly, and Harry is standing between them and he wants to interrupt it. But Voldemort only says, “You brought Harry back here?”

“… Yeah.”

“Thank you.” He tips his head, curious. “How do the rest of them fare?”

“Alright,” Hagrid says, though he is still tense and bitter. “Most of ‘em have got their Patronus, and the Aurors have authorized _Desicco_ and _Excarcero_.”

“Azkaban won’t hold them long,” Voldemort says sharply.

Hagrid’s shoulders rise and fall. “Don’t think it’s Azkaban they’re sending them to,” he says. “Mad Eye says yeh need to pull the eco-magic from them. Or take away their magic some other way.”

“Mm. This,” he motions to the blue arc still in his hand, “will slow them and make them susceptible to injury. We will find a way to drain their magic next.”

“Alrigh’,” Hagrid says again, and Voldemort nods him out, and Harry murmurs _thank you_ as he steps away. Hagrid’s gaze is dark.

And then Harry is allowed to come just a bit closer. There’s a current in the arc, as though it is a length of wire they’ve pulled from the ground. Herzog has constructed a careful scaffolding around it, imbued with other spells. Voldemort, Harry assumes, is here for the magic of Hogwarts itself.

He speaks in English still, for Herzog’s benefit, even though he and Voldemort are stilted and awkward in English. “He said we’ll need Parselmagic tonight. And – he said you could use whatever magic you need, but they already know the killing curse doesn’t work.”

“Of course it doesn’t.” He’s twisting a bit of magic between the scaffolding and the arc. “It does no bodily harm. We could not kill them, only injure them enough to impede them.” He smiles coldly. “My previous strategy is ill-suited, it seems.”

“He said you wouldn’t kill the Dëshmitar.”

Voldemort actually looks taken aback by this. “Not as a _mercy_ ,” he says in disgust. “I am still bound by surrender. I cannot harm any of them. The magic of the castle is the most – _useful_ I may be.”

“Well, good,” Harry says. “Keep doing that. Should I stay, or…?”

“Please.” And that means Voldemort needs his magic, and Harry approaches carefully, fitting himself at Voldemort’s side.

Herzog looks up from the runes he’d drawn on the forest floor. “Draining their magic…” he muses. “We might run it along the same ley line.”

“No. It must be one leading away from Hogwarts.” And then he is kicking off his boots; Herzog seems unsurprised but Harry looks on in bewilderment. But then Voldemort is walking carefully along the damp soil (limping hard, and it pains Harry to watch). A short distance away, he plunges the bottom of his staff into the ground, and there’s a spray of magic as though he’d struck water. Harry gasps, and Voldemort looks up in amusement.

So as Herzog is completing the first runes, Voldemort is establishing the second – and Harry is allowed to help, mostly with magic but also twisting together bits of the ley lines, which feel like a more potent form of wards to his touch. They work quickly, knowing it may be the difference between life and death.

But when it comes to actually crafting new runes, Voldemort falters. “Janus?” Herzog looks over. “ _Desicco_ dos not translate. I would also prefer to funnel their magic _into_ something, not simply disperse it.”

“Like what?” He is thinking. “It’s incompatible at best, toxic at worst.”

“I will take it. Her own magic will kill her, nothing else will.”

Herzog ties off the last of the ley line, stands. “That is….”

“I understand you have no reason to trust me with more magic.”

He looks startled, then nearly amused, at Voldemort’s misunderstanding of his hesitation. “That is _dangerous_ ,” he corrects, “as you’re already cursed. It will doubtless accelerate the damage.”

Voldemort is dissatisfied but Herzog is constructing looping wards off the new ley line, writing runes that redirect the captured lugétër magic back into sustaining the ward itself. Then he is pulling out scrolls, looking through ancient-looking text like nothing Harry has ever studied. He draws runes that look jagged, violent. “With each spell they cast, a portion more of their magic will be drained away,” he says.

“Good.” And then Voldemort is working to secure it, anchoring it with new warm, humming wards.

It is Harry to notice the threat first. It is only a flicker in his peripheral vision, but he looks up. A flock of crows, as the varri could transform into, has gathered overhead. “Oh shit – “

Voldemort and Herzog follow his gaze. Herzog gasps and Voldemort’s magic goes cold. Of course they brought the varri. Of course.

Voldemort is tying off a ward efficiently, leaving the rest to Herzog. “Harry, stay – “

“I’m coming with you,” he insists.

“They want _our_ Horcrux, we should not present ourselves together – “

“You won’t survive without me,” Harry says bluntly. “I’ll get out if I need to, but for now, I’m coming.”

“Fine,” Voldemort snaps. There is no time to argue.

They leave Herzog to finish casting the wards. Harry braces himself for what they will find beyond that guarded oasis of trees.

The forest now crackles with stray spells, whose energy hangs in the air. Their thestral trots before them, shielding them. Voldemort leans heavily on his staff and Harry still supports him under his other elbow.

He is casting seeking spells, but they all return wrong – those spells are calibrated for the living, not the undead. He expects the Dëshmitar is nearby, even perhaps watching them. Why wouldn’t she be?

But now they must deal with the influx of varri. The Aurors understand what they are, but the students don’t. Harry and Voldemort understand one another, without speaking, when they move to protect a cluster of students. But when he hears Luna scream, Harry breaks into a run.

Luna, Terry, Padma. There is one vampire but two more Inferi, using generic faces and bodies as they had before. One has seized Luna by the throat, holding her as the other two throw curses. It is brutal, and moreso to watch how little effect Terry and Padma’s spells have. Padma’s red panda Patronus circles but it cannot adequately distract the Inferius.

Voldemort comes up behind Harry, who is casting furiously, doing anything to taunt the Inferius to let her go. But even with a soul, it moves slow and hesitant, at least relative to the vampires’ dueling. Before Voldemort is able to cast anything, however, Harry grows furious. He takes aim: “ _Sectumsempra_!”

The Inferius stumbles and then nearly disintegrates, coming apart at the loose joints of its body. It shrieks, and the vampire and the second Inferius are throwing crackling spells at Harry, but Voldemort casts a shield that makes their spells ring out like a gong. When they are still reeling, he throws Diffindo in Parseltongue at all three, and the Inferi writhe on the ground as the vampire flees.

The students are shaken, Luna is injured, and Harry looks like he’s about to be sick. Voldemort casts a spell to draw the trees tight around them, until they recover.

The other Ravenclaws will not yet look at Voldemort, but Luna’s eyes are wide and wet. She tries to speak, but coughs blood. Voldemort steps in, lifting his staff. “Mollesco.” It is the most effective spell for internal injuries. “I have brought no potions,” he says, almost apologetic. Luna is nearly on the verge of a panic attack. “Harry? A calming draught?”

“Oh, yeah.” He pulls out a roll of potions – clearly a wartime habit he learned from the Aurors – and passes a vial to Luna. Then another wave of nausea runs through him, and subsequently Voldemort. They both shudder.

“Those weren’t vampires,” Padma (Voldemort is near enough to Harry’s mind to know her name now) says warily. “Are they… human followers?”

“Nearly,” Voldemort says. Padma shrinks from him a bit. “They are Inferi, imbued with a temporary soul, so they are able to perform magic.”

They all react to this viscerally, in jolts and shudders. But Padma speaks again. “You attacked their bodies,” she says. “How do you take their souls?”

 _Ravenclaws_. He doesn’t keep enough of them around. He wants to smile at her but keeps his face neutral, so as not to further scare them. “You cannot, for now. Their bodies break down easily. The lugétër – the vampires – are rather more impervious to violence, but impeding them with bodily harm is possible.”

“There must be… stakes. We can fashion stakes.”

This time he _does_ give the girl a small smile, a quirk at the side of his mouth. “They are not _that_ sort of vampire. They rarely bite, but if you are near to death, they will steal your soul. Get out if you become gravely injured.”

“Alright,” Padma says in a tiny voice.

By now, Harry is holding Luna steady. She is pale but she would recover. And with her incredible intuition, she looks to Voldemort. “Their leader summoned the birds near the lake,” she says. “She was alone then.”

There are more ley lines where the forest meets the lake. They should have constructed the ward that restricts magic first; the Dëshmitar might not have been able to summon the varri if they had. He shakes the idea off. “Thank you, Ms. Lovegood.”

“Let us go – “

“No,” he says sharply, because he feels Harry’s fear of putting his friends more in danger than they already are. “Stay here. The Inferi are….” These are all purebloods, they do not know what _cannon fodder_ is. “Are more of a nuisance than a threat. Lower their numbers, so the vampires cannot rely on them.”

There is concern in Luna’s eyes, and he gathers that it is related to some question of death and its ethics. He is the last person to reassure her of her own morality in any way. Instead he shifts the trees surrounding them enough to leave. Harry falls into place beside him quietly as he limps out, murmuring gratitude when he casts a disillusionment on them both.

The thestral gallops in wide circles around them, so as not to give away their precise location. They are far from the lake, and likely should not interfere with more duels than they must on the way. They can hear shouting, the breaking of tree branches, the crackle of magic – but they can see no one.

And then an ethereal lasso is dropped out of the trees, ensnaring their Patronus.

Harry immediately tries to rescind the spell, but they can both feel resistance in the magic, that it is being held by another force. The thestral thrashes as currents of its magic course up the rope, and Voldemort is firing vicious magic into the tree cover. Then there is a yank on the rope, and movement in the trees, and Harry barely deflects a stunning spell that would have captured them both.

“Run,” Voldemort mutters, pushing Harry away. They cannot be caught together. Already the thestral is a union of their magic, it may be enough to take the Horcrux from them.

And Harry is firing shots as he runs, still disillusioned. Voldemort uproots the tree in a motion, bringing it crashing down – and a vampire lands too lightly at his feet. “Oh Kukudh, are you… here?” He fires a bolt of a deadening curse mere inches from Voldemort. He dodges, shooting gruesome pain through his damaged hip and knee, but he lifts the tree again, to bring it down where the vampire stands. He flickers out of existence, reappearing a few feet away in safety. He is laughing and the thestral is still bound. His stunning spell grazes Voldemort, who is slowed if not properly stunned, and he cannot react quickly enough. The vampire is pulling apart the thestral’s magic, seizing both of their souls, and his head swims with the pain –

Another Patronus darts in, knocking back the vampire, and he loses his grip on the rope. Harry cannot sustain the thestral so he vanishes it, and they are both casting curses at the vampire: Voldemort casts a flesh-peeling curse, and Harry casts a blood-curdling curse, and the vampire hisses in pain, retreating. The Patronus follows it, and behind, coming through the trees, is Granger.

Voldemort’s magic shifts as Harry runs to her, and then it’s clear where his disillusionment gives way when he touches her, a hand on her arm. She is grim, and alone, and Voldemort wonders if that means something has happened to Weasley.

But as Voldemort steps closer, he wavers. His magic is flooding out, as per the surrender. He could not harm the vampires. He goes dizzy, and he sees a look of concern on Hermione’s face, as Harry must have reacted as well. He knows Slytherin’s magic, the castle’s magic, will sustain him, but only just. He swallows and approaches Granger.

She freezes at the crackle of twigs underfoot, but Harry reaches out, finding his hand despite the disillusionment. “Vol,” he says, more to Hermione than to Voldemort himself.

“The Inferi – there are dozens,” she says, clearly upset. “I helped Flitwick cast a spell that would hold them in the lake, and we thought they’d go, but now… _she_ is near the lake, and is using them to attack directly.”

“Casualties?” Voldemort asks.

She looks approximately to his face. “No,” she says. “Not yet. But when their spells aren’t psychological, they are necrotic. We are burning through healing potions, and spells don’t stop it.”

“I need to see it.”

She hesitates, looking to where Harry stands. “Ron….”

Harry hisses air through his teeth. “Hermione, take us,” he says in a more severe way than he has ever spoken to her before. She flinches, but nods. “We can follow.”

Granger is quick, weaving through the forest, and it aggravates the curse running down Voldemort’s side – but she didn’t know, he thinks, and there is no point in saying it now. With Harry on one side, his staff on the other, and the magic of Hogwarts pulsing beneath his feet, he is held together like the composite soul he is.

There is more action in this part – Hogwarts faculty and Aurors are dueling, mostly the varri but a few lugétër as well. Nothing critical or out of control, but he notes the necrotic damage that mars many of their complexions. A grayish-green spotting, erratically placed. It looks cursed to drain magic. He must find out.

And Hermione brings them to a jutting overhang of soil, bound tight with a Disillusionment across the width of it. It is good magic. “Let me tell him,” she says.

“Is he alone?”

“No. With Lavender. The nurse,” she says, for Voldemort’s benefit.

The _new_ nurse, he amends in his head, because he is positive his Death Eaters cursed the previous one to death. Hermione is lost behind the Disillusionment, and a moment later Harry brings Voldemort through as well.

Beneath the overhang are tangled roots and damp soil, but they’ve made space here. It is clever. Weasley is curled on his side, looking away, and with him is, unmistakably, the girl mauled by Greyback last year. Her complexion is dark but the scars across her face are still a vivid, puckered pink. He never would have guessed she had survived.

He drops their own Disillusionment as they enter, and the three of them predictably startle. Weasley’s eyes are bleary but he still flinches as Voldemort strides over. “Don’t – “

“What happened?” he interrupts, but Weasley’s robes are off and the side of his jumper is torn open, revealing the same green-gray flesh. It has spread as though it was a direct hit to his shoulder, but it is already nearing his heart. Voldemort vanishes his jumper entirely to see the extent of it, and Weasley fully gapes at him.

While Harry and Granger have stayed near the entrance, _Lavender_ is beside Voldemort, and now has the audacity to glare, casting a quick heating charm. “Take it off,” Voldemort says, deliberately gentle even though he’d like to snap at her. “Heat will accelerate the damage. It should be iced, if anything.” And to her credit, she immediately replaces the spell with a chilling charm, making Weasley go goosebumped. Voldemort casts additional lighting above him to study the wound.

Terror. Why is he newly uncomfortable around people who fear him? “Close your eyes,” he instructs him, so he no longer has to look back into that fearful expression. Then he is casting quick diagnostics – Parselmagic, access to knowledge the nurse wouldn’t have. Within a minute, he at least has a hypothesis. And there is something else as well. He looks up at the nurse. “Go stand with the others.”

“No. What – I need to know how to treat this.”

“You will. I cannot have you here right now.” He is unpleasantly surprised that she does not promptly cooperate, but he supposes that is the same stubbornness that kept her alive through Greyback’s attack. But then she moves away and he is alone with Weasley. Who is _looking_ at him again, his posture curled over on itself.

“Let me,” Voldemort says, attempting not to speak through gritted teeth. Then, quieter: “Before the curse reaches your heart. Or your child.”

Immediately his eyes go wide, but his expression… softens. “Really?” he asks, moving a hand toward his still nearly-flat stomach before pulling it away, self-conscious.

“Yes.” He assumes it is an accident. Muggleborns, like Muggles, are more prone to accidental pregnancies than purebloods, who need to be coaxed into fertility after generations of inbreeding. He wonders if either of them had ever realized the risk, that a Muggleborn girl could impregnate him, or that their magic would decide Weasley was the one better-suited to carry it. “If you don’t want it, I would also perform _Resorpto_ – “

“I want it,” he interrupts, and he is consciously straightening his posture now so as not to reveal himself. “Just… the curse. Please.”

He is not entirely certain this will work, but the _Aquavitae_ spell to preserve Inferi has more restorative properties than any other spell he knows. He raises his wand. “ _Aquavitae!_ ”

Weasley shivers when the cold stream hits him, but when the liquid evaporates off his skin, it slowly takes the deadened parts with it. It is a steady stream, at least three minutes to fully lift the curse, and the students have all edged in to watch when he looks up. He takes note of how soft Harry’s expression is, under the circumstances. “Aquavitae,” he repeats after he has lifted the spell off Weasley. “Direct contact, until the curse has been visibly eradicated.”

Lavender nods, but Hermione looks horrified. “The Inferius spell?”

“ _An_ Inferius spell,” he corrects. “Yes. Therefore, if there _are_ casualties, you must vanish or shelter their bodies. I am casting a storm.”

Hermione’s mouth works for a moment. “It will strengthen the Inferi they’ve already got.”

 _Not significantly_ , is his answer from weeks of research for the Humnerë on those accursed creatures. Instead, he says quite curtly, “No. It will only save the humans.”

“… Alright.”

He looks at her in actual shock. He clearly was not asking her _permission_. He does not answer to her at all, except to the extent that their cooperation brings Harry some peace.

But when he looks over to see Harry’s expression, instead he sees him just dart out between the tree roots, and then there is the sound of a fight too close to them. “Harry!” Voldemort also ducks through the shield, and he might hear Hermione behind him.

The fight isn’t Harry’s – Samuels, the youngest Auror, has been pinned to the ground with a vampiric spell. She is unconscious, and Auror MacDougal now fights hard to get to her, but he is held back by three Inferi, whose very touch spawns the same necrotic damage. Meanwhile, the vampire – _Xenoclea_ , he realizes – is playing at Samuels’s soul. There is a bright white strand that runs from her mouth, and Xenoclea is extracting it carefully, so as not to break it. Samuels’s eyelids flutter.

Harry had the good sense to disillusion himself or throw on his cloak before going out, but Voldemort can feel in their magic that he has approached from behind. But before Voldemort moves to assist him – he gathers a storm in his hands. This was his first feat of wandless magic when he’d been young, and there is still comfort in it. Nobody else is watching as he lifts the shimmering sphere into the sky. It cracks open, and a rainstorm of Aquavitae breaks over them.

Xenoclea looks up first. She holds the Auror’s soul still, but she is casting tracking spells to find him beneath his disillusionment. As she does, Harry is in position to shoot at her hand, what looks like Diffindo. She hisses as the spell rips through her dry flesh, and then she is obligated to drop Samuels’s soul. Voldemort moves in: he is struck by the tracking spell but it does not matter. His disillusionment is stripped away, and he is staring Xenoclea in her pale eyes as he scoops up Samuels’s body with a spell. Without speaking, he raises his staff, and apparates.

He lands in a deeper part of the forest. He hadn’t thought of it specifically, but Quirinus had killed a unicorn for him here, years ago. How appropriate.

He casts Auxilio, lowering Samuels’s body against a shady oak. He casts protective spells around her, ones the Aurors would need to remove later. She was relatively safe here, anyway.

He does not want to apparate back where they were directly, but Xenoclea is at least as dangerous to him as her mother. She is at least as dangerous to _Harry_.

He apparates a distance away, and the tug on his soul indicates that Harry is still nearby. Stupid boy, he curses him fondly. He should have run, but he will never stop _saving_ people. The battle has moved and Xenoclea has gone. He follows the brightness that indicates Harry’s direction.

There is a wild fight in a clearing – he watches Moody slam a vampire into a tree, Bones stagger with a necrotic spell at her throat. He watches an Inferius get fully ripped in half, both halves falling to the ground with a mundane thud. It twitches.

The Aurors work in synchronicity: Dawlish captures a vampire and Phan nearly garrotes him. Villanova is slammed against a tree; Williamson nearly bitten by an Inferius; Bragg throws a spear-like curse into a band of Inferi so they briefly scatter. They throw an array of hexes back at him – none of them are yet very talented with magic, but by numbers alone it is overwhelming. Voldemort catches a curse that slips past Bragg’s shield; his expression is surprised but he wisely doesn’t turn to look.

Voldemort’s vision shifts as Harry moves, the brightness of his presence illuminating a different bit of the forest. He is moving back – there is another fight behind a cluster of gnarled trees, but it looks to be mostly Aurors as well. Voldemort stays here – he is new at twisting spacetime, but Hogwarts is amenable, and he is able to turn two of the Inferi’s spells back on themselves. It is effective and satisfying. He will need this magic.

The Inferi aren’t clever enough to recognize his presence, but the lugétër are, and they begin to throw curses also in his direction. These are quicker, more precise. When a curse of vertigo grazes him, he nearly swoons, leaning heavily on his staff. He must move.

He is moving toward the secondary battle site, when he sees a flash of red hair. Ginevra, with two other students against a vampire – and then Ginny’s horse Patronus is _vaporized_ , by some cruel and obscure magic. Harry throws off his disillusionment, running in.

And at the same time, there is a blast above Voldemort’s head – too near to be coincidental. There are three Aurors and as many vampires, and he is obligated to move in, shielding the Aurors from what he is able.

Savage ensnares and vanishes one vampire with _Excarcerous_ ; one is knocked unconscious when Voldemort turns her spell back on her; the third escapes. Voldemort looks up, looks to find Harry twenty yards away.

But Harry is watching elsewhere. Bowersock is alone, struggling with a vampire, while Harry is sheltered behind a tree. There is movement in the forest between them – a second vampire bursts through the trees at Bowersock’s back. Harry raises his wand – then his hand twitches. He lowers it again. In a split second, the vampire has hit Bowersock in the back with a brilliant white curse; he drops to the ground immediately. Both vampires flee.

Voldemort is running, without regard for discretion or his injury. He reaches Harry, drawing him close, and of course he knows. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Harry is saying into Voldemort’s chest. “I couldn’t let him – “

Movement from his other side – Amelia Bones had apparently also witnessed this, because she reaches Harry just a moment later. She takes in the scene; Voldemort drops his disillusionment silently.

“Potter, stay still,” Amelia commands in a low tone. “You need a memory spell, so you can’t account for this later.”

Oh thank god. Voldemort had been nearly about to do the same. Harry gasps. “You saw – ?”

“Allow me,” Voldemort interrupts, speaking over his head to Amelia. “I know the contours of his mind.”

She gives a tiny shake of her head. “If it ever comes to light,” she says, “I will be able to answer for it, in a way you never will. You need to be seen nowhere near the body within a minute.”

Harry’s eyes are wide, but he is still as Bones lifts the white memory charm to his temple. And then it is over, and Voldemort pulls Harry so he may not even view the body. “Thank you,” he says to Amelia, and then raising his staff, he silently apparates them a distance away.

Harry is only slightly disoriented. “We’re nearer to the lake,” he ascertains. “Vol, she’s _here_ – get us out of here – “

“Have you ever been so reluctant to fight?” he asks, taken aback.

“I’m not worried for me, I’m worried for _you_.”

He is loved. Undeniably loved. In this moment, it nearly helps. “Granger was right, the Inferi should be contained in the lake.” The lake, filling with aquavitae since a steady rain still falls, but it will subdue them, potentially. They must also remove the souls that sustain their magic, somehow.

Harry can feel the energy of his thoughts, if not all their contours. Slipping into Parseltongue like a comfortable robe, he asks, “How do we do it?”

“Throw something in the lake and tell them to fetch.”

Harry actually smiles, though it’s small. “Tell them to bring up the _bloody_ Defense curse while they’re down there.” Then, more sober: “Shouldn’t they keep the souls? It seems that if they’re more… alive, they can also be killed. Or nearer to it. You can’t really drown an Inferius.”

“That really depends on where they have been submerged.”

“Oh.” Harry is still smiling, still amused with him in some fashion. “So… what’re you transfiguring the lake into?”

“I don’t know.”

His expression falters. “You said you’d be able to stop them. That you and Snape talked about it.”

“We did,” Voldemort agrees. “We agreed submersion would be the best tactic. After that – I anticipated being _conscious_ for the past fortnight,” he says in irritation.

“Okay.”

And now Harry is disappointed, and his easy affection is receding, and the way those feelings filter into Voldemort’s own consciousness – he finds it crushing, in a way. “We’ll survive,” he says softly to Harry. “ _They_ will survive.” Everyone else he lives for.

“I know.”

Then, the soil under his feet jolts a warning. Someone is approaching. _Many_ creatures are approaching.

He grabs Harry, first disillusioning them both, then levitating them into a tree. Its leaves are small and new, and while it wouldn’t be complete coverage if their spell should fail, the Inferi are not clever.

The Inferi pause a distance away, still out of sight and out of range. Voldemort is leaning against the sturdy tree trunk, Harry holding him from the other side. They both wait.

And then there are footsteps – just one set, but running. Harry tenses, anticipating someone in danger.

“Harry?”

Ginny Weasley bursts through the foliage, eyes wide and hair tangled. She looks as though she’s been pursued. Harry makes a strangled noise. “Ginny!”

And he’s jumping twenty feet down, with a hurried featherfall, before Voldemort can stop him. “No!”

But Harry is running to her – _it_. The doppelganger appears trembling and helpless, even as she edges back toward the bushes. There are more footsteps – Harry will be captured, mauled – Ginny grabs his wrist.

In desperation, Voldemort raises his staff. He would kill it, but Harry would be traumatized, useless in what is certain to be an oncoming battle. He has never cast this alone before – but he plunges into their magic, Harry’s love and goodness – “Expecto Patronum!”

The thestral crashes to the ground, galloping for Harry and Ginny, partway into the brush. More violent than it has ever behaved before, it drives its nose between them, headbutting the Inferius. Harry is stumbling backward, but when he raises his wand, his voice is confident. “Diffindo!”

The Inferius retains Ginny’s form as it is hit, ripping open its robes through its shoulders and chest. The footsteps are approaching fast, and Voldemort casts a wall of ice forty feet across where they’d break through.

The Inferius writhes, bending over on itself in pain or a mockery thereof. “Harry, Harry,” it is murmuring in Ginny’s voice. Then, with a wide smile, its face warps, rotting and dead, Ginny’s features decaying off. Harry cries out, and Voldemort jumps to the ground, vision graying in pain when his damaged hip and knee absorb the impact. His hands are on Harry, pulling him back, pressing Harry’s face against his chest to shield him. “Excarcero!” he attempts, but it is a spell only the Aurors can cast; he cannot vanish it. Instead, stunning it, he lashes it to a tree. When it is unconscious, Ginny’s features melt away. Soon there will only be smooth flesh left.

Harry pulls back when it is quiet. “Merlin _fuck_ ,” he says, shaking still.

“I am sorry.”

“No.” He reaches out, patting the thestral on its velvety neck. “I shouldn’t have….” But his voice is lost in a shaking breath.

“We need to move. They won’t be deterred for long.”

“Yeah.” He peels himself off Voldemort’s chest. And while his jaw is set, he also keeps their thestral very close by.

The other varri are likely circling the wall of ice by now. He considers carving through the middle to bottleneck them, but they may also be flanked. Instead, with a flourish, he makes the ice perfectly translucent, peering through.

“There.” Harry nods at a dark cluster of varri, moving parallel to the wall. “Can you just trap them?”

“Yes.” He extends the ice, encircling the group. Three? Four? They realize it slowly, blasting the ice with ineffective spells. And when Voldemort arcs a flesh-eating curse over the wall into the space, he again pulls Harry away to avoid the carnage.

It is not enough – a moment later, a second group of varri comes around the other side, and they are synchronized. The thestral charges, catching a lymphatic curse in its hide. But as Voldemort ducks a stunning spell, he steps into a bone-shattering curse. It hits above his left elbow and pulses downward, cracking his radius and ulna. The pain and fury overwhelm him – and without thinking, he raises his staff. “Avada Kedavra!”

The Inferius drops, sprawled across some tree roots. But this infuriates the others, and they are running in, their spells reverberating off Voldemort’s shield. Harry is shouting something, firing at them – Voldemort can barely spare a moment to cast a makeshift splint, cradling his broken arm against his chest.

As the Inferi approach, their faces snarl – no. Their faces _change_ , and then Bellatrix leers at him. “My lord,” the Inferius purrs, and again the voice is wrong. But the others behind her, four of them, are shifting as well. Before he can shout to Harry to go, to apparate away, the Longbottoms are standing before them. Harry’s _parents_ stand before them. Harry goes motionless.

The thestral charges between them, pushing James and Lily back, with magic that makes the Inferi’s flesh twist and burn. Then Harry recovers enough to cast a stunning spell – a second – and they both miss but the Inferi are caught off-balance. Harry runs in.

Voldemort is surrounded by Bella and the Longbottoms. He cannot run, so instead he apparates, re-appearing behind them. They growl, moving in, casting crackling curses – a necrotic spell hits his stomach, and his organs wither –

The thestral charges past him now. His back is to Harry, but the thestral should be protecting _him_ , why is it here – But then it throws Alice’s doppelganger back just as she throws a lethal curse. The atmosphere becomes nauseating with it as the magic goes wide –

Harry cries out. He is struck, and Voldemort whirls away, indifferent to his own safety. His back, between his shoulderblades, has been ripped open and he is bleeding. Voldemort hurls three killing curses at the others, and it exhausts his magic but he scarcely feels it. He hears their bodies drop as he moves in.

Harry is doubled over in pain – even as protected as he is, Felix running through his veins, it was a spell meant to kill. ( _Why_ , Voldemort barely stops to wonder. They should not want them dead, not before they have recovered the Horcrux.) Lily’s doppelganger had opened a portal; James’s is carving away at the shield before Harry. When it abruptly cracks, when the Inferius lunges for Harry, throwing glowing ropes around his hunched torso – “Avada Kedavra!” Voldemort casts, and James drops dead in front of Harry.

Harry’s scream is strangled, and Voldemort must quickly stun Lily and close her portal before he can remove the bindings, draw near – He wants desperately to just take Harry away from this wretched scene. Instead, he apparates them a bit farther, drawing trees close together for temporary shelter. “Harry – I am sorry – “

“I’ve got potions,” Harry says, blunt to avoid talking about it. “Healing potions. I couldn’t cast a healing spell yet.” Until he’d taken a calming draught, any healing spells would backfire. “They broke your arm? Anything else?”

He moves so unevenly – he doubts his hip is _broken_ , but the tendons have been ripped through, a curse withering them down the length of his thigh. Still, he shakes his head. “I will heal you first. That curse – I could have intercepted it – “

“Don’t,” Harry says, but he is shrugging his torn robes off, revealing a bloodied shirt underneath. “I’m glad it missed you.”

Voldemort cannot lift his free hand to run his fingers through Harry’s hair as he casts. Mollesco, then two iterations of Episkey. The rain heals as well, as it touches the damaged flesh. He scourgifies the blood away, and finally mends the fabric. Harry slips back into his robe, even as he still moves gingerly.

He is pulling out potions then: a calming draught for each of them, a healing potion for Voldemort. A potion of magic, praise Morgana, because his own is leaking and unstable. He must shift his weight, leaning onto his staff so his unbroken hand is free.

“Oh. Is that splint alright? Should I cast another one?” Harry asks, examining it. There must be doubt on Voldemort’s features because Harry gives him a small smile. “I can do that much, at least. _Ferula_.”

He casts a more careful splint than Voldemort had put on himself in the moment, holding the shattered bits of bone together. It hurts, and he swallows the adrenaline of pain. Instead he takes all three potions in quick succession. His magic, _their_ magic, surges and then settles.

Harry swallows a calming draught as well, but his eyes are still bright and expression still empty. Voldemort would like to hold him but recognizes it would not be welcome. There is nothing he can do for Harry after _that_ , surely.

But Harry catches some echo of his… guilt, his guilt. He manages a smile. “I can’t talk about it,” he says. “I can’t _think_ about it. Good thing there’s no time to, anyway.”

“I could not persuade you to go?”

“ _Hell_ no.” He pushes his hair, wet with rain, off his face. “Could we apparate to the far side of the lake? If you need to cast on it.”

It is a good idea, but he shakes his head. “It’s too close to the castle, the anti-apparition wards would still be in place,” he says. “I might disrupt them, but it wouldn’t be worth the risk, to threaten the castle.”

“Right.” Harry is thinking. “The grotto underneath the school, though….”

Voldemort looks at him in surprise. “Would be quite plausible,” he agrees. “Do you know how to get in?”

“The Aurors closed it off. It was a passage in the dungeons. You really don’t remember?”

He shakes his head with a faint smile. “Cursing the Defense post was among my more vindictive moments.”

“Well. It’s useful now. D'you know how to apparate into the Chamber?”

“Yes.”

Harry hesitates. “Then… why didn’t you?” he asks. “Ever, I mean. Not even in the war.”

Because the castle had turned against him in the last war. He is only able to admit that to himself now, and how much it hurt him. Still, he clicks his tongue. “The Death Eaters were never worthy to step foot in the Chamber.”

Harry relaxes, smiles a bit. He is entertained when Voldemort is dismissive about such things. “Alright,” he says softly. “Take us, then?” He wraps a hand around Voldemort’s waist; Voldemort apparates.

They arrive in the lowest cavern of the chamber. Harry stops him. “The diadem – he said he trapped it for anyone who got in.”

“Ah.” Voldemort casts an infrared Lumos, and a wall of wards appears in the light before them. “Fortunately, _his_ magic is _my_ magic as well.” He begins to pull apart the wards. “This is how Avery and Greengrass entered, then?”

“Avery, yeah. Then I told him to fix it, and he did this. Greengrass walked in through the front door. Hey,” Harry puts a hand on his arm – his left arm, the splinted one. “Let me try a healing spell now? I’m… alright to do it.”

Their magic has settled. Harry’s mind has settled. “Yes,” Voldemort says, stepping back from the wards. “ _Brackium emendo_ , with a motion….” He lifts his staff in an upward swirl.

Harry squares his shoulders. “ _Brackium emendo_ ,” he casts, dispersing the beam of light from his elbow to his wrist. His bones knit themselves together, tender but passable. Harry is near enough to his Legilimency now, to know the effect. “There.” Vanishing the splint, he runs his fingertips carefully along Voldemort’s arm, magic sparking between them.

“Thank you.” Wedging the end of the staff into the wards, he peels them open. Harry pauses, waiting for an explosion or the like; when there is none, he leaves before Voldemort.

He has missed the Chamber, he realizes as they traverse it. Vast and dark and wet, but there is an intimacy to it. Slytherin’s magic embraces him here.

Harry hesitates in an upper cavern, where the passages are deliberately obscure and misleading. And Voldemort, slow and uneven gait on his staff (he moves like Moody now, he realizes with faint disgust), guides them both to the surface, emerging into the girls’ toilets.

The castle is quiet, quieter than it has been since a year ago, when it’d been shielded for its survival. They cannot linger, however. Harry loops an arm in Voldemort’s, to ensure he’d keep pace. They move toward the dungeons.

The dungeons _hurt_ , he finds. This magic that echoes in him, that his wounds will damage the castle, is now so close as to be overwhelming. Even without revealing the wards, he feels how they crack, spark, unravel too quickly. He wonders what it was like for the Slytherins to live among such precarity all year.

“They were scared,” Harry says aloud, because even their thoughts cannot be separated any longer. “I wish anyone had asked them earlier. Or _believed_ them earlier.”

“What do they need now?” His first instinct is a demand: _I want to see them_. But obviously they would never want to see him; and what would the benefit even be, except some outlet for his guilt?

( _Guilt_. The second time today.)

Harry hums in thought. “They’re not getting their families back until, uh, this is over. I think that’s as much as they want.”

“Yes, well.” He raises an eyebrow as Harry leads him to a corridor that was mostly defunct even when _he_ had been a student. “There was a cave-in?”

“Uh-huh. It’d been closed up here.” He lights lumos in a sphere to accompany them along the passage. Voldemort pulls apart the Aurors’ wards that had closed off the passage to students.

Deeper into the space, there is the smell of water and then the sound of it. Voldemort is fascinated. How had his younger self gained access to this place? He is fairly confident the grotto was inaccessible then, perhaps even unknown. And that he would plant it the same day as the diadem, under Albus’s suspicious eye… well. It is impressive.

At last they reach the water’s edge. “I don’t suppose you could summon whatever you left down there?” Harry asks brightly.

“ _Accio_ DADA curse.” The water does not stir; neither of them had expected it to. “Another day, then.”

They are leaning against a high boulder as Voldemort thinks. Harry rubs circles into his back, careful to avoid the cursed spots at his shoulder and ribs. There will be permanent damage by now, he thinks, but there is nothing to be done for it at the moment.

The varri should migrate toward the lake at an individual pace.  If they were all to move at once he could simply freeze the lake, but their relative autonomy precludes this. Anyway, he feels some fondness for the giant squid. And it would be a political nightmare to kill Hogwarts’s mermaids.

They must put a lure at the bottom of the lake, strong enough to attract them and then cursed enough to kill them. Or trap them.

It is overly simple, but he looks to a boulder in the middle of the lake. If they could chain the varri to a sunken boulder…. He moves off the stone on which they are leaning, pulling Harry away too. Then he wraps a ward of attraction around it.

The varri do not have a particular rune to name them, unsurprisingly. He crafts a ward: attraction to this object, for all undead, a strong force. The vampires may also be attracted but he doubts they will throw themselves into the lake. It would be good fortune if they did, though.

Harry laughs when he translates the ward for himself. “Don’t bring them _here_ , though,” he says. “Could you block off this part from the outside of the lake? Otherwise….” They would enter the castle.

“Yes. But they will not get in.” He loops another ward around the boulder. Incarcerous charm, with magic-resistant chains, on any undead within ten feet. He conjures a length of chain out of the stone, testing its weight. Acceptable.

“I hope this doesn’t hurt the mermaids,” Harry says, reading over his shoulder.

He gives his sweet, thoughtful, wonderful boy a smile. “It will _annoy_ the mermaids, I’m sure. We will remove the bodies as soon afterward as is feasible.”

“You’re really rather nice these days,” Harry says, and Voldemort sighs but does not disagree.

Harry gives him magic as he works, weaving the wards together for the most power. The way magic courses between them – it is comforting. They have both missed it. He only gathers from the periphery of Harry’s thoughts how trying this past fortnight has been for him. Really, these past months altogether.

When the boulder is glowing with interwoven wards, he steps back. Now he must plant it in the water, as near to the forest as he is able. He is fairly confident that he can propel it through the lake. Magic comes easier, now that the castle has forgiven him, at least for a time.

Still, Harry hovers anxiously at his elbow as he first levitates the boulder out, then drops it, causing the water to splash hard on the shore. He is careful, maneuvering it underwater. The hum of magic in the ground beneath his bare feet helps. And beside him, Harry’s touch is also filled with magic.

It is approximately in the center of the lake when he releases it. He _has_ essentially crafted a game of fetch for the varri, he thinks. Then he puts a wall along the grotto’s opening, separating it from the rest of the lake. Then – they must return.

The adrenaline has long worn off, and dread is setting in. Harry’s emotions, not Voldemort’s, for whatever that is worth. “Calming draught,” Voldemort says to him firmly.

Harry looks up. “For me or for you?”

“At this point it hardly matters.”

So Harry gives him a small smile, pulling out his potions. He gives Voldemort the last potion of magic replenishment. They must see the Dëshmitar now.

They apparate from the Chamber again – perhaps longer than walking out the front door, but crossing the lawn would make them easy targets. Still, they might apparate directly into a battle. They are both bracing for it.

And they do, nearly. The forest is quieter than it had been, but a short distance from where they land, there is a crackling exchange of curses. Voldemort catches a swirl of Aurors’ red robes. They move in.

Aurors Villanova and Phan, flanking _Slughorn_ of all people. There are two varri and two vampires – but all three of the humans have some darkening necrotic damage on their exposed skin, and they are clearly worn down. The vampires’ stamina made them valuable dueling partners for Voldemort half a century ago; it makes them formidable opponents now.

“Stay,” he mutters to Harry, but then he peels off his own disillusionment. Slughorn sees in his peripheral vision, gapes, misses a tongue-splitting curse meant for him. Voldemort bats it away.

“Where is she?” he demands of the vampires as he steps into the duel, throwing a blood-chilling hex around them both. The Inferi, too near its boundary, hiss and shiver.

“She said she would summon you when the time is right,” the male vampire says. “That you could not be surrounded by your _army_.”

He gives a dry laugh. “She understands nothing, if that is what she believes.”

“As you wish,” the vampire says, and his _Incarcerous_ narrowly misses Voldemort.

Harry is moving, plotting something, he can feel in his magic. The duel would be simpler if they got the Inferi away – the vampires may vacate if outnumbered –

And Harry has thought the same. He is running as he casts a Patronus, so they cannot curse him immediately. The thestral erupts from the air, galloping into the fray. And while the vampires step back, the Inferi’s gazes snap to the glittering warmth of the figure.

They had used a Patronus as a lure before: in the caverns, when he’d last dueled the Dëshmitar. It will work, it _must_ work. He throws a tendon-snapping curse at the female vampire who has advanced much too near to Slughorn; she stumbles and curses in Albanian. And then he is putting a gloss of Imperio over the thestral: all undead should follow it. The Inferi’s wands waver in their grips. Their constructed facial features are warping as they lose focus.

The Aurors and Slughorn seem to understand what has happened. Free to only duel the vampires now, their efforts redouble, and violent spells clash in the air again and again, with the sounds of metal clanging and the smell of sulfur. Slughorn trades a lightning spell for a spell of metal darts, creating great sparks in the sky. But there is recoil in his spell, and when he falls back, the other vampire hits him in the face with a glittering psychological spell. Immediately his eyes go wide, mouth pulled in a silent o of horror, and the vampire is laughing –

Harry’s disillusionment breaks where he is grabbing Slughorn, taking him by his rounded shoulders. And one vampire is shooting at Harry, the other at his Patronus, and they are too near to one another for a killing curse – “ _Diffindo_!” Voldemort casts in Parseltongue, and the first vampire’s arm is severed just beneath the elbow. She cries out.

There is a _crack_ , because Harry can’t apparate silently yet. But he is gone, and Slughorn with him.

Bragg and Villanova move in a tactical way, pinning the vampire who is still clutching the strange, dry stump of her arm. Voldemort shoots a stunning spell at the other – misses, but it is enough to distract him. He throws a curse, too fast and too violent, and while Voldemort sees that it will pierce his shield, he hasn’t got time to move – the air before him warps. The vampire’s spell bends back on him, and then he is hissing, doubled over on himself from internal damage. “Excarcero!” Bragg casts, seizing the opportunity, and he is vanished to their prison as well.

The Aurors gape when they are alone. “What was _that_ ,” Villanova mutters, because she’d seen the minute warp.

Hogwarts loves him. Again. It is a relief, equal to the relief of finding Harry still loved him after this time. “Unpracticed magic,” he says instead. “A gift.”

“… Fine,” she says after a moment. “We would handle the rest of the vampires if you would find their leader. Or – you’ll need Potter?” she asks, frowning.

He’d _need_ him. “Ideally,” he agrees, even though the answer is assuredly _yes_.

Villanova nods at this. “And from the Aurors…?”

An offer to command the Aurors. He quietly marvels, but keeps his visage indifferent. “Send the Inferi to the lake,” he says. “They will drown themselves there.”

Bragg is amused, Villanova disgusted. “And Potter’s Patronus?” Bragg asks.

“They may be attracted to his alone. You should have yours out, regardless.”

They obey: an ox and an egret shimmer before him. Voldemort surveys them. “The Inferi can shapeshift. They _have_ shifted.” There is no time to explain – Ginny, Bella, the Longbottoms, the Potters. “A Patronus will recognize them.”

“Thank you,” Bragg says, surprised. “But if you – _rely_ on Potter’s Patronus – “

They want to accompany him. He is nearly startled by that accommodation. “Harry and I are never far from one another. I will find him.” And then he is stepping back, casting disillusionment on himself. He must find Harry.

Harry says their connection feels like a cord to follow. For Voldemort it feels like a saturation of color. They are not near enough together now, but – Voldemort knows the magic of summoning. And the soil thrums with his magic, their magic. Pulling open their Legilimency, he concentrates, and apparates.

He lands on the edge of a skirmish, much too close to where the nurse had been caring for people. Harry must have brought Slughorn to her, then returned back into battle. Of course.

The battle is sprawling: a half dozen vampires and as many Aurors in his sight. He does not care to interfere; he must only find Harry. But in the bright, shimmering scene, of twinkling light reflecting off the cursed rain, he cannot see where Harry might be. He plunges in.

The nearest vampire is Anaya, one of the Humnerë researchers and the one who most often dosed him with Amortentia. She is quick, a brilliant duelist even by vampiric standards, and she trades crackling hexes with Willoughby now. She dances around him, exhausting him without really threatening him – and Voldemort sees the way he moves. There are students behind him, two Ravenclaws fighting an imposing male vampire, and Willoughby is attempting to give them a way out. But they are struggling too. So Voldemort moves in.

The male vampire has dark hair that swirls over his shoulders, and a cruel smile on his thin lips. But he _lets_ the students take aim at him – missing constantly as he dodges, also frustrating and exhausting them. But the next time he ducks out of the way of the boy’s spell, Voldemort has aimed for him – he casts a Sectumsempra that strikes between his shoulder blades.

The vampire writhes, and the students take a precious moment to be shocked instead of _stunning_ him as they should. He is moving in, but the vampire straightens. “Kukudh,” he says through his teeth, his voice rasping, and he is looking back at precisely where Voldemort stands. Then, casually, he throws a severing curse at the students. It splits open the boy’s throat.

There is shouting, there is pain – Voldemort knows Harry has seen it too, the way their emotions surge. Chaos, then, and everyone moving in to grab the boy, to attack the vampire. Willoughby is hit in the distraction, and Brightbone has run in, and _Scrimgeour_ has run in even though it is stupidly dangerous for him to be here at all –

Voldemort and Harry reach the boy at the same time, their magic coming together powerfully as they touch. Harry too is disillusioned, but he’s throwing his invisibility cloak over the boy, taking hold of them both. “Get us out,” he rasps. And Voldemort does.

The boy is already unconscious when they land – perhaps a hundred yards away, not far because it is dangerous to apparate an injured person at all, but enough to use to their advantage. Voldemort casts further disillusionments and repellant charms on the space, drawing some brush in close to shield them. The boy is lying flat on his back, and Harry’s hands are on him, casting wandless Parselmagic even as it is draining him. “Terry, Terry,” he’s saying desperately in between spells. Voldemort winces even as he falls to his knees beside them.

The Parselmagic is a good instinct – the severing curse itself is creature magic, untouchable by wixen magic. But it is also necrotic damage, and the flesh at his throat is falling away faster than Voldemort can stitch it back together. Harry is pulling out a healing potion in fumbling hands, a blood replenishing potion, but they cannot be injected and he could not swallow them. When Harry realizes this, looking at the mangled mess of the boy’s throat, he makes a strangled cry of frustration.

“Magic,” Voldemort says briefly, reaching for his hand. He already knows it will not help, that he is as good as dead. But Harry will not feel so helpless, anyway. At least their magic will touch, sustaining them both, as they watch this boy die. Voldemort casts until the end, when Terry’s complexion is gray and his head lolls. Then the necrotic damage will eat at his flesh until he is decapitated but for his spinal cord, and Voldemort cannot allow Harry to see that. “We need to leave him,” he says.

“No – “

“Harry. He is dead. I am sorry.” He picks up the invisibility cloak, spelling the blood out of it. “He must be protected from the rain, but we are marking this brush with a cairn. We will return for his body later.” He is bold and dispassionate because Harry is best in crisis with such specific authority. They had never let go of each other, so Voldemort pulls him up by his clammy, blood-stickied hands by now. “We must find the Dëshmitar. This needs to end.” He is recasting their disillusionment as a single spell, so they can see one another Harry’s expression is miserable and empty; there are mottled scratches on his face from necrotic damage, and the beginnings of a black eye. Voldemort cleans up the blood down his front.

“… Alright.” Harry has steadied himself. “How do we find her, then?”

“The castle speaks to me.” He has draped a shield over the bush where the boy lays, and conjures a cairn of blue-green stones beside it. And then he is pulling Harry away.

They walk beneath the disillusionment together, leaning on one another. Harry’s mind has steadied, putting this trauma away as with all the others. They share magic easily, even as broken as both of them are. And it is apparent then, without Hogwarts and Harry, Voldemort would be near death. He stays quite close to Harry. His final Horcrux.

They move toward the lake, in the direction of the castle. There are fewer Inferi now in the forest, and when one vampire summons more, only a single bird swoops in to join her. Still, the quiet of the surroundings is unnerving. So is the smell of blood in the air. The vampires do not bleed, and with the Inferi gone, it could now only belong to the humans.

“It’s like that everywhere,” Harry says, after a time. “You saw how he was only… holding Terry and Lisa back. They aren’t trying to kill them. Well, most anyone,” he says. “The Ministry, they will. Scrimgeour came close. Bones has got a wicked curse scar on her face.” (He does not mention Bowersock because he no longer knows Bowersock is dead. Voldemort is relieved at it.) “But otherwise… it’s like they’re waiting us out. I saw Lavender,” he says, when Voldemort gives him a questioning look. “It’s what she’s told me, anyway.”

“I see.” They wish to exhaust the others and isolate Voldemort, so he cannot bring others to fight on his behalf. It implies quite a lot of faith that the people on the battlefield would fight for Voldemort anyway. But, in a sense, they already were.

They are near enough to the lake now that Voldemort can hear the patter of rain on its surface. The soil hums with recent magic, but she is not here now. She is… farther, across the lake and in the direction of the castle.

No, _beyond_ the castle. Already regretting what this will do to Harry, he pauses. “Dumbledore’s tomb.”

“No. Oh god no,” Harry breathes. “ _Why_?”

“I don’t know.”

“What the _fuck_ ,” Harry says, and at least his anger invigorates him. “We’ve got to tell someone, we can’t just go….”

Voldemort is inclined to agree. There is a fight perhaps a hundred yards away, amidst a rock formation behind the lake. He sees the red of Aurors’ robes. Instead of walking, on his leg that now surges with the damage done, he apparates them.

Moody and Tonks. (Who is to say whether the relief they feel is properly Harry’s or Voldemort’s?) One vampire is unconscious and bound against a tree, and a second floats in midair, throwing clouds of poison at the Aurors. Harry instinctively moves in, but Voldemort grabs him, circling around to the vampire’s blind spot. He pulls Harry’s magic out, using it to cast a flesh piercing charm: it slips neatly beneath the vampire’s ribcage, and she hisses, hitting the ground hard.

“Excarcero!” Tonks vanishes her while she is down, and then the unconscious one too. Moody’s magical eye studies them both, and Voldemort lifts the disillusionment for Tonks’s sake.

“She is at Dumbledore’s tomb.”

“You’ve seen her?” Moody says, squinting in suspicion.

“No. Not yet.” Voldemort explains: “The magic of the castle. I can only feel that she is beyond it.”

“His _tomb_ ,” Moody says, disgusted. “I am sending Aurors in ahead of you.”

“No. Send them afterward. She will speak to me, not to them.”

“You don’t know what is there.”

A tomb. A body. The magic is bright and sparse, indicating there is no army in that direction yet. “It is only her,” he says. “We must duel, anyway, and it should be before she amasses her forces.” Nobody else may interfere with the magic of a duel. The Aurors, if they came at all, could only come as witnesses.

Still, Moody is unrelenting. Raising his staff, he splits his Patronus into four. “To Dumbledore’s tomb,” he says, sending them in different directions.

Voldemort looks at him in frustration. “She is mine,” he says, and before he can apparate them both, Moody points his staff at him.

“Your _what_?”

“Mine to kill,” he says curtly. “Your human magic never will.” And, still looking at Moody’s snarled features, he pulls Harry into another apparition.

He knew that Dumbledore’s tomb had been erected on the grounds; he has not seen it before now. But the marble is split open, bright blue in the full moon, and the Dëshmitar stands behind it. Voldemort holds Harry back, protecting him from the sight.

 _Crack, crack, crack_. The Aurors arrive behind him immediately, and Voldemort nearly swears. It will be more difficult with an audience than without one. He and the Dëshmitar could speak much more pragmatically alone.

“Voldemort!”

He turns to look. Scrimgeour, standing before the Aurors. His face is spattered in blood but his expression is determined. “Minister,” Voldemort says. “Please don’t.” And he is letting go of Harry now too, pushing him backward toward the crowd. He must do this alone.

But Harry clings. He has always clung. “I would rather die with you,” he says in low Parseltongue.

“… We might.”

The Dëshmitar still holds her glittering metal staff, but she also holds a wand – _Albus’s_ wand, he realizes in wonder, the one he carried back from his duel with Grindelwald. What does it mean to her? “ _Kyria_ ,” he greets her, moving forward gingerly on his ruined leg.

“You’re a bit early,” the Dëshmitar says dryly. “But no matter. You knew I would come alone. Why did you not?”

And now he must answer for the Aurors behind him. He knows she does not mean Harry. “Witnesses,” he says. “They will not interfere.” And he knows it is true when he says it, that the group has stilled. Their fear, their ambivalence – not everyone would save him, anyway. But some would.

He comes closer, only a few feet from the tomb. Harry, still beside him, is oddly calm. But Harry has never feared death. Voldemort holds fast to this borrowed courage. “A duel?” he offers.

“No.” Her tone, usually light or wry with him, is severe now. “We _cannot return_ until you are subdued. It is beyond my control.”

“The Erinyes?” he guesses. Of all the Undying, the Furies of Athens are the nearest thing to a central authority. They also hate Voldemort the most. The Dëshmitar nods shortly.

He cannot resolve anything to do with the Undying. He cannot save the Dëshmitar or any of the vampires. “You haven’t got to do this,” Harry is murmuring in Parseltongue. “We will go anywhere else, live with them, start someplace new – But I won’t survive without you.”

Without the Horcrux. It keeps them both alive, really. To fight for it might put him in danger. It might put _Hogwarts_ in danger. But this was love, wasn’t it, making stupid and irrational decisions on another’s behalf? “I will not relinquish him,” he says to the Dëshmitar.

“Vol – “ Harry is desperate.

And the Dëshmitar’s mouth twists in a smile. “You might, actually,” she says lightly. She raises her staff, boiling like liquid metal with the fury of its trapped souls. “You drowned my varri,” she begins, and Voldemort has a terrible sense what will come next. “I found they were all being lured to the lake, though, by a thestral.” And she swings her staff before her, and their Patronus emerges, shaking out its mane.

Harry chokes, and he’s casting furiously but the thestral is no longer in his control. He is scared, and defeated, and _betrayed_ in a queer way. And moreso when Voldemort says to him, low but in English so the Dëshmitar can hear it, “You must go.”

“I’ll fight – “

“No,” he says, “you won’t. _Imperio_.” And he is gentle even as Harry resists, and it hurts them both. And when Harry sees Voldemort flinch, he relents, following the spell. He is drawn backwards toward the Aurors; their ranks close around him. Voldemort briefly makes eye contact with Moody, whose gnarled hand is now gripping Harry’s shoulder, but his expression gives away nothing.

He turns back to the Dëshmitar. “We must duel.”

She could have refused him. His magic is still hemorrhaging from breaking the surrender earlier, and she already holds a bit of their soul in the Patronus. But he learned to respect ritual from her, the weight and significance of magic. She stashes Albus’s wand in her sleeve, and casts a protection spell around the tomb. And Voldemort is surprised and gratified at this, if only because Harry would be devastated if any harm came to the tomb or the body itself. Then, the Dëshmitar bows. Voldemort returns it. They each raise their staff.

Harry can’t watch but he can’t look away. Voldemort’s Imperius has fallen away but Moody’s grip on his shoulder makes clear that he may not move. But his magic – _their_ magic – is already so fractured; and the Dëshmitar is so formidable and Voldemort so weakened; and even the thestral circles ineffectually as they square off.

Voldemort throws the first curse, the Dëshmitar deflects it. She is light on her feet, not floating but only just. And when Voldemort casts a spell of brightness over the scene – he seems to pull the moon closer, until it hovers just over the grounds – the light catches her glittering hair. Her lips still curve in a smile.

She duels as the other vampires did – defensive, batting away his spells without casting her own. Voldemort throws fire, electricity, a number of different lacerations. But the first time the Dëshmitar throws a severing spell back at him, he hesitates and it grazes his ribs, ripping open his robes. He cries out, and there is blood down his side. But when Harry cries out too, a corresponding wound slicing itself along his torso, Voldemort looks back. The Dëshmitar should have hit him with another spell in his distraction – Harry hears the intake of breath by the Aurors, anticipating it – but she does not.

Voldemort casts harder, more recklessly. He apparates instead of running. He casts three spells of lightning in quick succession, aimed so she must dodge into one to avoid another – and instead she levitates herself, lifting easily into the air. When she fires down on him from this angle, he is even less able to avoid the spells. The shields before him ring out as they are struck.

There is conversation among the Aurors, too low for Harry to hear. Brightbone saying something, Scrimgeour making a doubtful noise, Moody saying curtly, “Yes. They should.” There is a rush of magic – Brightbone again, he thinks – but nothing changes.

The first time Voldemort’s spell fails, a blood curse by the shape of it, there is an inhalation behind Harry. He feels fury, and he rips open his own Legilimency, pressing forward all of his magic. Voldemort’s next spell, one that twists the air beneath the Dëshmitar’s feet so she is obligated to lower herself to the ground, is stronger.

But Voldemort tires. He is clearly further injuring himself, and he will never be fast or more dexterous than her. But the magic of the castle supports him, the air and earth twisting to impede the Dëshmitar. When a wave of soil shifts beneath her feet and she is caught off-balance, Voldemort lands a perfect _Diffindo_ in her torso. She shudders.

But that is the last of it. His next volley of spells – _three, four, five_ spells of blood and flesh – all graze or miss her. Harry sees that he is attempting to lure her away from where she holds the thestral, just before Dumbledore’s tomb. But she won’t, she drives him back each time just as she’d kept him away from the portal in the caverns. Desperation boils within him.

On the next hit, a psychological spell that reaches his battered soul directly, the thestral flickers. Voldemort is furious – he casts Avada Kedavra, but it dissipates into the air, too weak to be a threat. Again – again. Fury and self-loathing are all that sustain him, and if Harry were any closer he’d beg him to stop. He will kill himself, draining the last of his own magic, and Harry is powerless to stop it. The thestral flickers again. Harry thinks he is crying.

The final time he stumbles, the ground seems to shift to catch him, but it is not enough. The Dëshmitar’s stunning spell hits him squarely, and he crumples, an impossibly small mass of black before Dumbledore’s tomb. Harry is shouting, fighting off Moody – and the thestral breaks apart, swirling back toward the Dëshmitar’s staff. She holds it over Voldemort’s body, seizing the edge of their soul –

“No!”

And Harry has broken free of the Aurors, sprinting across the grounds. The only thought in his mind is that he wants to be holding Voldemort when they are both killed.

The Dëshmitar’s staff glitters and burns as she extracts his soul. Harry is desperate. _Not yet, not yet_. A swirl of her staff – his vision swims as his own magic is pulled apart – his own wand is hot in his hand and he is panicking. The staff consumes all the light in the space – it seems even Voldemort’s pale visage is going dark –

His wand is up, violently, without thinking. She can’t take him yet. And there’s a surge, everything he is feeling – a bright beam shoots across the grounds, hitting the staff squarely. There is a wail like a banshee’s, the Dëshmitar startles and looks up to see Harry running –

But she whips Dumbledore’s wand from her robes, and she is casting furiously, barely able to hold onto the wavering thread of Voldemort’s soul. With a last gasp, Harry throws himself on Voldemort’s body, breaking the thread, and he’s fumbling for the Portkey at his throat but he’s already dead, they’re already dead – There is shouting and magic and a thundering mass above them, and then Harry’s head falls to Voldemort’s chest. And then there is only darkness.

 


	37. Chapter 37

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And then they find themselves in King’s Cross Station.

What brings Harry back to consciousness is the impossible brightness before him. Even with his eyes closed, it burns through his eyelids. He turns his head in irritation, and his cheek comes into contact with a smooth, cool floor.

Perhaps he is not _conscious_ as such, but he exists here, anyway. And so does Voldemort, he knows before even opening his eyes, by the way their magic is coiled around one another’s. _Thank god, thank god, thank god._

Voldemort’s fingers are in his hair, then, brushing aside his fringe, when Harry finally opens his eyes. “You’ve still got your scar,” Voldemort says, peering at it.

This seems so insignificant that Harry laughs. Rolling himself seated, so his knees touch Voldemort’s, he asks, “Is this death?”

“… It might be.”

But everything around them is neat and clean. Their injuries are gone. They are not wearing the robes they died in, but simple white cotton robes, with a rope cinch. The surroundings are entirely mist, but for the glass ceiling that sparkles above them.

Voldemort stands – and that injury _was_ sustained, that there are still marks of the curse down his left side. When Harry sees him wince, he is up immediately, pressing himself to Voldemort’s side for support. But Voldemort has his wand as well, and transfigures it easily into its staff. “There is no magic here,” he murmurs, thumbing the handle.

“It is all magic,” says a voice behind them. “What you feel, rather, is an absence of the mundane.”

They both turn abruptly, because a moment ago they had been alone. The mist is resolving into a scene, into floor and benches and warm-glowing lamps, and Dumbledore is striding toward them.

Harry feels the twist of Voldemort’s soul, tense and complicated. But Dumbledore approaches Harry first. He reaches up carefully to cup Harry’s face, running his thumb along his cheek. “My boy,” he says with such fondness. “You are so unerringly brave. So unerringly _good_.”

Harry foregoes the bit where he’d tell Dumbledore he is less brave now, dying for someone he loves, than when he thought he’d have to die for someone he hated. Instead, he looks into Albus’s blue eyes. “You are dead.”

“Quite,” Albus agrees cheerily.

“Then we are dead, too.”

“You may be,” he says, still with good humor. “But that is not yet a decision you must make.”

They are in an in-between space, then. As this comes true for Harry, the scene of mist around them resolves further. “King’s Cross!” Dumbledore says in delight. “A profound choice.”

“Albus – “ Voldemort speaks for the first time, his tone strained.

“Come, both of you,” Dumbledore says. “I shall explain what I am able. At long last.”

They walk abreast, Harry in the center of them. Harry’s hand is on Voldemort’s back, and already he can feel the tightness there. Voldemort is silent once more.

There is a waiting area behind a railing; Dumbledore spreads his midnight blue robes to take a seat, and Harry lowers Voldemort’s broken form before sitting himself. They touch each other openly, their sides pressed together, in spite of the way Dumbledore surveys them. Voldemort’s magic is uncomfortably tense in anticipation.

But Dumbledore is easy, smiling at them. “I am so proud of you both,” he says, looking between them. “Our world is fortunate to have you. I wish, Voldemort – “

“That is inadequate and you know it,” Voldemort interrupts, unimpressed.

Harry tries to shush him, but Dumbledore nods gravely. “It is,” he says. “Many – if not most – of my decisions concerning you have been. But I _do_ wish I could have channeled your revolutionary spirit into such productive work, much earlier. Britain does need you,” he says, “even if the Ministry’s opinion is as fractured as that of the general populace on that account.”

“I will be Minister,” Voldemort says. “And the most helpful thing you can do is to keep out of the way.”

“Oh, I daresay I can be more helpful than that. That I _have_ been more helpful than that,” Dumbledore adds, and his voice carries the faintest edge.

Voldemort pauses. It is clear to them all that there will be no moving beyond this moment without – well, a _referendum_ , on their fundamentally broken relationship. It is Dumbledore who begins again. “Voldemort. I _am_ sorry. I failed you in significant ways throughout your childhood.” His voice and expression have both gone soft. “I felt at times that I could no more face you than I could Gellert. You made me ashamed of myself.”

Voldemort does not relish this apology. On the contrary, he is unnerved, unwilling to accept or reject it. Seeing this, Dumbledore goes on. “Harry has already advocated for you rather strongly, and I am inclined to agree with him. I was the only one who fully recognized the dark road you were on. It was the same as my own.”

Voldemort recoils at the comparison. “I am not you,” he says. “And I am not _him_.”

“You ran from your past more devoutly even than you ran from relationships. And yet….” A tug at the corner of his mouth. “It is all that tethers you to life, now. These scraps of your past self.”

“When did you know?”

“About the Horcruces? The night of your death.” He says the word unflinchingly. “The world needed to believe you had died, and I needed to believe you had lived. Coupled with a few inebriated confessions from Horace in the first war, I had my suspicions. _Harry’s_ Horcrux, however,” Dumbledore goes on. “Not until your resurrection. Which is rather late, in the scheme of things. And even then, I was not so imaginative as to assume anything could come of it but your mutual defeat.”

“You never told him,” Voldemort says. “What is martyrdom if it is so uninformed? Did you intend to take this insight to your grave?”

A faint smile. “As you have found, _the grave_ is a rather more permeable barrier than one might expect. And – yes. I hope, Harry, you recognize my interest in keeping you unaware,” he says, looking over. “Even if Voldemort’s knowledge of your Horcrux would have undoubtedly kept you safer – I could not allow it out. That its utility has so exceeded my expectations – _anyone’s_ expectations – “

“I fear I sacrificed Hogwarts for it,” Voldemort says, too softly. For a moment, there is no contempt in his voice, and he sounds so much younger.

“Hogwarts lives,” Dumbledore says. “Though not unchanged. If ever I had known of _that_ relationship – if any of us had known – “

“I never would have deliberately endangered it.”

“Dear boy, I know,” Dumbledore says, as though mollifying him. Voldemort’s hand gripping Harry’s goes tight. “Has the castle welcomed you back, by now?”

“Yes.”

He nods, thoughtful. “I had hoped so,” he says. “I had hoped you would find its magic as stabilizing as you must find Harry’s. If it is at all possible, you might spend time there. It will help.”

Voldemort finds this embarrassing and shameful, this commentary on his mental health. He redirects their attention: “Did you also know of Hogwarts first?” he says, slightly bitter.

Dumbledore does not rise to the antagonism. “I know of your connection to Hogwarts from the time of your sorting. The castle longed for you. That, too, I should have nurtured into something productive,” he adds. “Having watched you take to Hogwarts like a mother’s bosom – looking back, I see that I had orphaned you all over again in sending you away.” He pauses; Voldemort does not react. “In the present, however, your loyalty to the castle has been, on the whole, a reassurance to the Ministry. Collateral even in the instances when they will not offer Harry. They believe in your sincerity, at least in these matters.”

“If you’ve taken it upon yourself to be my advocate among the Wizengamot…” Voldemort says, distrustful and taken aback.

“Only in these extraordinary circumstances,” Dumbledore says. “I am sure I will be irrelevant again someday.”

This is obviously untrue, but Voldemort does not acknowledge it. “Hogwarts will no longer be threatened. _Britain_ will no longer be threatened,” he says with some ambivalence. This, too, he finds embarrassing in a way: he has been wrong, and it pains him. “I will not accept anything but peace now. The wars have stunted us for far too long.”

“You regret it.” A statement, not a question.

And Voldemort goes hot in anger, for the first time. “No,” he says. “What benefit is conferred by such backwards feelings as _regret_?”

Dumbledore lets a quiet moment elapse. “I am inclined to agree,” he says mildly. “As you know, I was paralyzed by the past as well. It changed nothing but for the worse. And yet – there is a benefit. At least one.”

He stops, silent, so Voldemort is obligated to ask with irritation, “What is it?” (And Harry can feel in his mind that if Dumbledore answers _love_ , he may have to hex him. In spite of everything, he finds this funny.)

“There is, as you know, precious little written about Horcruces,” Dumbledore says. “Less on how they may be restored.”

“I have none left,” Voldemort interrupts. “But Harry. The final two were severed in battle.” He says it more evenly than he feels. He wonders if there is enough of a soul within him to return to the realm of the living now. Harry is horrified by this possibility, but only leans in closer, their magic going warm and safe.

“Those Horcruces have been lost to time,” Dumbledore agrees. “And I am sorry for it. But there is another.” And he is shaking back his sleeve, revealing his hand still blackened by a curse.

Voldemort looks openly. On Dumbledore’s finger is the signet ring, a crack down its dark stone. And of the many questions Voldemort could have asked at this moment, he looks into Dumbledore’s deep blue eyes: “Why did you die?”

Dumbledore’s smile borders on mischievous. “Ah, Harry has been asking the same of me for months!”

“And you said you’d tell us _both_.” Harry recalls how unlikely that had seemed at the time. “When the time was right.”

“And so it is.” He has not removed the ring, instead thumbing it on his finger a bit. Harry feels Voldemort’s impatience. “The curse of the Horcrux would have killed me regardless. But I did intend to die. However, you will not understand my reasons until you understand what this ring is.”

“What it _is_?” Voldemort echoes, incredulous. “I stole it from my uncle after tearing open his memory. There was lore among them, that it was an heirloom of the Peverell family. But their coat of arms could have been etched onto it at any time. And the Peverells do not carry a fraction of the weight of Slytherin’s line, so it was only a triviality if there was truth in it at all. Of what value is any of this?”

With a spell, Dumbledore removes the dark stone from its setting, holding up the underside not to Voldemort, but to Harry. Etched there is a design: triangle, circle, line, all set within each other. “This symbol,” he says, “is the Peverell coat of arms.” He studies it, the overly simple geometric design. “Perhaps you have seen it before?”

 _Triangle, circle, line_. “… Yes,” he says slowly. “But sir, I don’t know where. I’ve heard of the Peverells before….”

“Their line has not yet died out, but the name has,” he says. “Centuries ago. Unsurprising, you will find, as I explain myself. I only have one further preliminary question – while you both did not have the benefit of growing up being told wixen faerie tales, have you ever read the Tales of Beedle the Bard?”

“ _Oh_.” He recalls now. “That shape, it was in the library’s book. But it didn’t – it had been penciled in.” He would think nothing of it, but beside him, Voldemort has gone quite still.

“Indeed,” Dumbledore beams at Harry. “The Peverell brothers are at the center of some of the most significant lore in our world. As the eponymous three brothers, they are credited with possessing – or perhaps creating – three powerful artifacts. Together they are known as the Deathly Hallows.”

Voldemort is still poised and precise. “They weren’t mentioned in Skeeter’s book,” he says to Dumbledore. “I’d expected they would be.”

“Her narrative must be incomprehensible without them, given how significant they were to my youth,” Dumbledore says. “But then, I am glad they are not. Best to let the myth die.”

“ _Myth_ ,” Voldemort echoes. “We are not here to learn of hearsay and children’s fables.”

Dumbledore smiles at that. “You are not,” he promises. “But it might be better if they were regarded as a fiction. Many people have had their lives destroyed, pursuing them. It was what first united Gellert to me,” he adds, and it is clearly painful for him.

“The Dëshmitar cracked open your tomb,” Voldemort says, quiet. “Before we arrived.”

“I assume they are more invested in humans pursuing immortality than the rest,” Dumbledore says. “Still, it is… surprising that she would understand.”

“Understand _what_?” Harry is lost, and he is fearful, and the impact of seeing Dumbledore’s tomb split open is really only sinking into his mind now.

Dumbledore takes up his didactic tone. “Of the three Hallows, by far the most well-known and coveted is the elder wand. An unbeatable wand, loyal to the one who last defeated its owner. You can imagine the trail of death it left in its wake, how far a person might go to possess the wand. Still, it has always been officially legend, a bit of drunken boasting to be passed around.”

“But if you had it – _she’s_ got it now – “

“She might,” Dumbledore says. “But if you will indulge just a bit more explanation, Harry.”

“Sorry, sir.”

Dumbledore waves him off. “This wand,” and he opens his hand, creating the same wand as the Dëshmitar had taken from his tomb, “was not the wand with which I attended Hogwarts. I carried this wand back from my duel with Grindelwald.”

“Everyone wondered,” Voldemort says lowly, “if it was mere sentimentality, or spite.”

His smile is wistful. “A bit of both, I assure you, but that is not all.”

“Why would you struggle with a wand that still obeys him while he lives?”

“ _Ah_.” Dumbledore looks at him like a clever student; Voldemort slips back into defensiveness and contempt. “I am sure this is why there was never speculation that this is in fact the elder wand. He still lives! But the deathstick, intriguingly, does not require death. Merely defeat. I believe it could change allegiance with so little as a disarming spell.”

Voldemort frowns. “That is… _chaotically_ fickle.”

“Isn’t it?” Dumbledore agrees in delight. “Whoever crafted this wand understood far more about power than either of us ever shall.” He looks down at the wand, light against his darkened hand. “It invigorated him, I believe. It was the wand with which he slaughtered and subjugated hundreds. Even now, there is a fundamental bloodthirst to it.”

Voldemort is…. Harry doesn’t know a word for his feeling. He regrets the loss of this wand. “You could have done great things,” he says, and there is anger in his voice. “The _inadequacy_ of our world – “

“I know,” Dumbledore says, quiet to contrast Voldemort’s rising tone. “Forgive me. Power has always been my weakness. I sequestered myself at Hogwarts, limiting my own access to grandeur. Even so, this compulsion never left me. My political aspirations would have been no purer than Gellert’s. I could not even ensure it would have been purer than yours.” He meets Voldemort’s gaze deliberately. “You disgusted me,” he says, “because I disgusted myself. In truth, bravery does not come easily to me.”

Voldemort is still angry. “The statute could have been broken decades ago, with such power. Our world scurried away like rats, for your cowardice.” He hisses the word.

“No,” Dumbledore says. “You have not handled this wand. Few could. It does not spare even its master. But I made the decision, shortly after imprisoning Gellert, that this wand must die with me. Its potential would never outweigh its risks. Have you not found, that the people best suited to power are the ones who least desire it?”

Voldemort does not answer this directly, but he still burns. “You broke the elder wand because you believed nobody could be more responsible with it than _you_ ,” he says, his tone poisonous. “But what of the ring? There are less torturous ways to die.”

“I did not only break the elder wand,” Dumbledore says, and there is an inhalation from Voldemort, but Harry does not yet understand. “The elder wand would only be rendered powerless at my death – a circumstance that, clearly, I could not entirely control. I feared someone would learn of the wand. I feared _you_ would learn of the wand, most of all,” he says to Voldemort, whose face remains impassive. “I had to dismantle the Hallows within my own lifetime, to be certain. For the one who could hold all three Hallows would be known as the Master of Death, to control the contours of space and time itself. It is a power never meant for us.”

“This is hearsay,” Voldemort says. “You only traded the quest for the Hallows for a paranoia of them. Did you not feel foolish?”

“At times,” Dumbledore agrees. “But foolishness is rather liberating, as I hope you shall find someday. The second Hallow,” he says, mostly for Harry’s sake, “is the resurrection stone. But you recall the story, do you not? It is not a true resurrection, but a cursed half-life, one which will destroy both the living and the dead. But I did not recall that when I found this ring – whose setting is, of course, that same stone passed down through the Peverell line. I quite forgot myself – to think I would see my poor sister again, my mother and father – that I could tell them how very sorry I am, and to perhaps begin to earn back my brother’s forgiveness. It was, in truth, more magnetic even than the elder wand. But its curse was violent, and even one so talented in Dark Arts as Severus could only slow its progress, until I had put all things in order.”

“Then I have killed you,” Voldemort says. He sounds – nearly _eager_ at this prospect, and Harry goes a bit sick.

Dumbledore looks at him sharply. “If that were rightfully your wand, it could not have been used against you,” he says. “I cannot instruct you in how to curb your craving for power. I am only telling you that you must – that if you do not, it will also kill you prematurely. You know that your desire for life and your desire for power are incompatible already. The wand is gone.”

Voldemort grits his teeth. “You’d _lecture_ me, even now.”

“Yes,” Dumbledore says. “I would.” He goes on: “I kept the Horcrux – the resurrection stone – with me at all times. It seemed apparent that you had not been aware of its true identity, but then, I thought perhaps there was nobody in your past you might have wanted back. If I did not already know from Harry how you came to inhabit this body, I might have expected the ring to play a part in your rebirth. But I destroyed it, even before the wand was destroyed. You must publicize this, at some point, so the other Seekers of the Hallows may move on with their lives. So Gellert may move on with what remains of his.”

Voldemort had carried a secret of resurrection, from the time he was sixteen. He is frustrated, shocked – yet, beneath it all, Harry also catches some amount of relief. Later, he may understand it later.

Dumbledore had died for the Hallows. It is fitting. It is brave, truly, even if he doesn’t recognize it as such yet. The wand, the stone…. “What’s the third Hallow?” Harry asks.

Dumbledore gives him a soft smile. “Do you not remember?” he asks. “An invisibility cloak. But that one, I have never been so concerned about. It seems to be in good hands. Even if I have tacitly condoned _quite_ a lot of rule-breaking.”

“No,” Harry says, but he is laughing now, at the revelation and Dumbledore’s twinkling gaze and Voldemort’s quiet shock.

“Yes,” Dumbledore says. “And I hope it continues to serve you well.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I intend to send you back with the ring,” Dumbledore says to Voldemort, though he has not yet removed it from his blackened hand.

Voldemort’s mouth curls. “There is no purpose to it any longer. You destroyed the stone, destroyed the Horcrux – “

“I did not destroy the Horcrux.”

“Oh,” Voldemort says softly, surprised.

“Make no mistake, I tried to. I would have liked to. But as a Horcrux embedded within the resurrection stone, it clung more strenuously to life than the others. I died believing I had negated its power, but recently it has been quite a bit more _animated_ than one might expect.”

Voldemort is looking at the ring with desire. “What do you want?” ( _Slytherins_ , Harry marvels.)

“You must listen to me.” He waits until Voldemort meets his gaze. “I am not returning your Horcrux to you. I am returning your soul. You are desperately more in need of the latter than the former. But you must promise to be more careful with it than you have been. Avoid the deaths you can prevent. Mourn the ones you cannot. Love, and let yourself be loved. Embrace death.”

“… I can’t.” He says it so quietly that it might have gotten lost.

“You can,” Dumbledore says. “And you will. Give me your hand.”

Harry is holding Voldemort’s left hand, so he offers his right. Dumbledore leans forward, slipping the ring on Voldemort’s long middle finger, where he had worn it in his school days. And then – so warm and gentle it could only be the purest magic – Voldemort’s soul is united. He feels as though he breathes deeper, thinks more clearly. He had not realized what he’d given up before.

“There you go,” Dumbledore says softly, watching him. “Be careful with it. Not everyone is so fortunate as to have a soul that is loved.”

“Thank you.”

“You are welcome. And – the ring, as an artifact, will be quite useless in your own world. If you’d keep it as a token, you should. But if you would not – you might pass it along to Gellert. A memento of a life that ruined us both. I would advocate for giving him the erstwhile elder wand as well, but of course he may not have a wand at all.”

“Yes,” Voldemort says after a moment. “I’ll bring it to him.”

“Excellent.” And then Dumbledore is reaching into his robes, studying a traditional pocket watch. “Now, I believe, you have a train to catch.”

“To return?” Voldemort asks.

“Yes,” he says. “If you’d like. You haven’t got to.”

“And what would happen otherwise?”

“Then your travels would take you elsewhere.”

Voldemort’s obsession with death has always been as much attraction as repulsion. The thirst for this knowledge fills him, to know what might be beyond. But Harry feels more alive than he has ever felt, more tethered to the world they had left behind. “We are going back,” he says, and he’s moving to get up.

“Yes.” Voldemort swings the olive staff before himself, accepting Harry’s arm as Dumbledore also rises.

There is a quiet moment, then Dumbledore says, “Britain _is_ lucky to have you both.”

“Yes,” Voldemort agrees.

But Dumbledore only smiles at his arrogance. And then he adds, careful, “And you are lucky to have one another.”

“… I know.” Voldemort is leaning on Harry’s side now, but he runs a hand along his back. Harry smiles up at him.

“Safe travels,” Dumbledore says, and steps back to leave in a different direction.

“Wait – sir,” Harry says. Dumbledore stops, looking back as Harry formulates his question. “This – all of this. Is it real? Or has it all just happened in my head?”

Dumbledore’s smile is warm and gentle and proud. “Of course it is happening in your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean it is not real?”

The mist closes between them. He and Voldemort walk a distance, until there is the sound of a train whistle and a blur of scarlet. The Hogwarts Express pulls onto the tracks before them.

For some reason, they both hesitate. But the carriages inside are warm and bright, and the air carries the scent of pumpkin pasties, and there might even be the unlikely sound of students, laughing and shouting somewhere within. Together, they board the train.

\\\\\\\ /////

 

The next time Harry was awoken by the brightness in his eyes, it was because he was flat on his back, looking up at the impossibly large moon overhead. He was holding a body – Voldemort’s body, broken and weightless – against his torso. He cannot feel him breathing. He sat up, panicked and grieving, pulling Voldemort into his lap properly, peering into his marble features –

But then, Voldemort lifted a hand, to slip up Harry’s chest, his neck, his face. The signet ring felt heavy against Harry’s cheek. At last Voldemort opened his eyes, blinking a few times before surveying their position. “The Pieta?” he said. “Harry, the only thing less likely than you as a virgin is me as Christ.” He rolled gingerly out of Harry’s lap.

They were on a wide expanse of lawn, and they were alone. The vampires had not followed them, the Aurors had not followed them. They were both in phenomenal pain, with the adrenaline of battle receding, but they were still touching, and as always, the magic knitted them back together. Still, when Voldemort reached for his staff, Harry hissed. “I really don’t think you should get up.” The corresponding pain in his own body suggested at least a few broken ribs, to say nothing of the curse.

Obediently, Voldemort re-placed the staff beside him. “We are not at Hogwarts,” he says, squinting up at the building’s silhouette against the moon. “But its magic is similar.”

“Oh. Yeah, I bet it is.” Harry moved so Voldemort could mostly sit up, propped against him. He had hoped to reveal the place in daylight, but the moon off the spires is itself breathtaking. “This is Slytherin’s estate.”

Voldemort paused, then laughed in surprise. “What did you _do_ ,” he marveled, looking up at their home. “I knew it to be in ruins. I had never seen it. I’d assumed it would be infuriating.”

“It was,” Harry said. “I mean, there wasn’t a lot left. Two walls of the ground floor, some of the flagstones. But we brought in historians and preservationists, so it’s at least partly a reconstruction.”

“When did you _possibly_ – “

“Ages ago,” he said, and he was grinning now. “Last autumn, when I got my family tree from the Ministry? I asked what they had for you, too. And everybody thought it was a bad idea but nobody actually stopped me. And I didn’t tell you because I thought it’d never work out. Which, by the way, I don’t believe you’re actually surprised.”

“I am immensely surprised,” Voldemort promised. “You know enough of Legilimency to know that you only find what you seek. And I never thought….” He was looking back to the home in wonder. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. _Oh_ ,” he said softly as Voldemort caught his jaw, pressing a deep kiss to his already-open lips. They must move carefully, but Harry pressed the kiss back into his mouth. “I love you, I love you,” he was murmuring between kisses. “I should’ve said it earlier.” His chest felt curiously empty and filled at once. He would never want to stop touching Voldemort like this.

But then there was a crackle of magic overhead. Moody’s falcon swooped low. “Stay there,” it instructed. “We’ll come for you soon.”

Voldemort gazed up at the falcon; Harry felt obligated to explain. “The Ministry cast the wards around the house. He could guess we were here, anyway. Oh, and – the diadem did a lot. Like, a _lot_ ,” he stressed. “All of the wards indoors, really. And he extracted this time lapse of the house from the walls. And he tamed the snakes.” Suddenly he was sad at the loss of Riddle, another casualty of the battle.

“He tamed the snakes,” Voldemort echoed, amused. “Well, I shall have to thank him.”

Harry looked over in concern. “Uh….”

Voldemort already knew the contours of his thoughts. “The Horcruces were severed, not destroyed,” he said. “I’m quite sure they’re fine.”

“Oh.” Harry considered this. “I’ll go see the Slytherins sometime soon, I’ll find out then. What would it _mean_?” To have the diadem exist independent of Voldemort….

Voldemort shrugged, then regretted it as it sent a new bolt of pain down his arm. Hissing, he held the curse scar at his shoulder. “This is permanent,” he said darkly.

“You said this body didn’t have enough scars,” Harry reminded him. “Anyway, I like how you look with a staff. Like you’re so wise.”

“Broken,” Voldemort corrected. “Merely broken.” He took up the staff, casting Lumos so he could properly examine it. “Olive wood,” he mused.

“Yeah. From an old grove in Athens, Ollivander said. And I got a new feather from Fawkes. After she’d snapped your old one.”

“Hm.” He turned the staff over in his hands, running a thumb along the pattern of scales in the handle. “He crafted a cypress wand for me, last year.”

“The diadem’s got it now.”

Voldemort’s mouth curved. “Cypress,” he said precisely, “is the wood of heroes and martyrs. Now he gives me olive, the wood of peacemakers.”

“Good,” Harry said. “We’re done, with murder and war and the rest of it. You don’t know how _unbelievably_ boring our life is going to be. I’m making you do all the wedding planning, I swear to god….” But then he was laughing and crying and kissing Voldemort again.

The night was mild and the stars were bright even in the full moon, so it only felt like a respite to be outside together. Harry ended up with his head on Voldemort’s shoulder, breathing in the warm scent of him. And then there was another crackle of magic as the wards were opened, the _crack_ of apparition. “Oh thank god,” someone breathed behind them, and Harry looked up to find half the Aurors department on his lawn.

Scrimgeour was striding out before them, a healer on either side of him. “Voldemort,” he said, dropping to his knees before Voldemort could move to stand. “It’s over. Well done. Alastor is still securing Hogwarts, and he said he would need your magic there later. The Ministry has most of the vampires in custody, for which you should also be present when we speak with them. You both need to attend the press conference tomorrow afternoon. But for now – everyone is at St. Mungo’s. You should be as well.”

He moved back, to let the healers cast rapid diagnostics on them each. Voldemort’s diagnostic spells _glowed_ with bright reds and oranges, as the curse made its way along his body. He was indifferent, but Harry felt newly anxious to get up and to St. Mungo’s, for him.

They moved with the help of Mobilicorpus and analgesic potions, and the Aurors didn’t trust them to apparate so Kingsley was casting a portkey. “I am sorry to take you from ancestral property,” Scrimgeour said to Voldemort, looking back at the estate. “I’m sure its magic is beneficial.”

Voldemort hesitated, considering his words. “My magic is nearer to whole than it has been in a very long time,” he said. “It is fine.”

Scrimgeour arched his bushy eyebrows in question. “Later?” he requested as Kingsley closed the portkey.

“Yes.” And when they took the proffered portkey, they were pulled away to the safety of St. Mungo’s.

They landed in the corridor meant for arrivals, outside the closed ward. Already Harry could hear laughter and crowds within. Kingsley saw Harry’s face. “Brace yourselves,” he murmured. Pops of other Aurors arriving behind them – Tonks grabbed Herzog and Willoughby to walk in before Harry and Voldemort so they may not be mobbed. They pushed open the door.

“Harry!” He heard Ron’s voice first. And the ward moved like a wave, as though to crush them both, until Voldemort threw up a neat shield around them.

Tonks actually laughed. “Nice,” she said over her shoulder. To the rest of the room, she amplified her voice magically, her throat still healing: “Look, we’ve only _just_ got them here, let the healers see them first, because it’d be rather shit if they died just inside the door….”

Still, Harry was counting everyone in the ward – everyone who’d been in the battle with them. The Aurors, faculty, students. Most of them had mottled gray marks of necrotic damage on them, some were bandaged or splinted. Some had clearly come from their exam rooms, with healers trailing behind them still. He was smiling.

Hermione reached them first, and Ron behind her, and when she raised her wand to tear open Voldemort’s shield, he made a wry noise. “There is no need for such drama, Ms. Granger,” he admonished, and twisted the shield to let them both in. Immediately they were hugging Harry, obliging him to stop entirely.

“What happened afterward?” he asked them. “I mean… at the end. What time is it, anyway?’ He had existed outside of time for too long, and it was strange to pull the rest of the world back together.

“I don’t know, maybe midnight?” Hermione guessed as Ron fumbled for his pocket watch. They were now flanking Harry, such that he had to fall away from Voldemort. He really didn’t want to. “They surrendered – there was this moment where their magic just _froze_ , and they couldn’t cast and we couldn’t hit them, so then it was over. After Snape and Remus cornered her, Moody said they were brilliant – “

“Snape and Remus?” Harry echoed. But Voldemort too had stopped, turning to listen.

Hermione flushed, following them into the exam room where two more healers were waiting. “We only heard a bit,” she said, glancing toward Ron, “from Moody while we helped secure the castle. But the vampires are – susceptible to werewolf attacks. And Remus was there – though he must have taken wolfsbane – and so was… Snape. As a wolf. So Moody said, anyway.”

A moment of silence.  Voldemort pressed air through his teeth. “Thank you, Ms. Granger,” he said in a way that suggested her dismissal.

“It’s Hermione.”

“Hermione,” he agreed. “Ron.” (And Ron fully blanched at this.) “I will send Harry into the celebrations and well wishes in a bit.”

“Fine,” Ron said too quickly. “Great.” He took Hermione’s hand on their way out.

It would always be like this, Harry thought. He could live with his partitioned life, really. He was pulled onto an exam bed, Voldemort onto another, and more spells were cast on them.

“You didn’t know about Snape,” Harry said, looking over at Voldemort as a nurse drew his blood. They spoke in English, tragically, because Parseltongue would unsettle the healers.

“No. I should have expected it.”

Harry gave him a skeptical look. “ _Should_ you?”

“He had clearly chosen some drastic measure to escape the Dark Mark.” The healers’ eyes snapped to Voldemort; he ignored them. “Of which there are precious few. But lycanthropy inhabits the soul in the same way. He would have known that I could never mark Greyback.”

“It’s stupid,” Harry said. “After everything….”

“You will be able to tell him so in the morning, I’m sure.”

“Right.” Harry took a healing potion and a blood-replenishing potion.

And Voldemort was peeling off his robes, to reveal the curse scars down the left side of his body. His healer cast a volley of spells. “Creature magic?” he guessed.

“Yes. Vampiric.”

“Well – of course we can treat it, but the results may not….”

“I know it won’t heal,” Voldemort interrupted him. “More pressing, why aren’t you using _aquavitae_ for the necrotic damage? The affected areas on everyone on the ward will already scar, but god forbid it _spreads_.”

The healer’s eyes went wide. “Was that _your_ rainstorm?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“It’s dark magic,” he muttered. “Let me find the ward’s Prime Healer, she’ll be able to authorize it.” He ducked out.

“ _Vol, don’t antagonize them_ ,” Harry chided in Parseltongue. A smile.

Harry himself was not overly injured: necrotic damage in small spots, including crescent marks where the varri, as Ginny, had grabbed his wrist. Cuts along his face. A black eye. Nausea and paranoia and a prickling feeling along his spine from the curse. His healer was most concerned about the injuries on his body that _didn’t_ show up on the diagnostic: that he had corresponding scars everywhere Voldemort had been stabbed. “It’s fine,” Harry reassured her. “Just treat Voldemort, mine will go away.”

“That is stunningly dangerous,” she muttered, but wrapped a medicated bandage around his wrist.

Most of the way through the exam, the door swung open. Moody entered, followed by Robards. Though Voldemort was lying back with his robes opened, breathing shallowly through the pain as a healer attempted to extract the curse, he moved to sit up now. “Hogwarts…?”

“Lie down,” Moody ordered, as Voldemort’s healer tried to push him back to the exam table. He acquiesced, surprisingly, but didn’t take his eyes off Moody. “The inhabited areas of the castle have been secured,” Moody said, “and the students returned to their dormitories for the night. We assume there is damage, not immediately obvious. You’ll come with us later this weekend to examine it.”

“Yes,” Voldemort said. “I will.”

Moody’s mouth tightened, but all he said was, “We need memories and statement from you both, before anyone else tells you anything. Robards is staying here; I’m taking Potter next door.”

“Yes, sir.” Harry grabbed his robe but left his shoes, padding barefoot along the ward. Most everyone had returned to their own rooms now, for treatment or sleep, and the space was finally quiet and a little foreboding. Harry hadn’t yet come down from the battle entirely, and – whatever had happened with Dumbledore had left him so happy and buoyant, he hadn’t processed any of it. Suddenly he wanted to be back at Voldemort’s side, learning together of the casualties.

Moody let him into another room, moving so the healer could tend to him first. A poultice and ice pack later, Harry watched Moody sink into a chair, kicking out his false leg as he opened a ledger. “From the beginning.”

How to put this night in order? Dueling club, curse scar, the feeling of being summoned. Seeing Voldemort staked to the ground. The Dëshmitar holding him and Kingsley immobile, luring Harry into nearly giving up his soul. The moment she severed the Horcruxes.

Then the fight, where his memories get muddled. He shook his head, conjuring a vial for his memories before he could ruin them by mis-remembering. Then, he attempted it: Hogwarts was out in battle, the students and faculty, and he was equal parts gratified and horrified. Patronuses, Sectumsempra. Ginny and Elia and Hagrid. Voldemort and Herzog casting deep magic on the ley lines. The arrival of the Inferi, distracting them from finding the Dëshmitar again. Necrotic damage, Ron, the rain of aquavitae. Then the Inferius posed as Ginny, dragging him toward the lake – “It was stupid,” he said bitterly. “I should have known, I know how dark magic feels – “

“Potter,” Moody interrupted, and picked up a calming draught. He wouldn’t go on until Harry had swallowed it. So when he had to recount the Inferi impersonating his parents a moment later, his voice was strangely flat. It protected him, anyway.

And then casting on the lake, to lure the Inferi. When Harry recounted getting into Hogwarts, casting from the grotto, Moody looked surprised. “Well done,” he said, in a rare interjection.

“Thanks. It was – “ Harry looked to the ceiling. “We spent a lot of time _not_ fighting. The wards, and the healing, and the grotto….” He felt like a coward.

“We needed that magic from him, more than we needed one more duelist. But – “ Moody lifted his quill. “Go on.”

Then the part where Harry and Voldemort separate, Harry apparating Slughorn to Lavender. “Is he alright?” he asked as an aside. “He was, uh, bad when I left him.”

“I will tell you afterward.” When he saw the fear in Harry’s eyes, though, Moody relented. “He is expected to make a full recovery. Being treated a few rooms down that way. Brown is good at crisis medicine, you know.”

“Yeah, she is,” Harry said. “Anyway – oh, I’d sent my thestral – our thestral – to lure the Inferi to the lake by now, but I guess….” That was when the Dëshmitar had captured it.

“Chronological,” Moody said, seeing his expression.

When he reached for another calming draught, neither Moody nor the healer even commented on it. The weight of battle had settled on him slowly, and he was realizing how few outcomes he actually knew. Moody never told him casualties first and he understood why, but it was still an awful feeling.

He swallowed. “There was a duel, with Lisa and Terry. Turpin and Boot,” he amended. “And I was disillusioned, and Voldemort apparated nearby – “

“By chance?”

He gave him a small smile. “We can always find each other,” he said. “And Voldemort casts Sectumsempra on the vampire, who casts a severing charm at Terry. Maybe it went wide, maybe it was to – retaliate.” His throat was closing in anticipation of what comes next. “And Voldemort and I got him out, and we were casting everything, but it’d hit his carotid, I think – We left his body sheltered under some bushes.” He tried to say it evenly and failed. “Marked with stones. I know where it is, we’ve got to go back – “

“We’ve recovered his body,” Moody said, as gentle as he’d ever been with Harry. “Lad, it’s alright.”

Harry was looking down hard at his hands in his lap. “It will never get easier.”

“Well. No.”

There is a moment of silence, then Harry continued: “We would go to the lake for the Dëshmitar, but she’d already gone. Voldemort said he just – knows, with magic, that she’s on the far side of the castle. At the tomb. And we were really lucky to find you, before going – “

“The Dëshmitar had been at the lake only minutes prior. It was a remnant of a fight with her, as she tried to get the Inferi back.”

“Good. – Voldemort’s going to have to get them out of the lake, isn’t he?” A short nod. “Right. And you know the rest.”

“Say it.”

He wasn’t sure he could. He’d put the sight of Dumbledore’s broken tomb far from his mind. It was only a tomb, only a body, but – He was angry and devastated all at once. “We apparate to the tomb,” he said. “And she’s already there. And she’d already opened it, to take his wand. And she had the thestral in her staff – Voldemort made me go with Imperio – and then they dueled.” Even then it had seemed inevitable that Voldemort would lose.

“And then – I don’t remember,” Harry muttered. “I remember running at them as she pulled out his soul – “

“You cast a spell,” Moody interrupted. “That destroyed her staff. Nobody recognized it.”

“I didn’t cast anything. I remember that – I think – but I wasn’t even thinking about magic. My wand did that on its own….” But he was reaching for his wand now, as though to jolt his memory back together.

He hadn’t noticed before, but his wand felt newly light again. “Oh,” he breathed. Moody raised his eyebrows. “I think – last year, with the Fiendfyre.” The night they should have died, the night that still haunts him. “Ollivander said my wand was heavier afterward because it carried a deferred death. And now – is that stupid?” he asked. “I don’t know what else it could have been.”

“No,” Moody said. “It’s not stupid.”

His wand had saved him, that weight of death he’d carried all year had saved him. And his wand was safe now. “It must have killed those souls,” he said. “That’s where she kept them.”

“They were hardly alive to begin with.”

“Yeah.” He put his wand back into his robes. “After that – I don’t remember. I remember reaching for the Portkeys, and they were already warm. But I didn’t… I thought we’d die then,” he confessed. _We might have died then_. “And that’s it.”

Moody wrote for a moment longer, then lay down his quill. “The Dëshmitar was captured alive just afterward,” he said. “She was cornered by werewolves.”

“By Remus and Snape.” At Moody’s look, he shook his head. “I didn’t know. Hermione just told me.”

“Reckless,” Moody muttered. “For their bravery, though, they’ll also be at tomorrow’s press conference. Keep Voldemort away from him.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Most injuries will be healed within a week. Some necrotic spells, if left untreated, will cause permanent tissue or nerve damage. But it would have been much worse without the rainstorm of Voldemort’s.” A frown. “But keep that from the public.”

“Yes, sir.” Dark magic would always make them fearful, he knew. Even the most useful of it.

“And there were three casualties.” Moody’s voice went flat, professionally disconnected. “Terry Boot, died from injuries of a severing charm to his neck and chest, cast by a vampire. Letholdus Bragg, died from the rapid spread of necrotic damage to his heart and lungs, cast by an Inferius.”

“I’m sorry,” Harry said lowly. Bragg had been a good Auror and a smart duelist; but necrotic damage had killed too many people in the last war, too. It was vicious magic.

Moody shook him off. “And Quintus Bowersock, died of a coronary curse to his back. Cast by a vampire.”

“ _Oh_ ,” Harry breathed. Bowersock dead. He found himself inappropriately satisfied. “Does Voldemort know?”

“Robards will tell him. The Wizengamot will convene tomorrow morning, to swear in Bright as the new Chancellor. They’ll also talk about international negotiations. We can’t detain the vampires forever.”

Had the Dëshmitar been lying when she had said they couldn’t return without the Horcrux? The Undying were formidable opponents to have regardless, and ones that the British Ministry was not equipped to handle. Still, he couldn’t fix this. “Alright,” he said at last.

Moody was closing his ledger. “You should both sleep on the ward tonight. No point in leaving.”

Since Harry hadn’t yet seen everyone here anyway, he had hoped he could stay. “Yeah, alright,” he said again. But when Moody had reached for his staff, Harry said impulsively, “Could I tell you one more thing?”

“Of course.” Moody set his staff back along the wall.

“Don’t write it down. It’s not… I don't know if it’s real, or what it means.” And then he was doubting himself, that maybe he should keep this to himself or ask Voldemort if he should share it. But – he didn’t want to have such a suspicious, antagonistic relationship with Moody anymore. “But after we passed out, we woke up in King’s Cross Station. And – Dumbledore was there.” He was looking down, to choose his words carefully. “He’d told me before that he’d meant to die. And – do you know of the Deathly Hallows?”

“Yes,” Moody said slowly.

“That’s why the Dëshmitar wanted his wand, because it was the elder wand. But he died undefeated, so it was broken, and the Hallows have been broken. But also – the ring that killed him. It was a Horcrux, but it was also – the resurrection stone.”

Moody hissed air through his teeth. “Albus,” he muttered in an uncharacteristically sentimental way. He must know of Ariana, of Albus’s eternal regret. He’d know it would lure Dumbledore in.

“He died to break the stone, so even if his death didn’t break the wand, the Hallows would still be separated. And he thought he’d destroyed the Horcrux in it too. But he hadn’t.” Moody didn’t respond, so Harry continued. “And so – he gave it back. Not the Horcrux. His soul within it. So he’s… alright.” _Nearer to whole than he’s been since sixteen._

Moody’s false eye rolled, looking through the walls. “He wears it now.”

“Yeah. Dumbledore said it doesn’t do anything anymore.” _He said to give it to Grindelwald_. “But – I wanted you to know that Voldemort is done, with all of it. He wouldn’t risk that part of his soul again. Or risk Hogwarts, or Britain, or me.” He said it more evenly than he felt.

But Moody didn’t react. “It would be profoundly stupid of him to create any more violence or threats to himself than he’s strictly got to,” he agreed. “But then, we thought that thirty years ago.”

“I know. It’s real, this time.”

“And just because we’ve now fought for your Horcrux doesn’t mean you can keep it.”

Harry’s stomach knotted. “Sir – “

“Take it up with the Ministry,” Moody interrupted. “It’s not a threat, it’s a warning. I don't know what will happen to it next. It won’t be my decision, anyway.”

He felt a sting of disappointment. “You’re still leaving, then.”

“I learned in a very different Ministry than the one we’ve got now,” Moody said. “I’ll retire within the year, after we’ve got something like peace. Already Shacklebolt’s got more to do with the house arrest than I’ve got. I’ll take up something international. I _am_ keeping the Order.”

“Good,” Harry said, relieved. “I mean – I know it’s complicated – and I can’t be involved with it all – but you’ll never lose me.”

“Good lad,” Moody said, and his snarled mouth almost smiled. At that he did pick up his staff. “Everyone should be asleep,” he said, his eye rolling to examine the ward. “And nobody is. Most of the students are down that way,” he gestured.

Harry’s healer had finished with him, only handing him a tall jar of a gritty nutrition potion. He winced, because he was still so nauseated from the Parselmagic earlier. “All of it,” she said severely. “You’re beginning to look like him.”

“Am I?” Harry asked, pressing a hand to his nose. When the healer glared at him, he grinned back.

Most everyone had clustered in just a few exam rooms – and since Harry had arrived, they’d begin to let in visitors. So down the way, when he heard Ginny’s voice, he followed it to find a sea of redheads all clustered inside. Ginny was on one bed, her mother crying into her hair. “ – Mum, it’s fine – of course we’re fine – “ Ginny was saying, rubbing circles into Molly’s back. Harry tried to enter quietly, but Ginny looked up. “Oh, Harry, _finally_. We thought you’d run off together,” Ginny said easily, but her voice was drowned out by the shouts of her family, and again he was mobbed. Bill was slapping his back and Arthur pumping his hand and Molly crushing him in a hug. Only when the twins had thoroughly ruffled his hair did he manage to squirm away.

“Moody said they wanted your soul,” George said cheerily. “Didn’t know you’d already sold it to the devil last year, I bet.”

“George!” Molly admonished, horrified.

But Harry grinned. This was good, this was comfortable. “I think I’ve mucked up all your branding,” he said. “Did he tell you my Patronus isn’t a stag anymore, too?”

“ _Dammit_ , Harry – “

“ _George_!”

The Weasleys had heard most of the battle already, the parts Ginny had cared to tell them. Harry took a seat on the other bed, where Ron and Hermione sat very close together. Ron looked over, speaking lowly when the rest of the room was distracted by Fleur’s entrance: “Did – _he_ really heal me?”

“Oh for the last time, Ron – “ Hermione sighed.

Harry smiled at them. “Yeah. Of course. I’d never forgive him otherwise, you know.”

“… Really?”

He’d meant it lightly, but not flippantly. “Yeah,” he said. “And I know – it can probably never be more than that, but that’s already a lot.”

“Ah, look at the ze heroes!” Fleur said as she swooped in on them then. “And of course the heroine.” Bending down she pecked each of their cheeks. Ron still went red.

“We would have fought,” Bill lamented, wrapping his arm around Fleur’s narrow shoulders. “Moody didn’t even summon the Order until afterward. But _vampires_ , honestly…. How do you even get mixed up with vampires, Harry?” he asked, light but also curious. The room was looking at him now.

They didn’t know. Or – he didn’t know what they knew. They knew of the Horcruxes, and maybe of Voldemort’s time in Albania, but no more. And Harry was reluctant to say anything, because it would sound like all of this had been brought on by Voldemort. Which wasn’t wrong, but wouldn’t help. “I dunno,” he lied. “He’s never been involved in international politics. Uh, neither have I,” he said with a lopsided smile. “But they wanted his magic – what they thought they knew of it.”

“And the Slytherins?” Arthur asked, soft.

The Slytherins’ absence was more noticeable like this, with so many of Hogwarts’s students in the ward. “They thought the Dark Mark was his magic, too. The students….” He didn’t know how to misdirect that one. Slytherin’s magic was the castle’s magic, and the castle’s magic was Voldemort’s magic. “I don't know,” he said. “Have you heard…? I guess you don’t work anywhere near the DMLE,” he stopped himself. He needed to see the Death Eaters under house arrest and the students reunited, now that it was over.

Arthur understood his question, even as badly as he’d put it. “We’ve developed quite a lot of surveillance tech recently,” he said. “Some of the things Muggles have come up with! Bracelets that can track where they are at all times. Imagine designing that without magic,” he said, shaking his head in wonder. “But really, keeping them in Azkaban after promising to get them out has been a contentious decision even within the Ministry. You’ll see enough public pressure to get them out soon, I imagine.”

“Good,” Harry said firmly.

A knock on the open door frame. Tonks stood there, looking quite tired and quite bandaged, but otherwise happy. “Hi – “ she began, but Ginny and Molly sprang up at the same time.

“Tonks – you kept my baby girl safe – “

“Mum, I’m eighteen – “

“Only eighteen!” she exclaimed, and she was crying again. “So brave, you are both so young and so brave – “

“Molly, it’s fine, I understand,” Tonks was trying to soothe her.

“Is your mother here?” Molly said, dabbing at her eyes with Arthur’s handkerchief. “I need to tell her what a good daughter she’s raised.”

Tonks fluctuated between amused and embarrassed. Ginny was now giggling. “She is here, actually, a lot of the Wizengamot is – I’ll bring her by when they’re done, yeah?” she suggested, patting Molly on the back awkwardly.

Harry took Ron, Hermione, and Ginny with him, to find the other students. When they were alone in the corridor, Ginny was laughing hysterically, burying her face in her hands. “Ahh, what the hell.”

“That wasn’t so bad,” Ron said.

“Yes,” she said. “It was.” But she was still laughing.

The students were gathered in one of the larger exam rooms, seated on beds or on conjured ottomans, sipping potions and getting prodded by healers. There were about a dozen of them altogether, and Harry looked around at them with such fondness. That these people would fight for him – that Terry would _die_ for him – there was a hot stinging feeling behind his eyes. “Hi,” he said as they entered, conjuring some poufs to sit on. “You’re all alright?” he asked, looking around.

“Not _all_ of us,” Zach Smith said nastily, and Harry felt as though he’d just been slapped. But he wasn’t wrong.

“No,” he agreed. “Have they told you about him? About Terry,” he amended. “Or….” He glanced at Lisa, who’d been there with him, who’d seen it happen.

“I haven’t told them,” she said dully. Her face was badly scratched and bruised, and he wondered what had happened to her afterward.

“Right. Um. It’s not a lot.” He settled into his pouf. Maybe he shouldn’t tell them, maybe the Aurors were withholding information for some particular reason – but they deserved to know. Harry had been with Voldemort by the time the last war had killed Susan, Seamus, Collin. This felt like a corrective measure.

He told them of bringing Slughorn to Lavender, then running back to find the sprawling battle that included Lisa and Terry. “And Voldemort apparated in – disillusioned, at first,” he said, and some of their eyes went wide. Sectumsempra, a severing charm, Harry and Voldemort meeting over Terry’s body. Invisibility cloak, apparition. “He did everything,” he said, his tone nearly pleading. “It happened so fast. Necrotic magic… it was too much. But we went to find the Dëshmitar directly after.”

This was the strange whiplash after battle – that at time they were all high on adrenaline and the relief of being alive, and then the deaths sank in and crushed them. Harry had never found how to inhabit both realities. Now, he may never have to.

He had been studying the group: Lisa’s bruised face; Parvati moving gingerly from some damage along her shoulders; Justin with his arm in a sling; Phaedrus’s hands shaking from nerve damage. He was overcome by how _dangerous_ it was, even sharing a space with him. When the conversation moved on – Ginny was recounting her mother’s reaction, and Parvati and Padma laughing about their own parents at the end of the war, horrified that they’d fought – Harry was sinking deeper into himself. The comedown was always hard. He wanted Voldemort.

He couldn’t make an escape until Ron elbowed him. “Alright?”

“Yeah. Uh. I should go.” And everyone was looking at him again. “I mean, _go_ relatively, I’m sleeping just down the way – “

“Go,” Ron said, before the rest of the room could say otherwise. “We’ll see you in the morning?”

He shot a massively grateful look to him before getting up. Partway down the corridor, then, he heard the low buzz of conversation start again without him. Well.

Voldemort was in another room in the ward now – not an exam room, an office space. If the Wizengamot was here as Tonks had said, Voldemort was presumably in their meeting. Or so Harry hoped.

He returned to their room, which was now dark and empty. There were potions laid out for them, and while he didn’t take a full measure of dreamless sleep, he took just a swallow, so he could close his eyes without seeing battle.

 

Some time later, there was a weight beside him on the bed, and Voldemort’s fingers in his hair, and soft breath on the back of his neck. Harry rolled over to kiss him deeply. “Alright?” he murmured against his mouth in Parseltongue.

“It will be. May I sleep with you?” Already he was charming the bed to expand, conjuring another soft blanket on top.

“Idiot. Here.” He pulled Voldemort deeper into bed, pressing his face into Voldemort’s neck. He craved touch. They’d both taken off their robes but left on their shirts and trousers – realistically a healer or anyone else could still come in – but Harry pressed their magic together. “I love you, I love you,” he was mumbling between sloppy kisses to his collarbone. Voldemort held him close.

And when Harry had fallen back against the pillows and Voldemort was scrubbing at the tense parts of his neck, he asked into the darkness, “What happens next?”

“Mm. I am sworn in to the Wizengamot so I can properly fix this. Bright gets sworn in as Chancellor. The Albanian government has little control over the Humnerë, but they will be here in the morning. As will Germany.”

“Germany?”

“Has supported Albania politically before. Also, as you recall, quite hates me. I would be unsurprised if some of the pressure on the Humnerë came from them. But we will not survive a war with them,” Voldemort sighed, “so we must leave it. The vampires are contained. The Dëshmitar is contained. I’d like to be present when she is questioned, but nobody has agreed to that yet.”

“I really don’t understand… what you are to one another,” he said, strained. “But if she’s important to you – I don’t know.”

But his thoughts were on Voldemort’s pathological need to shed his past. How few mentors he had, how few _connections_ he had altogether. Really, speaking was redundant, as clearly as they could tell one another’s feelings.

“They don’t give a damn about my mentors,” Voldemort said. “But if any harm should come to the vampires, we would likely have a confrontation with the Undying. _All_ of the Undying,” he said darkly. “Really, you already saw that the humans are outmatched against the vampires alone. We couldn’t….” He stopped, shaking his head with a sigh. “We will avoid conflict,” he said. “Because we cannot afford it.”

“I know.”

Voldemort was reaching for potions on the bedside table, reading the labels by the filtered light of the corridor, since their door was still ajar in case of an emergency. He and Harry were still quite cursed – Harry couldn’t say whether the lingering nausea and disorientation were from Voldemort’s injuries or the earlier effects of Parselmagic; and the medicated ache down their side was turning into an icy burn. Harry could tell Voldemort was putting a significant amount of magic toward Occlumency, so as not to hurt him. “It’s okay,” he murmured, pressing magic above his elbow where there had been a stake.

“They say it will be permanent.” He said it evenly, but Harry could feel how trapped and betrayed he felt by this body. He no longer looked untouchable, formidable. The way he moved was shameful. “Look.” And he was pushing his trousers down his hip, to reveal a glowing brace that would run to his knee.

Still, Harry managed a smile. “Good.”

There was a stab of unpleasant surprise. “ _Is_ it?”

“Well, you said I should top more often.”

Voldemort let out a short laugh. “You incorrigible child,” he said fondly, and he allowed Harry to run careful fingers along his scalp and down his neck as he swallowed a potion. “Would you join us at the Wizengamot tomorrow, for the oath?”

“Are you kidding?” Harry said. “I’m never letting you out of my sight again.”

 

 _Saturday, May 1._ He didn’t remember where he was upon waking Saturday morning. The sheets didn’t feel like the sheets at Hogwarts, Grimmauld Place, the safehouse, the Burrow…. There was a strong smell of coffee in the air, and the buzz of voices outside the door. They were indistinct at first, but then he caught what might have been Scrimgeour’s voice, and then what was definitely Voldemort’s, and that’s when he decided to get up.

The ward was still filled with everyone from yesterday, and it was still early but many of them were now milling in the corridor. There was food out here instead of being delivered into rooms – probably because the healers had given up on keeping everyone in bed – and tables and chairs and sofas had been conjured. For a hospital wing, it was really quite cozy.

Voldemort and Scrimgeour were among more of the Ministry – Amelia Bones had a vicious bruise along half her face, and Robards had thick bandages up both arms, and Moody was fine but currently glowering at Voldemort even as Andromeda Tonks spoke to him. Apollo Bright, who would replace Bowersock as Chancellor of the legislative chamber of the Wizengamot, was with them. Harry studied him discreetly: Voldemort had said he was no better than Bowersock, and would do Voldemort no favors. But then, this was never going to be an easy transition.

Farther down the way were more Aurors, and beyond that were Hogwarts students. Harry poured a very large mug of tea before moving to join them.

 _Oh_. And faculty. Not all of them – presumably most of them had to be in the castle to watch over the students – but McGonagall was there beside Hermione, drinking a cup of tea; and Slughorn’s shaking hands were attempting to open a potion until Justin did it for him. Everyone had a few potions set before them.

And so did Harry, when he approached. “Potter,” a healer greeted, popping his chart into existence and then a moment later, a tray of potions.

He looked askance; there must be a dozen of them. “Are these _all_ for me?”

“You’ll want them, before the end of the day. They said you’ll be at the Ministry all day, so you’d best take them now. And take his as well,” she said, glancing back at Voldemort.

“Oh. Yeah, sure.” Harry poured a healing potion into a nutrition potion because it’s not like it could make either of them taste worse; and put the others into a potions roll. The healer was nearly satisfied, and Harry sat down beside Ginny.

Not for long. McGonagall was leaning in, taking his free hand, her eyes bright. “Well done, Mr. Potter.”

Every time he heard this, he believed it less. He’d done nothing but survive. Voldemort had catalyzed most of this, and Harry was constantly tensed for someone to finally _blame_ him. And then he wouldn’t know what to say. “You shouldn’t have fought,” he muttered, surveying her injuries, the potions before her. Her hand was very tight around the top of her cane. “None of you should have fought.”

“Harry, shut up,” Ginny said beside him.

“No – nobody should have to _die_ for me.” He hadn’t meant to say any of this, it had just tumbled out of his mouth at this scene. “Nobody should have to die for _him_.”

There it was. There was an inhalation of breath before him, but he was looking down, unable to look at them. And then, oddly, it was Slughorn who spoke, as someone conjured a blanket over Harry’s shoulders and someone else pushed a calming draught into his hands. “We haven’t fought for him.” His light eyes darted up, but of course Voldemort was across the ward. “This war has dragged on for thirty years, and I could not bear to see yet another generation devastated by it. This was never meant to be _your_ war.”

Harry gaped at him. “Of course it’s my war.” It was his prophecy, his destiny, his relationship.

“No,” Slughorn said with uncharacteristic firmness, “dear boy, it’s not. May you see that when you look back on these years in the future.”

Harry swallowed. “Thank you, sir.” And he allowed Hermione to slip beside him, rubbing his back carefully so as to avoid the puncture wounds.

Eventually they were beckoned into respective exam rooms by healers, for a last check-up before releasing some of them and giving another round of potions to others. Harry glanced back to look for Voldemort, but he was still deep in discussion with Scrimgeour and Andromeda. “Here, Harry, come with us,” Ron said, by way of distraction. And a moment later, when his damaged hand slipped off the back of the sofa, Harry caught him neatly. Ron shook it off, but then smiled. “That’s why we keep you around, you know.”

“I know.”

Even with the amount of healing Voldemort had done for Ron yesterday, the necrotic damage had still hurt him. There was magic to protect his heart, but parts of his lungs needed to be regrown, and the muscle damage in his chest and down his arm would take months. “Robards said it wasn’t enough for a DMLE disqual,” Ron said as he took a seat on the exam bed, lifting his shirt over his head for the healer. “It might’ve been, if I were going into the Aurors. Ginny swore I’d get sick of a research job before she gets sick of fieldwork, but I really don’t see how.”

Hermione smiled at him. “You’ll be competing with the twins in a way, who can make the greatest explosions.”

“Yeah,” Ron said happily.

Hermione sat by Ron as the healer cast new bandages, and Harry took tiny sips of the hideous nutritional potion. He was halfway to suggesting Ron and Hermione come to the press conference with him later, when the healer made a tiny noise. “If I may have a moment alone with Mr. Weasley?”

“No,” Ron said. “I want them here.”

The healer gave him a considering look, but didn’t make Harry and Hermione leave. Instead, gesturing to a bit of the diagnostic spell before her, she said, “You are pregnant.”

“ _Oh_ ,” Hermione said softly, her eyes wide. Then, realizing Ron hadn’t reacted, only watched both of them for theirs, she glared at him. “You knew?”

“Sort of.” He glanced down, though his stomach was still flat under his vest. “Last night – but I was so fucked, I thought I might’ve hallucinated it. Especially since – “ His eyes darted to Harry.

And Harry burst out laughing in spite of everything. “Because Voldemort told you,” he filled in. Ron nodded, not quite flinching at the name. “Yeah, uh, that’s not how I would’ve wanted you to find out either, mate, sorry.”

“No kidding,” Ron muttered, but he was smiling too.

Hermione’s face was a snarl of emotions. “But you’re a pureblood,” she said. “You’re not supposed to get pregnant by accident! The entire wixen race is a _disaster_ , we’re practically sterile, but I at least trusted….” She was tugging at her hair, making it go frizzy. “We’re _so_ young. We’ve got careers!”

“And a house,” Ron agreed, as though it were a point in favor of keeping the pregnancy. “And Harry would love to babysit,” he added with a mischievous look.

“I would, though.”

“Look – Hermione, I’m not attached to the idea. We’ve got time, later. And, er, friends have said the resorption spell is really easy. But I also thought it’d be… fun?” he said hesitantly. “I dunno. I’ve only ever lived in – you know. A _loud_ home. We’ll put silencing charms around your study, though,” he added with a winning smile.

Hermione stared at the ceiling for a long time. “You know I can’t stay home,” she said. “And you! You’ve got a job. A _good_ job. And don’t say Harry will watch it, because he’ll be busier than us both.”

“I really don’t think I will be – “

“I’ll take the baby with me, or I’ll work from home, or I’ll leave it with Mum. You know I’m not like you, that a job is just sort of… necessary. If I’ve got to choose, I’d rather stay home with it, but we can make it work. And it won’t get in the way of your job and everything you want – “

“I do want this,” Hermione interrupted. Ron blinked at her. “I didn’t mean to give you the impression I’d only – _tolerate_ a family. I want this. And why not now?” she said, though her laugh was still a bit high and manic. “You’ll be a really good father.” And then she was kissing him, cradling his face in both hands, and Ron was saying something against her full mouth, and they were both laughing.

The healer had stepped back to mix a potion, and Harry looked awkwardly toward the door. But when Ron and Hermione broke apart, Ron was beaming at him. “Hey Harry, want to be its godfather?”

“I’d get it into a lot of trouble, you know,” Harry said lightly. “Sirius wasn’t the _least_ of what I’d do for a godchild.”

“Good,” Ron said brightly, and they were laughing again.

 

And then it was time to go – that the healer said Harry was excused from the ward for the day but he (Voldemort, really) would have to return later, and possibly daily for at least a week. The curse that still burned inside them was slow, and probably slower from the Amortentia with which Harry had been dosing himself, but it was still destroying them from the inside out.

And that was how he found Voldemort, with the muted pain and panic of moving to get up. Most of the Ministry members had already gone, and Voldemort was pulling himself up on his staff gingerly, and it was such a heartbreaking sight that Harry nearly sprinted to grab him. “Sweetheart,” he murmured as he scooped up Voldemort’s waist, propping him on his own side.

Voldemort’s scandalized look indicated he’d said that in English, not Parseltongue, but Harry didn’t care about inappropriate boundaries just then. “There must be a bloodletting,” he said.

“Now?”

“Yes.” He pulled them both toward the room where they’d slept. “And you have been given potions?”

“Every potion you could ever want,” Harry promised. He lowered them both onto the bed. (It was funny, Voldemort had enlarged the bed so they could sleep together last night, and neither of them was inclined to revert it now. It was obvious.) Voldemort nodded and then summoned a healer.

The purification looked similar to the circumstances in which the curse had been created: stakes of magic put vertically into the pressure points where he’d been stabbed. Then a delicate filigree of wards were strung between them, then the pulsating lights of magic. The healer walked away, leaving Voldemort to be purged or whatever.

Harry propped Voldemort’s head on his thigh, running his fingers along his scalp with a gentle touch, because anything more hurt. Being drained of dark magic hurt, unsurprisingly, and Harry wondered if the spell wasn’t removing more than the Dëshmitar’s magic. If it could move their Horcrux, similarly dark magic, they could be separated after all this….

He looked to the ceiling, steadying himself. They were both deeply unstable right now, and they couldn’t even hold their broken minds apart. In any case, he drew a breath, forcing his thoughts elsewhere. “So Ron’s pregnant,” he said, relishing the feeling of Parseltongue in his mouth. His head still swam with the knowledge.

“Is he?”

Harry looked down to make a face. “And I know you know. He said you told him last night.”

“I understand it wasn’t the ideal circumstance in which to learn it.”

“Well. No. But thank you.”

“Of course.” He winced then, and Harry felt a corresponding stab beneath his ribs. “Your magic…” Voldemort said, strained.

“Oh, is it safe?” But already Harry was pressing a hand over Voldemort’s heart, so magic burned between them. It was warm, it was good. When the pain had subsided and the wards hummed happily again, Harry took a breath. “They’re talking like they’ll keep it. Ron’s only ever lived with a big family, you know, so….”

“Chaos,” Voldemort said. When Harry blinked down at him, he expanded on this. “You said you enjoy chaos. He must, as well.”

“Oh. Yeah.” He was smiling, thinking of how the Burrow felt at Christmas. “Yeah, I guess he does. They asked me to be the godfather.”

“Of course they did.”

He was smiling, giddy, happy for them now that the shock had subsided a bit. He craved chaos, but in a boring normal way. He craved domesticity. “Can I take you back to the Slytherin estate tonight?”

“I assume so,” Voldemort agreed. “I am not so broken as to sleep here again.”

“Good.” Getting through an entire day at the Ministry sounded interminable, exhausting. He’d only survive it with the promise of _home_ afterward.

 

The full Wizengamot convened an emergency session that morning (though some of them in poor humor, being called in on a Saturday) to swear in Voldemort, and the new Chancellor. Harry took a seat near the front of the amphitheatre, level with the floor. Moody sat beside him.

While Bowersock had been muscular and classically handsome, Apollo Bright had severe features that reminded Harry strangely of Bellatrix. He was sworn in by Amelia Bones, after a lot of talk about the unfortunate circumstances of Bowersock’s death, all of his dedication to the Wizengamot.

Voldemort’s mind was open enough to Harry, but he could only begin to understand the snarl of feelings within him. He’d endured months of abuse, out of necessity but also strategy. He’d expected Bowersock’s obligation to him to be advantageous in obtaining him a Wizengamot position first and the Minister’s office second. But now Bowersock was dead, and Voldemort was entering into a different Wizengamot than the one for which he’d planned. It would set his career back _years_ , and he was strangely annoyed by it.

 _We’ve got years_ , Harry thought firmly. And while they couldn’t hear particular thoughts while awake, Voldemort must have still gotten the sense of it. From the amphitheatre’s floor, he looked to Harry for a split second. His posture marginally slackened.

And then Voldemort himself was to be sworn in. Amelia held a tapered candle, liquid gold like the one with which they’d been married. Voldemort fit his hand just above hers, and she lit it wandlessly. “Lord Voldemort of Slytherin,” she said into the quiet of the room. “You are being sworn in as a standing member of the bicameral Wizengamot, the prestige body of the British Ministry of Magic. Upon your magic, do you swear to uphold the laws and constitution of Mage Britain?”

“I do.”

“Do you swear to serve its citizens, acting in the interests of their rights and well-being?”

“I do.”

“Do you swear to protect the sovereignty and integrity of Mage Britain, defending it loyally?”

“I do.”

“May all your work in the Wizengamot be for good, Lord Voldemort.” She held the candle high; he blew it out.

The room was pregnant, then the low buzz of conversation broke out. Voldemort was shaking the hand of everyone on the floor: Amelia, Bright, Swinton. Scrimgeour, who had also watched in the first row, approached. Moody rose but left in the opposite direction.

Andromeda, approaching the floor, paused beside Harry. “You should be proud of him,” she said lowly.

Should he be? Harry felt a lot of things about this moment, anyway. “I am,” he decided at last.

“I will request dispensation, that you may sit in on more Wizengamot affairs than a civilian might otherwise,” she said. “Your presence still reassures people. Perhaps it will not always be like that,” she said with a small smile. “But you seem to stabilize him as well.”

He never knew what to say to this, the intimations that Voldemort was not only dangerous but mad. _Not anymore_ would be a ridiculous response, but it was true. Their soul felt warm and solid, less broken than it’d ever been. “Thank you,” he said instead. “But he’ll be careful. He’ll be – good. He really wants this.”

“I know,” she said. She swept past him to congratulate Voldemort.

 

Then they would convene for a press conference. The Ministry was buzzing, strangely full for the weekend, and most of the Wizengamot walked upstairs to the press room together. Voldemort, having spoken to everyone, fell back at Harry’s side. He ran a hand along Voldemort’s back as they walked. “Congratulations.”

“Thank you.”

They had fallen a bit behind the crowd, and were speaking in Parseltongue anyway, so Harry offered hesitantly, “I’m sorry about Bowersock.”

“Are you?”

“Not that he’s dead,” Harry said (keeping his tone neutral only because he knew harsh-sounding Parseltongue would scare the crowd). “But that it complicates everything for you.”

“I have other advocates,” Voldemort said, carefully dispassionate. “We do have time.”

Years from now, many years, Voldemort would seek the office of Minister. He might even win. For now, it was still a lot for Harry to even see him in this space, allowed here at all. He couldn't get the same staccato out of his heart: _It’s over, it’s over._

Nearer to the press room, he asked lowly, “What do I say if anyone asks me?”

“That you are grateful for the safety of Britain, and saddened by the unfortunate loss of life.”

“And about you?”

“I will speak to them myself.”

“Alright.”

Like last time, they were meant to sit at the front, in a prominent and visible location. But as they were filing in, moving toward the front of the room, Voldemort made a small noise. Harry looked up, to see Snape and Remus also approaching.

And then Voldemort was pulling away from Harry, leaning heavily on his staff to move quickly through the crowd. “Vol – “ he said desperately, weaving after him.

But Snape and Remus had seen them, too – had apparently been watching for them. They both looked worn down if not completely ragged. Most everyone who fought wore cosmetic glamours this morning, for the press rather than one another, but Snape and Remus had chosen not to.

Harry couldn’t run to Voldemort without attracting bad attention. By the time he’d moved through the crowd, Voldemort had drawn before Snape. “Severus,” he said, very soft.

“It wasn’t for you.” Snape looked angry and defensive already. “None of it was for you.”

“I am aware.” But when he reached for Snape’s forearm, Snape didn’t pull away. Harry went hot with jealousy, because he’d seen Voldemort touch Snape like this before. He hated it.

Voldemort ran a hand along his forearm, feeling discreetly without exposing the area, so nobody would photograph it. But of course he already knew the Dark Mark was gone. “Clever man,” Voldemort marveled. “Clever, reckless man. I am quite indebted to you. Both of you,” he added, meeting Remus’s gaze.

Snape made a noise of distaste at this statement. “Don’t.”

“You think I’m a fool?” Voldemort asked, a bare edge to his voice. “I don’t say such things lightly.”

“I know.”

“I’ll return to Hogwarts later,” he said, lighter now. “Though Moody has said it is non-essential damage. I recommend you stay elsewhere if you cannot bear my presence.”

“It’s the headmaster’s office.” Remus spoke for the first time. “It won’t open. Moody closed the floo last night, and nobody can enter.”

“The portraits?”

“Frozen.”

“Hm,” he frowned. “We will come by tomorrow. Assuming I receive Moody’s blessing.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Snape muttered.

“And your blessing, of course, Headmaster.”

Snape’s gaze only darkened at this deference, even as sincere as it sounded. But he only said, “If you will be returning Potter anyway, you may as well.”

Harry let out a startled laugh. He still had to go to _school_. Voldemort had been returned to him, the Ministry was rebuilding their world around their presence, and Harry still had to attend classes. It was surreal.

“Yes,” Voldemort agreed easily. “And your students shall finish out the year uneventfully.”

“I should hope so.”

Snape was bitter and hostile, but Voldemort was… gentle. Harry hated it. They had to go; they shouldn’t even be speaking. “See you tomorrow, then,” he said, his fingers at Voldemort’s waist tightening fractionally. “Um, thank you. Thank you both.” And nobody thought he’d authoritatively ended that conversation but with a twist of his lips, Voldemort stepped back, letting Harry lead him away.

“Harry – “

“Later,” he said. “I can’t think about – _that_ now.” Snape with Voldemort, any of it. It required more of a conversation than he would survive right now. Instead he was fishing in his pockets, pulling out baobab tablets because a proper calming draught would put him to sleep in front of the Ministry. He threw back a couple, and handed the bottle to Voldemort.

He rolled it between his fingers, considering. “You’ve been on quite a regimen of drugs, just holding our soul together.” They returned to Parseltongue, thank god.

“Yeah. I don’t mind. Anyway – it will be easier now.”

“We’ll still have quite a lot of time apart.”

Harry nearly rolled his eyes. “Not just magic,” he said. “Just knowing you’re alright will help.”

“Ah. Yes, I suppose it would.” He swallowed the baobab as well. “Nevertheless, you don’t have to be whole.”

Didn’t he? Depression had settled on him so thoroughly this year, but now all its catalysts were solved. There was still a wound, though, where his soul had been so grievously injured. “Alright,” he said. “But you, either.”

Voldemort was more broken than he was. Harry didn’t quite understand what he felt, and he couldn’t tell where his feelings ended and Voldemort’s began anyway. But Voldemort drew a breath. “The Horcrux,” he said. “The _former_ Horcrux. It carries… a significant capacity for remorse.”

Oh,” Harry said softly. This was objectively good, and undoubtedly painful. Instead of expressing sympathy or relief, he asked, “Because it is so young?”

Voldemort gave him a peculiar look. “No,” he said. “Because _your_ Horcrux feels remorse.”

Harry’s heart fluttered in pity. “Vol – “

“Don’t. It is fine. I will keep the – torturous parts away from your mind.”

“I wish you wouldn’t,” Harry said. He wanted to kiss Voldemort; he couldn't. Instead, lowering them both into their seats at the front of the hall, Harry laced their fingers together discreetly.

When Scrimgeour spoke, he said nothing of Voldemort. He said that a group of foreign radicals “whom we are not naming at this time” breached Hogwarts grounds last night. After a year of hostile magic directed especially at pureblood students and their families, the foreign group had attacked directly. “These people are now in Ministry custody, awaiting international legal action,” he said. Scattered applause.

He said that the Aurors division and many residents of Hogwarts had fought valiantly. When he said that Auror Bragg had been killed, there was an audible reaction somewhere behind Harry. “The second casualty was Terry Boot, an eighteen year old Hogwarts student, a loving son who had intended to go into curse-breaking after this school year.” He was looking deeper into the crowd now, where Harry thought he could hear other students. “And the third casualty was Quintus Bowersock, Legislative Chancellor of the Wizengamot.” At this he paused for the press reaction – photographs, and the scraping of quills, even though they’d mostly heard this news last night. “He was talented, passionate about his work and his state. This morning we convened the Wizengamot for an emergency assembly, to swear in Apollo Bright, who had previously served as Vice Chancellor.”

When the reaction to this news had settled, Scrimgeour looked over his glasses. “We consider these actions, particularly the targeting of prominent individuals and families, to be acts of terrorism. We will prosecute accordingly. We will not tolerate violence any longer; we will insist on peace. The Unification with the Muggles has given us great social and economic opportunities this past year, to decide what sort of nation we will become. It is imperative that, for our own survival, we insist on peace.”

It was as much as he’d say about Voldemort, then. Voldemort’s hand had gone tight in Harry’s, or maybe it was the other way around.

But it was inevitable, shortly into the Q&A: “What is Lord Voldemort’s involvement?”

Scrimgeour answered without glancing at Voldemort. “He also fought well yesterday.”

“For which side?” a second voice called out.

Scrimgeour’s look was unpleasant. “I believe you know,” he said. “This morning he was also sworn in as a standing member of the Wizengamot. His political loyalties are as any of ours.”

“How can you trust – “ But Harry glanced back, furious, just in time to see an Auror neatly silence the reporter’s question.

“Others?” Scrimgeour asked smoothly.

Harry noticed that the Aurors were moving into position, toward the front of the room where all the Wizengamot and other Ministry members sat. And, when Scrimgeour left the stage, the press was up, rushing to get quotes from them. From Voldemort, most of all.

And Harry was moving to protect him, shield him, but Voldemort touched his arm, a slight smile at his indignation. “Suffer them to come to me,” he said, as though magnanimous, and when Harry gave him an exasperated look, he ran a hand through his hair. “It is fine.” He stepped into an open area, so the reporters might approach.

And they did, in a wave. When Harry saw Rita’s peroxide curls among them, he gritted his teeth, but drew closer to Voldemort.

They weren’t free to make any statements about the Humnerë, or vampires, or Inferi, until after there had been meetings with Albania. After Voldemort deflected those, the questions they had were all _why_. Why had they attacked, why target purebloods. Why would Voldemort fight with the Ministry. Why would he serve in the Wizengamot. Harry thought most of these answers were obvious, but Voldemort was unusually gracious in answering them.

Partway through the interview, Harry looked away, to see _Daphne_ here, and Malfoy beside her. What the hell. The woman beside her must be her mother; they had the same stature – but last Harry had heard, Daphne’s mother had been under house arrest since the war. She wore black lace for Astoria, and she was speaking with Andromeda and another Wizengamot member.

He looked for other Death Eaters – really just other Slytherins – but didn’t see any. They were probably still in Azkaban. He wondered if anyone would even tell them, everything that had happened.

He should go to Grimmauld Place.

There was a reporter hovering at Harry’s elbow; Harry side-eyed him and he didn’t go away. “Such a tragedy,” he said, following Harry’s gaze. “How have your colleagues fared this year?”

He wasn’t sure the public knew _just_ how much time he’d spent among the Slytherins, or that he was sort-of still sheltering them. He cast about for something politic and came up empty. “They’ve had a hard year,” he said. “It will be better when they’ve got their families back. _Don’t_ write that down,” he added severely when he’d raised his quill. “I don’t know anything. Kingsley Shacklebolt is overseeing the magic for house arrests. The Minister’s got the Order of Lua Saturni for the Death Eaters himself. You could even just… ask the Slytherins?”

“Yes,” he said, looking back at Malfoy and Daphne. “Quite.” Changing tact, he said, “With the Dark Lord’s return, what do you anticipate will be next for you both? Personally and politically.”

“Oh, you know.” His arm was still at Voldemort’s waist, and he tightened his grip a little. “Same as before. Saving the world.” And while the reporter’s brow furrowed at this, it wasn’t even a lie.

 

Harry was almost not allowed to go with Voldemort to speak to the Dëshmitar. All of the most significant Ministry members had congregated after the press conference – Scrimgeour, Robards, Moody, Bones, Bright, two members of the International Relations Department, two barristers – and Voldemort was expected to go with them and Harry was not. Even knowing Voldemort was perfectly adept at being alone with the Ministry, it still made Harry nervous. And Voldemort too, in a different way. He found Scrimgeour. “You’ve kept them in a void.”

“Yes. Where they must stay. We can scarcely contain vampiric magic anyway.”

“Then Harry must come.”

Scrimgeour’s mouth tightened in thought. Then: “Yes,” he said. “I suppose he should.”

It was difficult for Voldemort to say aloud, how broken he still was in body and mind. He was lucky Scrimgeour understood this, and what a proud git he could be. Harry followed the group of very important people to the very important meeting.

The vampires were kept in cells beneath the Ministry itself, temporary holding cells rather than anything proper like Azkaban. Getting there involved a private lift, two flights of stairs, and intriguingly, something like an airlock. They all braced themselves for the void.

The void of magic was even more severe than the one that had been placed on Voldemort’s cell in Azkaban. When he entered, he drew a breath abruptly, but Harry was already pushing magic into his hand discreetly so as not to let the others notice.

There were other wixes there: politicians and negotiators from Albania and Germany, as Voldemort had predicted. More lawyers. None of the other Undying had come, but everyone seemed nervous about their possible response.

At last they entered a large and bright room. The Dëshmitar already sat at the heavy oval table, poised and alert even as her magic was drained. Her features were colorless before; but now she was pallid, and a bit shrunken. Still, she moved to stand when they entered.

“Sit,” Moody snapped, and she paused for a moment before complying.

There were no introductions: they spoke as though she already knew them. The negotiators from Albania and Germany sat beside the Dëshmitar, but they were humans and she was clearly impatient with them. She and Voldemort didn’t make eye contact.

She repeated what they’d heard yesterday: that many of the Undying, not merely the Humnerë, were agitated by Voldemort. His prominence in British politics, his Horcruxes, his existence. “Who supported you,” Robards asked, dark eyes on her light ones, “and how?”

She flashed sharp teeth. “You cannot solve the problems of the Undying. You could not understand them at all.”

“It was not an offer.”

“There has been dissatisfaction,” she said, “since the end of your war. Word spreads of the bearer of a Horcrux quickly, but – “ her eyes darted to meet Voldemort’s for the first time, then back to Robards. “They had assumed your military would kill him. All of your clever peacemaking, however – we needed to intervene.”

“Voldemort does not pose any threat to you,” Scrimgeour said, unimpressed. “And since he has now been sworn in to the Wizengamot, any further attempts on his life will be prosecuted as assassination attempts.”

“We would not kill him,” she said with scorn. “Don’t you see? The responsibility fell to the Humnerë because Voldemort had been ours. Not first – that was the castle – but at least second.” Another glance at Voldemort, whose face was impassive but hand was tight in Harry’s under the table. “He was ours. The diadem had been ours. We went to great lengths to avoid the deaths we could.”

“Our Chancellor was killed.”

“Ah. Yes.” This time she didn’t look at Voldemort at all – but Harry felt a flutter in his magic, that meant more than he understood. “And an Auror, and a student. Unfortunate. Were there others?”

Scrimgeour’s gaze burned on hers. “Perhaps the lengths you went to weren’t so great as you say?”

A shrug. “I am sorry. They were not my interest.”

“The attack on Diagon Alley in August, the attack on the Ministry in September, the attack on Malfoy Manor on Halloween. The death of Edgar Avery on New Year’s. The death of Astoria Greengrass in March. You have terrorized our world for the better part of a year.”

“Perhaps.”

“Why the students?” he challenged her. “They had nothing to do with Voldemort.”

“They had access to the castle,” she said, indifferent. “They _bore_ the magic of the castle. Everyone who passes through it does. It seemed to be useful. And to be fair, you left your own _Slytherins_ ,” she said the word precisely, “quite vulnerable this year.”

“This was terrorism.”

“No, it wasn’t.” Her tone went flat. “But you don’t have the resources for another war, regardless. Unless you’d recruit the – what do you call them here, _Muggles_?” No one confirmed this; she went on. “But you would not enter a war with the Undying. We are only tentatively allied, but – as I said, they are agitated. And they would galvanize.”

“There will not be a war.”

She hummed, doubtful. “Not even their own governments control the Undying completely. You would not be able to.” She took in Scrimgeour’s expression. “I am merely warning you. The Humnerë took the contact first, but there are others stronger than we are. Who _would_ kill Voldemort, and anyone else necessary.”

“Then that is our crisis, not yours.”

“As you wish.”

There were bits after that: whether and how the vampires might be charged, how to return to them to Albania, how to be in contact with the countries of other Undying. What to tell the press, since they’d held back everything about the Humnerë earlier.

And at last she was taken out. She looked to Voldemort once more; Harry had the sense they would have had more to say to one another if they had been alone. Later, sometime later. Probably back in Albania. Voldemort did not lightly discard people he believed he could use.

And by now they’d had nearly a full day at the Ministry, and everyone was eager to go. The ones who fought were mostly required back at St. Mungo’s for another round of potions. More of the lawyers and Wizengamot had to speak of prosecution. They returned upstairs in groups of two and three.

Voldemort deteriorated over the course of the day, even with Harry’s magic diffused across his skin. The curse scars had gone black and purple; they radiated pain down his entire left side. He was using a lot of magic to hold the worst of it apart from Harry, even after he’d said it was fine. Voldemort would always prefer to suffer alone.

Moody gave them a portkey into St. Mungo’s closed ward, “for the week,” he said darkly. “Or longer. We are also keeping the safehouse reserved for you both. Or take what you’d like from it; everything inside will be burned otherwise.”

“Everything will be _burned_?” Harry repeated in fascination.

Moody looked at him seriously. “Your magic’s all over everything in that house. It wouldn’t be safe to release. You should expect nothing less.”

“Oh. Yeah. Yes, sir. Thank you.” Putting himself between Moody and Voldemort as usual, he took the portkey.

The closed ward was still rather crowded, with Aurors and students and faculty. Harry’s heart hurt, but he quietly followed Voldemort into an exam room.

It was the same procedure as this morning: glowing stakes were placed at each curse scar, wards woven around them, and Voldemort was left to have the dark magic drawn from his flesh. Harry sat with him, nursing the potions he’d been given. At last he reached for his bag. “Can I read to you?”

It was good, it was safe. Harry only had Hermione’s copy of _The Count of Monte Cristo_ with him, and Voldemort looked at it fondly and said he knew it, that Harry could read from wherever he’d left off. “Are you sure?” Harry said, thumbing through the book. “Uh, they’re just getting to the prison, it might – “

Voldemort smiled. “Perfect,” he pronounced, and rested his head on Harry’s thigh, closing his eyes.

Harry began the chapter: “ _The commissary of police, as he traversed the antechamber, made a sign to the two gendarmes, who placed themselves one on Dantes’ right and the other on his left…._ ”

They were alone for nearly an hour, Harry reading of Dantes in the Chateau d’If and Voldemort only opening his eyes to correct the occasional French. Harry only asked once more for Voldemort to drop his Occlumency, that it would better suit him to let that magic heal him instead. “No,” Voldemort said severely. “I _cannot_ hurt you again.”

“Vol – “

There was a knock at the door.

They both composed themselves, if only to present a united front to the rest of the world. The healers would enter without waiting for a response, so the elapsed pause confused them both. “Come in,” Harry called.

Scrimgeour. Probably checking back on all the patients still kept on the ward. Since by now it was strangely typical for him to see Voldemort in various states of injury, he was unmoved to find him on his back, the wards still draining dark magic. “You’d meant to say something before.”

“Yes. Come in.” Voldemort propped himself up by only a few inches, as much as the magic would allow. Scrimgeour drew a chair near to the bed, expression impassive. “It is the Horcruces.”

Scrimgeour’s expression flickered. “I expected your magic to be – less stable than this, having lost them.” He’d seen how fucked Voldemort had been – really, both of them – after Nagini and the chalice had been destroyed in the same week. At least they weren’t _so_ devastated now, as they had been then.

Voldemort hummed in agreement. “They are gone,” he said. “If the artifacts persist, they should be displayed at Hogwarts. I have no further attachment to them.”

“I’ll suggest it to the governors. They may decline.”

“Fine,” Voldemort said, though he was not entirely indifferent. “But there was another.” Scrimgeour was quiet; Voldemort raised his free hand, where the ring still glittered.

A reaction – a hiss of unpleasant surprise. “If you stole that out of his tomb, we will charge you with desecration of a corpse. Don’t be obscene.”

Harry shrank from the Minister’s anger, but Voldemort faintly smiled. “No,” he said. “I did not take it from his tomb. You must listen.”

And Voldemort told him what Harry had told Moody – that Dumbledore had collected them in a liminal space, located just before death. They had learned of the Deathly Hallows, and Dumbledore’s need to destroy them. That Dumbledore knew of the Horcruces first, and the need to destroy them as well. “And the ring that killed him,” he thumbed it, “had been both.”

“ _Had been_.”

“Clever,” Voldemort said approvingly. “Yes.” The resurrection stone was gone, the Horcrux was gone, but in its place Dumbledore had restored his soul. “The portion of it, anyway. It was the second created, and the first truly deliberate one.” He should have gone on – to say it held a quarter of his soul, to say his mind and magic felt renewed, to say it hurt him but in a satisfying way. He didn’t. Instead, still thumbing the ring on his finger, he said, “This is only a remnant. I do not want to keep it. Dumbledore requested that it be given to Grindelwald.”

Scrimgeour had been quiet, considering all of this. He looked up, amused, because Grindelwald was hardly the most significant part of these circumstances. “Dumbledore restored your soul,” he said, as though simply needing to hear the words aloud.

“Yes.”

“You should be _quite_ grateful to him.”

Voldemort’s insides twisted. But he only said, “I am.”

“It would be an appropriate gesture, if that is what Albus wished in return.”

Voldemort’s non-eyebrows arched. “Indeed.”

“I don’t believe Grindelwald is dangerous any longer,” Scrimgeour said. “Though of course use your own discretion. I’ll speak with the Swiss government.”

“Thank you.”

Scrimgeour got to his feet, still quiet and thoughtful. “When I was appointed to the office of Minister,” he said, “it was with the understanding that I would defeat you.”

“You haven’t.”

“I have.” And he left, his boots clicking decisively on the tiled floor.

 

At last, after eating a supervised meal and downing more potions, they were allowed to go. They were _allowed to go_ , on their own, without Auror surveillance or making anyone aware of their movements. Harry actually hesitated, feeling like this was illicit in some way. Voldemort laughed at him.

They moved to the area of the hospital from which they could depart. And since Harry still wore the portkey to the Slytherin estate around his neck, he offered it.

The sun was just setting on their estate, with the spires silhouetted against a backdrop of orange and purple. Again Voldemort fell quiet and pensive, looking up at their home. Harry took his hand.

It was half-finished, furnished but not yet lived in. Everything was as it’d been when Ron and Hermione helped him move in. But the home buzzed with new life, much as Hogwarts had welcomed Voldemort back. They walked the entry hall, the kitchen and formal dining room, into the sitting room and then the ballroom. Finally the library, its dark wood warm in the glow of candlelight. Harry had brought in as many of Voldemort’s books as he’d kept, but they only filled a fraction of the shelves. Voldemort gazed at the space – all of it, the spiral staircase and upper level mezzanines – in quiet wonder. “Harry – “ he said, his voice strangled, but then he’d pulled Harry onto the nearest sofa, bending him backwards with deep kisses, because for once he was at a loss for words.

Harry held him close. They were warm, happy, easy, alive. He drank in the taste of Voldemort’s mouth, that he’d feared he would forget in their separation. Magic crackled in their kisses.

At last Voldemort drew back, his gaze bright and beautiful. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Harry said, though he was still grinning like a fool. “Though really, it’s _your_ home. You should’ve had it to begin with.”

Voldemort was looking at the space again. “Tell me you didn’t pay for all of this,” he said, and there was a twinge of the old insecurity in their Legilimency.

“I did. Though it was less than you might think, when they, uh, found it was for us. Oh,” he said in a tired laugh, “and there was an account for royalties, I used all of it.”

“Royalties?” Voldemort said dubiously.

“Uh-huh. I guess it’s time you saw this. _Accio_ Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes porn.” He held up a hand, and the novellas fluttered from their ignominious place on the shelves. He passed them to Voldemort.

 _In Light and Darkness: The Chosen One’s Lust_ was the novella on top of the stack. Voldemort fully gaped down at it. “But… why?” And then Harry was laughing again, in lieu of explaining their dubious status as sex symbols.

 

It was not very late when they got upstairs, but they were both fatigued, and the day had contained all the excitement they could manage. “It’s still empty up here,” Harry narrated as they moved through the corridor. He charmed open the doors – almost nothing inside, but for a few stray wedding gifts. “But – there’s space for a potions lab. This one,” he said, stepping into a wider room, “since it can be vented out directly. And the next room over could be a study? For – your work things, I don’t know.” He was not doing a great job at this. “But a lot of these rooms – I was going to make them into guest bedrooms.”

He said it hesitantly, but Voldemort only blinked at him. “You should.”

“And have people over,” he clarified.

“You should,” he repeated. “Harry – “ He stopped, starting again. “I would like to give you exactly the life you want for yourself. Of course you should have people over.”

“They won’t always be… okay.” _Pleasant, accepting, kind_.

A faint smile. “Ms. Granger will never be obligated to any sort of respect or acceptance, if she does not care to.”

Harry let out a breathy laugh. “Yeah. Sorry. She, uh – she’s coming around. You might not be able to tell for awhile.” His hand was at Voldemort’s waist again, walking further down the corridor. “And,” he said awkwardly, “later – a _lot_ later – there will be room for a family.”

“Yes,” Voldemort said easily. When Harry looked up, he ran a hand through Harry’s hair. “I’ve already told you yes. Though, you should learn what you can from your friends’ child-rearing. I know nothing of children.”

As though he wouldn’t amass a library of research, as perfect he was at everything. Still, Harry laughed. “Ron and Hermione are having a _baby_ ,” he marveled. “They’re so young. We’re so young.”

“They haven’t got to have it. Nor have they got to keep it.”

“I know. They wanted to, though, I think. It’ll be – well, an adventure for them.” Because they did better with a shared purpose, anyway. “I said I’ll babysit for them. Maybe I’ll let you hold it sometimes, if you ask nicely.” He glanced up with a grin, but Voldemort only looked thoughtful. “What?”

But Voldemort only shook his head. “I will give you everything,” he said, and drew Harry into the bedroom.

Their healer had forbidden _strenuous activity_ , for a few weeks. And Harry agreed: Voldemort was still quite injured anyway, and neither of them knew the extent to which that would affect their sex life. Still, when they both sprawled across the bed, knees and hips and chests touching, Harry’s head tucked into Voldemort’s shoulder – he had never been so happy. They had both never been so happy.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The King’s Cross chapter is my favorite in the series, I really wanted to retell it here.
> 
> Ron and Hermione’s pregnancy – They’re very young. It’s a very imperfect family. But canon only gave us next gen perfect families, where everyone marries their childhood sweetheart at 20 and has kids at 25 and then exists in this static configuration for the next 80 years, and I am so over that idealized family. Imperfect families making it anyway, forever.
> 
> Allusions for Chapter 37:
> 
> Walpurgis Night – So the fight happens on April 30, which marks Walpurgis Night. It is supposed to be a night of a “witches’ meeting,” when magic is strongest and most wild. Also April 30, 1999 was a full moon, so – hell yes that’s going to be the day everything goes down.
> 
> “The Pieta? Harry, the only thing less likely than you as a virgin is me as Christ.” – In Christian art, the pieta is a classic pose of the Virgin Mary holding Jesus’ body after the crucifixion. The most famous is Michelangelo’s, which you can see [here](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1f/Michelangelo%27s_Pieta_5450_cropncleaned_edit.jpg).
> 
> The image of Voldemort permanently injured and walking with a limp echoes [Gilgamesh, by Morgan Steelgrave](https://archiveofourown.org/series/775470).


	38. Chapter 38

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And then they are needed back at Hogwarts.

_Sunday, May 2_. Harry woke to the sound of a kettle, in another unfamiliar space. He squinted at the ceiling, smiling when he realized where he was. The bed was empty but warm, and then there were footsteps outside, and then Voldemort re-entered the bedroom. “Would you like breakfast?”

“Oh.” Harry blinked at him. The kettle had probably been among the wedding gifts, but otherwise they were ill-equipped to cook. “Yeah. We’ll have to go out. Or go shopping, I guess. I really haven’t lived here, there’s nothing in the house….”

“I did go shopping.”

“You did?” He sat up. “How? There’s a village nearby called Blythehead, did you find it? Or….”

“Harry. Some days you still think like a Muggle. We’ve got magic. I could have apparated to Tokyo for groceries.”

He rolled his eyes. “ _Did_ you go to Tokyo, then?”

“No. Sheffield.” He watched Harry swallow baobab tablets, then took the bottle himself. It was easier not to speak of it, how depressed and fractured they still both were, but… this helped. Voldemort couldn’t properly pull Harry out of bed, but he fell easily into Harry’s touch when he was up.

He said he’d return to St. Mungo’s for the purification tonight, after returning Harry to Hogwarts. They had to meet Moody at the castle this morning. But as they were leaving, they took the door out through the cellar, so Voldemort might meet the snakes.

It was mild enough outside that few snakes sheltered in the cellar: a green python hung from a branch Harry had propped in the corner; a thick gaboon was tensed on a bed of tree bark. An albino ball python, one of the more approachable ones for Harry, lifted its head curiously. “ _The heir_ ,” it said, and Harry wondered what sort of serpentine magic allowed them to recognize each other.

“Yes.” Voldemort was careful, moving slowly. He tried to kneel, winced, and remained standing. “And you have protected Slytherin’s land. Thank you.”

“Where is the other one?”

The diadem, but of course Voldemort understood that. “Can you not tell our magic is the same?” he asked. “I have shed that body.”

The snake circled them, suspicious, but accepted this answer. “Would you tell us of Slytherin’s line?” it asked. “They left very long ago.”

“Of course. I can tell you later. We will live here now,” Voldemort told the snake. “And you should live here as well.”

“Yes.” The snake’s tone was scornful, as though it were never in doubt. Voldemort nearly smiled.

On the lawn, they intended to apparate to the edge of the Hogwarts grounds. But Voldemort was casting curious spells on the wards surrounding their home. “Moody brought in Aurors to cast it,” Harry said, squinting at the shield that had just become visible. “The property goes farther out than this, actually, but he said I’d have enough to do on the house alone. But there’s a pond out that way, and I think stables?”

Voldemort frowned. “Come with me.” He was still casting, and there were turquoise threads running through the barrier in the distance. Harry had never seen anything like it. He followed.

The magic out in this direction was peculiar: the shield twisted and melted in spots, not patchy as if neglected, but… something. “The diadem came out this way before,” Harry offered. “One of the snakes said there was a portal near the pond, but he said it hadn’t worked….”

But Voldemort was limping away from the pond, toward the structure that had once been some sort of servants’ quarters. It looked like a lot of rotting lumber now. “We should tear that down,” Harry said. “It’s probably dangerous.” He thought of Petunia warning Dudley (not Harry) about tetanus when he went to nearby empty lots. This was a place to catch tetanus.

“We might tear it down,” Voldemort said, “but not yet. I need your magic.”

Harry looked up curiously, but obliged. “Why?”

But Voldemort cast another spell to reveal more wards, brighter and more complex than Harry had ever seen before. “That,” he said, indicating the central knot, looping over on itself, “is Fidelius.” Reaching up, he tugged on a bit of it, and the entire knot retracted.

Harry gaped. “You _shouldn’t_ be able to do that with a Fidelius charm.”

“I shouldn’t,” Voldemort agreed. “But it is my own magic.”

He realized immediately what _that_ mean. “Oh, _goddammit_.” He stepped in to throw the emerging door open himself. “I asked him if he was keeping the Slytherins here, _repeatedly,_ and he told me I was being stupid.” Voldemort clicked his tongue, amused, as Harry entered the structure.

It was a home – servants’ quarters or a gardener’s home at one point, but expansion charms had been used liberally on it. The space had the same crowded, chaotic feeling as the Burrow, too many rooms in too small a space – but it was also amazing, what Tom had done with magic alone. There were at least ten bedrooms crowded on the upper floors, four baths, and a pantry that Voldemort said at one time had been connected to Hogwarts’s kitchen. “This is….” Harry spun in place, gazing around the empty kitchen. “Unbelievable.”

“You’re not angry?”

It was a sincere question. Voldemort was about to _defend_ the Horcrux if necessary, and wasn’t that funny. “I – no. I’m not angry. I’m bloody impressed, and I hate myself for it.”

A noise of amusement, and Voldemort led him back out. “Which implies that the portals – there were more than one,” he said, pointing at the withered wards along the pond, “were likely from the Humnerë. When they took Avery and Greengrass.”

Harry’s good-natured bewilderment melted into horror. “No.” They were lured out here, then. Probably watching through a window as a doppelganger of Avery’s father or Greengrass’s brothers approached. Their deaths still horrified him, and his hand had gone tight on Voldemort’s waist.

“Harry. Look at me.” He did. “Their deaths had nothing to do with you. But you need to make the decision, should the Aurors be informed?”

“They don’t know,” Harry said. “They never knew where the Slytherins had stayed before. Bulstrode wouldn’t tell them.” But Voldemort was waiting for his answer. He sighed. “No,” he said. “Not yet. Maybe not ever. But I need to see the Slytherins first.”

“Alright.”

It’d been like this all weekend, the whiplash of delight at being alive and the agony of other deaths. It would drive them both mad. He held close to Voldemort as they apparated to the castle.

The forest was still marked off for forensics, and they found Moody at the edge of it, copying some of the wards Voldemort and Herzog had cast to control the ley lines. “’Morning,” Harry said carefully, angling himself between Moody and Voldemort.

Of course Moody recognized the gesture, and snorted. “Potter, don’t be ridiculous.” Closing a preservation charm he’d peeled back, he lumbered to his from the rock where he’d sat. “I brought eight,” he said to Voldemort, over Harry’s head. “Not for the office, for the lake.”

“Excellent.”

“You can’t harm the squid or any of the mermaid population.”

“I won’t,” Voldemort promised, though amused. Moody glared, but summoned the Aurors.

Again the Aurors included people Harry had rarely seen: since only a subset of the department agreed to work with Voldemort, he only knew the others vaguely. But Tonks, Kingsley, Herzog, and Rye were here, with four others. They’d all clearly been at work – studying the forest? Restoring it? But they followed Voldemort to the lake.

“There will be at least thirty Inferi chained together,” he told them. “I am moving the lake.” And before anyone could ask what that meant, he grabbed Harry’s hand, drew their magic together, and split the lake in two.

Harry was laughing – it was an absurd and impressive sight, the water churning to move to either side of the cleft. And after a long minute, magic straining to contain this, they could see the lake’s floor, covered in weeds and detritus from the trees.

The mass of Inferi wasn’t in sight – but then, they’d dropped it nearer to the grotto. They all reached the same conclusion at once. “You think we’d go in,” Moody said flatly.

“Well, yes. I don’t know that there’s another way. Do you?” But Moody shook his head, casting spells to clear away some of the plants, and they moved in.

They moved slowly because Voldemort moved slowly – and Harry could feel in an abstract way that he was angry about it, having half the Aurors department scrutinize his infirmity. Harry held him close, magic necessary but also stabilizing. And the walk was fascinating, anyway – on either side, the wall of water contained all manner of aquatic life. He didn’t see the mermaids, but a looming dark shape approached after a time, and the squid was staring back at them. When Harry waved, Voldemort laughed at him quietly.

They’d nearly reached the spot where the lake filtered underground when they found it. The boulder, covered now in glowing shackles. At the end of each was an Inferius, returned to its form of anonymous flesh. Some of them still moved, some of them looked at the approaching group, or gestured to them. Some of them were shivering from the cold lake water, and Harry found those the worst of all. He looked away.

“They don’t have souls any longer,” Voldemort said, looking over them. “So they also no longer have magic. What have you used before?” he asked, turning to Moody. “To dispose of them.”

“Protocol is a petrification and a vanishing charm. Stay out of the way and hold the lake back.” But Moody’s eye had rolled to look at Harry as he said this. They stepped back gratefully.

Harry couldn’t watch, but he couldn’t look away. The Inferi looked so harmless and pitiful like this. “Harry.” Voldemort drew him close, turned him away from the scene.

“I can’t save them. I know.”

“I only meant to say, your pity is useless.”

“Is it, though?” Still, he remained close to Voldemort, attempting to drown out the last sounds of the bodies.

Near the end, Voldemort looked up. “Alastor?” And Moody stepped away, albeit still glaring. “We should proceed into the grotto. I may find the artifact that holds the Defense curse.”

“It _is_ down there?”

“So I have heard.” His mouth quirked, but Moody looked profoundly unimpressed. “As I’m sure Harry conveyed, I threw out those memories. Still, we may recognize the magic.”

Moody gritted his teeth. “You spiteful child.”

“Yes,” he said, undeterred. “I was. Your Aurors haven’t got to follow.”

“They are going.”

“Fine.” With a wave of his staff, the water at the mouth of the cave receded, and a dark passageway emerged.

The Aurors had just vanished the last of the Inferi, and Harry was allowed to look in that direction again. They looked… fine. He wondered if he even would have succeeded as an Auror, when that had been his career path. He felt far too soft for them these days.

The floor of the lake went from tree debris to jagged rock as they descended. “ _Lumos inhorresco_ ,” Voldemort said to Moody, since he was holding the lake back and Harry was offering his magic. Moody cast it, and the grotto went bright with newly-illuminated magic.

But it was just… Hogwarts. The infrared worked better outdoors, or in mundane spaces. Nothing looked more obviously magical than the rest. The Aurors scattered to search. Harry looked at the lake bottom with mild despair.

“Close your eyes,” Voldemort said. “If it attracted you once, you could find it again.”

It was only as unlikely as anything else. “Don’t let me trip over anything,” he muttered. Voldemort drew him closer to guide him along the rocky bottom.

He kept his head low, attuned to the shifting magic of the space. Last time it was simpler, because he was desperate for Voldemort’s magic anyway. But he and Voldemort couldn’t be separated now. He kept his eyes just open enough to carve a path before him.

It had been long minutes, and the magic of the space ricocheted off itself as the Aurors cast dark-seeking spells. Still, Harry wandered, his wand held before him like a dowser. Nothing. Nothing certain, at least. “If you put it in a rock I will curse you,” he muttered, kicking another one away. A noise of amusement.

It took too long for him to think of the obvious solution. Patronuses were attuned to dark magic, that they’d protect him from it. Voldemort made a small noise – their Legilimency was open enough that he must have heard this thought too. Harry looked up. “Could I cast it?” Most of his magic was tangled in Voldemort’s.

“Yes.”

It was easier, so much easier, to cast it from their shared magic, which was good and warm and more whole than Harry’s itself. “Expecto Patronum!” The thestral burst forth, illuminating the grotto with silver-blue light.

He heard reactions from the Aurors, and some of the casting behind him stopped. Without really directing the thestral, he walked behind it, allowing it to circle the space.

It stopped, a distance away.

Harry moved toward it; Voldemort held him back. When he looked up, Voldemort said, “Perhaps you should not approach the artifact intended to curse you, specifically?”

“Oh. I guess. I thought I was safe for another month.” He followed Voldemort.

And since Voldemort couldn’t cast while holding back the lake, Harry again levitated stones out of the way. The thestral stayed. And when a glimmer of metal emerged in the thick mud of the lake bottom, it stepped forward to position itself between the _thing_ and Harry.

“Hold this,” Voldemort muttered, offering Harry his staff. He looked at it warily; a break in the spell would drown them all. “Oh for – carve around it. Do not touch it.”

But Moody had approached by now, studying the ground. “A knife,” he said, and he was casting to vanish the mud around it. “Is this it?”

“Presumably.”

It took another minute, but in the end he levitated a wicked-looking knife: a twisted tridagger, the length of his forearm. “Is this a murder weapon?” he asked Voldemort, deadly serious.

“When have I ever stabbed someone?” Voldemort asked, mystified by the accusation. “How pedestrian.”

But it was a knife obviously mean to kill someone – to _maim_ them first, making jagged wounds that could not be closed. Harry thought it was a valid question.

Voldemort was stepping in, examining the magic on it. “Vampire craft,” he said. “I don’t know the metal. I would have carried it back from Albania. Perhaps it had been a parting gift. Or sent for good luck.”

Moody hated Voldemort’s ease, it was clear. “I am sending this to our cursebreakers,” he said, vanishing it abruptly so Voldemort couldn’t study it further. “You should be prosecuted for the _dozens_ of lives it destroyed.”

It wasn’t that Voldemort felt guilty or ashamed, but he knew that what Moody said was true. He should be prosecuted for a great deal, including perhaps how the curse had affected Moody personally. What was there to say? “Yes,” he agreed at last. “I regret the damage done to Hogwarts most of all.”

Moody glared, unimpressed. “I’m getting the Aurors out first,” he said. “Hold back the lake until they’ve gone. They will do another sweep of the castle; I’m talking to the cursebreakers. We will find you at Albus’s office after lunch.”

“Fine.”

They watched the Aurors file out toward the dungeons. Harry held onto the Patronus, warmed by its presence, and stayed close to Voldemort. Then, when they were alone, they picked their way up the lake’s sloping shore. And when Voldemort eased the spell off, the water flooded back in, filling the grotto with cold spray. And then Harry was laughing, unbelieving. “Forty years,” he said. “For _that_. You bastard.”

“Allegedly.” Voldemort steered them back toward the dungeon. “Dumbledore attempted negotiations before, when he had his suspicions that the post was cursed. He would send word through the Death Eaters who frequented his brother’s pub. I never told him that I simply didn’t know what become of the curse.”

“Wanker,” Harry sighed. They’d traversed the passage back into the dungeons, and now stood before an unused classroom. “We should probably eat in my rooms. Uh, taking you to the Great Hall….”

“I quite agree,” Voldemort said, mouth twitching.

“I’ve invited a lot of the faculty and all my year to the wedding,” Harry said as they walked. “Someday – it will be normal. To have you together.”

“Harry….”

“It will,” he said stubbornly. “But not today.” Voldemort ran a hand through Harry’s hair.

But when they reached the passage to the Slytherin common room, Voldemort slowed. “Come in with me?” he requested.

“Yeah. Sure. Just – for memory’s sake?”

“Yes. _Open_ ,” he addressed the stretch of wall, and it did.

The Slytherin common room was unusually bright, as sun filtered through the lake. And it was very still, as it hadn’t been occupied in over a month. Harry reached for the wall. “The wards…” he said, keeping his voice low so as not to disturb the silence. “They’re the worst in here. Look.” And with a tug, he made the crumbling wards visible.

Voldemort hissed through his teeth at the sight: there were gaps in the wards, places where they’d frayed, places where they were sparking. “This is….” He trailed off, twisting a ragged ward back together.

“I know. It’s why they left. Well. One of the reasons.”

Few of the wards down here would physically harm the students, but they’d all decayed into paranoia, dread, depression. It looked like psychological warfare.

Voldemort squinted at a thick golden ward, following it along the wall deeper into the common room. And in one corner, a nook meant for studying, candlelight was flickering.

They shouldn’t have approached. They weren’t supposed to be here. Still, Voldemort’s curiosity was piqued, and he pulled Harry along.

Malfoy was stretched along a sofa, asleep with a stack of runes books beside him. He’d come back, Harry thought in amazement. The other Slytherins were still gone, but Malfoy had returned to the castle. He wondered why.

As Voldemort approached, Harry grabbed his sleeve. “Don’t,” he said, incredulous. It seemed so exceptionally petty, to wake him for no reason.

But Voldemort shook his head and raised his staff. “ _Accio_ locket.”

Harry choked as Slytherin’s locket lifted itself from beneath Malfoy’s collar, the chain tugging at the back of his neck. Immediately Malfoy sat up, slapping one hand over the locket as the other went for his wand. “What the _hell_ – “

He fell impressively silent when he saw Voldemort before him. “The locket, please,” Voldemort said, his hand out.

“No.” The blood had drained from Malfoy’s face, but his jaw was set. “You have taken _everything_ else from me this year,” he said viciously, voice full of loathing. “You won’t take this.”

“Then put it in the fire yourself. I must speak to it. You do know how it works,” Voldemort said, and it was not a question.

Malfoy moved past them to the great hearth. He was gripping his wand very tightly as he cast it. “ _Hithgalach_.”

The younger version of Riddle stepped from the glittering green fire, surveying the scene. “It’s a bit late now, isn’t it?” he addressed Voldemort, mouth curling.

“Sit down.” With a spell he sealed the common room’s door, then moved to the two facing sofas before the fire. Riddle sat; Malfoy remained standing. He might have been planning an escape. “Draco,” Voldemort said, with a tone of patience typically reserved for Harry and absolutely no one else. “You may keep the locket. Though I don’t entirely understand the appeal,” he said, with a dry glance at Riddle. “But you must be informed of some things first.” Malfoy sank onto the sofa, still wary and silent.

Meanwhile, Harry had his fist pressed to his mouth, unable to cope with this revelation. He had _forgotten_ the locket, and lost it, and given up on it again ages ago. “What did you _do_ ,” he breathed, no doubt disrupting all the strategic Slytherin silence. “You stole it out of my room – last year? God, I don’t even remember. And I caught you!” he recalled suddenly. “At Avery’s memorial. I saw you with it and I – _fucking_ hell, what did you do? And _why_?” His memories were hazy still, a half-remembered dream. They didn’t feel real.

“I took your memories then,” the locket said. “Because you were being obnoxious.”

Harry glared. “I should have never let you out.”

“Yes,” Voldemort said, startling them. “You should have. There was little I could do for the students directly this year. I understand that the Horcruces have been invaluable.”

“Not enough,” Riddle said darkly. “The castle still deteriorated around them. And we couldn’t save Avery or Greengrass.”

“Though the Fidelius still remains. Did you cast it, or did the diadem?”

“He did. You could access it, then?” the locket asked, amused.

But Harry glared. “You’ve been with them _this entire time_?” he demanded.

“Yes.”

“And at Grimmauld Place?”

“ _Yes_.”

“What the _fuck_ ,” he sighed. He shot a dark look at Malfoy. “That’s why you had those stupid wards on your room.”

“You had no business in there, regardless,” Malfoy said, unrepentant.

“ _You_ had no business stealing the locket. What even – “ He ran out of words and glared harder to compensate.

Voldemort ran a hand along Harry’s back, which just felt patronizing. Before he could shrug it off, though, Voldemort leaned in toward Malfoy. “You _do_ understand what a Horcrux is?”

“Yes.”

“The locket is no longer a Horcrux.”

Malfoy looked at Riddle for the first time, curious. “But….”

“We’ve been separated,” Tom said. “I assume by the Humnerë?”

“Yes,” Voldemort said. “Truthfully, there is no word for _what_ sort of remnant you are now. But as you no longer anchor me to life, the word seems ill-fitting.”

“Use whatever word you’d like,” Tom said, indifferent. “We are not staying. My life will not intersect with yours again.”

“Where would you go?”

“Away. Perhaps France, perhaps farther.”

“Not France, at first,” Voldemort said. Riddle arched his eyebrows. “It is difficult to establish a new identity there, they are too fastidious. Try Estonia, or Hungary.”

He ducked his head. “Thank you.”

“And change your face. Rita’s hideous book has already begun the outing. There will be more.”

A sigh. “Yes.”

“Do you have a preference, of what I might tell the Aurors?”

“Tell them the locket remains lost, as it so often has been.” A curious look. “Do they _believe_ we have been separated?”

“Moody was there. Scrimgeour was there.”

“Mm.” He shook his head. “Tell them anything. Tell them you will scour Borgin’s shop until it is pawned there again.”

A smirk. “Perhaps I will.” Then, more sincerely: “And – while it would not be ideal during the school year – when you are free, the fire of manifestation may be cast within the locket itself. So you might carry the artifact, without physical limitations.”

“Oh,” Malfoy said, blinking at him. “Yes. We will do that,” he said with a glance at Tom.

Voldemort focused on Malfoy. “And when you tire of him,” he said the pronoun in a particular way, “would you please return the locket? I have precious little attachment to it any longer, but it _has_ spent a great portion of its existence being lost.”

“Yes, sir,” he muttered. He was still pale. But when Voldemort moved to get up, he looked at them in surprise. “That’s it?”

Of course Malfoy had braced himself for worse. Harry knew Voldemort as the tyrant who threw Crucios in mild displeasure. And maybe that part of his character existed somewhere, but not now. “That is it,” he said, accepting Harry’s arm to steady himself. “I am sorry I could not do better for you, this year.”

“Thank you, sir.” And as Voldemort and Harry turned to go, Malfoy stepped just a bit closer to Tom.

 

They took fruit from the kitchen and ate it as they walked to the headmaster’s office. Harry was still in a state of shock; but Voldemort was nearly amused. The _fucking_ locket.

Moody and the Aurors had congregated at the base of the tower; they made Voldemort enter first, since the castle was the least likely to hurt him. “ _Open_ ,” he said in Parseltongue, and the door shuddered. Frowning, he took hold of the curved handle. “ _Open_.” There was a cracking sound inside, and the door yielded.

The ceiling had fallen in, and heavy stones had smashed much of the furniture in the room. Dust still hung in the air from the collapse, making everything look vague and smoky. After Voldemort had squinted into the open space above the ceiling, he cast a brilliant shield charm around the damage. “Tell them they can come in.”

Harry let go of Voldemort to relay that down the staircase, but Moody and the others were already moving in. He got out of the way.

Voldemort was casting into the ceiling – it wasn’t just the structure that had failed, but some significant wards of security. He looked over as the Aurors entered. “Could you mend the desk?” he requested. “Everything else that has been broken is insignificant.”

“That’s for us to decide,” Moody said, but moved to clear off the great desk.

It had cracked in half, under the rubble. Very old magic poured off it, more significant than Harry would expect from a desk. And Voldemort was… distressed. Harry gave him a curious look as he approached to share magic, but he shook his head.

Herzog was casting on the desk in a careful, studious way; but when Voldemort looked back, his lips thinned. “The destruction began here,” Herzog said. “I believe the magic of the desk damaged the ceiling, not the reverse.” Voldemort tied off a glowing ward before he stepped in to look. Herzog indicated some shredded wards. “It began there. Just… split the desk in two. I don’t believe it can be fixed.”

“Take it anyway. Please,” he added, softening his tone from the imperative. “It is the last known original piece in the castle, with the house tables gone.”

“Oh.” Herzog skimmed his fingers along the polished surface. “Yes, I’ll see what they can do.”

“Thank you.”

And so Herzog bundled the remains of the desk in protective spells, and Voldemort returned to casting on the ceiling. His Occlumency had gone rigid. “I’m sorry,” Harry said lowly. His mouth was tight.

Moody opened the floo; Tonks and Villanova unfroze the paintings. Most of their inhabitants were out of frame or elsewhere in the castle; a few would need touchups. Harry didn’t know if the portraits could ever die, but… they hadn’t died. In any case.

The clean-up was slow, as they had to untangle wards carefully to avoid explosions or any further damage. They grew tired. Voldemort’s body and magic were both giving out, regardless of what Harry did for him.

There was a sad, low whistle at the window.

Fawkes had been out, but now returned, perching on the sill to watch their efforts. He sang only a few notes, then fell silent. Then, looking at them shrewdly, he soared into the room and perched on Voldemort’s shoulder.

Voldemort was perfectly unmoved, reaching up with his free hand to stroke his golden breast. All the Aurors looked up, but said nothing. When Voldemort didn’t react, they returned to casting.

But when Harry felt a warmth in their magic, he looked up. Fawkes had lain his head on Voldemort’s shoulder, and crystalline tears were soaking into his robes. Voldemort himself stopped at this, surprised, then ran a hand along Fawkes’s head. “Thank you.” A warble.

After a time, some of the Aurors departed to look for external damage. Herzog floo’d the splintered desk back to his labs in the Ministry. At last, only Moody remained with them. Harry was dying of tension.

Limping to Dumbledore’s typical frame, Moody raised his staff. “Dumbledore?”

A moment’s pause, then Dumbledore swept into the frame, brilliant purple robes trailing behind him. “Alastor,” he greeted him warmly. “May I be of assistance?”

“Are we interrupting?”

“No, no. I was speaking with the new Chancellor earlier. Nothing pressing.”

“Could you say anything about what happened?”

“No,” Dumbledore said, gazing out at his office. “We were nearer to the Great Hall then. There were no injuries, I assume?” Moody shook his head. “But a bit of lasting damage. The castle will recover.”

“The desk splintered,” Voldemort said, nearly through gritted teeth. “I sent it back with Herzog.”

Dumbledore’s gaze was bright on Voldemort’s. And Harry wondered – everything at King’s Cross, everything at their death. If it were real, or if _that_ Dumbledore was _this_ Dumbledore, or if he should be invested in either of them. But Dumbledore’s demeanor toward Voldemort was open and gentle. “That is a tragedy. We have so few relics any longer.”

“Yes,” Voldemort said, tense and bitter.

“Should we expect to put Ravenclaw’s diadem on display, though?”

“Oh, yes.” He was practically dismissive about it. “Nearer to the end of the year – or perhaps the beginning of next term. But I do not care for it.”

“Thank you. Also – I have quite a lot of impositions for you today….”

“Yes?” Voldemort said, in a way that implied he would have rather snapped, _What is it_?

“Are you in need of a phoenix?”

Voldemort blinked, and Harry laughed in surprise. Fawkes hadn’t moved from Voldemort’s shoulder, crystal tears still trickling down his sleeve. Dumbledore went on: “Fawkes is quite self-sufficient, but has been rather in want of company this year. Severus is indifferent. I believe he would be well-suited for you both.”

“Yes,” Voldemort said, his hand on Fawkes’s breast again. “We can take him.”

“Excellent,” Dumbledore beamed. “Alastor, I am sorry I could not be of more assistance. Will there be a formal investigation?”

“No, no.” He’d just pieced together shards of glass back into a spindly instrument. “No need. It _won’t_ happen again.”

He did not look in Voldemort’s direction, but Voldemort raised his eyebrows anyway. “I should think not.” When Moody whirled to glare at him, he said with unusual sincerity, “Hogwarts is my first priority. I’ll see no harm comes to it.”

“How generous of you,” Moody muttered, but he wouldn’t pursue this fight. “Who’s at the Ministry now?” he asked Albus.

“Bright, Swinton, Bones. Scrimgeour. I’m sure your input would be valued.”

“Yeah.” Suddenly he looked very old and very tired. “Tell them I’ll be in soon.” He turned back to Voldemort and Harry. “You can see yourselves out, I assume.”

“Yes, sir,” Harry said. (It still felt _really_ strange to not be in Ministry custody.)

“Good. Goodnight.” And taking floo powder, he was gone, and Albus with him.

Voldemort and Harry stood alone in the restored office. “I’m going home with you,” Harry said, before Voldemort could tell him otherwise.

“You’ve got class in the morning.”

“ _Ugh_. What was it you said earlier, about getting to Tokyo and back with magic?”

“Harry….” He hesitated.

“I’m not asking your permission.”

“No, you’re not.” He moved toward the exit, letting Fawkes flutter nearer to the ceiling. “I am _quite_ happy to have you back. But you have fought so hard to hold onto the rest of your life – I urge you not to abandon it now. Or to abandon _them_.”

“I know,” he said, touched by the thoughtfulness. “I don’t want to. And I’ll have to be here a lot soon, for NEWTs. And Quidditch,” he said with a smile. “Since we’ve got three more weekends before the finals and Ginny would kill me if I didn’t see any of them. _Oh_ , and I couldn’t cast at the airspace shield last week, it’s probably a disaster by now…. _Ugh_ ,” he reiterated, dragging his hand over his face. “God, let me hide out there if nothing else, so I can take a nap.”

Voldemort was amused, and ushered Harry out. Still warbling lowly, Fawkes lit the stairwell as they descended.

Into Harry’s suite, to pack an overnight bag. He hadn’t been in the suite since Friday, since before everything, and it now looked alien to him. He stared a bit blankly before moving to the wardrobe.

Voldemort approached the cauldron, decanting a jar of kaval. “God. Here.” And Harry took it, swallowing deeply so the buzz on his skin settled. “I can’t….” He sighed. “Moody said it’d be easier for them to get potions to ease – uh, withdrawal, than if I tried to. But I don’t think I can ask him.”

“No?”

“It’s embarrassing.”

“Ah.” Voldemort screwed the lid on, placing it in Harry’s bag. “You can taper it, over a few months. I _am_ sorry for involving you in such dependencies.”

“No. It’s fine. It has helped.” He threw his pajamas in Voldemort’s direction, went into the toilet, and threw his toothbrush in the nappy bag. “Anything else? – Oh, look at the bookshelf, see if there’s any books of yours still on it,” he said. “And we’ll need to bring your books back from the safehouse. And from your father’s house. There are a _lot_ of bookshelves to be filled,” he stressed, at Voldemort’s look. “I designed it to be, uh, a bit aspirational.”

“You are ridiculous,” Voldemort said fondly. “The bookshelves will be populated in good time.”

“I know they will.” He took both bags over his shoulder, collected Fawkes from the corridor, and moved to apparate from the grounds.

Time enough to drop off Fawkes and the bags; an hour at St. Mungo’s to drain the curse from Voldemort’s body; apparating back as the sky grew dark. The medical spell made Voldemort exceedingly hurt and fatigued, which Harry hadn’t fully recognized at first, so he moved up the stairs in careful steps. “Go lie down,” he said, holding tight to help Voldemort up the sweeping staircase. “I’ll start dinner.”

There was a sickish twinge between them. Voldemort could not tolerate being pitied. “You haven’t got to do this,” he said, extricating himself from Harry’s touch.

“Alright,” he said, letting go. Voldemort had been gracious about being literally supported all day, but he was done now. “Be down in an hour or so?”

“Yes.” Grabbing the bannister, he pulled himself up the stairs. Harry tried not to pity him too much.

Into the kitchen. He went through the pantry and the icebox, wondering if they were allowed wine with all the drugs they were both on. Pouring a glass anyway, he put on water to boil.

When Voldemort found him downstairs later, he was just pulling coq au vin blanc out of the oven. “Hey. Sit down. D'you want wine?”

Voldemort levitated the bottle and a wine glass to himself, slipping onto one of the stools at the island counter. “Thank you,” he said, surveying the pans before Harry.

“Sure.” Cooking felt simple, it felt normal amidst the madness that was their life. “I’ve got a house elf – did you know that? – but I don’t think I’m bringing him here. Unless you think we should. But he….” Harry sighed. “We’re better without one another,” he said. “I think I’ll give him to Hogwarts. Is that alright?”

“House elves are a liability,” Voldemort pronounced. “All domestic help is. Magic can accomplish nearly everything to which they tend, anyway.”

Voldemort’s distrust of others was typically only a background force in their life. Harry already knew they’d fight about having a floo installed later, but at least they were in agreement about Kreacher now. “Good,” he said, plating egg noodles and chicken. “He’s been with the Slytherins anyway. He is so happy to have proper purebloods in the house for once. And Malfoy could tell him all about Bella.” Chicken plated, roast broccoli pulled from the oven at perfect crispness. He poured another glass of wine and they moved to eat in the dining room.

As they ate, Voldemort motioned to an abstract painting over the hearth. “What is that?”

“Oh,” Harry said, glancing at it. “Dunno. A wedding gift. They’ve already sent a lot.”

“There will be more.”

“I bloody know,” he sighed. “I sent Ron and Hermione home with some of it. Like, towels. Extra tea trays. _Ugh_ ,” he said, recalling that day. “It was such a disaster, really. I brought them with the diadem – “ Voldemort’s eyebrows shot up. “I _know_. They already knew about it – him – and he knew more about the wards on the house than I did. But he and Hermione got into it about – uh, arithmancy, I think – and Ron got jealous, and they had an awful row afterward – “ He shook his head with a tired smile. “More trouble than it’s worth.”

“Arithmancy,” Voldemort repeated, amused.

“Or maybe it was runes. I should have expected it. She can’t talk with me or Ron about those things.”

“Send my apologies, for being the cause of strife in numerous avenues of her life.”

Harry laughed. “She and Ron don’t know any other way to be together, except fighting. It’s… a lot to be around. Did I tell you we got a house together? So I can have people over there, anyway.”

“It would be a waste if nobody saw this home. I could be elsewhere. I likely _will_ be elsewhere,” he added. “It will be a pivotal year for Ministry reform.”

“I know. I’ll bring people around eventually. Maybe not at first.”

“Good.”

“Most of my year’s already said they’re coming to the wedding. There’s that, at least.”

“Good.”

“Is there anyone you’d invite?” Harry said, struck. “Who’s not already going as a politician or pureblood or rich person.” It seemed unlikely, but he was ashamed of not even wondering about it before.

A wry smile from Voldemort. “No,” he said. “That will suffice.”

“Alright. I’ll bring you everything Penelope’s sent so far, if you’ll go see her sometime.”

“I will.”

“Brill.” He speared three pearl onions on his fork. “Be careful at the Ministry, though,” he said, a bit hesitantly. “There are still protests. The, uh, Muds for Liberation have been there because… I don’t know what law specifically. But they hate purebloods and they hate you.”

“That seems quite reasonable.” At Harry’s look, he said, “They have never become violent. I don’t believe they will, yet. But Harry – I am quite accustomed to being hated.”

“ _Ugh_. I know,” he said. “I hope – well, it’s probably easier that way. But I hope you’re not hated forever. It seems exhausting. My fifth year was awful,” he muttered. Voldemort would already know what that meant, of course he would. “I couldn’t do it again. I couldn’t be alone again.”

“You have claimed a contentious place here.”

“Yeah, I have,” he said with a wry laugh. “They’re not protesting me yet. I don’t think it’s occurred to them.”

“I will keep them far from you, in any case.”

This was how it was, between them – they both cared for one another’s safety and happiness more than their own. He gave Voldemort a fond look. “I know.”

 

They let Fawkes in for the night, made the cellar a little warmer for the snakes, and closed all the security wards. When Harry got out of the shower, Voldemort was awaiting him in the bedroom, the nappy bag beside him. “Come here.”

“Oh,” Harry said softly. And maybe he was aroused, but he was also just… warm. Soft and safe. “Thank you.” He levitated the damp towel back into the bath, taking a seat at the edge of the bed.

And then Voldemort was touching him, kissing him hungrily, slipping their tongues past each other. Their magic pulsated. “We’re not supposed to…” Harry gasped around his mouth.

“I don’t give a damn what we’re not supposed to do.” And then he was pulling Harry backwards, sucking deep kisses down his torso, sliding himself down the bed, so they lay opposite. Harry was undoing Voldemort’s belt, pushing his robes off his shoulders, getting all the fucking _fabric_ out of the way so he could take his cock in his mouth.

He held Voldemort up carefully as he pushed his trousers down his legs. And while the puncture wounds at his hip and knee looked darker and more painful than the others, Voldemort moved as though he didn’t feel them. His hand cupped Harry’s swelling balls, thumb playing at his arsehole, to make Harry gasp and buck.

Harry took Voldemort’s cock into his mouth inches at a time, swallowing the warm flesh. He’d missed the scent of him, the taste of him, the weight of his cock on his tongue. Holding Voldemort’s flat arse in both hands, he pulled him deeper into his mouth.

They dropped their Occlumency, so the sensations of their flesh echo and reverberate off one another. Voldemort twisted his thumb deeper into Harry’s hole and Harry pushed the sensation back at him, making him groan into his cock. Harry arched hard, shuddering against him.

He played his fingers along Voldemort’s hole, laughing at every kick that elicited. When he tasted pre-come at the back of his tongue, he pushed two fingers into his arsehole, twisting hard as he clenched around the touch. A moment later, and Voldemort gasped, spilling come across Harry’s tongue and lips. He lapped it up, wishing he could be filled with it. And then Voldemort sucked him off hard, scrubbing his tongue along his frenulum, making all the heat in his body rush to his groin. His fingers curled – his toes curled – he thrust roughly into Voldemort’s mouth, choking him as he came.

Afterward, he was weightless, as though his very self had evaporated. The first thing he recognized was Voldemort leaning over him, kissing him again so their tastes mingled on their lips. Harry pulled him down without opening his eyes, holding him close to run a hand down his back. “Alright?” he murmured.

A snort. “Quite.”

Harry looked up just so he could roll his eyes. “I _meant_ , did that hurt? We haven’t got to if….”

Voldemort lifted a hand lazily, summoning a vial that he barely sat up to uncork and swallow. He was still numb from orgasm but the analgesic took away the aching pain that ran down his side. “There,” he said. “Though really, I have survived much worse. It will be fine.”

“Alright,” he said, still somewhat doubtful.

Voldemort cleaned them up with a wave of his hand, then picked the nappy bag from the floor. “Lie back.”

And suddenly Harry was shy. “You haven’t got to,” he muttered. It was weird, kinky, shameful.

Voldemort pushed him back against the blankets, indifferent to his embarrassment. Harry lifted his legs and Voldemort used magic to keep his hips up, and then there was the familiar cushion of soft cotton beneath him. Some part of him, very deep down, immediately went warm and settled.

And then the bed shifted. “You brought the kaval.”

“In my bookbag – I can get it….”

“Stay.”

His eyes were closed but he grinned. “Yes, _sir_.”

Movement, the bed shifting again. When Harry tilted his head, Voldemort lay a hand over his face. “Keep your eyes closed. It will be better.”

“What are you doing,” Harry asked, but allowed himself to be pulled against the pillows, propped along Voldemort’s side. There was a twinge of magic, and then something was put to his mouth.

Harry did reach up then, and found the jar of kaval transfigured into a glass baby bottle. “Oh,” he said, and he was blushing hard now. They’d mentioned this before but he never thought it’d actually….

Voldemort re-placed his hand at his side. “Close your eyes,” he said again. “You may tell me you hate it tomorrow.”

“Okay.” Harry’s voice was far too soft. “But I don’t.” He allowed Voldemort to press the rubber nipple to his mouth.

They needed a bit of adjustment: that Harry had to lie back farther, and the bottle tilted in a particular way, and Harry’s tongue against the nipple as he sucked. But then the herbal taste of kaval trickled into his mouth, and the rhythmic sucking quieted his mind.

Voldemort played with his hair as he liked it. “Let me do this for you,” he said, speaking softly so as not to disrupt the peace. “Every night, if you’d like. It will make the tapering slightly less unpleasant.”

He couldn’t take kaval forever. It was already embarrassing. “Thank you,” he murmured around the bottle. Long fingers mussed his hair.

He was nearly asleep when the bottle ran dry, Voldemort pulling it from his lips. But when he moved to get up, Harry caught his bony wrist. “You haven’t got to go.”

Voldemort hesitated. “I will not sleep.”

“I know. That’s why I want you here.”

“… Alright.” He moved to get ready for bed.

 

Harry slept while Voldemort wrote by low candlelight. They touched, and their magic helped, and when at last Voldemort slipped into the sheets, Harry pulled him very close. “This is saccharine,” Voldemort said, even as he allowed himself to be held.

“Mm _hm_.”

Harry summoned dreamless sleep, swallowing a mouthful. But it was Voldemort’s waking mind, not his dreams, that disrupted his nights. Occlumency was pulled between them, and they were alone.

But when he next awoke, Voldemort was still awake, and moving to get out of bed gingerly. Harry reached over, grasping his hand. “Don’t get up,” he requested.

“Your sudden clinginess will not always be endearing.”

“No, I know.” He could feel in the way their bodies resonated around one another that his bladder was heavy. “Could you piss on me instead?”

Voldemort’s posture was hunched and stiff, avoiding his damaged hip. With a moment of consideration, he eased back into bed. “Yes.”

“Good.” He faintly flushed when Voldemort’s fingers touched his nappy, still thin and dry. “Down the front?” he requested.

“That is quite perverse.”

He smiled. “I know. C’mere.” He was pulling the waistband of the nappy away from his stomach.

Voldemort had opened their Legilimency and was paging through his mind, curious how often he’d gotten off in a nappy in their separation. Finding the nights where Harry would sleep beside Riddle, where he’d push the wet nappy between his legs during a handjob, Voldemort made a small noise. Harry flushed. “It was nothing. – I couldn’t keep it from him anyway, and it helped – “

“Harry,” Voldemort interrupted. “It is fine. I only thought he would be more fastidious. I am quite grateful to the Horcrux, on your behalf. But now – “ He tipped Harry’s pelvis forward.

Harry, being cheeky, stole a kiss with their faces so near together. And then another. One hand held open the nappy but the other ran along Voldemort’s side, stroking and teasing. And when Voldemort hesitated, unable to piss in bed, Harry cast a tingling suggestion charm from his fingertips that made them both shudder. “There you go, sweetheart,” Harry mumbled, pressing their hips toward each other. Voldemort’s cock was soft against his belly. A trickle.

Harry groaned as the stream ran across his stomach, through his thick pubic hair, along the base of his cock. The nappy swelled, pressing in around him with a wet heat.

He held Voldemort close, pressing kisses to his mouth and jaw, laughing in between them. And as piss pooled beneath his balls, ticklish and teasing, he was getting hard again. Voldemort’s hand was between his legs, stroking him, and he jerked into the touch.

The last drop rolled along his hip, soaking into the nappy underneath him. But when Harry pushed deeper into Voldemort’s touch, Voldemort pulled back. “Rub yourself off,” he said. “Through the nappy.”

He groaned again, going hot at the instruction. “Yes, sir.” And he was rolling onto his back, shuddering as the liquid ran along his arsehole. The swollen nappy was pushing his thighs apart, weighing down his hips. He loved the weight of it.

Pressing the warm nappy to himself, where his erection now curved up his stomach, he was shuddering against his own touch. “God – I want – I want – “ Unable to think, he turned his head to kiss Voldemort hard. And then Voldemort’s hands were on him too, reaching into the nappy and rubbing him until he arched like a cat. The touch felt so good – the magic felt so good –

He was flushed, with humiliation and arousal and love. His body tensed, hips slamming into Voldemort’s touch. With a gasp, he came across his stomach, slumping into the sheets. He was laughing, spent.

Voldemort cleaned up himself but left Harry a disaster. He loved it. “Could you tie me up to sleep?” he requested. “I’ll get you off, but then I really want….” The security of it, the weight of bondage to go with the weight of the nappy.

“Yes. I don’t want to get off now. Draw up your knees in front of you.” Reaching for his staff, he transfigured it back into a wand neatly as Harry shifted. “And put your hands beneath your thighs. Good boy,” he said as Harry complied, making him blush. The swirl of his wand, and his wrists were bound beneath his thighs, holding him in a fetal position. Then his ankles were bound, keeping his legs tightly together. He had to keep his head down to accommodate the position.

Voldemort ran a finger along his curved spine, a bit playful. Then, another flush of magic. “Open your mouth,” he said, and when Harry did, he pressed a rubber soother in. “Keep it in,” he said severely. “I will take it out for you in the morning.” Harry hummed his acquiescence. He felt so safe, so young, so cared for.

 

_Monday, May 3._ When he woke the next morning, when the sky was barely light, Voldemort was still asleep and he was desperate to piss. He couldn’t move, he found, pulling experimentally at the bindings. He couldn’t help it, he thought as he began to slip, wetting the nappy. Voldemort had left him to wet himself in bed. Curled as he was, with the soother in his mouth and a gentle stream running along his thighs into the already-heavy fabric, he felt _so_ young.

A stirring, and Voldemort was reaching over to do a typical morning check at the legband of his nappy. Harry couldn’t speak, but he squirmed. And when Voldemort realized he was going _now_ , still letting out a long stream after holding all night, he laughed softly, moving to press his hand right to Harry’s cock, to feel the swell of the fabric. Harry was blushing hot.

“There you go, darling,” Voldemort was murmuring in his ear, making him shiver. “Just let it go. You were quite desperate, weren’t you, after a long night. And quite _helpless_.” His tone was mocking. Harry loved it. “But that’s why you want to be bound to begin with. So you couldn’t help but have an _accident_.”

He flushed at the childish word. Voldemort’s mind was on his, sharing in the shame and humiliation. He let out the last of his piss, shivering as he did.

“You don’t even want to be let up.”

He didn’t. He wanted to look at himself, to have Voldemort look at him. He wanted to be tied up and forced to wet himself in public, with everyone watching. Voldemort threw back the blankets. But instead of saying anything, he pulled open the back of the nappy, and pissed a hot stream down the cleft of his arse.

The nappy was sodden, unable to absorb everything. Harry lay in a puddle, from both of them. His skin was goosebumped with arousal and shame.

“Whenever you are in a nappy,” Voldemort said lowly as he went, “I will piss into it. That seems quite fair, don’t you agree? Perhaps I’ll just keep you in them for the convenience of it. Or I will need you nappied before I arrive home in the evening, so I may wait during the day and use you at night. How would that make you feel?” Reaching over, he pulled out the soother casually.

“ _God_ ,” Harry gasped when he was free. “God – yes – just fuck me.”

A chiding click of his tongue. “Perhaps I shall also only allow you to clean up after you’ve sufficiently pleasured me.” And with that, he turned Harry over and lifted himself to slip his cock between Harry’s lips.

The taste of salt and then warm flesh. It was degrading, sucking cock with his hands still bound, so he could only mouth Voldemort. He loved it. Voldemort ran a hand through his hair even as he thrust shallowly along Harry’s tongue. They were both hard.

When there was a tinge of precome on his tongue, Harry opened wide, swallowing hungrily again and again. Voldemort pushed his head back, thrusting deeper until he nearly gagged on it. He loved this, he loved this, he wanted to be used every single day like this. Scrubbing his tongue around the cock head as he swallowed, he felt the rush of arousal between them – and then Voldemort was coming down his throat, and he was coming in the front of his nappy again. Voldemort pumped and pumped until he was spent, and they both fell back against the pillows, breathless.

Voldemort untied him with a touch, and vanished the nappy into the laundry. Harry lay there dazed for a long while. “We could do this every day,” he murmured stupidly at the ceiling.

“Well. Yes. It might begin to disrupt your sleep.”

Harry snorted. “I’ll manage. Hey,” he said, rolling over to face him. He’d had this moment a hundred times already this weekend, but: “I’m really happy,” he said, kissing Voldemort once more. A hum.

By the time he was out of the bath, Voldemort was downstairs with tea and breakfast. Harry took in his crisp formal robes, black with silver stitching. “You’re going into the Ministry?”

“I work in the Ministry,” Voldemort reminded him. “I’ll be going in every day for the length of my employment.”

Harry made a face at him. “Alright. Wanker.” He poured tea and took a sausage. “Would you see the Aurors today?”

“Certainly.”

“Could you ask them what to do with the airspace shield? They didn’t want me outside last week, but it’d be decayed by now. Though it takes longer. Maybe every three weeks or so.”

“I will ask them.”

“Cheers. …You _would_ come, wouldn’t you? You haven’t got to.”

“There are worse ways to spend a weekend than in Cornwall. Of course.”

Harry smiled. “I’ve taken Moira the past few times, as well. She is _so_ smart. She saw the Humnerë first, in Talacre.”

“She was bred to be a warrior’s companion,” Voldemort said. “She will be attuned to danger.”

“Yeah. I’ll bring her again, if I stop by Grimmauld Place. God,” he said, looking to the ceiling. “I should be there, if they… whatever. Get out. The _diadem_ should be there.”

Voldemort shook his head faintly. “I remain mildly horrified that you shared the diadem with – well, all the people with the authority to destroy it. And yet it persists.”

“Yeah. I know. They seem pretty, uh, content to let him go. Unless they’re lying, I guess. But they – we – signed a blood contract.”

Voldemort’s eyebrows arched. “It bled?”

“Yeah. Somehow. If I do go to Grimmauld Place this week – is there anything I should tell him? Or them?”

He considered his tea for a moment. “Tell them the castle will become no worse. Tell them that while their parents are forbidden to contact me, they are under no such obligation, if they need to. And – tell them to stay in Britain. That the political circumstances for them in the coming years will not be so difficult.”

“Uh. It’s all seemed pretty shitty this past year.”

“Yes,” Voldemort agreed. “But anxieties will recede. The memories of war will recede. Most of the upper class – the purebloods – wish to believe the best of them anyway. Lucius begged his way out with the donation of a new hospital wing, once,” he said with a smile. “This Ministry is not so receptive to bribery – but they still would like to believe that purebloods are _good_. It is why the Muggle-born rights groups have such difficulty. Our world will speak of _niceness_ , as though it is the opposite of discrimination.”

He said it all dispassionately, as though he hadn’t benefited from that same discrimination for decades. Something complicated twisted inside Harry. “I want to know about the war,” he said. “The first war.”

Voldemort studied him. “You may. Though I would not go so far as to say you _should_. We are, after all, moving to eradicate its effects. I do not understand how you value the past so. But – you must hear it from anyone else. Ask Moody first, he knows the most.”

Harry grimaced. He could imagine what Moody would say to _that_. “But I want to know what it was like for you, too.”

“No,” Voldemort said flatly. “I will not convince you of any of my beliefs then, or most of my tactical decisions. You are a better person than I will ever be, and I intend to keep you that way.”

It wasn’t guilt. Just… hyper-realism, on Voldemort’s part. He had never believed himself to be the hero. “Okay,” he said lowly. “But it wouldn’t… change things. I wouldn’t leave.”

“Of course you wouldn’t,” Voldemort said, so easily that Harry laughed in surprise. “Nevertheless, you need to learn of the war elsewhere.”

“I asked the diadem,” Harry offered, a bit hesitantly. “He’d taken all the books out of the library. We read them with the Slytherins, actually, which was… a lot.”

“I assume he did not approve.”

“Well. No. He hated everything you did.”

Voldemort raised a shoulder in a shrug. “I would do many things differently. But there is little value in regret.”

They had had this argument before. The night before their wedding, they’d hit this same problem. Someday Voldemort would tell him properly how much of his past he regretted. It didn’t have to be today.

So Harry gave him a smile, running his fingertips along Voldemort’s arm for a flash of magic. “Alright,” he said, and summoned his bags downstairs. “I’ve got to get to school. I’ll see you… Saturday, I think? Could I write?”

“Of course you could write.”

“Great.” Slinging his bags over his shoulder, he stood. “See you then. Good luck.”

“ _Good luck_?” Voldemort echoed, amused.

“Well. You never know when you’ll need it.”

\\\\\\\ ////

The castle was _loud_ when he entered. Loud enough that they didn’t hear the great door, and Harry was able to slip off into the dungeons without going through the Great Hall. He sighed in relief. He’d see them all later. Not yet.

He had just a bit of time to flip through the Panopticon to see what the press might have written by now. But as he opened it, his heart thudded. A photo of him with Voldemort – when he’d taken Felix Felicis and kissed it back into Voldemort’s mouth – was prominent on the page. It had been taken from a memory, but it was clear and soft-lit by the lights in the trees. Absent any context, it was beautiful.

The press had found out nearly everything by now: every paper had an article about the Humnerë, even if they were vague about it, “an international vampire-led radical political organization.” Most said it was some conflict they had with Voldemort, exacerbated by his position in the British Ministry. None of them wrote of Horcruxes, and so implied the Humnerë wanted Harry just as emotional leverage over Voldemort. It was wrong but it was a safer misunderstanding.

More than anything, Harry didn’t want it to be known that Voldemort’s well-being was so directly connected to Hogwarts; or that some of the damage this year had been damage done to _him_. It would make things complicated. People would misunderstand. If they believed nothing else about Voldemort, they had to believe he loved Hogwarts. And Harry, but that went without saying.

Then there were the deaths. He had the same whiplash he’d felt a hundred times this weekend, that he was so relieved and so crushed at once. Bowersock would have a traditional state funeral this weekend. Bragg would have an Auror’s funeral next week. The Prophet named Terry – “the eldest son of the Boot family, one of the oldest and most celebrated pureblood families of Britain,” but only the Quibbler wrote that Hogwarts would have a memorial for him this week as well.

He should have thought of this before he’d left Voldemort. He hated that he hadn’t. Pulling their diary from his bag, he wrote, **_Are you going to the funerals?_**

The reply was instant: _Yes._

**_Can I go with you?_ **

A pause, then: _If you’d like. Nobody would think anything of your absence._

**_I want to go._ **

Another pause. _Thank you._

 

When he was nearly ready to go to Charms, there was a knock on his door. “Yeah? I mean – coming,” he called, getting up.

Ron and Hermione. He let them in. “I thought I heard the front door,” Hermione said with a faint smile.

“Yeah. Um. I’d already eaten.”

“Harry…” she sighed, then stopped. “We only thought you wouldn’t know – there are no classes this morning. There’s a faculty meeting instead.”

“Oh,” he said, surprised. Reaching into his bag, he tossed his charms textbook on his bed. “Alright. Now?”

“Yes. We can tell you – well, a bit,” she said, glancing at Ron, “on the way. We’ve been back in the castle since Saturday afternoon.”

They walked to the meeting – not held in a traditional meeting room this time, but in a space rather like a drawing room, with sofas and armchairs and a great fireplace. “We haven’t seen Snape yet,” Ron said lowly as they approached. “Or Remus. Heard they’re back, though.”

Harry laughed, wry. “I saw them,” he said. “At the Ministry. _Voldemort_ saw them. And, uh, thanked them. He and Snape are finished, anyway.”

Hermione was frowning. “A life debt?” she guessed. “That only works if the recipient acknowledges it, generally….”

“Maybe.” This hadn’t occurred to Harry, somehow. “But – werewolves can’t be Marked.”

They both made tiny noises of surprise. It was a final, reckless, stupid gesture by Snape. It was brave. Voldemort might admire it, even as he was exasperated by it.

And now – Harry didn’t know how to _be_ with Snape. Regardless, he entered.

Most of the faculty was already congregated. Some still had bandages on, some moved delicately, but they were alright.

Harry almost choked when he saw Malfoy in a corner, writing in a journal. He _should_ have expected Malfoy here, maybe, but he hadn’t. And now he couldn’t turn to Ron and Hermione and ask if any other Slytherins were back. He sank onto a sofa beside Hagrid.

Remus and Snape were the last to enter, leading the Chair of governors with them. They both looked tired – but then, Remus always did after a full moon. They looked alright.

Madam Avalark, the governor, said there would be a full investigation of the castle over the summer, “so as not to disrupt the students’ education further.” She said that the Aurors had assured her there would be no immediate danger to the castle. “Though of course you should remain vigilant,” she added, peering over her glasses, “and there will be Aurors stationed here through the end of the year.”

She said the governors and Ministry would do their best to shelter Snape from any public backlash – it was coming out in rumors that they had been werewolves who’d cornered the Dëshmitar, so Snape had maybe two or three more days before he was completely inundated with hate mail. Sitting stiffly beside the fire, he looked unimpressed. “Let them come.”

Beside him, McGonagall clicked. “Just because you take a perverse satisfaction in being hated,” she chided (and Harry startled at the similarity to what he’d spoken to Voldemort about earlier) “does not mean such a distraction is welcome.”

“Spiro already detonates the Howlers,” Snape said. “You will have more trouble containing Potter’s letters.”

“Whatever,” Harry said when the room looked at him. “I toss them all anyway. You should, too.”

“Brilliant,” Snape muttered.

Then they talked of healing, of what the school and students needed. Sabita was on hand for therapy and most of the seventh and eighth years were being pretty much forced into seeing her. There would the memorial service for Terry. The students could request time off to see their families, if they wanted. The floos were all open to calls.

“And then there are the missing Slytherin students,” Avalark said. She looked not to Snape or Slughorn, but Malfoy.

He looked back coolly. “They’re not missing. The Aurors know where they are.”

“They are not here.”

Snape answered this time, because Malfoy looked impatient. “I too know where they are. It is under Fidelius,” he said at her look. “They will return over the summer for tutoring, and return to their typical status as students in September.”

She pursed her lips. “Some of the governors believe it would benefit the school emotionally, to have them return. We understand tutoring will serve them well academically, but – they have been isolated and stigmatized for so long.”

“When they get their families back,” Malfoy said, too abrupt and too forceful. “They’ll cooperate then. Get their parents out of Azkaban, and the students will return. Until then, they don’t mind being an _embarrassment_ to the school or the Ministry.”

At least three people tried to shush him: “Mr. Malfoy!” from Avalark and McGonagall, “ _Draco_ ,” from Snape. He kept his cool eyes on Madam Avalark. “We decided it ages ago. I am telling you now so you will make it a priority.”

“It is our recommendation that students return for their own good.” Madam Avalark seemed unmoved. Maybe she’d worked with Lucius before, and knew how to handle the Malfoys. “It will not be used in _negotiations_.”

“They don’t want to come back,” Malfoy said. “It _is_ a negotiation.”

“You understand how removed we are from the Ministry’s decisions.”

“Yes.”

Her look was exasperated but not angry. (She _must_ have known Lucius, Harry decided.) “Then I will send the Aurors around.” A shrug.

After that was more for the faculty: how to proceed with the end of the year, how to prepare for exams, how to accommodate both the seventh and eighth years in the end-of-year Embarkment. They discussed who they would be bringing in to tutor the Slytherins over the summer, and who would be repairing the castle’s wards. “The Ministry has suggested bringing in Lord Voldemort,” Avalark said, with a glance at Harry. Her expression was guarded, awaiting his reaction.

“He could,” Harry said. “He’d – like to. I would come with him,” he added. “Not just for, er, a buffer. But our magic is better together. But he doesn’t go anywhere people don’t want him.”

“He’d be here _with_ the Slytherins?” Malfoy interjected.

Harry gave him a look of utter incredulity, knowing he’d spent this year with _two_ bloody Horcruxes. But he only said, “It’s a big castle.”

“We will discuss it,” Snape said, looking between them with an unimpressed expression. “It is our hope that the damage isn’t so dire to need his assistance.”

“Yes, sir,” Harry muttered. Snape’s dark gaze lingered on him just a moment longer than necessary.

When the meeting adjourned and they were all moving to go, Harry approached Malfoy. Against his better judgment, but still. “Er. Have we still got class?”

“Potter, you have never had class.”

_Wanker_ , but god help him, Harry laughed. Malfoy looked faintly surprised when Harry didn’t fight back, then said, “If you haven’t given up your ridiculous hope of passing the NEWT, then yes. Of course we have class.”

“… Great.” He suddenly realized he’d miss Grimmauld Place, and the prickly atmosphere of twenty displaced Slytherins within. “Are you going back – _there_ again?”

“Likely, yes. We will evacuate as soon as it is possible, and then you may have your miserable house back.”

“Okay. They can stay as long as they need to, though. Even if that’s until they’re back in the castle this summer.”

“Send him a note,” Malfoy said, voice dropping. He meant the diadem. “He’s got more to do with the logistics than I have.”

“Alright. Uh, also.” An unlikely thought had occurred to him. “Would you take Kreacher? We didn’t want him, and he’s not good at being alone….”

“And you liberated my elf?”

Harry grimaced. “You didn’t deserve Dobby,” he said coolly. “You might not deserve Kreacher. But he should probably stay in the Black family, and since he’d never listen to Andromeda or Tonks….”

A quirk of Malfoy’s lips. “Yes,” he said. “We’ll take him.”

_We_. God. The room had cleared out, so Harry shook his head. “Are you really shagging – _him_? Of all people?”

“A bit uncomfortable for you?”

“Incredibly.”

“You wouldn’t understand.” Malfoy was moving to go. “Just keep your mouth shut for a couple months longer.”

Harry would never even consider narcing, yet he bristled. “Or else?”

Malfoy’s gaze was cool on his. “Or else you live with that guilt, I suppose.” He left.

Wanker. And since he and Malfoy had stayed behind long enough that Ron and Hermione had left, Harry walked back to the dungeons alone.

 

_Thursday, May 6._ This next week was weird, as the school cycled through the same manic-depressive state as Harry had. DADA was a delicate operation, and Kingsley sat in on a lot of his classes to observe the students as much as Harry, and to do damage control where he could. Harry still lived off a cocktail of healing potions, magic potions, anti-depressants, and kaval. A bit for him and a bit for Voldemort, who was still quite broken even if he wouldn’t let his injuries show in their Legilimency. The only time he slipped was when he was near to sleep, late at night. It wasn’t worth writing then, but Harry would get up to swallow baobab and then push magic toward their soul. Quiet.

Terry’s memorial was Thursday, pre-empting afternoon classes. Madam Avalark spoke. Scrimgeour spoke. Flitwick spoke. Harry’s heart was elsewhere. He felt responsible for every death of the war, of this eternal conflict. When Ron noticed him staring into his lap, he nudged him and silently passed him a treacle lolly. Harry gave him a wavering smile.

They were sitting far back enough to survey the audience: all of the Ravenclaws were clustered on one side, most attentive but a few curled in on themselves. McGonagall was sitting beside Madam Hooch, saying something lowly with a grave expression. Hagrid was weeping as Flitwick handed him tissues. Malfoy sat perfectly straight at the edge of the Ravenclaw group, as though unsure whether he belonged there. But acting as his buffer, holding Lisa against her shoulder, was Daphne Greengrass.

Harry exhaled. Perhaps the Slytherin would return at a trickle. Perhaps Daphne had only come in for this. But it was good to see them at Hogwarts regardless, as though their exodus wasn’t permanent. She had a hand on Lisa’s back, rubbing circles in as Lisa shuddered.

At last the Ministry recessed, and the faculty behind them, and the students were free to go. There was a low buzz, as though they didn’t feel they could be loud. Suddenly Harry wanted to be alone and very far away. He wanted to go flying.

He walked Ron and Hermione back to their suite, gathered his Quidditch gear and broom, and walked to the pitch. It was still early enough that the house teams wouldn’t be arriving for practice yet. The sky was empty.

He faltered when he entered the locker room: on the other end of the lockers was Malfoy’s platinum hair, pulling a jersey over his head. Well. The sky was big enough for them both.

But Malfoy turned when he heard the door swing shut. “Oh for god’s sake – “

“Don’t,” Harry said abruptly. “Stay. It’s fine.”

“Well, _thank_ you for your permission, but – “

“Malfoy, shut _up_. And bring out a beater’s bat. I want to hit bludgers at you.”

“Charming,” Malfoy said, but he didn’t disagree.

Outside, they kicked off without speaking, each holding a bat and a bludger because it’d be more interesting that way. Immediately Malfoy shot high into the air, at least two hundred feet, so he had the advantage of height. Harry circled so the sun would be in Malfoy’s eyes.

They played hard for at least an hour, sprinting and dodging and smacking bludgers directly at each other’s faces. Harry had to switch hands a few times when his shoulder was exhausted, and while neither of them had taken a real hit yet, there would be a few bruises and a few sprained fingers. It was masochistic. It made him feel alive again.

But then, at last – the bludgers had both zoomed at Harry at once and he knocked them back _one-two_. And while Malfoy hit back the first one, he’d been forced to duck a bit, and then the second bludger smashed into his face.

“Oh _shit_ – “ Even from a distance Harry could see the blood everywhere. He was fumbling for his wand, charming the bludgers into docility.

And Malfoy hovered in mid-air, for some reason not landing. “You idiot,” Harry said, even as his voice was lost on the wind. He chucked his bat toward the grass – he’d find it later – and flew closer. “ _Idiot_ ,” he said again, and grabbed the front of Malfoy’s broom. He dragged them both toward the ground.

Malfoy had also dropped his bat, so his free hand was at his nose. Definitely broken, Harry could see just from the bridge above his fingers. “Get off,” he said, muffled and spitting blood as he dismounted his broom.

“Let me cast a healing spell.” Malfoy’s skeptical gaze over his hand was brutal. “Really. God, it’s all we’ve done this year, bloody heal one another. Or you should go see Lavender, at least, but….” There was blood dripping through Malfoy’s fingers. It was gruesome.

So finally he muttered, “Be quick about it,” and moved his hand.

“ _Episkey_.”

And Malfoy’s nose clicked back into place with a grotesque noise, and he winced but then reached to feel it. “Tell me you did it straight.”

“Eh…. Yes,” he said, at Malfoy’s glare. “I did.”

“Good.”

He rolled his eyes. _Slytherins_.

But just as Malfoy was beginning to clean blood off his robes, someone approached. _Oh_ – Ginny was sprinting up, wand out. “What the hell – “

“What?” Harry said blankly. Then, taking in the scene: “Oh,” he grinned. “Uh. We weren’t fighting. I broke Malfoy’s nose.” There was still a lot of blood. He wondered if wixen purebloods were all hemophiliacs like the royal family.

“A _bludger_ , carelessly aimed, broke my nose,” Malfoy clarified.

Harry rolled his eyes. As though they hadn’t been aiming for each other’s faces the entire time. “We’re going in now,” he said. “You’ve got practice?”

“Yeah. Want to help with it?”

He grimaced. “I need to ice my shoulders.” And Ginny laughed at him and waved them off. They went.

 

_Friday, May 7._ So things would get better slowly. Daphne was back to stay, apparently, even if she wasn’t going to many classes. She’d told Harry shortly when he’d asked that everyone else was fine, but holding out for their parents’ release. He was watching the papers now for news of the Death Eaters daily.

He got to the Slytherin estate late Friday, after dueling club, because Bowersock’s funeral was Saturday morning. Entering, he found the lights still burning, and followed their connection to the library.

Voldemort had fallen asleep on a sofa, a scroll of parchment on the coffee table before him. _Leg. Article 380.1.2: Comprehensive Education Reform_ , ran the title. It was a draft of a bill he’d been arguing for all year, to provide comprehensive elementary and higher education. Harry liked it a lot.

So he conjured a blanket over Voldemort – he’d have to wake him sometime, his back would be fucked if he slept on the sofa all night, but not yet. Then he went to see to the rest of the house.

Voldemort had made order out of chaos, as usual. The fiddly bits of having a home were now in place: soap dishes, clothespins, mirrors. Harry wondered when the hell he’d had time to _shop_. He must have gone under a glamour; Harry would have definitely seen “Lord Voldemort spotted buying kitchen sponges in Diagon Alley” in the papers. Anyway.

He also found a lot of magic. Spells that cleaned dust off the countertops and floors every morning, ones that beat the drapes and rugs, ones that scrubbed the sinks and toilets. He saw what Voldemort had meant when he said one didn’t need a house elf if their magic was adequate.

He found Fawkes sleeping near a window that led into the courtyard. Voldemort had given him a very natural-looking perch, made of twisting wood that still had its leaves attached. When Harry stepped a bit closer, Fawkes opened one eye, warbling a low greeting. “Hi,” Harry said softly, running a hand along his breast. “Has this been alright? It’s not Hogwarts, but there’s a lot of open space…. I’ll have to introduce you to Hedwig later. She’s an owl. You can go out hunting together. I hope he’s been good to you,” he added. “He owes you a lot.” Fawkes gave another reassuring warble. “Good.” He pulled the external wards closed to go to bed.

Back to the library. This time, he had to shake Voldemort awake carefully, to send him to bed. Sitting beside him: “Vol? Voldemort.”

Voldemort blinked but didn’t move at first. “Harry. Tell me it isn’t yet Saturday.”

“Well. Maybe technically. I just wanted to sleep here tonight. And, uh, sorry but I didn’t think you’d want to spend the night on the sofa.”

“It would render me quite incapacitated in the morning,” Voldemort agreed darkly. “More than I already am.” He was reaching for his staff, propped along the back of the sofa.

Harry winced and moved to support him up. “Still bad?”

“I will be in St. Mungo’s twice a week for at least two months. It is quite….” He sighed, breaking off this line of thought. “You are probably scarred as well.”

“Mm. A bit.” He held out his hand, where the Dëshmitar had staked Voldemort. A neat starburst pattern remained among the bruising. The other puncture wounds looked the same. “But I’m fine. I’ll give you magic tonight. I could go with you to St. Mungo’s too, if you don’t go while I’m teaching.”

“No. We manage without you.”

That meant more than just the hospital staff. That meant he’d gotten on with everyone with whom Harry had mediated before. “The Ministry’s been alright, then?”

“Yes.” He was straightening his robes, running a hand down his face. “As inefficient and chaotic as usual, so it all is approaching _normal_.” He took Harry’s arm gracefully. “We released the Humnerë on Tuesday, but we are still in meetings with Albania. And it is _certain_ that Germany bankrolled them in some way, but it is all quite opaque and we cannot poison that relationship anyway, so.” A twist of his hand. “And the Wizengamot functions as it always has. Bowersock was not particularly revolutionary or influential, so it will persist without him.”

They were at the grand staircase, walking slowly because Voldemort still had a deep limp. “Does the Wizengamot, uh, want you?” Harry asked awkwardly.

A wry smile. “Does it _tolerate_ me? Largely, yes. The ones who don’t are not the confrontational sort.”

“Good,” he said firmly. It shouldn’t be the case that everyone must maneuver around Voldemort’s ego, but – well. He was quite pliable with some dignity and deference. It was imperfect, but it would work. He brought Voldemort down the corridor to their bedroom.

Voldemort bottle-fed him kaval again. It was mortifying and incredibly soothing at once, the weight on his tongue and repetitive sucking motion. Their magic was open as Harry slumped against him, a warm glow between them.

 

_Saturday, May 8_. Voldemort was already – still? – up when Harry awoke too early Saturday morning. He stood at the wardrobe motionless, considering his robes. “Did you even sleep?” Harry asked blearily, pushing the warm blankets off himself.

Voldemort glanced over his shoulder. “Of course.”

“ _Did_ you, though?”

Voldemort made a noise of amusement but didn’t properly answer. Harry gave up. “You’re impossible,” he said. “Wear the red one.”

Voldemort had an array of formal robes, though one would never know it by his typical all-black ensemble. He picked the deep red robe, with wide sleeves and a bulky cowl neck, off its hanger. “Narcissa would have robes made for me,” he said, indicating the jewel-toned part of the wardrobe. “I never had an eye for such things. At least wixie fashion does not move so quickly as Muggles’.”

“Will there be journalists there?”

“Undoubtedly. Are you not used to it by now?”

“Not really.” He finally got out of bed, opening his bag. He’d brought his teaching robes, and pulled out a dark blue one in a diamond pattern. Subtle. He only wanted to be seen _enough_ at this funeral.

And then they were ready much too early, and Harry was going to have to pace the house for a couple hours until Voldemort said, “Let me take you out for breakfast.”

“Oh,” he blinked. “Can we do that? …Of course we can,” he said with a laugh. “I’m not used to freedom yet. Uh, Muggle or wixie?”

“Muggle. You haven’t got to change,” Voldemort waved him off. “I have been _advised_ ,” (warned) “that people would prefer I do not use glamours in wixen spaces. They would rather know, it seems. But nobody cares if I deceive the Muggles. Unless you’d like to be recognized?”

It was a sincere question. “No. I mean, someday, we should go out… normally. But not today.”

“Good. Come here.”

Two glamours later, and they stood as generically attractive strangers before each other. Harry had said he didn’t care what Voldemort looked like, as long as he was still older than Harry and their bodies still fit together in the same way. “Oh, and wear your hair long,” he added.

Voldemort frowned but charmed wavy chestnut hair to his collar. “Is this too conspicuous?”

“No, it’s perfect. For this.” Reaching up, he ran a hand through Voldemort’s hair decadently, playing with it and running his fingers along the sensitive parts of his scalp. With a last mussing, he grinned up at him. “There. That’s all I wanted.”

“You are ridiculous,” Voldemort said fondly, and spelled his hair neat again.

He apparated them into a London alley, within walking distance of the Ministry. Somehow, they both hesitated before Harry slipped an arm around Voldemort’s waist. Harry’s glamour looked older than he was, so it was only as scandalous as any queer couple, but. Anyway, Voldemort still walked with a limp, his staff transfigured into a walking stick, so Harry still supported him carefully.

The diner was warm and bustling; they got a corner both near a window. “English,” Voldemort reminded him lowly, even as he cast silencing and discretion bubbles around them.

“Ugh.” They weren’t good at conversing in English.

Still, they fell into it easily enough. Harry ordered a waffle with fruit and whipped cream, and Voldemort called him a child, which was pretty much true. Harry told him about Terry’s memorial, going flying with Malfoy, Friday’s dueling club. He told him that Daphne was back in the castle now too, so – well, it was a slow process.

“Could you get them out?” he asked, knowing it was a desperate question. “Not the students. Their parents.”

“I am quite sure any advocacy on my part would only cast suspicion on them.”

“I mean. Yes. But it seems really obvious that you don’t want them back, and they don’t want you back, so….”

“The Ministry is inefficient at the best of times.”

“Right.” That meant no. He tipped the remainder of his strawberries onto Voldemort’s plate.

“Harry….”

“No, I know. That you can’t – whatever. Can’t do a lot for them yet. I knew before I asked.”

Reaching across the table, Voldemort ran long fingers along Harry’s wrist, up his arm. The flush of magic. Harry smiled despite himself. “That doesn’t fix anything.”

“Did I say it would?” He speared a strawberry, ate it. “We should go.” He got up to pay at the register.

Harry popped the silencing spell and hurried to follow. “You’ve got money?” He was digging into his pockets but it was strange, as the glamour didn’t quite align with his actual robes beneath it.

Voldemort waved him off. “Yes. I wouldn’t invite you out otherwise.”

“ _Invite me out_ ,” Harry echoed, amused. “You’ve never _courted_ me. Just….” And then he had to stop before he said _just kidnapped me instead,_ which would have been massively stupid and probably gotten law enforcement called in.

Voldemort knew his thoughts well enough to guess. A curve of his mouth. “Perhaps in the hideous, mundane, domestic life you have envisioned, we will find time for a proper courtship.”

“ _Mm_ ,” he said, appreciative. Dropping back, he let Voldemort pay.

A walk to the Ministry under a dull slate sky. Voldemort was quiet, his Occlumency firmly in place. Harry looked up at him. “Alright?”

“Quite. This way.” He steered them along a back alley.

“You haven’t got to… keep it from me,” he insisted, pushing at the Occlumency. The barrier was uncomfortable between them.

Unexpectedly, Voldemort stopped, stepping in to corner him against a brick wall, closing his mouth with a brusque kiss. Harry’s hands scrambled, grabbed his arms, and he couldn’t say whether he was pushing him away or holding him closer. Their mouths worked hard against one another’s.

And then Voldemort pulled back just enough to say in a low tone, “I love you but _stop it_. We can’t discuss this, least of all now.”

Harry glared. “I’m glad he’s dead,” he informed Voldemort, unrepentant.

“As am I. Keep it off your face during the funeral. During the entire time we are within the Ministry, really. We will be congregating in the Wizengamot offices and processing in together.”

“Fine.”

“Also.” He sighed faintly. “It is traditional for funerals to end with those in attendance casting a Patronus. It is symbolic. You haven’t got to, but – you should. We should. Do _not_ cast it with the happiness that he is dead, it will go very poorly for you.”

“I know,” Harry said, offended by the warning. “I _do_ teach Defense.”

“Yes, you do. Nobody would say anything to you, but – they will take note.”

“Fine,” Harry said, though faintly disgusted. Bowersock did not deserve their well wishes. This anger, all these feelings about his abuse, had been dormant while Voldemort had been in Albania, and were bubbling up now. It was inconvenient. “Cast it with me?”

“Well. Yes. The papers will write of it.”

“Do you mind?”

“No. Do you?”

He thought. There were some moments between him and Voldemort that he _liked_ having as public knowledge. The Felix photo (as it had come to be called), Harry asleep on Voldemort’s shoulder last autumn. “I don’t mind.”

“Good.” Carefully he took Harry’s hand as they walked in the direction of the Ministry.

Stripping off the glamours as the entered the Ministry, they proceeded to the lifts. There were other people around, including a significant number of security wixes. The atmosphere was tense.

The Wizengamot offices were set within a large circular department, decorated in ivory and gold. It was imposing. “Have you been here before?” Voldemort asked as he took him down a curving corridor.

“No. Though I’ve, uh, seen it. In your memories.” The memories of Bowersock’s abuse, that Voldemort had stripped from his own mind and given to Harry for safekeeping.

Voldemort’s glance was mild. “I’m sure it’s quite terrible,” he said, “but you know those memories better than I do. Perhaps one day I would like them back.”

“Okay. But they’re safe, for now.”

“Thank you.”

“Hasn’t Dumbledore got a portrait here?” Harry said, looking around. There were a lot of portraits on the walls – but most were empty or their occupants were sleeping, like in the Headmaster’s office.

“Yes. The other way around, nearer to the door.”

Harry side-eyed him. “Did we go the long way around to avoid him?” He was only mostly joking.

Voldemort sighed. “We shall have a working relationship,” he promised. “Someday.”

“Good. I didn’t mean….” But Voldemort waved him off and let him into his office.

It was neat, with light and spindly furnishings. “You should bring in some of the paintings people sent us,” Harry said, looking to the bare walls. Then: “Oh.” What he’d first taken for a coat rack was in fact a bird perch, with seed and water on one branch. “Uh, have you brought Fawkes in with you?”

“Not as such.” He was going through his desk drawers. “But he’s welcome to come and go. We are only a hundred miles from home.”

“Huh. Maybe I’ll fly in, too, then. Oh, have I told you I’ve got a flying motorbike?”

Voldemort looked up from the baobab tablets he was counting out. “You have not.”

“It belonged to Sirius. It’s in Mr. Weasley’s shed now – he takes appliances apart for fun – because everybody said I shouldn’t have it at Hogwarts.”

“Does it fly higher than a broom?”

“Yeah. I’m sure it would.”

“Don’t crash it into any aircraft,” Voldemort said. He was nervous on Harry’s behalf. Harry grinned.

“I’ll take you out sometime,” he promised. “After I’ve gotten good at flying it.” He held up his hand for the baobab bottle. Voldemort tossed it. “Cheers.”

There were muted sounds from elsewhere in the department, as people had arrived and prepared. Chattering in the corridor, and footsteps, and laughter. Voldemort and Harry went to join them.

The Wizengamot would process in by chamber: legislative chamber first, led by Apollo Bright in glittering black robes; then the judicial chamber, behind Amelia Bones. Harry knew few of these people and there was no time for introductions, but he managed to share a look with Andromeda and Ted as they took their spots. And Voldemort greeted a few people lowly and nobody, well, _reacted_. Not in the way Harry expected, at least. No fear, no anger, just stoic greetings in return.

The funeral was staged in an amphitheatre – not the Wizengamot’s, but a shallow one, in white marble and gold candlelight. The Wizengamot was seated directly across from the press pen, so Harry would have to look sad and attentive the entire time. Elsewhere in the room were other Ministry members, foreign delegates, Hogwarts governors, civilians. What must be his family, a tall blonde woman with four adult children, sat in the front row. And the Aurors were present, but stationed at the edge of the room rather than being seated. Scrimgeour was speaking to Moody in an undertone, even as Moody’s magical eye examined the crowd entering.

At last everyone was seated, and music struck up from somewhere beyond the walls, and the room fell quiet. A priestess stepped into the center of the room, casting a burst of glittering white magic that blinded them all for a moment. When their vision cleared, a carved coffin was before her.

People spoke, at length. It was all full of political promises – _there must be justice, we will carry on his legacy,_ et cetera. Nothing they said about him sounded anything like the brash, hateful man Harry had met.

His shoulder touched Voldemort’s, they were sitting near enough, and their magic swirled together. Voldemort looked perfectly dignified and attentive, but inside he was just… complicated. All of his feelings tugged and snarled. Harry slid a hand along his arm. Moreso when it began to hurt him to sit so long at a time, after an hour. Harry patted down his pockets, to see if he still carried analgesic potions, but Voldemort shook his head minutely. “It will be fine,” he murmured, even as he shifted in his seat. Harry offered warm magic.

Finally, at nearly two hours, the funeral would conclude. The priestess took to the stage again. Music hummed, anticipatory. She raised a golden staff.

Voldemort was one of the first ones on his feet, back spasming. Harry caught him as he hissed through his teeth, but then everyone else was standing, taking up their wands. Harry offered his wand hand to Voldemort, so Voldemort’s hand could fit behind his own.

They had a life together. It was the thought Harry held nearest to his heart as they awaited the indication to cast. The priestess’s Patronus, some sort of magical bird, fluttered and landed atop the coffin. Then the family, then the officials in the front row. Then the rest of the room. “Ready?” Harry murmured, dipping into their shared magic. “ _Expecto Patronum_.”

The thestral joined the swirl of Patronuses racing past them, moving to surround the coffin. The room was bright and warm and peaceful. It was a fine way to end a funeral. And when the Patronuses were a single white flame around the coffin, the priestess raised her staff. It all disappeared.

The room recessed in reverse order, still and solemn as music hummed in the walls. Harry had to let go of Voldemort when they filed out into a reception, where the press were already waiting. Harry looked into the crowd and muttered in Parseltongue, “Is there alcohol?”

Voldemort glanced at him, amused. “I’m sure there is.” English. “Would you go find it?”

“You don’t need me?”

“No. Thank you.” So he beckoned Harry off as some of the press approached. With a last nervous glance, he went.

The room was fairly light and jovial, with much of the Ministry chattering, laughing, gesticulating. There was definitely liquor here because some of them already held glasses. Brilliant.

“Harry, darling.”

He groaned, looking up to find Rita approaching. “Haven’t you got anyone more important to talk to?”

She made a dismissive motion toward the rest of the room. “They will all say the same thing. You bring a spark of humanity to the scene. A view from the common man.”

He looked at her, alarmed. “I’ve got nothing to say about anything. Don’t you want to interview people who, uh, know things?”

“No,” she said brightly. “The world wants to hear of your life together, now that he’s been returned to you.”

He hadn’t kept track of what the Prophet specifically knew or believed about the battle. “I’m still in school,” he reminded her. “And he’s busy here. Oh thank god,” he muttered, seeing a bar across the room.

Rita followed his gaze. “Yes, let’s have a drink.”

“Were you invited?” he said, but ignoring him, she took his shoulder to steer him through the crowd.

“Quite a touching memorial,” she said as they went. “Chancellor for eight years, cut short in his prime! I suppose Voldemort is pursuing the position.”

“You’d have to ask him,” Harry said, though the answer really was _yes, eventually_.

“You must be quite proud,” she said. “And quite relieved to have him back. Dirty martini,” she said to the bartender as they reached him.

“I am, yeah.” He was looking for people to rescue him, but nobody would. They all seemed to be avoiding Rita’s gaze, actually. “Uh, have you got whiskey? On the rocks. Two of them.” This got no reaction from the bartender but a few glances from strangers around him. Good.

“Tell me more about Voldemort’s relationship to the Chancellor,” Rita said. “They spent quite a lot of time together.” He must have winced, because Rita looked delighted. “Was there conflict, then?”

“No,” Harry said. “I mean, I don’t know. I can’t answer for him.”

“You should,” Rita said, her voice losing its treacle for a moment. “You humanize him.”

“… I know,” he admitted. “I don’t know what he’d say. I’d take you to him, but he won’t speak to you. Like I told you,” he glared. “Give back the memories you stole and maybe he’d change his mind someday.”

“Journalists are not beholden to our subjects,” she said loftily, looking over the rim of her martini. “They are beholden to the people. And the people deserve to know. How can they have any confidence in him?”

“By everything he’s done. Everything he’s doing. Nobody’s got to like him personally to like the laws he’s written.” They’d crossed the hall; he could see Voldemort speaking to one of the foreign delegates now. “Look, you can try, but he’s going to tell you no.”

She studied Voldemort, then shook her head, curls bouncing. “I have other means,” she said. “And other stories to tell. Good day, Potter.”

This didn’t bode well, but then she was gone and he breathed a sigh of relief. A long draw of whiskey, and he approached Voldemort.

The delegate had just been pulled away by an Auror, so Voldemort was alone as Harry slipped beside him. “Here.” He pushed the second glass of whiskey into his hand.

“Merlin bless and keep you,” Voldemort murmured, swallowing a mouthful.

“I saw Rita. I didn’t tell her anything, but I think I mucked it up anyway. I really don’t know what to tell people about you.”

He cast a dark glance after her in the crowd. “You are not obligated to answer for me. On any matter.”

“She said I humanize you.”

“Regardless.”

“I mean… I’d like to, though. It seems like it’d make everything easier for you, if they also liked you.”

They had drawn into a corner and switched to Parseltongue. Harry cast a multiplication spell on his whiskey because he’d consumed it much too quickly. Voldemort was thoughtful. “There will be moments of _humanization_.” He said the word mockingly. “The wedding, primarily. Other events at which we are seen together. Being out in public. It will all become commonplace to them, eventually.”

“Will it be enough?” Harry said. “To get you…” _the office of Minister._ It felt like a curse to speak it.

At this, Voldemort’s look was tired. “This,” he gestured, meaning Bowersock’s death, “is inconvenient. It will take longer than a decade, now. Even if the Humnerë meant well.”

Harry faintly choked on this. “They _meant well_?”

Voldemort gave him an odd glance. “Well. Yes. They knew. I didn’t ask them to interfere in the abuse, but – “ A twist of his hand. “They have protected me before. They will again.”

So that was at least in part what the looks between Voldemort and the Dëshmitar had meant, in the aftermath. Harry couldn’t handle this relationship, strange and difficult and illicit. He couldn’t handle feeling grateful toward the group that had also attacked Britain for months. “Okay.”

“Regardless, you know you haven’t got to campaign for me.”

“I want to, though.”

With a curve of his mouth, he brushed the back of his hand along Harry’s cheek. “My hero,” he crooned, until Harry slapped his hand away, laughing. “We _should_ give a joint interview, eventually. Not to the Prophet. I haven’t seen either Lovegood here. Ask her if she’d like it?”

“Luna would love an interview,” Harry promised. “Could we have her to the house?”

“That seems best.”

“Brilliant. I’ll ask.” He gazed back out into the room. “Is there anyone else I should talk to?”

“His family. Yes,” Voldemort said at Harry’s look. “You don’t have to mean any of it. Tell them you’re sorry, and you’re thinking of them in this tragic time. Then you should speak to the Hogwarts governors. And the Aurors, any of them. Then we may leave.”

“Alright,” he sighed. A swallow of whiskey, and he plunged back into the room.

That Bowersock had a family at all annoyed Harry, moreso that they seemed nearly nice. If his widow weren’t so soft-spoken and doe-eyed, he might have told her in vicious whispers that her husband had been molesting Voldemort for months. Abusing him. That he wore steel-toed boots to Azkaban just to kick Voldemort’s teeth in. Instead Harry plastered a smile on, and wished all the best to the widow and the four children. It was… complicated.

He said hello to the governors, and to Robards, and to Winston and the rest of the Muggle Liaison Office. Finally, exhausted of this performance, he looked to find Voldemort so they could go. He _had_ to get better at this sort of thing.

 

“Can I go out to the pond?” Harry asked Voldemort when they’d gotten back home. He was pulling off his teaching robe and tie, feeling like a sham.

Voldemort frowned at him. “You hardly need permission.”

“No,” he said. “I don’t. But the Aurors set wards just around this square mile, and I’d wondered if you’d moved them farther out. The pond was just beyond it.”

“I did move the wards outward.”

“Cool. I brought my broom. I’m going flying.” He went to get changed.

Fawkes followed him out, and up. The land was low and still just sprouting new growth. There was a forest in one direction, and he thought he could see the village in the other. He flew higher, sucking in cold air.

Circling a few times, he landed beside the pond. It was dark, with plants around the edges and vague motion beneath the surface. He thought he saw a turtle. Any sort of cleansing spell would disrupt the ecosystem, so he just peered into the dark depths. He’d have to ask Voldemort to find out what lived in there. Who knew they’d so quickly develop a menagerie.

A few hours later, he came in, to find Voldemort asleep in the library again. Maybe this would just be normal for awhile, maybe it was too much to expect Voldemort to fall asleep beside him, in the contemplative dark of night. Picking up his lower half carefully, so as not to further injure his bad hip, Harry slid beneath his legs, diffusing magic. He really should study.

When Voldemort awoke later, he was still soft and unguarded. Harry always found it charming. “You haven’t got to do this,” he murmured, nevertheless accepting Harry’s assistance in sitting up.

“I know I don’t.” He marked his runes textbook and set it aside. “I like it, though. It feels safe. Can we start dinner?”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look, I should have said this 37 chapters ago, but please don’t sleep in bondage unless you know what you’re doing. It’s safe for wizards, but terrible for Muggle circulation.
> 
> One last chapter. I’ll probably cry. See you there.


	39. Chapter 39

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We can never really escape the story of our past, we can only tell it again in another cadence.

_Sunday, May 9. **Who is Tom Marvolo Riddle?**_

The Prophet headline was bold – not front page but second page, and accompanied by a photo taken from the memory of Tom at the home of Hepzibah Smith. (Did Rita even recognize the significance of _that_? Would anyone?) The lede read salaciously: _Many have speculated about the true identity of the one known as Lord Voldemort. Seemingly appearing amidst pureblood society in the mid-1960s, he has not offered any insight into his origins until recently. Dear reader, I come bearing an exclusive and comprehensive insight into the young wizard who would become Lord Voldemort._

Voldemort would have to reckon with his past, Harry thought, because clearly he could not escape it. The article was thorough. Since Voldemort was using the Slytherin and Gaunt names publicly now, that was how she said she ‘researched’ – but she had taken all of Dumbledore’s memories, so she knew of both sides of Voldemort’s family, the orphanage, his time at Hogwarts, his time at Borgin and Burke’s, the interview with Dumbledore. She elided over Slughorn and the Horcruxes, if only because nobody truly understood all the implications of them yet. She said Voldemort collected artifacts to replace the absent mother that was Hogwarts, after he was not welcome back. It was quite Freudian.

The entire thing was Freudian, really. Rita _loved_ stories of dead parents, it seemed. She as much as speculated that he turned evil out of lack of a mother’s love. The annoying thing was, she wasn’t even entirely wrong.

Then there was Dumbledore. As though Rita hadn’t done enough of a hatchet job to Dumbledore’s reputation recently. _Reports from the Ministry stated that Dumbledore addressed Voldemort repeatedly as ‘Tom,’ an intriguing detail often overlooked in the year of his return. When asked directly, Dumbledore had always made clear he knew of Voldemort’s true identity, yet withheld it from the public for strategic reasons. Some might say that in addressing ‘Tom,’ he beckoned back the Dark Lord’s more innocent self, appealing to a humanity most would think lost. Others may wonder about the purity of his motive, especially given the recent revelations of his complicated past and relation to dark magic. Even his portrait has not deigned to speak with the Prophet on this matter._

And so on. Harry had reached blearily for the Panopticon upon waking, while Voldemort had been already in the bath. But he heard him moving to get out now. He could feel nothing in their Legilimency.

Voldemort hadn’t expected to find Harry awake, sitting up and clutching the Panopticon. “Good morning.”

So he didn’t know. “I’m sorry,” Harry said, holding the Panopticon out to him. “After what I said to her yesterday – I’m sorry.”

Voldemort took the Panopticon with a frown, lowering himself onto the bed before looking at it. Long silence as he read, longer as anger made words stick in his throat. He looked to the ceiling. “Bring Luna here today.”

“Oh,” Harry said. “Is that… it?”

A wry glance. “That is not _it_. But only tyrants pursue unfavorable journalists, and you’ll note that my rehabilitated image is decidedly non-tyrannical. At least she was so spiteful that she couldn’t wait another news cycle.”

So Bowersock was still on the front page. And… maybe, but a lot of people only got the Sunday paper. It would be significant, anyway. “She took the memories from Dumbledore’s office,” Harry said. “Everything he showed me. The diadem wanted them back, and we found them missing, a couple months ago.”

“That’s a massive security breach.” Voldemort was interested. “Did somebody let her in through the floo? Because otherwise, for the castle’s safety….”

“No,” Harry said. “She’s an Animagus. A beetle. She probably got in through a window.”

“ _Oh_.” He’d set the Panopticon aside by now. “Yet you haven’t taken advantage of this. Yet she still antagonizes you.”

“I’m not sending anyone to Azkaban,” Harry said firmly. “If there were something else… but there’s not. Anyway, we _have_ used this. Hermione blackmailed her to stop writing for a year. Hermione is vicious,” he said fondly, at Voldemort’s look. “And then made her write, y’know, about you. But she’s gotten confident again that we won’t do anything to her, so.”

Voldemort was holding his anger apart from Harry in their connection, he could tell. “She deserves worse,” he said, “much worse than what you have offered her. However – this is not so much dangerous as obnoxious. I will give them something more interesting to discuss. If you don't mind giving an interview today.”

“No, I don’t.” Still, as he slid out of bed, to get read, he gave Voldemort a helpless look. “Sorry.” But Voldemort waved him off.

 

He arrived at the castle in the middle of breakfast, and went directly to where the Ravenclaws sat. Luna shared a table with Padma, Parvati, Lisa, and Daphne. The twins were looking at a magazine, Daphne was writing on the same scroll he’d enchanted to communicate with Grimmauld Place, and Luna was carving elaborate shapes into an orange peel, but the Prophet was open before her. “Hi,” he said, taking a seat.

The other girls murmured their hellos. Luna looked severely over the blue-tinted glasses she wore today. “The Prophet exploits you both,” she said, gesturing at him with her knife.

“Yeah, they do. We didn’t give them an interview,” he said, intimating Luna’s thoughts. “I came to ask if we could give you one.”

Still thoughtful and a bit intense: “Could I write anything?”

“… Yes?”

“Because the Quibbler is not a propaganda machine.”

He saw her point. Voldemort was not known for telling the truth for truth’s sake. This interview was already strategic. “You can write anything,” he promised. “I won’t let him lie to you. We talked about it yesterday, actually, but we thought you should come by in a few weeks. Not today. But, um. He’s really bad at talking about… that. His past. So he’d rather give you – or the public – anything else.”

“Alright.” She set down the orange, its design half-finished. “Where should we conduct the interview?”

“D'you want to see the Slytherin estate?”

“Oh.” Her eyes went wide. “Yes. Absolutely.”

“Great. I’ve got a portkey. So, uh….”

“Come up to my room,” she said. “I need my camera.”

A quarter hour later, and Luna carried a camera bag out of her room, shoving a steno pad into a pocket. “Do I need anything else?” she asked, pulling her hair back in frizzy pigtails. “A housewarming gift? Feeder mice?”

“Where would you get feeder mice?” Harry asked, mystified. “And no. Our snakes are pretty self-sufficient.” They left, Luna humming a bit beside him.

“What would you like to talk about?” she asked, partway down the stairs. “Or have you already coordinated it?”

He made a face. “We definitely haven’t coordinated it. Uh, normally we do. It’s… important to be on the same page in public. But we haven’t had time. You’ll get a _very_ spontaneous interview,” he said with a wry smile. “Here, there’s a portkey….” He was lifting it from around his neck.

“A Ministry portkey?” Luna was eyeing it with suspicion.

He suppressed a sigh. “Yes. They set up the wards to begin with. Would you rather apparate?”

“No, that is much worse,” she said. She didn’t elaborate as Harry offered the portkey.

She was taking photos as they walked up the grounds. “How far does it go?” She was peering beyond the house.

“Pretty far. We’ll go out that way.” He opened the wards to let her in. “Voldemort?”

“Yes.” Footsteps from the kitchen. He’d put on silky silver robes, and carried a large mug of tea. Harry only knew his dis-ease from their Legilimency. Still, he offered his hand to Luna. “Ms. Lovegood. Welcome.”

She shook it, but frowned up at him. “Harry says I get to ask anything.”

“You do,” he agreed. “Though we may not be able to answer everything, in the interest of national security. I do understand your concern, of course. But if I wanted Ministry-approved narratives printed in Ministry-approved papers – well, I would have approached them instead. I have a position with the Wizengamot now, I have access to such things.”

They’d moved into the kitchen easily, pouring tea. Luna looked around, Harry narrated how they’d reconstructed the home. “It was neglected for at least a century,” he said. “There were about two walls standing. The family had gone. Do you know more?” he asked, glancing at Voldemort.

“Yes. Should we continue in the drawing room?” He couldn’t stand at the island counter much longer.

“Oh – yes, sorry. Here.” He took Voldemort’s tea so Voldemort could take his wand from his robes, transfiguring it into a staff.

“ _Oh_.” Luna’s eyes went wide, studying it. “Olive?”

“Yes.” He leaned on it heavily as they walked. “The wand of my childhood was snapped in a conflict. Harry had this one commissioned, using a feather from the same phoenix as provided both of our original wand cores. _Fawkes_ ,” he called in the direction of his perch. A flutter of wings, and Fawkes landed neatly on Voldemort’s shoulder. “ _This_ phoenix.”

Luna was delighted. “How _complete_ ,” she breathed. “Nobody believes in circular magic, synchronicity, the elegance of completion….”

“I do,” Voldemort said, as Harry took his arm to sit together. “It is merely rare.”

She pulled out her steno pad and a hot pink quill. “People would like to know everything.”

“Yes,” Voldemort said, though Harry was privately skeptical. How much more did the world deserve to know about them? But he put his face in a smile.

“Let’s start from the beginning,” Luna said brightly.

Harry blinked. “Er.” _Well, there was a prophecy and Voldemort killed my mum and dad…._ “Which beginning?”

“From the war.”

“… Yeah, okay.” _So Voldemort kidnapped me and has accused me of Stockholm syndrome, but really it’s been brilliant…._

Harry didn’t think he’d be the one to talk most in the interview, but it was clear that he’d have to, that people were charmed by him and not by Voldemort. He knew this was his place, anyway, to rehabilitate both Voldemort and the public perception of him.

He moved quickly through the narrative to get to the armistice, the promises and compromises with the Muggles and Ministry both. The dissolution of the statute of secrecy. Voldemort’s place, improbably, among the Ministry, spearheading the Unification.

“Is it what you expected, the Unification?” Luna had looked up, but she addressed Voldemort now.

“I’m very pleased,” he said. “It has offered – and will continue to offer – unprecedented benefits to both worlds.”

“And difficulties?”

“Some,” he acknowledged. “We will be better for them.”

“Some Muggles are protesting.”

“That is Harry’s purview,” Voldemort said, looking to him.

“Ah.” He hadn’t expected to answer this. He didn’t have any elegant words at hand. “We’ve met with them before, we’ve got a follow-up scheduled for later this month.” He was reaching for what anyone else had said at the last meeting, something thoughtful. “Magic and religion aren’t opposites. They both mean there is more to the world than we can understand yet. The religious Muggles knew about magic first, really.”

Luna wrote for a bit, then looked up. “And some wixes are protesting, too,” she said, to Voldemort again. “Your place within the Ministry. Your sincerity. Your goodness.”

A quirk of Voldemort’s mouth. “People may understandably have concerns,” he said. “But I was uniquely positioned to set the Unification in motion. The statute was crumbling, and the Ministry could not react fast enough, within the strictures of their protocol. It had to be an outsider.”

“We’ve published your Resolutions for an integrated world,” she said. “You said you wrote them very long ago. Was all of what you’ve done – the wars, the terrorism,” (Harry winced but Voldemort didn’t) “in service to removing the statute?”

It would have been easier to say yes than to say no. It would sanitize his past, making it more palatable and heroic than it ever was. But after a silence: “No. Some of it. Not all of it. But I have left pureblood supremacy behind.”

“Why?”

“Because we can’t afford anything but peace. The wars – _all_ of them, Grindelwald as well as my own – were cause for a fearful, stagnant world. In a time of peace we might make social advances, technological advances, educational advances. I have wanted greatness for Britain, but it requires peace.”

Harry had seen Luna work before: she didn’t get caught up in her subjects’ narratives. She looked up shrewdly. “Do you have any plans for reparations?”

“That is a decision for the Ministry,” Voldemort said. “I am receptive to the idea. Anyone affected by the wars should write to the DMLE, who will decide how to proceed.”

Harry couldn't fathom what Voldemort could give people back. Reparations meant money, didn’t it? But Voldemort didn’t have the wealth of pureblood families, to pay his way back into society. Maybe he’d give them information, or time, or access to power. Or… what?

Luna didn’t pursue it, though. She wrote for a bit, then asked: “Do you _want_ forgiveness?”

But Harry actually choked on this. It was personal, so intensely personal that Voldemort could scarcely answer it for him in private. Anyway, the noise he made startled them both, then Voldemort smiled wryly at him. “You really haven’t got to defend me.”

“No. I know.”

“I’m sure Harry has grown bored of the question of forgiveness by now,” Voldemort said, returning to Luan. “But I still find it quite a mysterious proposal. Can the past ever be revisited, much less resolved?”

“Mm. And what has Harry said to this?”

“Oh.” He looked to Voldemort; he got no direction. “I don’t….” It was suddenly too personal. Recounting their life together was fine, but the quiet and intense conversations they had in the dark – he cherished those, and kept them safe. Taking a breath: “I don’t know what forgiveness means either. What it means that I should forgive Voldemort. We’ve only got… this. This life. I don’t know how it’d matter.”

“Then what would you tell his other victims?”

_His other victims_. It was a brutal question. He fidgeted with his tea for a bit. “I don't know,” he said again. “I mean, I don’t think I can answer that. It’s not the same for anyone else.”

“How?”

“Because – our souls are connected. And our magic. It means, um. That we’re literally soulmates. Even if Voldemort is annoyed when I call it that,” he said, flashing him a grin. “It helps to be together, and it hurts to be apart. It makes our relationship easy. But – I can’t tell anyone else how to feel.”

“Do you support Lord Voldemort politically?”

“Ah. Yeah. I do. I support the Unification, and the work everyone’s done on it. It will be good for our world, all the new legislation. And – “ It felt dumb, but he couldn't not say it. “And I’m really proud of you,” he said, looking to Voldemort. “Have I said that yet? I am.”

Voldemort’s look was soft, even as he reached to tug Harry’s front lock in that mocking way. “Thank you.”

“ _You’re welcome_ ,” Harry returned, posh. Back to Luna. “Sorry. Uh. The Unification will help. A good relationship with the Muggles is important to me. We can learn a lot from each other.”

“And you want peace,” Luna said. At some point Fawkes had fluttered to perch on the back of her chair; she stroked his breast now. “Do you _anticipate_ peace? What is being done to ensure it, either with the Muggles or with other magical communities?”

“We anticipate peace,” Voldemort said. “Much of our current work is in diplomatic meetings. You should speak to the Department of International Affairs for more particular insight.”

“What about the Humnerë?”

Voldemort’s magic went minutely tense. “This needs to be off the record,” he said. “Analysis of the battle is not yet complete. The diplomatic implications are still fragile. We have not yet traced their entire chain of command or sources of funding. And I am not authorized to speak on record about any of it.”

Luna had set her quill down. “But they wanted your soul.”

“They did.”

“Why?”

“I’m not at liberty to say.”

“Did they want Hogwarts, too?” she asked. “It is confusing that they’d take you off their own land, otherwise.”

“Yes. They wanted Hogwarts.”

“But you’ve got an obligation to it.”

“The castle was my first home, and the only family I have ever known. You may write that,” Voldemort said, and Luna took up her quill again. “I will always have an obligation to protect it.”

“And the war last year?”

“The war last year was a mistake,” he said promptly. Harry looked up in surprise. It was the first time he’d said anything like it. “I regret it. There is magic to the castle I did not yet understand.”

“What sort of magic?”

“I can’t disclose that.”

“There must be ancestral magic in the castle.”

“Yes, there is.”

“So the castle responds to you uniquely. Especially as the only surviving heir to the founders.”

“Yes, it does.”

“Which is why its magic fails every time you are injured?” At their horrified looks, she shrugged. “Every time Dad had a story about an attack you were involved in, I had a story about Hogwarts. I don't know why nobody else noticed. And then I looked up other times – that the night Harry’s parents died, most of the windows shattered. But people thought it was a celebration gotten out of hand. During the first war, there were fires, cave-ins, floods, even though the castle was never a battleground. Unless the Ministry knew and kept it secret, nobody realized it.”

“Luna.” Voldemort’s voice was low. “That is quite good investigative journalism. You may not publish any of it.”

Luna looked different when she was serious and determined. “People deserve to know,” she said. “It is a matter of safety.”

“Yes,” he said grimly. “It is. This also must be off-record.” He waited for her to set her quill down before he continued. “The Ministry now knows of the magic, that the wards decay with any damage done to the heir. Presumably it was also true for the lives of the other heirs, but that is irrelevant now. Whether that was intentional in the construction of Hogwarts….” He twisted a hand in the air. “But it cannot become known. The Humnerë used it to their advantage. So would others.”

“Do the Slytherin students know? They were driven from the castle.”

Voldemort looked to Harry. “Do they?” he asked. “They might have learned it.”

From the Horcruxes, that meant. The Horcruxes, who had contempt for Voldemort and felt that his wars had been a mistake. “I don't know,” Harry said. “Uh, maybe.” He couldn’t say anything more without divulging _far_ too much.

“Do they deserve to know?” Luna asked.

Voldemort was unimpressed by the question. “They deserve more than what they’ve been given altogether. An explanation is the least of it. They know they are welcome to find me, and I would tell them what I am able. But they should confront anyone in the DMLE first.”

Luna hummed, thoughtful. Then, picking up her quill again: “What shall your relationship to Hogwarts be now?”

“As always, I leave it in the care of its governors, headmaster, and faculty. Our educational reforms may restructure the curriculum and hiring standards, in accordance with the new early education policies. But I do not anticipate having much direct involvement. I will protect it through legislation and diplomatic affairs, now.”

“The Prophet wrote that you collected artifacts from the founders. Do you still have them?”

“Of the three I obtained, one remains. Hufflepuff’s chalice and Slytherin’s locket were both lost in conflicts. But Ravenclaw’s diadem has been preserved. It will be donated for display in the castle shortly.”

“Oh.” Her eyes had gone wide, sparkling. “The lost diadem. Is it here?”

“Unfortunately not. It is kept safe elsewhere.”

“How did you recover it?”

A faint smile. “That will be disclosed at its presentation.”

Luna wrote something in the margin, then asked much too easily, “Do you still regret that you were never given a teaching post?”

It’d taken this long to reach the details of Voldemort’s life from before, of _Tom Riddle’s_ life from before. He ran his thumb along the edge of his mug, refilling it with a silent charm. “Surely you don’t want to begin a dispute with the Daily Prophet.”

“If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have agreed to write this distraction for you,” Luna said, sharp but not angry.

Voldemort was surprised. Nobody spoke to him so candidly, without deference, except perhaps Harry. And Severus, once. He felt Harry’s tension at it. “A distraction from my childhood,” he said. “In a way, it is. People are understandably curious. The Ministry had always known of my previous identity as _Tom Riddle_ ,” (he barely disguised his distaste) “so you might ask them to what end they kept it confidential. Of course Dumbledore always knew. As did many of the former Death Eaters – if not the entirety of it, that they had some insights into my past. But intrigue has been elevated since my recent use of both the Slytherin and Gaunt names. They were lines lost for a very long time, largely due to anti-Parselmouth legislation that was a product of colonial relations with India. The legislation was repealed as a condition of Indian independence. But the Gaunt line so thoroughly withdrew from wixen society, I could not account for the entire line.”

It was a distraction itself. Nobody would care about the Gaunt line, people cared about Voldemort. Luna cocked her head. “I found the Prophet article indulgent,” she said. “So little of the information will have any bearing on our world. But would you like to comment on anything it presented?”

“Yes.” He felt Harry’s surprised look on him; he took a moment to collect his words. “I do not often speak of my childhood, as it was shameful and unhappy. The Prophet article already offers the details. My mother’s life was a tragedy. My father’s abandonment of her was a tragedy, as was his later refusal to acknowledge me. He feared and hated magic, having left my mother when she revealed she was a witch. I was named for him, but he never deserved to have his name carried into the magical world. He never deserved to have his face carried into this world, either. I discarded both. Instead of being raised by my wealthy father, I grew up in a gritty orphanage in London, during which it served as an epicenter for the Muggle world war. I have no fond memories of the time before Hogwarts. Coming to this world was – sanctuary. The purebloods will not understand, but being surrounded by magic was like at last being able to breathe.”

He paused – he’d like to say something about the cruelty that pervaded the Muggle world, but it would make Harry’s job of mediation needlessly difficult. Luna was still writing as he continued, “I never presented myself as a pureblood. How could I, when at the time Slytherin was populated exclusively by names hundreds of years old? I am so committed to early education, especially for young wixes not raised in magical households, for this reason. To catch up on a decade of intrinsic knowledge and culture, alongside proper education – it is unfair to the Muggleborns.” To say nothing of the way the Slytherins would never let him belong. But he didn’t say that either.

Luna had looked up sharply.  “You have fought for pureblood supremacy for decades.”

This was true; but the more thoroughly he leaned ono his halfblood background, the more people would come to doubt themselves. _Why would a halfblood be a pureblood supremacist_? “I can’t comment on that.”

But Luna was astute, and unimpressed. He admired her bravery even in the midst of his irritation. “Other people also had tragic childhoods,” she said, “and managed not to start any race wars. Harry grew up an orphan with terrible Muggles and he’s one of the best people I know.”

“No, I’m not,” Harry said, a bit alarmed. He was tensed beside Voldemort, expecting conflict if not outright violence.

So Voldemort slipped a hand along Harry’s arm, in an appeasing way. “That’s precisely it, though,” he said to Luna. “I neither want nor deserve anyone’s pity. To dwell on such things – to sell papers with such things – is morally complex, and ultimately irrelevant. I do not need to be liked, as long as I am free to improve Britain’s circumstances. The Unification is too large and too significant, to distract from it.”

Luna was writing, thinking. Her feelings on the matter were clearly in conflict with her journalistic disinterest. Beside Voldemort, Harry was about to jump up and sprint from the room, he was so anxious about it all.

“Okay,” Luna said at last. When Voldemort raised his eyebrows, she shrugged. “Our readers will make their own decisions.”

“I suppose they must.”

“Could you tell me more about the estate?”

“Yes.” He reached for Harry’s hand, and his staff.

Luna turned back to her typical dreamy self as they walked her through the estate. Harry spoke too quickly and forcefully, still tense from the conflict, but he was effusive about the home and it showed. And Voldemort hadn’t heard some of what he said before, the conversations he’d had with preservationists and archaeologists and historians. “It’s closest to the way the house was in the early 1800s,” Harry said. “They added on, uh, research rooms upstairs then, and expanded the courtyard. Let me show you.” He was moving from the library door toward the rear entrance, letting go of Voldemort’s hand so he could lead Luna out. And Voldemort stayed back, allowing the two of them to walk together, speaking lowly. Luna gestured; Harry laughed.

Voldemort was suddenly fascinated to see Harry in his own world, not mediating but just – being the student he still was. Spending time with his friends, discussing whatever eighteen year olds discussed. Harry had never known a life not bounded by him, but these moments were the nearest insight into who he’d be otherwise.

The courtyard and the rear gardens could be beautiful. Most pureblood homes put an emphasis on intricate gardens; they might do the same. He limped carefully along the stone path; Harry and Luna had stopped, sitting at the edge of a historic fountain. Luna’s camera had operated on its own all day – Harry had said he preferred how they looked in candid photos – but she held it now, taking close-up shots of the fountain’s details: a centaur, a mermaid, a phoenix.

Harry rose when Voldemort reached them, catching his arm again. “I was saying, a lot of this space was used for plants before. Potted plants, and gardens. The family were all into herbology and potions.”

“We should keep some significant plants,” Voldemort agreed. “But I thought if we designed the gardens into a worthwhile setting, we might have the wedding reception here?”

“ _Oh_.” Harry was surprised and delighted. “Really?”

“Yes. If you’d like. It seems a waste to not display the work you’ve put into this home.”

He was smiling. “Yeah, I’d like that. I’ll write Penelope to tell her.” He looked back to Luna. “Told you we didn’t coordinate any of this.”

They circled around the house, and then Luna said she should see her father. “Could you apparate from here?” Harry asked. “Or I could take you back to Hogwarts on the portkey, or….”

“I can apparate,” she promised. She’d caught her camera from where it had flitted over her head, and re-placed it in its bag with a pat as though it were a good dog. “Lord Voldemort, thank you very much for your time.”

“And for yours.” And Luna dropped into a curtsy and Voldemort into a bow, and she apparated herself out.

Immediately Harry took a shuddering breath, laughing and sighing at once. “That was so….” He didn’t have words, but in their Legilimency he was still tense and nervous. “Should I have said something?”

“No.” They were walking back to the house. “You must understand that every relationship with journalists is a bit oppositional. It is the nature of the profession.”

“Luna’s never….” He sighed again. _Luna’s never been disapproving before,_ was the sentiment held in his Legilimency. “Nevermind. It was fine. Are you happy?”

“Yes. Thank you. Are you?”

“I mean. If it gets people off Rita’s _fucking_ article. I am sorry. Whatever I said to her….”

“Clearly she’d had it written before yesterday. Just….” He ran a hand over his face. He would curse anyone in the entire Ministry who called him Tom. But Harry didn’t need to hear that. “Just come inside. Luna should have stayed for lunch.”

 

Thy both ended up in the library that afternoon. Harry should have been studying runes, but he was reading _The Count of Monte Cristo_ instead. Voldemort was writing in a long scroll with a lot of legal words on it, until he picked up a small diary. Harry looked at it in surprise; it was the one he used to write to the Aurors. “I didn’t know you’d gotten that back.”

“It’s still quite important that they can contact me. It won’t always be. We have been arranging a day at Cornwall next weekend. I’m sure the airspace shield is disastrous.”

“Yeah,” Harry sighed.

“And I’ve asked what progress has been made in securing a visit to Nurmengard. If you’d also join me in that?”

“Yeah, I would.” He looked to the ring still on Voldemort’s finger. “You’re giving it to him?”

“It means nothing to me. It would be best to no longer possess it.”

“You told Luna that the locket was gone.”

“I will tell the Ministry the same. It may find a life – or the equivalent thereof – abroad. And there is magic that will allow the diadem to stray from its artifact.”

“He was reading a lot to figure out how. A lot from the library at Grimmauld Place.”

“Is there a library there?” Voldemort’s interest was piqued.

“Yeah. It’s all really, uh, dark. Probably illegal. You want it?”

“Immensely.”

He grinned. “Alright. When the Slytherins are out. Oh, also, do you know how to move a piano? The diadem said it couldn’t be shrunk very far.”

“Mm. Out the front door. You might hire movers – Muggle movers – though we’d need to put a road nearer to the estate. I assume Moody will have to re-cast the Fidelius afterward anyway.”

“Yeah, he will. He’s already resigned to it.”

“Are you going to learn piano?”

“No. You are.” At Voldemort’s look, he shrugged. “It will come back to you.”

“I’m quite sure it won’t. I physically discarded those memories.”

_And that’s awful_ , Harry didn’t say. “Then it will be new. Or maybe I’ll learn it someday. Or it will be a conversation piece to put in the drawing room.”

They’d played this game all year, roleplaying a perfect domestic life together. The piano was aspirational; but so were the potions lab and the wall-to-wall bookcases of the library. And now it was all real, too. His heart hurt with happiness.

 

_Monday, May 10._ **_What’s next for the heir of Slytherin?_**

When Harry arrived at breakfast in the Great Hall Monday morning, copies of the Quibbler were already scattered across tables, presumably hand-delivered by Luna. He picked up a copy as he walked to the high table.

_Having been granted the only comprehensive interview by Lord Voldemort since his return to Great Britain, I endeavor to paint a portrait of the complex figure who has dominated the political landscape for decades. Cunning, opportunistic, bold – how will Lord Voldemort shape the Wizengamot and the Ministry as a whole in his new position as architect of the Unification?_

The article began as a rebuke to Rita’s. ( _Can any of us truly account for our present by dwelling on our past?_ Luna had written poetically. _The figure who was Tom Marvolo Riddle is a curiosity, but has little place in current circumstances._ ) But it surpassed the rebuke quickly, writing instead of the complicated parts of the interview: that neither of them understood what forgiveness meant, that the protestors against Voldemort had legitimate grievances, that ideals of pureblood supremacy had infested their world and corrupted it for decades, and Voldemort benefited from the supremacists even if he wasn’t codifying their principles into law.

_Perhaps I don’t understand forgiveness either_ , she’d written. _But I would like to. Or perhaps the word I seek is redemption. How do we measure out how many beneficial decisions he must make before the prior harm has been negated? Arguably it never will be, particularly for families who lost partners, children, siblings in the war. He speaks with passion about bringing Britain into a new era of peace and prosperity, words that will resonate with a war-weary population. And he has kept every political commitment he has made since the armistice nearly a year ago. While it is the Quibbler’s editorial position that no government official is to be fully trusted under any circumstance, others will ask: when can he be trusted?_

_Some people have put their faith into his leadership in the Unification. Some put it into his public conduct. Others trust the company he keeps: the Minister, Wizengamot, and DMLE have all accepted his assistance this year. Of course, many put their faith in Harry Potter, whose steadfast support of Voldemort has itself upended many of our political expectations. And while post-mortem portraits cannot be taken as legal entities, it must be noted that Albus Dumbledore’s portrait has expressed approval of Voldemort’s handling of the Unification as well._

_To ask what place Voldemort has in our world is to ask who we want to be a society, altogether. To ask about forgiveness is to ask about justice, legal or otherwise. The Ministry has said it will not pursue further charges against Voldemort, as the exile and suspension of his citizenship served as the final sentence they would carry out. In what way would punishment be justice; in what way could we imagine ‘justice’ that is not connected to retribution, punishment, or violence? This question runs parallel to the sentences served by former Death Eaters, whose families have been destroyed and children been driven into hiding since their imprisonment. Who benefits from such decisions? As proponents of the Unification’s large-scale restructuring have argued, our society is too small and too fragile to count anyone as expendable any longer. We can do better. We must do better._

It didn’t read like any traditional journalism Harry had ever seen before. But it was thoughtful and beautiful, and it was the antithesis of the Prophet’s article. It was more than enough.

So the text was ambivalent but the photos were sweet and gentle and good. The front page photo was from the drawing room, Harry and Voldemort sitting close enough that their thighs touched. Harry must have said something teasing in that moment, because he was grinning at Voldemort, who looked back with exasperated fondness. He never noticed in the moment how much – _love_ – there was in the way Voldemort looked at him. It was revealing, it was undeniable. It was worth sharing with the world if they needed to see it. His expression was never so soft as it was then.

Fawkes was in the background of some photos: Harry and Voldemort standing at the entrance to their library, Fawkes perched on the curving handle of Voldemort’s staff. Among the dark and muted colors, Fawkes was a splendid scarlet and gold. It was – good. Fawkes tied them together, tied them to Dumbledore, tied them to the cycles of life and death as they’d been so associated with them. It was a more significant endorsement by Dumbledore than Harry had realized at the time.

Inside, at the bottom of the article, a photo he hadn’t realized had been taken: in the courtyard, Voldemort limping to the fountain, Harry propping him neatly against his side for support. That… well, he liked it (he _loved_ it), but Voldemort might feel it made him look weak. But it was perfect. Harry had brushed his fingers along Voldemort’s spine, Voldemort relaxing minutely into his touch. There were framed by the fountain and a distant grove of trees. He wondered if the rest of the world had been seeing them like this all along.

He’d left Voldemort very early that morning, before he was even really awake, so he was probably just now also reading the papers. Harry fished through his bag for their diary, to find it already warm. _Tell her thank you,_ Voldemort had written at the top of a new page.

**_I will. But she didn’t do it as a favor to you._ **

_I know._

**_I didn’t know if you’d like it._ **

_She could have written vicious polemic and called me an arsehole in the headline. As long as it redirected the conversation, I would be quite satisfied._

Luna hadn’t put most of what Voldemort had said about his childhood in the article at all. Just that he neither wanted nor deserved pity for it. People would still know – some students at breakfast were still passing around yesterday’s Prophet – but Luna wouldn’t be complicit in that spectacle, anyway.

**_Come with me to the therapist sometime,_** Harry wrote on impulse. **_I want to understand why you feel like this._**

A pause, then: _No._ Before Harry could write back, he added, _But you might continue to see her, or someone else. Ask if she’s got a private practice._

That really was not the issue at hand. Chewing his tongue: **_I’ll support you forever, but I don’t know enough to do it on my own._**

_You really haven’t got to._

**_I do. And I want to. But you’re hurting yourself._ **

(And it’s going to fuck up you or our children or both, he didn’t write. Not yet.)

Another pause, then Voldemort wrote, _Alright._

**_What does that mean?_ **

_It means I will endeavor to have a less harmful relationship to my past. But you are still going to therapy alone._

He smiled. **_Thank you. I love you. Do you want me to tell Luna anything else?_**

_No. Tell her I am grateful._

So he did, in Potions that morning. Ron, Ginny, and Luna had joined him at a table, practicing an anti-inflammatory potion in preparation for the NEWT. In between powdering salamander skulls, Harry leaned in. “He says thank you,” he said to Luna.

She shrugged, her long peacock feather earrings sweeping her shoulders. “I did not write it for him,” she said. “I wrote it for our readership. They deserve to know such things.”

“Yeah. I know.”

Ron looked between them with trepidation. “You wrote about Voldemort?” he asked. (He’d skipped breakfast that morning, and missed the Quibbler. There would still be copies scattered at lunch.)

“I _interviewed_ Voldemort,” Luna said. “He asked me to, to distract from the Prophet article.”

“Mum didn’t trust the Prophet article anyway,” Ginny said brightly. “I floo’d with her last night. But she said it was very sad.”

Oh god. “The Prophet wasn’t really wrong,” he said carefully, “but he didn’t do an interview with them. Anyway, he likes the Quibbler. Not just because you publish him,” he said to Luna with a smile. “I hope, uh, the response is good.”

“Dad said we might have to hire someone,” she agreed. “To keep up with demand.”

“That’s great.” A pause; he set down the marble pestle and frowned at Ginny. “Your mum thought it was _sad_?” he echoed in the most delayed reaction.

“It’s not an excuse for anything,” Ginny said. “It can just be sad. She loves Fred and George’s novellas about you anyway. They’ll probably write new ones based on the articles.”

“God,” Harry sighed, looking heavenward. On the one hand, Voldemort did _not_ deserve the goodness of Molly Weasley. On the other – it would make Harry’s life better if there were some bridges made even out of pathos. So if schmaltzy articles and softcore porn worked for Molly, well. Good.

 

_Thursday, May 13._ The other positive effect Luna’s article had had was drawing attention to the Slytherins – the Death Eaters who should have been under house arrest, the students who were still in hiding. Harry thought it was likely not a coincidence when, on Thursday, Millicent and Blaise came down to breakfast together, re-uniting the four eighth year Slytherins. Behind them was Snape, shoulders back, expressionless.

Malfoy had stood, striding across the Great Hall. So had Daphne. The four of them were speaking to Snape in low, urgent tones. Harry watched openly.

This had to mean that the Death Eaters had been released, that they were being moved from Azkaban to house arrest. It means they should get the Slytherins back soon – if not during the school term, over the summer. Thank god.

He had this hideous urge to get to Grimmauld Place himself. He’d only be in the way, realistically. Still, he’d see Daphne in Transfiguration later that afternoon. He’d have to ask her then.

Hermione had arrived to breakfast alone, and had followed his gaze as she sat down. “Oh,” she breathed.

“Yeah.” He looked over. “Where’s Ron?”

“Ill. I brought him potions, he’s got a pre-natal visit tomorrow.” She laughed in a breathy way. “We’re actually doing this.”

“Does he… want anything?” Harry had never been around anyone pregnant before, he hadn’t the faintest what it entailed. Much less a pregnant man.

She clicked her tongue. “There are some potions ingredients he shouldn’t be handling. And dark magic! Exposure to most magic is alright, but dark magic….”

The aquavitae spell that Voldemort had used in battle, to heal necrotic damage. The necrotic magic itself. “No,” he said faintly. “What if….”

Hermione shook her head. “We’ll know more tomorrow.” She ate a piece of toast in three decisive bites, threw some tangerines in her bag, and stood again. “Anyway, I’ve got to get ready for class. You can go see Ron later today. Just, er, don’t mention that men don’t get pregnant in the Muggle world. He’s a bit sensitive that, well, this is new to me.”

Poor Hermione. Poor Ron. “Yeah, alright.” And Hermione dashed off, and Harry finally pulled a platter of eggs toward himself.

 

In Transfiguration that afternoon, Harry rushed to sit beside Luna, who shared a table with Lisa and Daphne. He wasn’t even subtle about it: leaning across the table, he asked Daphne, “Are they out?”

She shushed him and returned to the open clockwork they were supposed to be transfiguring. When Harry didn’t lift his gaze, she glanced up in irritation. “They will be. It really doesn’t concern you.”

As he’d been mediating for all the Slytherins all year, he strongly disagreed. He wanted to ask more questions – he wanted to ask about Tom – but he couldn’t do that here. “Malfoy will tell me later,” he muttered.

Daphne arched her perfect brows. “Will he?”

Honestly, yes, since now Harry had his secret of the locket to keep. He shrugged it off, returning to the dismantled clock before him.

 

That evening, Malfoy walked into the Runes classroom, dropped an exam on Harry’s desk, and turned to walk out. “Wait,” Harry said.

Malfoy audibly sighed. “Why.”

“Could you tell me more about the Slytherins?”

“Didn’t Greengrass already tell you no?”

“Yes,” he admitted promptly. “But you like me more than she does.”

“I certainly do not,” Malfoy said, though his lips twitched.

“Are they moving back in with their parents?” he asked. “I haven’t seen anything about house arrests in the papers, but I guess I wouldn’t….”

“They are still precarious,” Malfoy said darkly. “People still want to hurt them. House arrest is too _easy_ , I’ve heard. And the locations of their estates are quite well-known.”

“But that’s fucked up.” Malfoy shrugged. “The Aurors were supposed to….”

“Yes,” Malfoy interrupted. “The Aurors have done everything they have promised. At long last. But both the students and their parents will keep a low profile, for their own safety. Especially as long as – he is in any position of authority or power.”

Harry recoiled. “He won’t hurt them.”

“Charming,” Malfoy drawled. “No, Potter. His prominence alone sows civil unrest. He can make Lovegood write as many lovely words about _peace_ as he’d like – “

“He didn’t make Luna write anything,” Harry interjected.

Malfoy waved him off. “But all those lovely words will not lift people’s anger. _You_ can be saintly, but everyone else still believes in retribution.”

“… Okay,” he muttered. He thought once again of restorative justice – he thought of it often these days – but he could not suggest what the Death Eaters might return to their victims. Presumably, with all the Death Eaters corralled in the Order of Lua Saturni, their conduct was Scrimgeour’s problem now. “Have they all gone? I need to know,” he added, at Malfoy’s look. “I want to take the library when Grimmauld Place is empty. And I’ll probably need to be there when Moody strips the Fidelius.”

“Before the end of term, he said.” Malfoy was reluctantly cooperating by now. “They’re moving them just a few a day. Bulstrode and Zabini came back here because – well, it really doesn’t matter, does it?” Because Millicent’s parents were never Death Eaters and Zabini’s mum was still a fugitive abroad. “And we need to study for NEWTs.”

“Oh. Uh, okay. And the wards…?”

“Won’t get worse. Tom and I are quite capable of healing the fractures in the dorms.”

It was still so fucking weird, hearing Malfoy acknowledge the Horcruxes openly. “Good,” he said. “And the diadem…?”

“ _Potter_ ,” Malfoy said, exasperated.

“ _Well_. He’d better be mediating, otherwise I’ll go.”

“The diadem is still at Grimmauld Place,” Malfoy said. “Where else would it be? As I understand it, he has negotiated a great deal on behalf of the students and not at all on behalf of the parents.”

“Good. I mean. Good.”

“Is that quite all?” Malfoy asked, again stepping back.

“Oh. No. Here.” Fishing in his bag, he pulled out what looked like a rolled newspaper. “Your Panopticon arrived. Stop taking mine.”

Malfoy took the Panopticon briskly and, instead of leaving, now settled behind his desk with it. Fine. Harry opened the practice exam, working in comfortable silence.

 

_Friday, May 14._ After dueling club on Friday, Harry bolted to the Slytherin estate. He and Voldemort were going out to Cornwall early the next morning, and he’d do no favors to anybody if he was sleep-deprived for it.

He found Voldemort just opening a bottle of wine in the kitchen, dressed in silky shorts, a glowing leg brace, and the jumper Molly had knitted for Harry last Christmas. It looked strange and adorable on him. “Hi,” Harry said, stepping in to kiss him. “Good week?”

Voldemort made a non-committal noise, but summoned a second glass. “And yours?”

“Alright. Did you know the Slytherins were getting out? I mean – well, any of them. The eighth years are in the castle again, even if nobody else is.”

“I did know,” Voldemort said, taking a swallow of wine then passing his glass to Harry so he could lean on his staff. They moved toward the bedroom. “Today I swore the full measure of the vow upon which we’d agreed. I would not collude with the Death Eaters, or have any non-essential contact at all. I may not foment rebellion. I may not pose a threat to life or limb of anyone in the Wizengamot.”

“Oh.” Voldemort felt this was a punishment, but Harry shrugged. “Did you want to?”

Instead of answering, he cast a spell that revealed a string of runes around each wrist. They’d entered the bedroom, and Harry held Voldemort’s hands to lower him to the bed. “Hm,” he said, crawling in beside him, to examine the marks. The first, largest rune was a complicated sigil that he didn’t know, that directed the entire string after it. “What’s that?” he pointed to it.

Voldemort grimaced. “That is the rune for Imperio,” he said. “As you know, it’s more expansive in its ability to direct behavior than any other magic we have. There is no spell to directly prohibit _fomenting rebellion_ , otherwise. It is too abstract.”

Harry was still examining the runes: he recognized the sigil for violence, and the one afterward must be the Wizengamot. The next string was complicated: wizards who have the Dark Mark, or have sworn loyalty to Voldemort in the past. He wondered if Snape was still included. “How long?” he asked, scrubbing a thumb at Voldemort’s skinny wrist.

“To be revisited annually. Likely not rescinded as long as Scrimgeour is Minister, and possibly beyond that, depending on his successor.”

“Oh.” Really, he thought that wasn’t so bad. The world deserved to feel safe around Voldemort. “Does it hurt?”

A ghost of a smile. “No. It does not hurt.” Hesitation, then: “It would have, if they’d included the prohibition on dark magic, as they said they would. But – apart from the obvious utility of dark magic in battle – it would interfere with the magic of the Imperius itself.” He touched the rune.

“Good. That’s really good.” That’d been the only part of the vow he’d fought, that restricting access to dark magic would be dangerous. And when Voldemort let the runes fade into his skin again, Harry rubbed at the spot they’d been. “ _Has_ it been alright, though?”

A pause. “It’s been difficult. I did not anticipate how difficult it would be, since we have worked together all year. The Unification is fine,” he said at Harry’s mild alarm. “But all of our international relations are strained. The Undying are rarely so entangled with human politics, and it has put everyone on edge.”

“Are you ever going to see them again?” Harry asked. “The Humnerë. Well, the Dëshmitar really.”

“Officially, I am not meant to have independent contact with any foreign officials, Undying or otherwise. Unofficially – yes, probably. When we have time to travel, nobody will notice a brief excursion into the Balkans.” He looked at Harry over his wine glass. “Though I don’t understand why you should – support any of it. She tore open our soul.”

“Yeah, well. Nothing personal.” He’d obviously forgiven worse. Then, more sincerely: “It matters because, uh, she seemed to mean something to you?”

“Yes,” he said, after a moment. “She did.”

“Good.”

Voldemort’s eyebrows went up, but he only ran a hand through Harry’s hair. “Good boy. Where is your bag?”

Nappies, soother, kaval. Again Voldemort transfigured the glass jar into a baby bottle, pulling Harry into his lap to suckle at it. Somehow it still felt more perverse than anything else he liked. He was almost as bad as Voldemort, in how uncomfortable he felt at being cared for. But it was kindness. It was love.

 

_Saturday, May 15._ The next morning, when the wards chimed to alert them of visitors, Harry opened the door to find Tonks and Moody. “Hi,” he said, pleasantly surprised. “You’re coming to Cornwall with us?” He knew they’d have an Auror escort, but Tonks and Moody together were uniquely delightful.

“Yes.” Moody’s magical eye was examining the house.

“Neat. Vol – ? He’s in the kitchen, here, come in,” and Harry led them across the entry way toward the kitchen.

Voldemort had packed Harry’s bag with fruit and chocolate in one pocket, and all the bloody potions they needed in the other. It sat on the island counter as he cast the last of the cleaning spells, clearing off the range and setting the breakfast dishes to wash themselves up. The last spell was at the cellar door, adjusting the humidity for the snakes. “Ready?” Harry said, slinging his bag over his shoulder.

“Yes.”

“Wait.” Moody had squared off; they both looked to him. “Idonea sent word this morning, that Nurmengard would take you both tomorrow. Otherwise it’d be at least another month.”

“Ah,” Voldemort said. “Yes, we’ll go to Nurmengard tomorrow.”

“Potter?”

“Yeah.”

Moody cast his falcon Patronus, which fluttered before Voldemort. “Send word to her. No paper trail,” he added at Voldemort’s questioning look.

“Idonea – Harry and I will meet you in your office tomorrow morning to depart for Nurmengard,” Voldemort said to the Patronus. Moody released it, and it soared off. They left.

 

It was overcast that day, and the ocean spray at Cornwall was subsequently unpleasant. Moody and Tonks had secured the site, then made shelter for themselves in a lean-to. Voldemort and Harry had walked the perimeter alone, drawing the necessary runes and setting the focusing crystals in place. The airspace shield was ragged, its magic so unstable that it nearly hurt to be around. It would be a long day.

At last, when they had finished, Harry looked to Voldemort. “Could you cast it?” he asked. “And then give it to me, I’ll do the rest.”

“Yes.” When Harry took the edge of the shield, pulling it taut, Voldemort lifted Harry’s wand. “Protego Maxima!”

The shield glowed, the magic coursing through it. When it had stabilized a minute later, Voldemort handed back his wand, brimming with energy. They moved to sit at a weathered picnic table away from the cliff’s spray.

“What are you saying to him tomorrow?” Harry asked lowly.

Voldemort hummed. “What should I say?” When Harry only blinked at him, he was thoughtful. “I will tell him of the Hallows, and the Horcruces. Should I tell him the cloak is still extant?”

“I mean. Sure. Would he care?”

“Undoubtedly.” Voldemort looked down at his long fingers, where he wore the ring. “I am giving it to him. Unless you think it would be cruel.”

This was uncharacteristically thoughtful of him. “I don’t think so,” he said. “But then, I don’t know anything…. I never responded to his letter. I just didn’t know what to say.”

“You really shouldn’t have to say anything,” Voldemort said. “Grindelwald is _certainly_ not your problem.”

“It’s fine,” Harry said. “I want to go.”

“Good boy.”

“It’s more for Dumbledore’s sake than for yours, you know.”

“I know.”

 

They had to switch off casting, even as they shared magic. It was exhausting, boring, tedious. It felt properly like the punishment it was meant to be. So when Harry got up at midday, to stretch his legs and use the public toilets across the way, his entire back crackled. “God.”

Voldemort glanced up. “We are _never_ leaving the shield this long again,” he said darkly. “It isn’t worth it. How long are you committed to it?”

“Er. The next five years, Moody said.”

“Fine.”

Five years felt like a very long timeframe, but he slightly cherished how easily Voldemort agreed to it for him. He smiled. “Thanks. We’ll come back in a fortnight, then?”

“Yes.”

“Right. I’ll mention it to Moody. Do you need…?” But Voldemort waved him off, and Harry crossed the sandy cliff.

Moody and Tonks’s improvised shelter had been angled to keep the cold gusts of wind out. Harry slipped in, swinging his legs over the bench beside Tonks. “Wotcher,” she said, passing him a tangerine.

“Thanks.” He peeled it open. “The shield is awful. We’ll have to come back more frequently for awhile. Every fortnight.”

“Sure,” Moody agreed, glancing out at the shield. It was difficult to see now, white against a slate sky, but it was still mottled and patchy after hours of magic. “But no complications?”

“No. It’s fine otherwise.” He fiddled with the tangerine between his palms. “Could you tell me about the Slytherins? Malfoy couldn’t say much.”

“If you can keep it confidential,” Moody said. “From everyone but Voldemort.”

“Yeah, I can.”

A tired nod. “So far we’ve secured the Rowle property and the Flint property, moving the parents out of Azkaban and their children out of Grimmauld Place. There are five more Death Eater-affiliated families in Azkaban with students in Grimmauld Place, who will be released across the next three weeks. You’ve already got Bulstrode, Greengrass, Zabini back in the castle, but we don’t anticipate any others returning before the summer.”

“Even though – “ And hen his mouth clicked shut, because he had sworn a vow not to talk about Riddle to others.

Moody understood. “Take a walk,” he said to Tonks, “and give us ten minutes.”

“Ooh, intrigue,” she said under her breath, but then flashed Moody a grin. She left.

And when they were alone, Harry could speak freely. “And Tom had _better_ be doing enough for them. Or I’d be there myself, if it would help. Or I’d be back at Hogwarts over the summer….”

“He is useful,” Moody interrupted his babbling. “He too would prefer they return to school, but all the truancy laws to force ‘em are – cruel.” He sighed the word. “We’ve already scheduled OWLs for August. And Riddle will be teaching them Defense. And potions, if we can’t convince Slughorn to spend the summer there.”

“Or Snape?”

Moody opened his mouth, closed it. “Dunno what will happen to Snape,” he said. “We can’t just ignore the laws against quasi-humans in school settings.”

“Yes, you can,” Harry interrupted hotly.

Moody’s look was uncharacteristically indulgent. “We can’t. Lupin’s been alright because the librarian’s considered a secondary position. It’s different for Snape. We’ll try to keep them both on, but….” A shake of his head. “Anyway, we’ll need you in the castle only if we need Voldemort. But now that we know why the castle was cursed….”

Harry’s stomach twisted. “He really regrets it,” he said. “He won’t let anyone get near Hogwarts again.”

“No,” Moody agreed darkly. “He won’t.” At Harry’s look, he softened. “Potter, I _know_. We know. Hogwarts isn’t threatened any longer. He may need to come cast new wards over the summer, to fix the current damage. That’s all.”

“Okay.”

“You’ll have Grimmauld Place back by June.”

“And you’re recasting the Fidelius then?”

“Got to, haven’t we?” he said, a bit dry.

“Before that – can you open the wards so I can move stuff out?” Harry asked. At Moody’s raise of his eyebrows, he explained, “I want the piano. And the library. That’s it. Uh, the parts of the library that aren’t illegal, I guess.”

“We took out the illegal books years ago.”

“Did you?” he asked, doubtful.

“Illegal _magic’s_ different from illegal _books_ ,” Moody reminded him. “Voldemort knows we track sales of components used in illegal magic. We could track his magic too, if we need to.”

“Oh. And thanks for, uh, not blocking dark magic, in his vow. It would have really hurt him.”

Moody squinted severely at him. “Don’t give a damn if it would’ve hurt him,” he said. “But the prohibitions were themselves based in the Imperius.”

“I know,” he said. “But thank you anyway.”

“You’re welcome.”

Would they ever be anything but necessarily at odds? Moody would be more free when he was no longer handling the Aurors department and confined to their code of conduct. The Order may have new purpose in tracking the Death Eaters on house arrest or their children or – well, who knows what the future might hold. Peace may not come as easily as they all hoped. “Okay,” he said in a sigh. “Uh, Voldemort will know how to make the Horcrux – permanent. So Riddle can go afterward, and the diadem can stay at Hogwarts.”

“ _That_ is out of my control,” Moody said grimly. “It’s a fight among the governors now, whether they want the diadem displayed in the castle.”

“I mean. There aren’t museums, are there?”

A twitch of his mouth. “There _are_ museums,” he said. “But Hogwarts has so few relics now.” He waved a grizzled hand. “They can find Voldemort, when they need him.”

“Alright.” He was swinging his legs over the bench, moving to go. “Thank you, sir,” he said. A grumble of acknowledgement.

 

_Sunday, May 16._ The next morning, they were up early again, to travel to Nurmengard. “You’ll surrender your wand,” Voldemort said as he pulled on dark robes. “But otherwise, it is nothing like Azkaban.”

Harry couldn’t imagine how different one prison could be from another. “Alright,” he said. “Uh, should we bring him anything?”

Voldemort looked up, delighted at this. “You darling boy,” he marveled. “It’s not a housewarming party.”

“I brought _you_ chocolate,” Harry said. “And potions.”

“Yes. Regardless, I’m sure his needs are being met. Here.” He handed Harry a robe out of their wardrobe. “Be downstairs in a quarter hour.”

 

They had to meet the international criminal justice contact at her office in the Ministry. Madam Thorpe, the liaison, was poised and ready for them as they entered. “You will have until noon with him,” she said briskly as they moved toward the lift. “There will be a guard stationed outside the door. You’ll be searched for contraband, and subject to Legilimency before and after.”

Voldemort didn’t visibly react to this, when Harry glanced at him. But they both knew Harry was pants at Occlumency. Did he know anything the staff of Nurmengard would find dangerous? But Voldemort only ran a discreet hand up his arm, steadying his thoughts.

They took the lift down to the floos, then the floo to Nurmengard. (There was a _floo_ to Nurmengard, Harry thought in a dizzy way. It beat the hour-long boat trip to Azkaban.)  The prison was made of cold, dark stone – and while they’d floo’d directly inside, Harry had the sense that it had been carved into a mountain of the Alps.

Madam Thorpe had handed them off to a guard, who brought them down wet passageways in which Harry could see his breath. And when the bored-looking guard cast Legilimency on Harry, he could also feel Voldemort’s magic in his mind, carefully preserving the parts they couldn’t know. It was useful.

“Here,” the guard said at last, coming to a reinforced wooden door. He did not knock before pushing it open. “We will be waiting outside.”

“Thank you,” Harry said. They entered.

His first impression was that the cell was a _relief_ , if only because it was warm. A fire burned in a small central room; and an aged man sat before it. When he turned to look at them, Harry found his face strikingly similar to the mischievous, attractive blond boy in Rita’s photos. It felt unfair that after everything, he should be so unchanged.

“Forgive me,” he said, standing creakily. His accent had the same harsh edges as Viktor Krum’s or Karkaroff’s. “I had my doubts you were actually coming.” With a long hook, he was pulling a kettle off the fire, taking out a teapot.

It was a proper suite, small but complete, with a living room and kitchenette in the common area and a bedroom and bath off to the side. The décor was in muted colors, made grayer by the weak light that filtered through one narrow window. Harry and Voldemort crossed the space, sitting on the sofa perpendicular Grindelwald’s armchair.

“We had to come,” Voldemort said, taking the offered teacup. “I told Albus I would.”

Grindelwald’s half-smile was mysterious. “He is quite influential, for a dead man.”

“Isn’t he,” Voldemort agreed, a bit darkly. But Grindelwald only laughed under his breath.

“Which is to say,” Voldemort continued, after a mouthful of tea, as Grindelwald settled back into his seat, “that we have not come for your well-being. What do you know of the Humnerë?”

Grindelwald shook his head. “When you first took up with them decades ago,” he said, “I believed you would never leave. You were quite useful to them. What did they call you again?”

“The Kukudh,” Voldemort supplied. “The deathless one. They call me it still. And while my Horcruces were a matter of repulsion to them in my youth, they were precisely the attraction now.”

“The Undying have nothing but time and patience.”

“I know,” Voldemort said grimly. “But they are presently held at bay. It would have been worse had we managed to kill any of them, but,” a tired gesture, “we did not.”

“She was cornered with wolves, the papers say.”

“The British packs have been absorbed elsewhere. These two werewolves were merely strays. They belonged to Dumbledore.”

(Harry was quietly startled by this, to hear Voldemort describe Snape as Dumbledore’s. But he was, at least in part.)

Grindelwald smiled. “He did always collect misfits,” he said. “But then, so did you.”

“They are useful.”

“I did regret that I could not have made use of you in the war, you know.”

“I could be nobody else’s soldier,” Voldemort said, dismissive.

“And now?” Grindelwald asked. When Voldemort pursed his thin lips, he said, “Because you certainly seem to have become your Ministry’s mercenary.”

“No longer,” Voldemort said. “Before, extrajudicial justice was the only way to accomplish anything, and for that I was useful to them. They even suspended my citizenship for a time,” he said brightly, and Grindelwald laughed even if Harry didn’t understand why. “But now I have been sworn into their Wizengamot, and I am bound by all of its lawfulness and tedium.”

“A rather circuitous route to the Ministry.”

“Yes. It has been.” He looked down, back up. “And in the interest of shedding the remains of my past, I have come to tell you of my Horcruces.”

Grindelwald was bright; his eyes fell to the ring. “Indeed?”

“But first we must tell you of the battle.”

So they did. Grindelwald had kept informed on most of Britain’s politics this year. (“For sentimentality,” he shrugged. “They give me Swiss and Hungarian papers as well, but do they not all have the same impact on me?”) But information on Voldemort’s Horcruxes, or Horcruxes at all, was scarce for a variety of reasons – because the Ministry discouraged it, and they scared people, and the journalists didn’t entirely understand what they were. So Voldemort spoke dispassionately about the Humnerë’s attempts to sever his Horcruxes, to obtain the magic and disarm him at once. He said that the diadem and locket had been neatly snapped off his soul; only the complexity of his connection to Harry insulated them from the same. “Albus had kept the secret of Harry’s Horcrux from him through his death,” he said with faint disgust. “Because it, too, served the greater good. He would see my Horcruces destroyed, and Harry last of all. But my family ring – _this_ ring,” he said, lifting his hand, “killed him prematurely.”

“He wrote to me of the curse,” Grindelwald said. “He did not seem surprised.”

“No,” Voldemort agreed. “He wasn’t.” A breath. “We spoke to him. In a – liminal space, just before the point of death. He’d been steadfast that it was necessary he die when he did. And that we would learn why at an appropriate time.” He met Grindelwald’s gaze. “And he told us there of the Hallows.”

“ _Albus_ ,” Grindelwald breathed sadly. “Really, why has he not put such things behind him?”

“Have you?”

A wry smile. “No,” he said. “But I have nothing but time to think.”

“That sounds miserable,” Voldemort muttered. “There were rumors, after your duel, that he had carried the Elder Wand away with him.”

“I hope he confirmed that for you.”

Voldemort looked at him sharply. “You are not concerned to have it known?”

“I understand the nature of the wand. It is not so accessible.”

“The Dëshmitar took it from Albus’s tomb.”

His eyebrows arched beneath his curls. “Then perhaps she is nearer to knowing than most. Many people have tried to kill me first, assuming the wand will yield to them, then.” He gave a brilliant smile. “But that’s not it at all!”

“The wand followed Albus,” Voldemort agreed, “from mere defeat. And he chose to die undefeated himself, to break the Hallows. Even as he admits how little he can be trusted with power, to assume nobody would be more worthy to wield it – “ He broke off in anger, as he had when Dumbledore had told them himself.

Grindelwald paused. “While I agree with you, that was the only choice Albus would ever trust himself to make. He may have considered it – penance.”

“It is irresponsible,” Voldemort said, bitter.

“Was the wand buried with him once more?”

“Yes. So they said. And the ones who seek the Elder Wand should know, that it is disarmed and the Hallows broken.”

Grindelwald’s smile was sad. “The quest for the wand destroyed nearly as many lives as the wand itself did,” he said. “Someday you must forgive Albus his decisions.”

“Maybe.” Though Voldemort was doubtful. “But there was another.”

“Another Hallow?”

And Voldemort nodded, twisting off his ring and passing it to Grindelwald.

Grindelwald reacted before he had even studied it. The magic must be distinct. “Ah,” he said softly, turning it over in his hands.

“I stole it from my uncle, who came from a miserable, ignominious branch of the Gaunt line,” Voldemort said. “The Peverell coat of arms was not particularly of interest to me then. It was a souvenir, one I took with me to kill my father and create my second Horcrux.”

“Making the resurrection stone a Horcrux…” Grindelwald said hoarsely.

Voldemort hummed. “It is an interesting intersection, is it not? And the magic it created was – unprecedented, apparently. Dumbledore thought he had destroyed it at the time it had cursed him. But he hadn’t. Being the resurrection stone, it clung to life, and it waited for me. But what he returned to me was not my Horcrux. It was my soul.” A breath. “So the ring – the resurrection stone – is quite without value now. Its use as a Hallow was exhausted, when it returned us to life. The Horcrux is gone. Perhaps it should be preserved as a historical artifact, but I have had enough difficulty merely convincing the Hogwarts board to take Ravenclaw’s diadem. Albus said you should take it instead, as a keepsake.”

“Of the life we once had?” he suggested dryly, but then went sober. “The life we once dreamed of, and promised one another.”

“Yes.”

He slipped it on, examining it on his bony hand. “I would have killed you for this,” he said, quite conversational.

A twitch of Voldemort’s mouth. “I know.”

“Thank you.”

Voldemort inclined his head. Then: “The magic by which he – restored my soul, was only accessible at the point of death,” he said. “It makes sense, does it not?”

“I have never read of an antidote to a Horcrux.”

“Nor had I.” (Though this was a _lie_ , Harry realized – Voldemort had read the same copy of _Magick Moste Evile_ as he had, and it specifically mentioned remorse. But then, why would Voldemort believe in such things?)

“I would like to see him again.”

It sounded like an idle musing from Grindelwald, but Voldemort nodded. “I will commission a portrait.”

“Thank you.”

“Such that he might persuade you to relinquish your Horcrux,” Voldemort said evenly.

Grindelwald clicked his tongue. “Is that what you have heard?”

“No.” They sat near enough to the walls that Voldemort could reach, tugging a ward until the entire web of them lit up. They were inalterable, but his magic kept them visible anyway. “I knew as soon as we entered the prison. The stones sing with life, more than the expected edificial magic. There.” He pointed to a complex ward. “The way it coils in on itself.”

While Grindelwald had originally been amused, he’d now gone somber. “They could not destroy the fortress. The enchantments were all cast in the blood of prisoners. It will live forever.”

“But you will not.”

For the first time, animosity. “I know you are not _above_ immortality,” he said. “Not with Harry still at your side, sustaining you.”

Unexpectedly, Voldemort gave Harry a fond look. “Yes. He is. But there is a prophecy that we shall die by one another’s hand and – I still put quite a lot of confidence in it.” When Harry made a tiny noise, Voldemort ran his fingers through Harry’s hair as he always did, but in Grindelwald’s presence it felt _so_ revealing. “Not imminently, of course, I hope. But no, I no longer yearn for immortality.”

“Why?” Grindelwald asked lowly.

A faint smile played at Voldemort’s lips. “Because death felt so hospitable.”

Grindelwald was quiet for a long time. Then: “I would like to see Albus. And perhaps – after the long overdue conversations we both avoided, the amends we never made – perhaps then I should be ready to die.”

“Good.”

Grindelwald looked up at him suspiciously. “Is that why he sent you?”

“No,” Voldemort said. “But we must heal the wounded parts of history.”

 

When they left, Voldemort’s presence in Harry’s mind was strong – so strong that Harry assumed the guard would notice it as he cast Legilimency. But they were both cleared to go, easily. Idonea waited for them at the floo. “Is he well?” she asked in a perfunctory way.

“He will be.” Voldemort took Harry with him into the floo.

At the Ministry, he turned to Idonea once more. “We must stop by my office,” he said to her.

“Why?”

“I’m afraid that’s confidential. But we will see ourselves out.”

She left them. Harry and Voldemort walked, leaning against one another because Voldemort’s cursed body ached. And when he entered the department of the Wizengamot, he didn’t take Harry toward his office, but the other way around, slowing before a curved wooden frame. “Albus.”

A long moment, then Dumbledore strode into the portrait, purple robes swishing behind him. “Voldemort,” he greeted him. And with more warmth: “Harry. You look well.”

“Thank you, sir. Ah….” He glanced at Voldemort.

“I am commissioning a copy of your portrait,” Voldemort said briskly. He could not speak freely, as the other portraits could always be listening, but he said, “There are regrets from which he must be released. And he will die,” he said, in a manner that meant, he _must_ die.

Dumbledore clasped his hands before himself, one black and one white. He looked down at them. “I feared as much.”

“You had to know,” Voldemort said. “When casting his prison. I saw the magic.”

“As in many things regarding Gellert, I chose not to know.”

“Brilliant,” Voldemort muttered.

Dumbledore disregarded this. “I would not have – access to him as I did you.”

“You would,” Voldemort said. “I left him a cursed knife.”

Harry laughed, interrupting them. “You didn’t.” He hadn’t seen anything, and he’d been sitting right beside Voldemort.

Lifting the arm to which he’d attached a charmed knife previously: “Revelio.” Nothing. “It should bring him near enough,” he said to Dumbledore. Near enough to death that he may be restored.

“Thank you. Truly.”

“He is irrelevant.” Voldemort looked uncomfortable with the sincerity. “A relic of another time. Our politics would be simpler if he did not haunt them.”

“You are nothing alike, you know.”

Voldemort’s discomfort deepened. “I know,” he said. “But the rest of the world has its doubts.”

“You should not have to live in his – our – shadow. Either of you.”

“Yes. Well. Much of Europe is timid about collaborating with Britain, even now. I do not care for justice or reconciliation, and I care less about your abortion of a relationship.”

“ _Voldemort_ ,” Harry said, horrified.

They both ignored him. Voldemort went on. “But I have sworn to maintain peace for Britain, which cannot be secured as long as Germany and the others still live in fear of his legacy.”

“I know,” Dumbledore said lowly.

And Harry saw it or maybe felt it – Grindelwald was another thing for which Voldemort thought Dumbledore had been negligent. He was holding back the flood of his frustrations, if imperfectly, but Grindelwald should not be _his_ problem. “Good,” he said, tone clipped, and turned to go.

“Voldemort.” A tensing of his shoulders, but he looked back. “You gave him the signet ring?”

“Yes.” Voldemort lifted his empty hand to demonstrate it. “I told him everything you had told us.” (And this was the first time they’d acknowledged – that time, the time at King’s Cross – to Dumbledore. He did not react with anything but a tiny nod.) “He seemed to – accept that the Hallows were gone.”

“That is a reassurance. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Voldemort said, and this time, they did go.

 

_Saturday, June 5._ Things got simpler, if not less hectic, after that. By the first week of June, the Slytherins had all been relocated out of Grimmauld Place, and their families out of Azkaban. So, after a _lot_ of conversations with Moody, Harry was allowed to bring Voldemort in to help him pack the library.

They apparated to the street, and walked hand-in-hand up the steep stairs to the door. They were both confident that Voldemort could get in anywhere Harry could – which Moody _hated_ , and rightfully so – but Harry held tight anyway, to drag him through the Fidelius if he had to.

But no, it yielded easily for them both. Harry stepped into the cold entryway. “Kreacher – ?” he began to call out, but immediately there was an irregular clatter of claws on the hardwood, and Moira sprinted/fluttered in. “Hey, good girl,” he cooed, scooping her against his chest. “Oof – you’ve gotten so strong.” He was ruffling her soft ears.

Then a pop, and Kreacher appeared before them. “Master,” he said, dipping low.

“Hi, Kreacher. Ah, this is Voldemort. Have you met? He’s – “ _the other part of the Horcruxes?_ What could he possibly say. “He’s come with me to move out the library,” he offered instead. “Uh, is Tom still here?”

“Yes. He is upstairs.”

“Great,” though he didn’t know what they were meant to _do_ with him. “Uh, and did Malfoy tell you that you should live with him? I don’t….” He fumbled, awkward. “I’m not good at keeping an elf, you know that, and you should stay within the Black family anyway. And if there’s anything, uh, important to you in the house, you should take it, too. Malfoy’s got a few more weeks at school and then – then he’ll tell you where he’s moving, I guess.”

“Yes, Master.”

“Do I need to sign anything?”

But Kreacher only shook his head, his long ears flopping. Then he vanished, to take care of things elsewhere.

Voldemort was entertained. “Nobody taught you how to manage a house elf?”

“Obviously not. _Hey_ ,” he said when Moira got too squirmy. He let her down and she, too, ran off. “Here, let me show you the library.”

He lit the lamps as they entered. “Moody said I could take all of it, there’s nothing too illegal, even if – uh. He doesn’t really _want_ you to have these books. You know.”

A quirk of Voldemort’s mouth. “I know,” he agreed. “Would you ask the diadem what he intends to do for the next month? He may stay here, but it seems there are more advantageous options.”

“Are there?” Harry asked doubtfully. “Like what?”

“Like living at the estate.”

“Oh.” Harry blinked at him. His weekends with Voldemort had been a reprieve and a joy, and having Tom around would _not_ be conducive to their relationship. “Sure. I guess.”

Voldemort enjoyed Harry’s polite reluctance. “I thought he might inhabit the guesthouse, which he expended so much magic to create. And having it on property imbued with Slytherin’s magic will – help. For a bit, anyway.”

“Right. That’s fine. I’ll go tell him. I mean, offer it to him.”

“Thank you.”

Voldemort was _reluctant_ to speak to the Horcrux, Harry realized as he went. But then, it was another piece of his past he hadn’t actually been able to shed. In a way, it was generous and unexpected to suggest he live with them at all. Harry climbed the narrow staircase to Tom’s room.

He opened the door before Harry could knock. “Come in,” he said, stepping aside. “Where is he?”

“Downstairs. We’re taking the library. And we’ve arranged a mover for the piano.” He took a seat at Tom’s desk, while Tom lowered himself gracefully onto the edge of the bed.

“Ah. Those,” he gestured to the stack on the desk, “are half yours and half Hogwarts’s.”

“That’s fine. Uh, Voldemort says he knows – thinks he knows – magic to keep you manifest, even apart from the diadem.”

“Mm. I also have hypotheses.”

“Well. Great. Did you have – plans for the next month, before Hogwarts needs you for the summer?”

“I will go,” he said. “Moody is quite anxious to cleanse this home of its Slytherin presence.”

Harry smiled. “Yeah, he is. But – look. D'you want to live at the estate? Voldemort said it would help. Anyway, you did so much to rebuild it, it’d be unfair if you didn’t live there. Take the guesthouse,” he offered in a rush, “or we could furnish one of the spare bedrooms, whatever you want. But… you should stay.”

Riddle had listened with a faint smile playing at his lips. “The savior,” he crooned.

“I’m not. Voldemort suggested it.”

Riddle rose. “I will take the guesthouse,” he said. “I need to speak with him about the diadem.”

“Sure, yeah.” Before Harry took him downstairs, he asked hesitantly, “Has it hurt? Being apart, that is.”

Riddle seemed to consider it in a sincere way. “Less than you might expect.”

“Good.”

They found Voldemort clearing out shelves with dramatic swirls of his staff: the books fluttered neatly into labelled boxes along one wall. He scarcely glanced up when they approached. “Are you joining us?” he addressed Riddle.

“Yes.”

A short nod. Then: “I would seal the fire of manifestation within the diadem, with blood magic. Only Harry or I could revoke it.”

“That offers nothing for the spatial limitations.”

“How far can you stray from it, now?”

“Perhaps fifty miles.”

“Then you’d best look for a flat in Scotland for a year or two.” Then, more sincerely, “Or really, you could do worse than staying at Hogwarts beyond the summer term.”

“I know. I might. But I will not stay forever.”

“No.”

“The artifact is kept in the minor drawing room.” He was leading them out now, into the drawing room where the flames glowed green in the hearth. Against the silvers and grays of the décor, the scene was decidedly Slytherin.

“When was the diadem last moved?”

“Weeks ago.”

“Ah. Then this may hurt.” And with a twist of his staff, he lifted the diadem from the fire. Riddle faded and vanished abruptly.

“ _Voldemort_ ,” Harry admonished, but he was laughing. They sank onto a sofa so he could work seated. “You do know what to do?”

Voldemort was pulling a slim notebook from his breast pocket, where he’d written a few pages of notes. “Yes. I only need your magic.”

“Sure, yeah.” He leaned in.

There was a ritual to it: Voldemort had brought their focusing crystals, and a vial of black ash that he said was a burnt phoenix feather. In the layer of ash spread across the coffee table, he wrote three runes. _Life, protection, wholeness._

Before setting the diadem amidst the set-up, he flipped it over, to reveal the back of the jewel setting. “The fire is going behind the central setting. You would be able to reveal and hide it with _Surripio_ and _Expiscor_ , just as hiding the Horcrux on your person.” He set the diadem within the ash and drew a globe of magic around it. Then, a tiny green flame inserted behind the jewel setting, before the white gold stretched to heal it over.

And then Tom flickered in the light reflected off the diadem, uncurling his body. He glanced at Voldemort. “ _Bastard_ ,” he said, picking up the diadem himself. “Could I shrink it?”

“Yes.”

So he did, slipping it onto his hand, as Harry had always worn it like a ring. “Thank you.”

“Do you need to pack?”

“Scarcely. I will apparate boxes back, though. Unless you’ve put in a floo?”

It had been one of their more persistent fights, because Voldemort was paranoid as always. “We do not have a floo,” he said. “Put on a glamour before you step out of this house.”

“Oh. Yes. The neighbors will recognize this one, anyway.” He drew his cypress wand, cast a mirror charm before himself, and then cast a glamour in tiny, precise strokes. His hair fell between his shoulder blades, lightening to a deep red. The bridge of his nose went wider, his eyebrows changed shape, his jaw went stronger. The effect was attractive, but in an entirely different way than Riddle. “Tarquinius Rowan,” he said easily, “named for the last tyrant king of Rome. But as Tarquinius is rather a mouthful, I prefer Tom.”

“It’s like you want to be caught,” Voldemort muttered. For Harry’s sake he added, “Rowan and Tarquin are both family names in the Slytherin line. It is excessive.”

“I am entitled to them. But as the papers still skip over the Horcruces entirely, I’m quite sure I won’t be.”

Voldemort made a tiny noise. “I will not save you if you are.”

“Yes, you will,” Tom said. Voldemort waved him off; he moved to go gather the books from his room.

And as Harry and Voldemort returned to the library, a thought struck Harry. “Am _I_ still attached to the Horcruxes?” he asked. “They were attached to my soul….”

Voldemort looked at him thoughtfully. “I don't know. Are you?”

“Maybe.” He would hopefully never be in a position to rely on Tom’s magic again.

“If you are, then you might be nearer to immortality than I am.”

Harry made a face at that. “Jealous?”

“On the contrary, quite relieved. So I may never lose you.”

And it was light but it also was real. “You never will,” Harry promised, stretching tall to kiss him.

\\\\\\\ ////

June came, and NEWTs with it. All of Harry’s classes were now revising. He held study sessions in the evenings for DADA twice a week, and studied Runes with Malfoy twice more. The seventh years were panicked; the eighth years were weary. Hermione came to breakfast with sticky notes in her hair from having fallen asleep on her books more than once. “But you’ve already taken all your NEWTs,” Harry protested.

“Ron hasn’t,” she’d said. “Honestly, I’d invite you over to study, but he’s so volatile these days….”

“I’ll take Ron,” Harry said. Hermione gave him a look of massive relief.

\---

He saw Sabita for therapy every week, and things seemed to somewhat progress now that he and Voldemort were no longer in crisis. When she said brightly that she was going to open a private practice in Hogsmeade, he nearly sighed in relief. He’d confided a _lot_ in her by now, and it’d suck to start over. “And can I bring Voldemort sometime?” he asked hesitantly. “Just – I don't know. Because he doesn’t really understand why I want this.”

“Bring him,” she said firmly. “It will help.”

The only thing that remained was to convince Voldemort, in spite of his earlier protestations. He’d work on it.

\---

Only the four Slytherin eighth years resided in the castle, but based on what little Malfoy or Daphne would divulge, they were alright. Riddle – the _locket_ – had done a lot surreptitiously to mend the wards throughout the dungeons, making the Slytherin dorms habitable again. And oddly, Malfoy seemed to delight in openly mentioning Tom to Harry, to make him twitch with paranoia. “This is perverse,” Harry muttered once in Runes. “You know he’s essentially a sex toy, right? Don’t fall in love with _it_.”

“Don’t be vulgar, Potter.”

A pause. “Are you really leaving Britain?”

“Yes,” Malfoy said. “We really are. It is simplest that way.”

“Want to come to the graduation party at Ron and Hermione’s place first?”

Malfoy made a face. “No, thank you,” he said. “I heard Weasley’s rather hormonal these days.”

News of Ron’s pregnancy hadn’t traveled evenly, but by now most of their class and all of the faculty knew. And really, the rest of the school had probably guessed, since he was even more temperamental than usual. And much hungrier.

“You should see Voldemort sometime, though,” Harry went on. A sidelong look. “Really. Or – he should, anyway. Voldemort made the diadem, uh, permanent? And now it lives in that _bloody_ hideout you made.”

At this, Malfoy snickered. “You,” he said, pointing a pale, chastising finger at him, “are ungrateful.”

“I’m _ungrateful_?” Harry repeated in bewilderment. “To you? To him?”

“He revitalized the literal wreck that was that home.”

“Oh. Yeah, he did. Hey, d’you know who did the landscaping at your Manor?” When Malfoy blinked at him in utter confusion, he said, “I know it sounds like I’m mocking you but I’m not. This time. We’re having our wedding reception at the estate next year, and we haven’t got the faintest how to do to the back garden. And everyone invited, y’know, cares about that sort of thing.”

Malfoy’s mouth curled. “Welcome to the wixen elite,” he said. “It’s a prison. As it is now _my_ Manor and I look after all of its maintenance, of course I know our landscapers. Shall I send their business card with Tom?”

It didn’t sound like a joke. “Yes?”

“Good luck tracking down all the correct wedding superstitions. The papers will talk if you miss one. The Prophet thought my mother was cuckolding my father because she plaited her hair in too novel a fashion. Merely two hundred years old.”

“Merlin fuck,” Harry said, looking heavenward as though for fortitude. And then Malfoy was laughing at him again.

\---

He became too busy to spend the weekends with Voldemort; The next time they were meant to go cast the airspace shield in Cornwall, Harry had written he’d have to bring his textbooks with him and Voldemort had written back that he was perfectly capable of casting it himself. He offered to drop Moira off at Hogwarts if Harry needed the company, which was really quite charming, and Harry was grinning when he wrote back that Voldemort and Moira deserved quality time together. **_But you need to tell the snakes on the property that they CANNOT eat her._**

_The snakes, too, are well-fed already,_ Voldemort had reassured him. _I put summoning charms for rats and voles at the edge of the cellar, for the lazy ones. I did not anticipate living amidst such a menagerie._

**_I’ll introduce you to Hedwig later_** , Harry wrote back, still smiling. **_We are going to run out of rodents on the grounds._**

_It is a good problem to have._

\---

The evening before NEWTs would begin, Hermione decreed that they needed to rest their minds, for optimal performance. “Are you sure?” Ron said, scrubbing at an ink stain across his knuckles. “I literally dream of the anti-inflammatory potion these days, Hermione. I don’t remember the time before it was the most important thing in my life.”

“Don’t be silly,” she said fondly. (Hermione had gotten uncharacteristically gentle these past couple weeks, if only because Ron was now the anxious and dramatic one. It was good for them, in a way.) “I asked some people over to watch a film.”

“Which people?”

“Ah, most of our year? And Ginny and Luna and – whoever, really.”

They were all very cognizant of how quickly _this_ was coming to an end. The controlled chaos of the castle, the usefulness of living among friends, the warmth of being literally surrounded by magic. “Yeah, alright,” Ron said, and he was shoving his textbooks aside.

That night they brought a case of butterbeer back to Ron and Hermione’s suite. When everyone arrived, they looked as frazzled as Harry felt. Lavender, the Patil twins, Ginny, Luna, Justin. Lisa arrived last and looked worst – Terry’s death still weighed heavily on her. When Harry saw her, he got up. “Here, would you come with me?”

She blinked at him. “… Yes?”

When he was partway across the dungeon, she realized. “Doesn’t it seem a bit late to befriend the Slytherins?”

“I dunno, is it? Uh, do you know the password?” he asked, as they approached the blank wall. He could use Parseltongue, but.

“Sycamore,” she said, and it opened. She went in first. “Daph?”

The Slytherins had been huddled in a study nook, passing books between them. “Oh,” Zabini said flatly when he saw Harry behind her.

So much for good intentions. “Look, we can’t revise anymore,” Harry said. “And we’re having people over. We’ve got butterbeer, and a film.” That probably meant nothing to them. “A film’s like theatre but the performers aren’t there in person – “

“Yes,” Malfoy said, amused. “There’s a cinema down the street from Grimmauld Place, did you know? Dreadfully easy to sneak into.”

“Oh my _god_.” He was horrified, delighted, intrigued by the idea of a cinema full of refugee Slytherin purebloods. “Then, come over. You can’t learn anything more tonight.”

“… Alright.”

So Daphne and Lisa slipped into their private world, and Harry was going to die of awkwardness among Malfoy, Zabini, and Bulstrode. Moreso, he thought, when he let them into Ron and Hermione’s suite, and some people just blinked at the lot of them. But then Hermione grabbed two butterbeers, thrusting them at Millie and Zabini, who were nearest. “Hi,” she said. “Come in.”

They watched Die Hard, at Ron’s request. Hermione fell asleep on his shoulder; Luna was distracted, showing Parvati how to finger-knit on a bright blue scarf; Ginny lay with her books propping up her head. The Slytherins sat together, approximately watching the film as they spoke in low tones. Malfoy was drinking butterbeer at an alarming rate but really, Harry couldn’t fault him.

\---

The Runes NEWT was held mid-morning the next day; and since Harry was the only person being examined, it was taking place in a smaller room upstairs. When he entered, an elderly witch with blue-silver hair waved him in. “Mr. Potter,” she said. “Come in and stand on the mark. I thought we could do things in a more lively fashion this morning.”

Harry was smiling as he took his place on the glowing x. The examiner swirled her wand, and a matrix of glowing wards became visible around him. Just as Malfoy had done for him all year. “This is the practical portion of the exam,” she said. “When you have defused these wards, you will be able to make your way to the written portion.”

She gestured to a desk in the back of the classroom. There must be twenty wards between him and that desk. “Yes, ma’am,” Harry said, and drew his wand.

The exam was _nice_. The dangerous wards weren’t too dangerous, and nothing was meant to make him blind or deaf or paralyzed like some of Malfoy’s shittier runes. The aging wards didn’t even decay into anything toxic. He saw the examiner watch him as he prodded a shifting rune with his wand, observing as it squirmed away, which always meant he could neutralize it. He’d learned that one from Voldemort, and it was unorthodox but it was useful. The ward fell apart in his hands.

 

Ron and Hermione were already at lunch when Harry arrived. Ron looked _green_ , as he tore a bread roll into smaller and smaller bits on his plate. Hermione was rubbing his back. “I could cast a scent-blocking spell,” she was saying, “but really, it will put you at a disadvantage.”

“Puking into the exam cauldron will put me at a disadvantage,” he said miserably.

“I know,” she soothed him. “I asked Lavender for anti-emetics, she should be back with them soon.” When she finally noticed Harry, she said succinctly, “Morning sickness. And the potions exam this afternoon.”

Harry winced. “Sorry, mate.”

Ron shook his head, picking ice out of his glass. “How’d runes go?”

“Good. Really good. I didn’t know everything on the written part, but the practical part was…” _fun_? “Fun.”

“You’re shitting me?”

“I’m really not.” He pulled a dish of salmon toward himself; Ron nearly retched. “Sorry, sorry,” Harry said, shoving it back from him. “Uh, should I find Lavender?”

“No, she’s just come.” Hermione lifted her chin where Lavender had entered the Great Hall. “Here, hon.” Carefully she cast an insulating bubble around Ron, keeping all the food smells out.

( _Hon_. Harry wasn’t surprised exactly, but he almost never heard Ron and Hermione being publicly tender to one another. It was nice.)

Lavender strode to the high table, dropping a dark pouch before Ron. It clinked with glass. “Enough potions for the day,” she said. “And a patch, since you couldn’t bring potions in with you.”

He sighed in gratitude. “You’re amazing.”

“Mm, yeah.” But she was smiling.

And then Harry was oddly free while his peers all went on to take the rest of their NEWTs. The castle was tense and nauseated; he had to get out. He took his broom up to the owlery. “Hey, beautiful girl,” he said, stroking Hedwig’s plumage. “Do you know Fawkes? We’re taking care of him too. But you’ll always be my first. Come flying with me?”

And so they did, soaring over the lake and the forest, toward the far mountain range. Hedwig swooped in front of him on the way out, and rode quietly at the front of his broom on the way back. And Harry’s face was turned toward the meager sun the entire time like a flower, and everything was okay for awhile.

\---

NEWTs ended and class exams were administered, and Harry, Ron, and Hermione spent a couple long days shut away together to grade them. On Wednesday the 23rd, they had the closing feast, and on Thursday morning the lower grades departed, leaving only the seventh and eighth years for, well, debauchery.

The feeling of the castle shifted drastically – they were free to wander, to do magic, stay out late. When Ginny brought a few bottles of butterbeer to breakfast on Friday, Slughorn passed their table, considered, and then transfigured the labels to read _Extra-Strength Pumpkin Juice_. Ginny grinned at him.

Harry was released from the obligations of taking meals at the high table, but it didn’t matter because faculty were immensely more willing to mingle with the students now anyway. Hagrid or Remus joined their table for meals regularly; Flitwick charmed the castle to make birds soar overhead, or firework erupt, or the suits of armor burst into song when the students entered the corridors. Slughorn threw them a party on Friday night. There, Harry babbled to McGonagall that he knew from Hagrid’s memories that she’d outdrunk Sirius at James and Lily’s wedding. She listened to his drunken rambling, considered him, and then conjured two shots of whiskey. “Cheers, Potter.”

Saturday was Quidditch scrimmages and time at the lake. It was Ron and Hermione planning a party in their home next weekend, inviting everyone. It was drinking with the faculty, who excused themselves around midnight to go to bed. “Just don’t do any lasting damage,” Remus said with a smile as he left.

Sunday was going into Hogsmeade once more, saying goodbye to Rosmerta and then Aberforth, drinking iced coffee at Madame Puddifoot’s on the sunny patio. Back in the castle, Hermione had them sign a massive thank you card to the house elves, and of course Ron laughed at her but he also signed it.

Monday was going down to Hagrid’s for tea. He was working the school garden when they arrived, harvesting artichokes as big as Harry’s head for dinner that night, and Luna helped him plant sunflowers. Harry, Ginny, and Ron played keep-away with a Quaffle over Fang’s head, and Hermione sat on a large round squash as she told Hagrid about her summer internship with Madam Bones.

Late that night, the five of them walked up to the astronomy tower, to look over the grounds. The moon was bright, three quarters full, and shimmered off the lake. Hermione had her arm around Ron in a protective way, and they looked a million miles apart from the others. They would be alright.

Ginny and Luna were looking over the balustrade, but Harry had hung back. Then, he saw a bright flash of something in his peripheral vision.

Malfoy’s hair. And he wasn’t alone. Quietly, so his friends didn’t follow, he approached.

The locket looked back first. “Ah.” And while Malfoy had not quite been touching Tom, they’d been close, and he pulled back now. He was glaring.

“Did you _follow_ us?”

“No,” Harry said, startled. “Why would I? We were – “ He gestured to his friends, even though they were mostly obscured from this angle. “But this is stupid. You’re going to get caught.”

“As I am not an idiot, my disillusionment more than suffices,” Tom said.

“Until the next time Moody’s around.”

A smile curled his lips. “We visited the Ministry today.”

“Oh my god, _why_.”

“Why do you think?”

“Uh.” It clicked. “You didn’t see Voldemort _there_. Oh my god,” he reiterated.

Riddle didn’t dignify his paranoia. “We are leaving the country tomorrow night. There was no other time. But now – “ He shifted his robes, revealing the gold chain of his own locket at his throat.

“Potter really hasn’t got to know any of this,” Malfoy muttered.

Riddle’s look was… indulgent. “We will have little reason to ever return, but he knows how to reach us should he need to.”

Harry hated this. He had saved everyone _but_ Malfoy this year. “What about the Order?” he addressed Malfoy, somewhat desperately.

Malfoy blinked at him, not expecting the question. “I assume it will survive my absence.”

“No. I mean – they were supposed to help. They were supposed to protect you.” _I want you to stay_ , he was in the supremely awkward position of almost telling him.

“Your Order did everything it was intended to do,” Malfoy said. “Nevertheless, we are leaving. Please contain yourself.”

He meant it archly, but Harry… Harry didn’t want to confront these unlikely feelings. “Fine,” he said. Then, the same question he had asked Voldemort before came to him again. To Tom: “Are we still connected? I mean….”

Riddle reached out, running a hand down Harry’s arm. There was that flush of magic. “It should not burden you,” he said, ignoring Malfoy’s bitter and jealous look. “A curiosity.”

“… Okay.”

Tom raised his chin to where Harry’s friends were stirring, moving to leave. “Go. We will be on the train tomorrow.”

“You are mad,” Harry marveled. “At least put on a glamour.”

He hummed, amused.  “Goodnight, Harry.”

\---

Tuesday would be the Embarkment. Harry was awake early to throw the last of his belongings in his trunk. He gathered Hedwig into her cage last of all. “Here. There you go. You’ll like the house, there’s meadows and forests nearby. Maybe we’ll plant fruit trees that you’ll like. Good girl,” he said, as she settled onto her perch, groggy from being out all night. Carefully he carried her to the ground floor.

The elves had made them a final grand feast, bright and fresh with new summer produce. Ron ate nothing but three servings of strawberries and cream, and Hermione fussed at him but in the end she was entertained. And then when the dishes had been cleared, McGonagall stood at the high table. “Students will please take your possessions to the lawn for transport, and then re-convene here in an hour.”

Harry’s breath was sticking in his throat.

When they reassembled, the student tables had been cleared away. The ceiling was golden-bright, bathing the Great Hall in a warm glow. The ghosts had assembled. The portraits were filled with other subjects from around the castle. The faculty were lined up at the front. Flitwick was before them. “In alphabetical order, please!”

This put Harry behind Parvati and Padma, and in front of Phaedrus Quick. He wondered if they would, for some reason, be re-sorted.

Instead, McGonagall stood before them once more. (“It had always been the Headmaster,” Padma murmured to Parvati, but Snape was silent in his place at the other end of the line. Harry had to consider what Moody had said about Snape, that werewolves weren’t fully included and his position could be precarious from now on. Anyway.)

“We are all so proud of you,” McGonagall began, before abruptly pulling out a tartan handkerchief. Dabbing her eyes, she went on, “Please process down the receiving line when your name is called. Lavender Brown, please come forward.”

The faculty had drawn their wands, and as Lavender stepped before McGonagall, they exchanged low words and then a hug. McGonagall swirled a bright spell over her; she stepped to speak with Slughorn next.

“Millicent Bulstrode.”

And so on. Each faculty member cast a blessing over each student. Snape, at the end, was handing each of them an item, but Harry couldn’t see what.

At last: “Harry Potter.” He stepped up.

“Mr. Potter.” McGonagall’s voice was cracking. “What a great man you have become. Everyone is proud of you. Everyone else _would_ be proud of you.”

And Harry felt the weight of it today, that his parents wouldn’t see him leave Hogwarts. Sirius would have accompanied them, of course, and they would have departed from King’s Cross to celebrate. Whether his parents would have been the type to host parties for his friends, Sirius _definitely_ would have been, so they would’ve brought everyone back to Grimmauld Place or maybe to a home Sirius liked better. “I know,” was all he managed to say.

“Your magic has been so impressive, so – determined,” she said with a smile. “We will miss you. And we are so fortunate to have you.” She raised her wand. “For good fortune.” Her magic washed over him.

Slughorn was genial, Hagrid inconsolable. “Yeh’ve got to come back,” he said. “Anytime. We’d have yeh back anytime.”

“Hagrid, I will,” Harry said, passing him a tissue. Through tears, Hagrid carefully cast a blessing of resilience on him.

Spiraea, Firenze, Vector, Nyx. Flitwick, standing on the stool that normally held the sorting hat, cast a blessing of gratitude upon him. And Remus, second to last, gathered him in a strong hug before anything else. “You are so, so good,” he murmured into his hair. “They would be so proud of you. This is – a blessing of love.”

At last, Snape, whose face was set in indifference. Harry didn’t expect a hug from _him_. He didn’t know what he expected. “Sir – “

“Potter. I have kept you safe for eight trying years,” Snape said, too low even for Remus to hear. “Please let _him_ save you from your own reckless, dangerous, attention-seeking behavior from now on.”

He couldn’t help it, he grinned. “Yes, sir.”

“Put out your hand.”

Wondering if he was going to get his knuckles rapped, he did so. Instead Snape slid a class ring, with the Hogwarts crest and _1999_ imprinted on it, onto his middle finger. “May you represent the castle with everything we’ve taught you,” he said, rote.

“Thank you.” His head was down, studying the ring.

“Potter. _Look at me_.”

He did, surprised. Snape’s gaze was intent on his face. After a minute, he gave a sharp nod. Harry stepped away.

They gathered on the far side of the Great Hall. Ginny walked, then Ron, and finally Blaise Zabini. “Congratulations,” McGonagall began to address them, but then her voice caught in her throat.

Hagrid stepped forward. “Follow me.”

He led them down to the lake. “ _Oh_ ,” Hermione said in a tiny voice. The fleet of boats was now lined up at the water’s edge.

“Three to a boat, yeh’re not so little anymore,” Hagrid said. Harry, Ron, and Hermione stepped carefully into a boat, and it departed.

Hermione was looking back toward the castle the entire way, her eyes bright. The rest of the class was similarly quiet, excitement receding into wistfulness.

On their way past the carriages, many of the students stopped to pet the gentle thestrals, letting them lick their hands or faces. The thestrals made soft noises when they were happy, and Harry was smiling as he climbed into a carriage.

At the Hogsmeade train station, then, he was fully pulled off his feet by Hagrid’s last hug. “You’ll see us again,” Harry said, sucking in a breath.

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

At last Hagrid let him go and he could collect Hedwig before boarding the Hogwarts Express.

The mood on the train was cyclical: excitement, sadness, excitement again. Most of them kept the compartment doors open so they could shout or run between them. Only the Slytherins’ remained closed, blinds drawn. Presumably Tom was inside with them. And Harry wanted desperately to do more for them, but – well, in a strange way he trusted Tom with that, at least.

He’d written to Voldemort that the train would arrive in London around seven that evening, and he’d apparate home from King’s Cross. **_I’ll start dinner if you’re not back yet. And I’ll let out the animals._** There hadn’t been a response – it _was_ a weekday, and Voldemort approximately lived at the Ministry these days, so Harry expected little else. He put his diary away.

By the time they’d crossed into England, Hermione had parchment out to plan the party next weekend; and Ron was looking over her shoulder as she wrote. “Don’t _send_ my parents an invitation,” he said. “They’ll be at King’s Cross. We’ll just tell them there.”

“Your parents are coming to King’s Cross?” Harry asked with interest.

“Well, yeah. Everyone is, I think. It’s traditional for families to come out.”

_Oh_. That was nice. Maybe he wouldn’t apparate directly home, then. “Do people just know, to…?”

“No,” Hermione said. “My parents got a letter about it as well. But they both have evening clinics on Tuesdays,” she added at Ron’s nervous look. “I said we’d go out to celebrate later this week. You can come too, if you’d like.”

“Maybe, yeah.”

Meanwhile Harry was quietly fascinated and horrified by the prospect that Petunia would have gotten a letter as well. Not that she’d come, not that he ever wanted to see her again, but she’d be the nearest thing to family from Hogwarts’s perspective. But he’d done better, now.

Ginny and Luna joined them in their compartment to watch the train roll into King’s Cross station together. “ _Oh_ ,” Harry said, charmed by the crowds waiting for them. There were sparklers and balloons, bubbles and fireworks. The Weasley family was visible amid all of it, their bright red hair a beacon.

They pulled down their trunks; Harry took up Hedwig’s cage. “Ready?” he asked her softly. A reassuring blink.

Cheers as the students disembarked, pulling apart to find their families. Ginny cut through the crowd and they all followed her to the gaggle of Weasleys. Everyone was there – Fred and George must have closed the shop early, because they were waiting with very suspicious celebratory buttons. Arthur and Xeno Lovegood were in conversation. Bill and Fleur stood with Tonks, laughing at something she was saying. But Molly saw them first, and moving through the crowd, she pushed a bright bouquet of golden flowers into Ginny’s arms.

Harry faltered. “Ron,” he said in a strained way, “do they know?” As badly as Arthur and Molly had taken Ginny marrying Tonks – _to save her life_ – he did not have high hopes about news of an unplanned pregnancy.

But Ron nodded. “’Course. I told them – well, a week later, when things had settled. They’re happy, after they’ve had time to adjust to the idea. Mum wants to watch it while I’m at work.”

Ginny had told Harry it was different for girls, and apparently it was. Harry offered a smile. “Good,” he said, and then he stepped forward to be crushed by Molly’s hug.

They stayed in King’s Cross for a long time, recounting the Embarkment and the celebration. Everyone was invited to next weekend’s party. But at some point, Harry noticed – a warmth in his soul. A tugging. He didn’t have to look for Voldemort to know he had come.

But when he looked over the thinning crowd, Ron and Hermione followed his gaze. “He’s here?” Ron said lowly.

“Yeah.” He was smiling. “Yeah, he is. Let me say goodbye to your parents, then I’m gonna….”

“Right. Yeah.”

So with a last goodbye, he set on, simply following the tether that held their soul together. He could feel the Weasleys watching – watching _him_ , perhaps, but moreso watching for how Voldemort would treat him. And it was okay, this partitioned life. Maybe it wouldn’t always be this way, but it was already more than he had ever hoped for.

Maybe Voldemort had worn a disillusionment, or maybe it was just how the crowds flowed, but Harry spotted him abruptly, leaning along a railing a bit apart from everyone else. He had brought Moira, held in his arms so she couldn’t run loose, and they were both watching the scene of families departing together. Harry was grinning as he approached. “Hi,” he said, shifting Hedwig’s cage so he could lean in, kissing Voldemort. “I didn’t know you’d come.”

“Of course I came. Congratulations.”

“Thanks. Here – switch you.” He held out Hedwig’s cage, and scooped Moira into his arms. “Hedwig, this is Voldemort. Be good for him.” A clicking of her beak meant she’d consider it.

Voldemort was looking past him, toward the Weasleys. “Wouldn’t you like to go out with them?”

He shook his head. “Not this time. We’ll all get together later.”

“Would you like to go out at all?”

At least it sounded nice. Being, well, _them_ , they could probably get into a nicer restaurant here than anyone had ever taken Harry to before. They could be visible, public, together. But again he shook his head. “Not tonight,” he said. “Maybe tomorrow. But for now – could you just take us home?”

Voldemort’s smile was soft, a curve of his lips. “I will take you home.”

It took a minute to sort out Harry’s belongings and the animals. Voldemort still leaned heavily on his staff, and Harry pulled him against his side easily for support. “But… don’t cast a disillusionment,” he requested lowly. “I want people to see, how proud of you I am.”

Voldemort’s response was to reach up, running his fingers through Harry’s wild hair. Then they stepped out of King’s Cross, into the last threads of summer sunlight, to return home.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So we made it. Thank you for taking a chance on this story; I have been so gratified that it has meant anything to anyone else already. I wrote this as a means of escapism, and as a reflection about love and goodness and justice in a time when it feels like all these concepts are coming apart at the seams. So, thank you for your indulgences, and all your kindness.
> 
> There will probably be one-shots or other pieces set in this universe, and there will definitely be more Harrymort in my life anyway. If you subscribe, I'll see you on whatever I write next.
> 
> You should also find me on Tumblr, at [sofiabanefics](https://sofiabanefics.tumblr.com). I post headcanons, Voldemort and Harrymort stuff, and some auxiliary posts about this fic in particular are all tagged Cicatrization. See you there.
> 
> Until next time, all the best,  
> Sofia


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